good

For the last few days, Doug and I have been working on switching from our old server to our new server. The new one is with JohnCompanies.com that offers VPS (Virtual Private Servers). It was a nice surprise, the computer we have access to has 8 processors running at 3Ghz (”proven” by the Linux Bogomips computation: 5985.31) And so far, I’ve seen about 0.8% of one processor being used. The rest is 100% idle most of the time!

This is a subject that comes back all the time in C/C++ boards.

Should you use assertions?

The answer is clearly yes. But the C/C++ assert() function is usually defined using a macro. Macros have several problems. The most common ones are: they offer no type checking, they do not warn you about weird side effects, they have a different syntax than the C/C++ language itself.

One good thing: for a fast program, the debug code used to check parameters, results, etc. is gone.

One really bad thing: if the expression in the macro has a side effect, the release program is different from ...

Today I had to debug a set of HTML pages. One feature of a website would not work with Internet Explorer. The code was like this:

Welcome on Alexis’ Blog at Made to Order Software Corporation.

This is my first blog! I’m glad I got WordPress to work with the m2osw style sheet. It is quite different from the default blogging board setup! Also I needed to make it work for several people on the same website without duplicating the code each time.

I did make changes to the code in order to achieve this feat. First, I had to access a specific database for each person to have its own blog (this may be just me who did not know how to use all the available features of WordPress, though.)

The following function ...

Made to Order Software Corporation is proud to announce the 1.1 release of Turn Watcher, the best GM's Initiative Manager!

For those of you who bought the 1 year's worth of updates for Turn Watcher back in 2006, we have really good news: we extended the duration of your privilege to download newer versions until the end of 2007!

Version 1.1 includes an optional initiative window which allows manual entry of initiative rolls for all combatants. Now you can let players make their own initiative rolls!

Use the Spot/Listen/Will roll feature a lot? Now Turn Watcher automatically sorts ...

I think I'm like just about everyone else. I have the work 'me' and the play 'me'. Only difference is, the two once merged, and what was born was Turn Watcher.

I have played in D&D campaigns for many years, but never thought of running my own campaign until I got a very unusual present for my 40th birthday — the Dungeon Master's Guide. I started reading the book and was hooked. How fun I thought it would be to create encounters and intriguing situations and worlds for my players. It wasn't until I ran my first game that I realized that it would take more ...