• On Life and Love

    The Contortions of a Spell List

    So I’ve been working on the next major release of the D20 Spell Lists app, and have found myself in a code and UI reorganization/refactoring jungle as I’ve refined my feature set and how I want to handle things. One of the common-enough cases that the current version doesn’t handle well that I think needs to be is multiple spellcaster classes. If I’m a Druid 5/Bard 6, I’m going to want to keep separate spell lists, and will have different DCs, spells known, and spells per day to contend with. With the current version, the best solution is probably to have two different character files, each with its own spell…

  • On Life and Love

    Weekly Linkage: Healthcare, Midnight Deployments, and Markov Chaining

    I’ve been all over The Incidental Economist lately, and it’s really hard not to link to every one of their posts that I can make heads or tails of. They’re really prolific by my standards, though, which means it’s a struggle to keep their posts from falling off the 30-day cut-off in Google Reader. Simply put: Marginal cost/benefit – "You’ll consume as much health care as you think worth it for the transaction price (your copayment if you’re insured). The lower the price, the more you’ll consume. You’ll keep using health services until the marginal benefit falls below the price you pay." I'm not sure I agree that people will…

  • On Life and Love

    Weekly linkage

    I’m still flying high from a wonderful 3 hours of dance last night. I had a whole lot of energy, even at the end, and managed to do all right at keeping up. I blame the belly dance show last weekend. There are a fair number of posts this week. I’ve been oot and aboot. Roleplaying Tips: Delegating – I really like the idea of splitting up some of the administrative work in running a game, especially in a game with 5+ people that will be running for a long time. I've seen in a 4-year one-on-one game how difficult it is to keep track of what's happened and who…

  • On Life and Love

    Weekly linkage

    This week’s internet cruising: How to keep someone with you forever – "You create a sick system." I wanted to cry when I read this. Looking Back — Discord&Rhyme – "To be successful at bootstrapping, you have to cut every feature except those you think are absolutely necessary. Then you cut some that you thought that you absolutely had to have. You compromise your design because you need to get the product to market. You ignore automated testing and documentation because your code is too unstable to be held back by rigorous processes." Launching beta, or “How to decide when and where to cut corners” – 200+ Seamless Patterns Perfect…

  • On Life and Love

    Quasi-daily linkage

    The Tiny Life , Archive » Julie’s Cozy House – This little house — although not terribly little at 410 sq ft, I think — is so pretty. Purple! UX Myths – Great list of user experience myths, with evidence and references. Buttersafe – Family Road Trip – Incredibly cute. Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names: MicroISV on a Shoestring – Too many of the comments are grumpy and the post doesn't offer any practical solutions, but it's a thought-provoking post anyway. Nonprofit Gym Helps Low-Income Community Get Fit : NPR – I love this. Too bad it's not here in Charlotte; I'd love to help out a group doing this.