A collection of various ramblings on technology, life in 
Saturday, November 29, 2003 Melanie and I do live a charmed life. As we left Nice, France this morning I saw one of the most beautiful views of the snow covered French Alps I have ever seen. I was kicking myself for not having my camera on hand. But the charmed life doesn't end there. Once we arrive in New York we are driving up to the green mountains of Vermont. Funny, the first real snow I have seen this season was this morning flying over the Alps but the first real snow I will ride on is in Killington, Vermont only 24 hours later. Yes indeed, a charmed life. posted by Kirby | November 29 08:58 AM | comments (6)
Monday, November 24, 2003 PhotoRoom V1.6 is now available for download. posted by Kirby | November 24 10:35 AM | comments (0)
Monday, November 10, 2003 Killington opened today! posted by Kirby | November 10 01:29 PM | comments (1)
Sunday, November 09, 2003 I am finally enjoying the Xbox Live experience with two new games, Top Spin and Amped 2. Both games are a blast and both have quickly become my favorites. But what I really like about both is the online play through Xbox Live.
With Top Spin, you need to play offline in career mode to build up your player. As you improve your skills you can play online in the official matches. When you win a match online your total points increase, and your total points will decrease when you lose a match to someone ranked lower than you. Your player's total points make up your total ranking. And with Xbox Live you can see your ranking against other players. And these folks are good, very good. The play is much harder than against the AI offline.
Amped 2 online play is a lot of fun too but in a different way. There are two modes, Just Ride and Session. Just Ride lets you free ride with others on various mountains. You can even set it up to ride with just your friends [or your crew]. The online chat is a nice combo with Amped 2 because you can talk with one another as you play. I can't tell you much about the Session mode as I have not played that mode yet. And like Top Spin, Amped 2 will rank you against other online players so you can see how you stack up against other real players.
My favorite aspects of the two games online are: 1) I love the competition with other real players in Top Spin, and 2) I love the online chat with friends and others in Amped 2. It's fun chatting with others about different real mountains, talking about what has just opened, and where snow has recently dumped. posted by Kirby | November 9 12:33 PM | comments (1)
Monday, November 03, 2003 I just finished reading the book A Practical Guide to eXtreme Programming, which I found to be very refreshing and motivating. Although I have heard a lot about XP over the years I didn't really understand it completely or know all of the principals and practices of the process. I found it interesting that many of the concepts are things I believe in today although admittedly I tend not to follow. Testing first is one example. I have worked on one project where I used this approach but I have to change and start doing it for all projects.
One myth about XP cleared up for me after reading this book was around documentation or more specially the misbelief that XP prompts no documentation. I have heard this mentioned by others in the past but didn't know what the real story was to debate it. The truth is that XP does in fact encourage documentation but only the right amount of documentation.
I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in XP and to opponents of XP who have not read a complete book on the process. posted by Kirby | November 3 09:23 AM | comments (0)
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