I have finished reading Basic Economics - A Citizen’s Guide to the Economy and I thought it was an amazing book. If all books could be as thought provoking, I don’t think I’d spend any time programming.

A few odd things where happening while I was reading this book. At the first there was the French youth labour law changes. I’d just read the section on why such labour laws are bad.

There have been other union based actives around that I’ve seen and I feel so distance from the idea that union bring any real value.

It’s a wired situation, I know someone who works in administrator at a unionised company, and the BS and pettiness of the union and the land grabbing for benefits that really don’t make sense. It just seems so inefficient.

But at the same time, I’ve had the concern that I been strung up by the ‘man’ in the past. I prefer the play it honest, and if burnt move on.

So back to the book, really just great stuff. The funniest thing is that in high school the guys interested in economics I had a ‘boring accounting’ opinion. It turns out I was missing out on one of the best topics.

Well, after 10 months of logged work, with 169 check-ins to Subversion. I have 91% of the assembly translated (or deleted) and ZERO errors. Which means I can start running the program and debug the issues that where assumed, or unknown.

Lots of unassigned memory issues so far. Things that where stack based in the C/C++ (original code as Pascal) sense, that now need to be constructed to allocate heap memory. At this point the project would have been heaps easier if I’d used C++ as the target language. But I didn’t.

Now the actually useful parts, like learn DirectX to do the graphic and keyboard IO. The other option is to go GDI+ and buttons and/or menus. I’ll mostly try the second option first. :-)

I read Options Trading for the Conservative Investor back in January.

The primary focus of this book is conservative uses of options, to lower basis, or protect value. I found it well written and explained things from the prospective of protecting wealth and use of options for this purpose. Compared to other books with their this is the maths/logic of how options work perspective.

I read the book Forgotten Realms: Azure Bonds a few weeks ago. I found the story fun. It was not complex. There was plenty of plot development in the beginning, but it was all wrapped up quite quickly at the end.

As with most books it is interesting to find out that the cover work armor is only worn at the end as part of a ceremony. Nice to know the sword sell did not consider this normal armor. Bless cover artists.

Here is a list of the cheats I’ve found so far in Curse of the Azure Bonds.

Adding STING to the command line (first parameter) will:

• Skip the Title screen
• Allow toggling debug mode, press CTRL+D. Output is put in the DEBUG.txt file. While in debug mode:
  • Each executed Byte Code is logged to the debug file
  • Press CTRL+Z to dump the affects that each party member has
  • Press CTRL+C to exit the game straight away

Adding Wooden to the command line (second parameter) will allow you to:

• Display the area map in all areas
• Skip the copy protection, so you don’t need the code wheel, not that it matters as most abandon ware sites have the cracked version.
• Turn on “Free Training” when in a trainer, press J. This means:
  • You don’t pay the 1000 gold pieces
  • You don’t need to have the required EXP to train
  • Your character doesn’t need to be conscious
  • Training centers will train all classes
  • You will be given the required EXP to be the level you have just trained for
• Pressing Alt-x or ‘-‘ (minus) in combat will cause “The Gods intervene!” and kill all enemies

Thus you would type start.exe STING Wooden at the DOS prompt.

I hope this helps someone may be stuck in the game.

Edit: Here’s a video showing these cheats in action

Reading the C# jobs on Rent-a-coder I came across this job which is a spam blog tool in the making. The thing I don’t get is why you need to have a C# program to-do it. And why you’d claim to offer up to $1000US for the task. A simple batch file with some SED come to mind as the complete requirements.

The only reason for an app that “looks very nice with a nice color GUI” is to re-sale to would be spam blogger in the making. As long as your mottos not “don’t do evil” it seems a simple ploy to profit off what is not profitable (or shouldn’t be). Almost like diet plans and exercise videos. Selling a dream, and skimming the cream.

All in all quite a sad state to affairs.

On a plus note though, 30 entries into the list I haven’t come across any university assignments yet.

I’ve been quite busy the last few weeks.

I’ve been searching for a new job (last day tomorrow) as my contract is not been renewed, and the company is restructuring to reduce costs. Been a great adventure, I’ve learnt a lot, and worked with a group of great people.

This is also the last week of our tenancy in our current house. Michaela has been spare heading the effort to find a new house to rent, on the south side of Christchurch. A mission in it’s self. But we have just sorted out a sort term lease, so we will not be crashing on her (or my) parents.

I’ve been playing underwater hockey twice a week. Broke my glove, then broke my stick on Thursday while trialling a new glove, so more $$ to spend on hockey.

In the gaps I’ve been studying for some Microsoft exams, as I want make some progress on my career. Been learning lots of interesting tit-bits, and finding the how-to sections of MSDN really helpful.

So lots happening, and just not the time to sit down and make note of it. That am I’m not sure the worthiness of each of these in part.

I notice Frank Arrigo has automated the Oz DNUG OPML list, and included the NZ DNUG OPML, so hello to anybody that’s subscribed, and seen nothing new.

I’ve read/watch/listened to some good posts recently that include :

• Casey Muratori’s video on Quaternion double-cover and the rest-pose neighborhood - This was a thread I had read the follow-up talk, but not watched the video. Very worthwhile if you interested in bones based animation.

• Scott Guthrie’s post on Awesome ASP.NET 2.0 RSS Tool-Kit Released - Not an ASP.Net junkie at all, but still interesting insight to processing RSS feeds.

• Scott Hanselman’s post on Answering Questions (and putting your gamercard on your desktop) - Not that I have an Xbox 360, or will be buying one in the near future. But I can dream yeah?

• Kathy Sierra’s post on Mediocrity by “areas of improvement” - I found this good fodder for my “how to run a company” monolog that runs through my head now and then.

• Marc Brooks’s post on Commonly Used .NET Coding Patterns in CodeDom - The Code Project - C# Programming - quickly read though Omer’s collection and if seems great resource. Plus it’s great tit-bits for my assembly-to-C# project.

• Somewhere in there some reported on a VB.Net-to-C# web service. I had some code that didn’t convert correctly, but I didn’t investigate this too far.

It was Michaela and my sixth anniversary yesterday. The sixth anniversary present is Iron, Candy or Wood depending where you look. So last week I went to a local shop that does iron work called Ironic Art, and looked through their catalogue (available online also). They have a huge collection of really impressive table/chair type stuff. But that was not what I was after. Talking to the guys, one showed me a partial flower that he had. So I ordered a pair of roses, made from Iron. They included a stand, in the price.

I was really impressed with the roses and Michaela really liked them also.

If you want Iron work I’d really recommend Ironic Art.

Items of interest have been:

I added Scott Bellware to my feed list today after I found this post (Failing Tests Meaningfully - TDD Process and The Karate Kid) really insightful on the whys of the TDD ways. I’ll admit I had not got that far in my understanding, but like a lot of good idea’s it seems so obvious now I’m on the other side.

I also added Creating Passionate Users after reading the great post Users shouldn’t think about YOU.

Microsoft have re-introduced the second chance program again, which is really good as I’m about to take a test or two, so this gives me confidence that my money will be well spent. via Darryl then Nigel

Lastly, Lego Bible Scenes, this is some of the funniest stuff I’ve seen done with Lego. via James

Michaela and I have been looking at houses and rentals for a while now, and each time I just wish there was a better way to search/view houses, because there are areas in Christchurch I want to live near.

So the other day when I came across ZoomIn Maps I was really impressed with their AJAX based street search. This was the basis needed to build my dream house/rental site.

Then today Tim off the .Net user group linked to the ZoomIn API and I was oooh-arhhh-ish. Reading their blog, they mentioned there first customer NZFlats, and my first thought was yay! now I don’t have to-do it. And sure enough it has the features I want. The number of listings in Christchurch is quite limited presently, but once this site catches on this will be the way to-do it. None of this crap custom search stuff per rental/real-estate agent.

So now we (NZer’s) just need to converge on this site, and all will be easy.