Kalimat al-Mutafalsif

So, I've spent the last 24 hours begging everyone I know to get into weewar and play me now, since I got that pro account. The new units, I've gotta say, are amazing. I finally got a game where I got enough credits coming in to splurge on the new units just to check them out and man was I impressed. They're strong, real strong. The Assault Artillery is fun. Drives fast to set up, and hits decently. The Berserker is slow but packs a HUGE punch. And the D.F.A... well... the D.F.A. made me laugh when I got a chance to use it. Here's a screenshot I just had to take. Talk about a target rich environment! And yes, not only does it have the range, but it'll get a 10 strength tank down to 5 in one shot. Cue evil laughter.

Well, about a week ago the creaters of Weewar had an interview on Galaxy-News.net. In that interview they offered a raffle for 5 free pro accounts. These accounts are normally gained by referring new players to the site, 10 players gets one month of Pro status. However, if you had Weewar and Galaxy News accounts, and sent an email to their giveaway, you were entered into this raffle. And guess what, your lovable neighborhood hacker Snarky won one! So now, of course, I'm getting tons of invites as everyone wants to play with Pro players. Oh, not because I'm good, but because we get to use new maps, and everyone in the games Pro players are in get new units! Death from above now is not only my favorite Space Marine battlecry, also the unit I most want to test!

So, real quick as I just got the idea to actually post this little story, I was writing a little script. This script dealt with ids I'm using for a project. Basically I knew there was a lot to begin with, but wanted a flat file, not a database because I figured "Hey, I'm dealing with a lot, why pay the overhead every id of doing a bunch of queries?" Among other things, this script couldn't list an id more than once. So I (stupidly) chose an array to store the ids and sort through them. At first, no issues, I could process a few ids in a second and get all my work done on them. Well, after I hit around 15,000 I had issues. It was now taking about 5 seconds an id. It only got worse, and worse, and worse. Around 19,000 ids I finally CTRL-C's the script, to retool it. I changed it over to throwing all the ids into a database, accepting a tad more overhead per id, but overall this becomes linear time. I stupidly forgot my Big-O notation classes, and that sorting through a large list of numbers takes longer than a very short one. *sigh*.

Bottom line: For large amounts of data accept the higher overhead per unit when it'll lessen the overall overhead. Now my script runs happily all day without decreasing my speed. I only post so you geeks out there can laugh at me, and I'll remember this handy little lesson later on.

(I feel the need, as I do freelance programming, to point out I'm normally quite smart regarding how I design my code, and I'm posting this because I can't believe I did that!)

So, I popped into my favorite IRC channel in the middle of a coversation about some new browser game. I paid it no heed and went back to replaying the Brood Wars campaign in preperation for SC2. Then someone offered to toss me an invite and I decided to try it. I only got through 4 rounds before I had other things to do, but I'm hooked already. This is bad because those of you who know me and browser games... productivity goes waaaay down.

Anyways the game is Weewar (yes, that link gets me a point towards "pro" status for everyone that signs up via it and completes at least one game... if you don't like that feel free to remove everything after the '?'), which is an AJAX based RTS that's pretty addictive and yet very simple to learn. Basically its just land units and cities so far, though it does include terrain bonuses (that I just started using right now to great effect!). However, the maps really change the game as cities generate certain amounts of credits based on the map.

The best part, in my mind, is that this is a fun multi-player browser game that one can come back to. My first game went on hold when we all had to leave after 4 rounds. No matter, the game will be there waiting as we each come back. And you don't even have to check back on the HQ tab, you can set the game to email you when its your turn! I already have two games waiting on other players, simple enough to click "Review last turn", watch what happened, and make your moves.

Bottom line? I'm hooked... I go by Snarky (what a surprise) on the site, hit me up for a game some time! Want an invite, I'll bring you in for your first game (I still have yet to finish one *grin*)!