I just released the second version of Polyball Bounce. This version is actually playable, but still rough around the edges. A screencast is available.
Polyball Bounce 0.2.0 Released
Polyball Bounce 0.1.0 Released
I just released version 0.1.0 alpha of a new game I’m working on, Polyball Bounce. To see what it looks like, check out the screencast.
It’s currently in pretty early stages, but I plan to keep working on it till it’s at least playable.
Student Union Elections (Server Side)
First, a bit of background info: I’m currently the primary administrator for xenon, an old server that I inherited from former members of COG. Xenon used to run a bunch of important things, but it currently only runs the Student Union website and some very low profile and unused personal and club sites. I’ve been pushing for the Union to move to something more manageable on a newer and better maintained server, and Yale Spector has been doing a lot of work to that effect. The new site is Almost There™, but we had to run another round of elections on xenon. Unfortunately, everybody who knew how to set up elections on the old site has left Brandeis.
After some effort, mostly on Yale’s part, to figure out the election system, everything seemed to be working. If there were any random crashes, they were fixed automatically by a script I wrote after problems with last year’s elections going down.
Towards the end of the election’s time window, the list of candidates disappeared from the website and admins couldn’t stay logged in. Fun times. Nobody could figure it out and I was unreachable, swing dancing and then hanging out with a friend in the gym, which has bad cell reception. I got back to my dorm to see some interesting messages.
After some digging around, I found that the relevant code for listing candidates does something like SELECT * FROM candidates WHERE election=12345 ORDER BY RAND(), which gave ERROR 1030: Got error 28 from table handler. When I removed the ORDER BY clause it worked fine, so I was about to accept non-random ordering of candidates until I could find out what’s wrong or randomize the order in PHP instead.
Since I’m not familiar with the code, I decided to make an in-place backup copy before changing the relevant file. When I tried that, I got the dreaded no space left on device. Duh. MySQL must have been trying to use disk space to “sort” the table. The admin interface must have been trying to insert rows into MySQL or otherwise write session information to disk.
After a minute or two with du and sort, I found what looked like a safe file to delete. Magic, people can view candidates and make an informed decision before voting.
Hello World!
This is a blog post. I’ve read that the majority of blogs have no more posts after the first. We shall see if this is also the last post on this blog.
Leah Price and the Impala: A Bängala Dance
This post was migrated from a collection of contra dances I wrote. The post date is mostly accurate, but the post time is not.
- Difficulty
- hard
- Comment
- I wrote this for an English Literature project on Barbara Kingsolver’s novel The Poisonwood Bible. The choreography is meant to resemble a hunt in which Leah Price kills an impala, but Gbenye thinks it was his kill before Nelson proves that Leah had killed the animal.
- The active lady is Leah, the active gent is Nelson, the inactive gent is the impala, and the inactive lady is Gbenye.
- Position
- proper
- Progression
- single
Choreography
A1
16 beats: active lady and inactive gent gypsy and meltdown into a swing in the center, ending facing down
A2
16 beats: active lady and inactive gent down the center, turn alone, and come back
B1
4 beats: cast around with partner
12 beats: active lady and inactive gent push off in center and return to swing partner
B2
8 beats: ½ ladies’ chain
4 beats: roll the ladies away with a half sashay
4 beats: inactives California twirl
Devastated Newbie 2
This post was migrated from a collection of contra dances I wrote. The post date is mostly accurate, but the post time is not.
- Difficulty
- extreme
- Comment
- Every progression the women move two and the men move one, so assuming you’re not at the end of the major set, you end up in a completely new set of four every time.
- Position
- improper
- Progression
- mixed single (for men) and double (for women)
Choreography
A1
16 beats: swing neighbor
A2
8 beats: women cross the set and gypsy partner
8 beats: ½ hey, starting with men passing left shoulders
B1
16 beats: balance and swing person on left (men) or right (women) NB: this is your new partner
B2
8 beats: circle left ¾ and California twirl partner to face new people
8 beats: balance and pull by new person
Flying Juggernaut
This post was migrated from a collection of contra dances I wrote. The post date is mostly accurate, but the post time is not.
- Difficulty
- hard
- Comment
- This dance can require a lot of upper body strength because of the flying figures.
- Position
- improper
- Progression
- single
Choreography
A1
4 beats: balance ring
12 beats: 4 person swing left with hands behind the backs: men lock hands with each other and women lock hands with each other; women fly: men lift their arms once some speed is built up and the women stay in the air; end in opposite place, as if it was a circle left 1½
A2
2 beats: women go forward and form a wavy line in the center
2 beats: #1 women jump, #2 women support
2 beats: #2 women jump, #1 women support
2 beats: women go back
8 beats: men do the same
B1
4 beats: balance ring
12 beats: 4 person swing left, men flying, ending as if it were a 1½ turn
B2
4 beats: balance ring
8 beats: petronella twice
4 beats: California twirl; end facing new neighbors