Christmas List 2020

It is that time of the year when I try to share some ideas for that hard-to-shop-for person on your Christmas list. In the past I have tried to focus on practical gifts that I would want. This year I am going to take a completely different path. In our family we have the idea of a "Christmas-Day" gift. It is a gift that you get on Christmas morning and play with for only a few days before you lose interest. This year I actually want something like that. When you only receive practical gifts, there is nothing to play with on Christmas day. This year, I want something to play with. A good example is something like a puzzle or a complex Lego set. Once you put everything together, you admire it for a bit, and then take it apart to possibly be played with at a later date.

The beauty of a Christmas-Day gift is that it is not something I would get myself. So without further explanation, here are some gifts I would enjoy receiving this year:

Just a box of Legos - This is just a set of Legos to go with my existing sets. It is great for allowing creative people to play and build.

Hogwart's Lego set - While I am on the topic of Legos, this is a set that I think would be fun to spend the day putting together. There are plenty of other large sets I would also like but this one I found quite easily.

Electronic Breadboard kit - Moving away from Legos and onto something a bit more practical yet fun is an electronic breadboard kit. This is something to get that budding electrical engineer in your family. My brother seemed to get one or two of these growing up but I never did. Perhaps that is why I studied Electrical Engineering in school as I always wanted one. No that I am grown, I would love to take some time during my Holiday break and just play with some electronic projects for fun.

Horizon Zero Dawn - Now if you get the chance to play video games on Christmas and you have a PlayStation 4, I recommend this one. It is a game that I really enjoyed playing and might be willing to play again. You can find the game at Best Buy for less than $10, which is less than I paid for my copy. Remember I work for PlayStation and so this might not be an unbiased recommendation.

Microsoft Flight Simulator - This is a game for your PC and is not one that I have played. This is something I would be interested in playing though. At $60 (from Best Buy for the standard version) it is the same price as most new video games.

If you are looking for low-cost gifts that fit into the Christmas-Day gift list, I really do enjoy a good 750 to 1000-piece puzzle. Puzzles are something you can always do with others and can be great fun for small groups.

Hopefully this gives you some ideas for that hard-to-shop-for person in your life.

Video Game Review: Lego The Hobbit

This evening I decided to go through my blog entries for the past year and realize that I never provided a video game review for "Lego The Hobbit" that I played on my PlayStation Vita earlier this year. I know that a lot of people are looking for video games as Christmas gifts and so I thought I would share my impressions on this fun little game.

Lego games are great for video game players of all ages. Any violence is no more graphic than when a child drops his Lego creation and blocks scatter. Contrast that with a first-person shooter that can be rather graphic. One nice thing about the video game is that you don't have all the little plastic blocks to pick up afterwards and it is a win-win situation for parents. I played the Traveller's Tale game on my hand-held and I understand they changed some of the game play to be a bit more customized for the portable format. However I highly recommend it for all platforms including the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, or any of the previous console versions.

The game follows the movie very closely and even uses dialog taken directly from the film. While not everything matches perfectly, I preferred that to having different voice actors narrate the game. You also have the ability to take somewhat different paths through the game and play things out of the order you would expect. I really enjoyed this after I finished the game and could go back to complete scenes I skipped the first time through.

I had an enjoyable time throughout most of the game. Of course I did encounter one or two parts of the game that seemed a bit more difficult than usual and found myself grinding through those sections. With a bit of effort and the lack of anything else to do on my plane rides, I got through them and continued the game.

I can easily recommend this game to anyone that loves either Lego toys or "The Hobbit." For the later it doesn't matter if you are a fan of the book or the movies. The game has an ESRB rating of E for everyone and can be found in most stores for around $20. It is well worth that price.

Entertaining Video Games

I am sitting at the airport in San Diego getting ready to play a video game on my PS Vita and I have a couple of choices. I have been trying to get through Sly Cooper but find myself grinding through the various levels and it has stopped being fun. Given the choice of continuing the game or watching paint dry, I am leaning towards the latter. Others may disagree but that is how I feel. Knowing this, I threw in another game in my computer bag before leaving home: Lego The Hobbit.

I have never played a Lego video game for more than a few minutes but find them hilarious. When your character blows up or is killed, there is no blood nor gore. Just Lego blocks being broken down into their individual components. It always makes me laugh.

So what makes one video game more entertaining than another? That is the all-important question and I wish I had a complete answer. I do know that there are a number of games that I have played that are like abusive relationships. The game is difficult and you only continue because you have invested time in the relationship and want to see it all the way to the end. Rather than feeling good because things are going well, you feel good because you didn't get the crap kicked out of you. I hate those types of games and that is what Sly Cooper is turning into.

Contrast that with Tomb Raider or Red Dead Redemption where I got totally involved in the game and looked forward to playing them on a daily basis. Some parts of the games seemed difficult but then they got easier for a time and the story built, allowing me to reinvest in my relationship with the characters.

Sly Cooper was amazing when it first hit the market. Since then games have evolved and it makes it difficult to go back to that style of game. I may eventually go back to it but right now I need something else to entertain me. Hopefully Lego The Hobbit is it.

Learning Python

One of the nice things about my new job is that I get time set aside each day to learn a new skill. Most of the developers I work with here are using Python and so I figured I would learn this computer programming language. What better way to learn than to work on an actual project. One of my coworkers was more than happy to volunteer a project and after a week, I am mostly finished. There is still some clean-up work to do, but the program works.

I do have to confess that I am not any better at knowing Python now than when I started the project. My program interacts with so many other pieces of the system that I feel like I am working with Lego blocks. When I need to figure out how to interact with one system, I do a search on the Internet, find some sample code, and work it into my program. I know just enough to make changes so that it works. When I get errors, I search the Internet and get an immediate fix.

Today I have a code review and I have to explain how my code works and why I wrote it the way I did. The only problem is that I have no idea what I did. The program just works and does what it is supposed to do. Oh well, maybe I will learn Python next week.

A New Project

This week I started a new software project. I'm not sure it will make me much money but it is good to be coding again. It is a short project and so I am hoping to have it completed within a week.

The exciting thing about my new endeavor is that it involves doing something I have not yet done. Normally my software projects are made up of pieces of things I have already put into other programs. If it needs to save data, I have an example of code I used on my previous project. Do I need to validate any of that data? If so, then I have a piece of code I used two projects ago. Sometimes software development is just like putting together pieces of Legos. It can also be just as fun.

The new piece that I am working on is a relatively new feature found in web-based applications. This means that I have to go the original RFC and figure out how to implement the feature on my own. Now you may be asking yourself, "What the heck is an RFC?" RFC is an acronym that stands for "Request For Comments."

When the Internet was in its infancy, the technologists involved exercised a bit of humility and democracy. Instead of coming up with a list of "must do's" they decided they would use a community process to determine the best way to implement technological features. Someone working on a problem would throw out a "Request For Comments" with his or her solution to the problem. Others working on the Internet were then free to suggest alternative methods. If nobody had any meaningful comments, then the RFC was adopted as a defacto specification.

One thing about computers and technology is that they continue to evolve. Even someone such as myself, with almost a quarter of a century working with computers, needs to learn new things. Now if I can just figure out how to do this one little thing, my project will be close to finished.