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Friday, December 5, 2008

I installed Google Friend Connect for my site, which took 10 minutes, and spent another few hours or so thinking up some creative ways of displaying it on the site. It problem is that its minimum width is 200 pixels, but my right navigation bar on my blog is 160 pixels. So I tried to float it and have some animations for it to pop out onmouseover, and blahblah, those didn't go so well, so I settled for the immediate effect and that works quite well. What's surprising is that I didn't have to tweak it for IE at all.

Anyway, in the past week, I've been to Momo's three times, been busy at work doing menu and UI coding, played a pretty good amount of DotA and generally slacked off with that secret website that I am working on.

There's two more weeks until I leave for Auckland. It's going to be an awesome Christmas time \o/

Posted by Jeremy at 8:58pm :: 2 comments

Tags: google, javascript, sidhe, momos

Sunday, November 23, 2008

November News

Okay I haven't died yet, it's just been pretty boring on the news front for the blog.

Let's see, I've spent the last two weeks practically home alone: two flatmates in the South Island, one in Australia for a week, means one Jeremy at home cooking delicious food for himself, and playing absurd amounts of DotA. Not that either of these things are bad. I brought DotA to work on my iPod in the hope I could attract some interest and get my workmates to play as well.

I had a flatwarming for three of my workmates last night too. They live about 20 minutes up the road from me, so maybe I'll see them on the bus or walking home or something. But it was a pretty cool party, got to hang out with people and socialise and stuff. Woo~. Got caught by the rain as I went home, but luckily the bus was on time and I managed to minimise the wetness.

I've been doing a lot of web development lately. I fixed some spam bot problem with my Shoutbox a few minutes ago, and I thought I'd blog about something that's been infuriating me for the past few weeks.

The majority of the world have this program installed on their machines and actively use this malicious application. I do not know the exact numbers, but whatever the statistics are, it is far too much for people to being using such filth every day.

I am, of course, talking about Internet Explorer.

Who the hell at Microsoft decided to make a substandard browser with so many security flaws and a blatant disregard for web coding standards just to piss developers off? Morons. Absolute bloody morons.

In this site I've been working on (You know the one, Stephen :O), I have this search box that appears onmouseover, and it disappears when you click outside the box, but should remain visible when clicking inside the box. The easiest way to implement this was to cancel the bubbling effect that events have, that is, clicking inside a table will trigger its onclick, its parents onclick and continue up the chain until there are no more onclick handlers.

So, if the table onclick is specified and the event.returnValue parameter is set to false, I can use this value to prevent subsequent calls to the onclick handler. Thus, when it gets to the body onclick, inside the handler, I just return prematurely if event.returnValue is false.

Yup, that's all great. Works wonderfully on Firefox. This behaviour also works on Internet Explorer too...oh, wait. Hold on a second. By specifying that the event's returnValue is now false in Internet Explorer, all onclick handlers no longer work. That means onclicks for anchor tags and submit buttons. What kind of stupid system is that?

I resorted to using the following code:

<script type="text/javascript">

var eventHandled = new Array();

function myFunction(event) {

    if (eventHandled[event.type])

        return;

    eventHandled[event.type] = true;

}

</script>

<body onclick="myFunction(event); eventStates = new Array();">

<table onclick="myFunction(event);">

    <tr>

        <td>No Click</td>

        <td><div onclick="myFunction(event);">Click</div></td>

    </tr>

</table>

Clicking on the innermost <div> with "Click" calls myFunction. myFunction sets eventHandled["onclick"] to be true, and prevents bubbling up by halting execution of the onclick in the <table> and <body> tags. Finally at the <body> tag, the states are reset to ensure that the next onclick can be processed. Phew!

Stupid Internet Explorer.

(PS: I should look at getting some syntax highlighting...)

Posted by Jeremy at 9:14pm :: 2 comments

Tags: dota, sidhe, fail, internet explorer, firefox, javascript

Friday, November 7, 2008

In Stores Now!

Buy your copy now, and I'll autograph it for free!

Posted by Jeremy at 8:50pm :: 2 comments

Tags: rugby league, sidhe

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Remember, Remember, the Fifth of November

As the poem goes, the city of Wellington celebrated Guy Fawkes Day with a fantastic display of pyrotechnics streaming from the harbour.

But for some, these fireworks meant more than watching a myriad of chemicals combust in the sky. These fireworked heralded a change. A change that attracted the interest of the entire globe as we followed the US Presidential Race during the later hours of the afternoon, until its pinnacle as Senator Barack Obama claims the 44th Presidency of the United States of America, defeating rival John McCain, 338 electoral college votes to 156. It is certainly a phenomenal landmark in the history books as America gets set to crown its first African-American President.

But of course, my project team and I were busy discussing important matters at our team meeting.

¬.¬

Posted by Jeremy at 11:40pm :: 1 comment

Tags: fireworks, guy fawkes, president, sidhe, strawberry fare

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Photo Dump!

Time to clear out some photos from my phone. As I said on Monday, we celebrated the announcement of Rugby League 2: World Cup Edition, my first game at Sidhe Interactive. The company took us out for some nibbles and drinks. Meet the team!

Those Wellingtonians seemed pretty happy that they beat Auckland for that Ranfurly Shield, so they held a parade for the players.

I was owned by the bus strikes on Wednesday and arrived at work 30mins late, so that night, I planned to stay at the Hub and walked to work the next morning. Good weather for it as well! On Friday night, I met with Jono and Dave at this Malaysian restaurant where we had the awesomest grilled prawns. A bit pricey, and not very big portions, but delicious.

Today, music at church - daylight savings meant I had to get up at what was really 7am. Then I met Laura for yum char at Majestic. I need to stay awake and not nap to keep this sleep schedule intact.

Posted by Jeremy at 3:19pm :: 0 comments

Tags: rugby league, sidhe, prawns, bus strike, yum char, church, piano

Monday, September 22, 2008

SHIPPED

We got the announcement that the game we've been working on for the PS2 finally got the green light from our publishers.

So that means that at the end of October or the beginning of November, you can go out into New Zealand stores and buy a copy of my first game.

That's right, you can play the game, flick to the credits and point and shout when my name appears on screen.

While personally, it's not my kind of genre, I wholeheartedly endorse and promote this game to give you a fantastic gaming experience.

And without further delay, Sidhe Interactive presents...

Posted by Jeremy at 9:51pm :: 0 comments

Tags: sidhe, rugby league, playstation

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Bad Start to the Week

Some things I forgot to mention last week: I saw Hamish Carter, Olympian, Gold Medallist and Auckland Grammar old boy, at the BNZ Food Court. He was buying sushi. I wanted to say hi to him but I was too shy and he was talking to someone else and it would have been cool to get a picture with him in retrospect but there were so many people around I would have looked really stupid and touristy and Azn.

Speaking of Azn, I got interviewed by some Azn magazine so if you see my mug somewhere, you'll know why. She asked me if the Government should be spending more money on the defense force.

Anyway, it has been a pretty bad start to the week. Yesterday I spent the whole day battling with freaking Metro~~werks~~fail over some stupid access paths problem. Apparently, if you have two files of the same name but in different directories, and each of the directories are in your access paths, they are treated as duplicates. What a load of fail.

Following that, I played pretty badly at badminton. I was just smashing the shuttlecock in anger most of the time :p

Today I was just fixing some stupid sound problem and it boiled down to nothing to do with sound, but rather the directories in which the resources were located. Blah.

Posted by Jeremy at 8:24pm :: 0 comments

Tags: grammar, olympics, asian, badminton, fail, sidhe

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Misconduct

I slept at work today :O Legitimately, you could say. Basically, we're shifting the place around so that people in project teams are closer to each other, and it's easier to communicate or whatever. Anyway, shifting means unplugging computer; unplugging computer means I can't do work; if I have no work to do... I sleep :O

After work, I met up with the others at Char Bar for the pub quiz. We didn't do too badly this time round: our name was In Soviet Russia, Quiz Answers You!. And we weren't DFL either, so that was great.

We decided to end the night by having rock melon milk tea with pearls at HK BBQ.

Posted by Jeremy at 10:56pm :: 2 comments

Tags: milk tea, pub quiz, sidhe

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Balloooons

Someone on my project team left the company on Friday, so we had a thing for him to celebrate his time at Sidhe. As usual, we had our obligatory company trivia quiz, and since he was from Norway, the inevitable question was "Who created the fjords in Norway?". No, my team didn't get it right. Yes, I'm sorry.

Anyway, here's a photo of some of the events that transpired that night. It was a balloon popping game.

On Saturday, I binged on a $6 bag of sour gummi lollies, including sour apple rings, sour watermelon rings, sour peach rings and sour coke bottles. And two mega snakes. Insert diabetes here.

On Saturday night we went to the other flat for a cultured wine and cheese night. To some people's dismay, there was more cheese than wine, but Bjorn didn't seem to mind. It was a really good night, despite the cacophony that was John and Matt talking in French.

Today I went with Jono to Central Baptist for a proper service, and yeah it was really good. I think I'll stay. I even managed to slip in that I was interested in the piano ¬_¬ And we're looking to join a home group as well. I guess we'll see how that goes.

Posted by Jeremy at 9:12pm :: 0 comments

Tags: slartibartfast, balloon, sidhe, sour apple rings, wine, cheese, piano

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Easter

It was indeed a fantastic time catching up with friends and family as I travelled back to Auckland for Easter. I left for Wellington Airport at around 10.45am to catch the bus from Wellington Hospital at 11.15am. I arrived at the airport with about an hour to spare so I just lazed about and walked around. The flight left early and only took 45 minutes, so I was out of Auckland's domestic terminal by 2.15pm. Shereen picked me up and we headed to the Hunua Falls.

We didn't do much on Friday. It was basically unpacking, team and cabin allocations, team building exercises including a blind obstacle course, some brain teasers and a team chant. I was the leader of my team: the Bananas! B-A-N-A-N-A-S! Raymond and Quan were our guest speakers.

Saturday was a rotation of four activities: kayaking, raft building, high ropes course and random games. I was stupid enough to wear my glasses while kayaking and as a result, they're sitting somewhere at the bottom of the crater lake where the waterfall spills into. Sigh. But anyway, I did have fun the rest of the day, despite the fact it was the second time I've lost my glasses in two months. We also had a guys' discussion and had some "manly" games. I can't believe how stubbornly competitive I am.

On Sunday we had a treasure hunt, a Burma trail, a barn dance, theatre sports and epic Mafia. My apologies to the committee for being so cynical during the Burma trail, haha. But yeah, it was a good night, I got to roleplay Phoenix Wright (to a certain extent) and of course, the other activities brought a smile to my face.

Yesterday we cleaned up the site and Debs and I left early to go to Burgerfuel for lunch (despite the 10% surcharge, it was so worth it), and then I dropped by home to see Dad and my sister.

So today I stumbled to work; tired from four days of fun, blind from no glasses and limping thanks to..um... certain manly games. It was a really nice surprise to see an Easter goodies box sitting on my desk: two Moro bars and two Cadbury Easter eggs. I shall add this to my collection.

Posted by Jeremy at 6:22pm :: 4 comments

Tags: easter, camp, hunua, bananas, kayaking, rafting, high ropes, glasses, burma trail, treasure hunt, phoenix wright, mafia, burgerfuel, sidhe

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Epic Long Weekend

Let's start chronologically. You'll never guess what I did on Sunday.

Yeah, there were four of us: me, Laura, Laura's friend and Laura's friend's friend's boyfriend's friend.

Anyway, after that, we went to Mt Victoria - pictures in the gallery. It was such a windy day, we kept getting blown around. The view was awesome though, however it was a pity we couldn't see the South Island. We saw quite a few planes going in and out of the airport - it's really weird when you're walking by the mountain and suddenly you see a plane at the same altitude as you.

This week was the last week for our sprint (Basically, a task period) at work, so we were trying to finish off all our tasks. I think I was pretty productive this week, I managed to achieve a lot of things that I didn't have any idea of a week ago.

Yesterday I celebrated a friend's birthday, but I also mourned the loss of a family friend. It really was a hilly day yesterday. My heart goes out to all those affected... I'm sorry I can't make the funeral and I guess it's just lame timing.

Tomorrow.. I leave for Auckland at 1.15pm, arriving 2.15pm. It'll be awesome seeing everyone again, and I know I'll have a great Easter camp with my youth group.

Posted by Jeremy at 6:01pm :: 2 comments

Tags: yum char, mt victoria, sidhe, easter, camp

Saturday, March 15, 2008

A Week to Go

It's less than a week to Easter, which means I get to fly back to Auckland to visit my youth group and my parents. It also means our current sprint for work is wrapping up, so I'd better finish all my work!

Today we had a flat barbeque, for no apparent reason whatsoever. But it's always good to have a flat barbeque. At least there wasn't any dancing this time. Rather, we played Mafia! Hooray. We had a twist on the game where we only two of the sheriff, doctor and sniper would be active, but it would be random and no one would know which one had been left out. So it makes it interesting when someone attempts to pass themselves off as something they aren't. Yeah, it was quite intense, but Jono kept making the wrong decisions and I think the Mafia got away with a lot more than they should have.

Oh yeah, as a followup to my last post, the three most common responses to the story have been:
3. Sleeping? And listening to your iPod? Let me note this down
2. So, the bridge you say? I think I'll go check it out some time
1. You said WHAT? You should have said "I'm taken, but here's my friend's number!"

Posted by Jeremy at 11:51pm :: 3 comments

Tags: barbeque, mafia, easter, sidhe

Friday, March 7, 2008

It's been a while

Yeah, been busy. Kinda.

Firstly, I finished Apollo Justice, which was great, because it means I'm not staying up past 1am playing the cases. Final verdict: Mmm, good game, good story, but still not as epic as Phoenix Wright. The characters might take a while getting used to, but overall, not too bad. I'll get the fifth game when it comes out.

Secondly, Debs was down in Wellington last weekend with Denise for my birthday, which was really nice. We had some much-missed Burgerfuel for lunch. Yes, we drove all the way to Lower Hutt. It was so worth it. Check the gallery for some pictures.

Let's see... I got an umbrella hat, a "There's no place like 127.0.0.1" shirt, some comfy house slippers for winter and a screen protector for my phone. Apart from the umbrella hat, all very useful presents. ¬_¬

Since then, it's just been work, work, work. Yesterday we got cake and cookies. Today, I almost fell asleep in a meeting, I was so tired. I'm glad it's the weekend \o/

Posted by Jeremy at 7:04pm :: 5 comments

Tags: apollo justice, burgerfuel, sidhe

Friday, February 22, 2008

Sidhe Interactive

Today kinda reinforced how cool my job is. I mean, apart from the gaming and the coding (which are two of my biggest passions), we get perks. Perks like...

1. Free soft drinks. Our soft drinks fridge was restocked today. I had a Schwepps ginger beer, and it was so good.
2. Brownies. We got brownies today. And they were delicious. Absolutely delicious. Being near the food table means I have ready access.
3. Ice cream. We got ice cream on a cone today. And it was hokey pokey and neopolitan. It was a pretty hot day, and ice cream is pretty awesome on a hot day.

Sidhe is awesome.

Posted by Jeremy at 7:49pm :: 0 comments

Tags: sidhe, ice cream, soft drinks, brownies

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Walking Home

I walked home for the second day in a row. It was a really good walk..until it started raining. Then it became a run. A not-so-good run. But at least I ran home in time to play DotA, which is always good. Yesterday, though, I stumbled upon this cute little thing:

It was so cute. I clicked my finger and it bounded towards me, all happy to see me, so I patted it...while trying to take another picture. It wouldn't face the camera though, but you can see my hand extending out to scratch it. So cute 8d

I finally got put on a project at work. So starting Monday, I actually have some hard-out things to do! Hooray. No more extensive reading of the Intranet Wiki. I also got to know some of the QA Team on the 9th floor. One of them has this:

Epic, epic win. It's so cute T_T.

Anyway, we also had a company quiz after work, because one of the guys was leaving. We didn't do too badly, we came second out of five teams. One of the categories was "Wellington" -.- and another category was "Southland". In the end, our prize was $15 to spend at a bar of our choice, and we gave that to the guy who left in the spirit of..his..leaving. Or something. Yeah.

Posted by Jeremy at 12:22am :: 1 comment

Tags: kirby, quiz, sidhe, dota, kitty

Saturday, February 9, 2008

First Week

So it's the end of my first week at work. Good week, I'd say. Still training...I've been working on this application that animates shapes, just to get used to the company style of coding and its conventions, and all that. It's a bit slow though, because everyone's busy and all, and no one really has time to assess my work immediately, as such.

Anyway, I was introduced to everyone at show-and-tell on Friday. It was a "We have a new person, Jeremy Lai, he's standing over there" and a "...Hi..." in response. Eh. But show-and-tell is great, I got to see a bit of the projects currently in progress, and I can tell you now that they're really awesome. If I had a console, I would buy those games :O </shameless plugging>

I also had dinner with Ritu on Friday night, at an Indian restaurant. And that was nice, because she's like one of three people I know in the city. I should have taken a picture of what I ate (because that seems to be the thing with my CS friends) but I forgot. I had mango chicken, with a spicy level of "Indian hot", as opposed to "Kiwi hot". Yeah, it was pretty hot :p

As I walked around the train station, waiting for Ritu's train to arrive, I saw this epic failure:

Posted by Jeremy at 12:06pm :: 4 comments

Tags: mango chicken, show and tell, sidhe, fail

Thursday, February 7, 2008

Happy Chinese New Year!

Wishing you all a safe, prosperous and peaceful year of the Rat in 2008!

Anyway, I finally got my new pair of glasses today from OPSM. They feel very light and...omg I can totally see everything now -.- So for future reference, in case I forget, my powers are 150 left and 100 right.

Also, I walked home today. Health++;
In jeans. Comfort--;
Via a scenic route. Health++;
With lots of hills. Comfort--;
But it was nice and sunny (a huge change from the last few days) so overall, it was a good walk. I doubt I will be doing that again, at least not in jeans.

Anyway, it's nearing the end of my first week at work. I'm still training - I've just been programming a competency test and revising/refactoring my code so it conforms with company standards, and also learning how to make it well structured and extensible and all that jazz. Got to meet a few new faces today (because I have to report to the HR Manager tomorrow with their names).

Posted by Jeremy at 7:36pm :: 0 comments

Tags: chinese new year, glasses, walking, sidhe

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

PROPER INTERNET

Well yes, it’s been a really long time now. When I last posted, I was paying 1c per kilobyte (Thanks Vodafone!) for using my phone as a modem. As a result, Vodafone think I owe them $150, but I’m certainly not paying and I intend to sort it out once and for all after Waitangi Day (Yes I have tried calling 777). BUT YAY INTERNET AT HOME!

Anyway, yes I did arrive safely in Wellington. It did indeed take us 10 hours from Auckland. We stopped over in Taupo for a quick toilet break (The lake was a beautiful rich blue colour), Turangi for fish and chips, and some random long drop on the side of the road about an hour out for Wellington (Ugh. I was lucky I had a blocked nose). Yeah, blocked nose. I ended up suffering from exhaustion and then a cold upon arriving, which was not ideal, but hey.

So yeah, I settled in alright, got everything set up. My parents were with me on Thursday morning and we took a quick ride up the cable car, went to the optometrist, explored Cuba Street…then they took off for Taupo (overnight stay, then Auckland on Friday). For the rest of Thursday, Friday and Saturday, I was just wandering around Wellington. Lots of interesting people were walking around for the Sevens. Went for a walk around the Botanical Gardens, went to Te Papa, saw the Beehive, walked around the city. I had Nasi Lemak at K.K. Malaysian Restaurant, Wellington :3 Sunday I just lazed at home (too much walking) but my flatmate Bjorn took me to church that night.

I walked in to the church with Bjorn and it immediately reminded me of WCCC. Very large, lots of people. I’d say almost everyone was under 30, and I was probably one of three Asians. We were a bit late, so I only caught two of the worship songs, but the second one we sang was “I stand in awe of you”, which was reassuring and comforting for its familiarity. I remember sitting in the chairs, listening to the sermon, feeling very reclusive and thinking about how I miss the friendliness of KCC, and how it’s nice and small and simple and so welcoming. I mean, it’s great that everyone’s so enthusiastic about God and worship here, but it just kinda creeped me out. I really want to find a small community church…I guess I feel less intimidated. Anyway, we didn’t stay long. I had a big day the next day…

Yeah so Monday was my first day at work. Sidhe is a really cool place. I walk in, and there’s people doing some hardcore programming, people in team meetings, people who have put aside their computer and instead are playing around with their creations on a Nintendo Wii. Like, seriously. We get to play with what we write :D I spent most of the day reading documentation and company policies and conventions and stuff like that, so it was kinda boring, and I was falling asleep towards the afternoon. But they sorted me out, and the next day I was completing a competency test (an extension to what I did when I applied for the job) just to make sure I had practice using the naming conventions and commenting styles. I was also given some homework, so I really should be learning all about C++ Templates and STL.

Anyway, I’m really glad I finally have Internet access. It’s like a connection to the world, to friends and family back in Auckland. It feels a little more relaxing and it certainly helps me to settle in better. I think once I get my new pair of glasses on Thursday, I’ll feel more confident too.

Pictures of Epic Win: