http://www.jrtwine.com/blog Blog Site for myself, and my friends Tue, 20 Mar 2012 23:54:07 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=139 http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=139#comments Tue, 20 Mar 2012 23:54:07 +0000 James R. Twine http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=139 JIC it helps anyone else out there.  For no apparent reason, Outlook 2010 started taking hours to download emails that usually came down in minutes.  And when I say hours, I mean 3-5 hours!  The app would remain responsive for the most part, but would consume 100% of a CPU/core.  It would download a number [...]]]> http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=139 0 http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=132 http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=132#comments Mon, 05 Mar 2012 00:39:50 +0000 James R. Twine http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=132 Going through my boards, I came across a second Dig Dug board.  This one boots to static garbage and no sound.    Watchdog is barking. Removing one of the CPUs gets different garbage.  Tried replacing with a known good one, no change. Checking the pins shows me that a couple of the data lines, from [...]]]> http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=132 0 http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=109 http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=109#comments Sat, 18 Feb 2012 23:20:21 +0000 James R. Twine http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=109 Got an interesting problem with a Roc’N Rope board that I recently connected up to the new JAMMA test rig.  It has all its sounds, and plays correctly, but the text and tiles (e.g. the title graphics and the graphics used to build the levels) are all upside-down! When the screen is flipped for cocktail [...]]]> http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=109 0 http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=105 http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=105#comments Sat, 05 Feb 2011 03:13:04 +0000 James R. Twine http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=105 Well, I finally got off my ass and placed the code for the XNA Command Console that I have been working on (and off) since 2009.  I think it is ready for a public release and is available at: http://xnacc.codeplex.com.  Have a look if you get a sec.]]> http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=105 0 http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=100 http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=100#comments Sun, 25 Jul 2010 22:29:33 +0000 James R. Twine http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=100 (Attention lawyers and previous employers: the following information does not specifically identify a particular entity.  You have nothing to worry about unless you think this represents you or your company and you know there is some truth to it.) As I have worked with a few different kinds of managers/supervisors throughout the years, I have [...]]]> http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=100 0 http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=96 http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=96#comments Sun, 25 Jul 2010 21:41:24 +0000 James R. Twine http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=96 I have been subjected to a few so-called agile development methodologies over the years.  Most recently, Scrum was the one in question.  Well, it was kinda-sorta-almost Scrummish, which means it was not really Scrum at all, but we will ignore that for now. All in all, the use of stories and a Wiki to keep [...]]]> http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=96 0 http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=87 http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=87#comments Fri, 04 Dec 2009 03:31:31 +0000 James R. Twine http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=87 My previous post, about Cocktail #1, clearly documents the “easy one.”   This second one is gonna be another story.  It has a very dead monitor, and a non-functional board.  I have not yet benched the monitor, but it has no neck glow, which is never a good sign. The board has problems, but at least [...]]]> http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=87 0 http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=77 http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=77#comments Fri, 04 Dec 2009 02:54:05 +0000 James R. Twine http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=77 Well, I ended up taking two Centipede cocktails off of another local collector as a package deal.  Still want that Gorf, though…  Will have to come back t that one soon! But I digress…  So I have two Centipede cocktails here.  One of them has a dead monitor (and a non-working board, I later discovered), [...]]]> http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=77 0 http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=70 http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=70#comments Fri, 24 Jul 2009 01:53:36 +0000 James R. Twine http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=70 So I have started playing around with the Guide, signed-in user preferences and information, and the UI features in XNA.  Gotta say, I am impressed so far… I am currently punting and using the text input feature to get a player’s high score name, defaulting it to the configurd player’s name.  When the game is done, I want [...]]]> http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=70 0 http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=71 http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=71#comments Thu, 16 Jul 2009 23:17:27 +0000 James R. Twine http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=71 Well, I finally upgraded to XNA Studio 3.1 and the audio-related memory leak appears to be gone now! That was easy… Just goes to show you that even in managed environments, you still have to pay attention and know what you are doing when it comes to managing resources…]]> http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=71 0 http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=69 http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=69#comments Sun, 12 Jul 2009 18:49:16 +0000 James R. Twine http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=69 Had a little trouble with a memory leak using the XACT classes to play sounds. Had to get a little kludgy to fix it.]]> http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=69 0 http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=68 http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=68#comments Mon, 29 Jun 2009 00:59:33 +0000 James R. Twine http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=68 So having some extra time on my hands, I have started playing around with XNA Game Studio again (version 3.0 this time). I picked up a shooter tutorial created by PHStudios which gives you a functional, but very simple game. I started about the shooter that I have always wanted to write. It was going [...]]]> http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=68 0 http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=67 http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=67#comments Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:02:26 +0000 James R. Twine http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=67 I once again find myself having to use a web-based application. This is a often just a fancy name for a bloated set of code that provides a little more functionality than what a set of CGI scripts could provide. The beauty of CGI apps was that they were often very succinct – they were [...]]]> http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=67 0 http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=66 http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=66#comments Thu, 25 Sep 2008 19:07:36 +0000 James R. Twine http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=66 How would you move a file in an atomic fashion? What? Not enough detail for you? Do not worry - I have made some assumptions regarding the scenario, that I just pulled outta my ASS, and you better get the same asnwer I did!!!]]> http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=66 0 http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=65 http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=65#comments Mon, 07 Apr 2008 21:28:49 +0000 James R. Twine http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?p=65 I got myself involved in a thread on The Code Project Forums that lead to the idea of Robust software, and one of the posters said: I call an application robust if it’s in use in the real world for a lengthy period of time and no data has been lost and no one has [...]]]> http://www.jrtwine.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=65 0