The great brain flush of all the things
Once again my brain feels like it needs to discharge its drive core so here it goes.
After a swift comeback from what was the lowest point so far this year now I find my self back with the time in my hands to continue my most ambitious project yet. While I'm eager to dive back in the readings of the Beginning Android Games book this has been put on hold due to all being set aside for the most joyful space adventure that is Mass Effect 3. Its been a while since I used my free time to do any fun video gaming and what better way to lose myself in a game than with one of the most immerse universes ever created. I wont dump a full game review now, but expect me to not shut up about it over the coming posts. So far I like all the things they fixed from the previews game combat system and all the things that they brought back from Mass Effect 1. The story has become its most immersive, given the focus on its political galactic drama of gigantic proportions. I revel on it. All healthy sleep and food has been put on indefinite hold while I save the galaxy from the Reaper threat.
Work brings about the most boring things of the industry. Lately I have had the fun opportunity to mess with reporting middle ware. Is not as engaging as writing a game loop but there is something exhilarating about learning new technology and tools. My massive disappointment was when I came to the conclusion that reporting middle ware is so far up behind in terms of usability that were still wasting too much time creating reports as much as we worry about them. While analyzing and crunching your databases er.. data is critical to your business decisions, the resources in terms of time and skill it takes to generate meaningful reports is something that the computer industry should be ashamed of it self. We should have solved problems like, calculating totals from a column and importing data from a database eons ago but somehow the middleware created for solving this manages to make the process as complicated and convoluted as ever. A developer sometimes finds himself/herself wondering if it should just end up writing a program from scratch to generate the report instead of fucking around with shit like Oracle Report Designer for 2 weeks only to find out how outdated and unfriendly the tools are. Don't get me wrong, I am the type of person that will read a whole 300 page book to learn a new tool (I do it on a regular basis) but at some point it just becomes counterproductive.
Oracle needs to get their heads out of their asses and provide a tool that lets create meaningful analysis of their database product that doesn't look like it's stuck on 1995. It's 2012 and data formatting and presentation should be one of the things that we should have solved long ago, like search and social networks.
Of all the tools I tried, surprisingly, (and I try not to puke all over my shirt when I say this) Microsoft's Reporting Services Designer came out on top in terms of usability. It still has a few conventions from how Microsoft likes to do things in their software like it was an evolved version of Excel but its the only tool that didn't want to make me pull my hair out and I'm glad that I know now how to use it (more or less).
Still between all this kerfuffle I have managed to write an excuse plot for the game with the help of my development partner and also managed to make one or two character designs thanks to a certain talented artist that helps me out when is not being such a lazy ass. Honestly I'm lucky to have met such talented bunch of people but I wish they were more willing to exploit their talents for profit and glory. I might need to prepare myself to distribute a couple of rounds of ass kicking over the next few weeks.
While most of my brain resources are being consumed by analyzing the games lore, on the back of my head I find peace that once again I can have the freedom of choosing on what I spend my nights on.
After a swift comeback from what was the lowest point so far this year now I find my self back with the time in my hands to continue my most ambitious project yet. While I'm eager to dive back in the readings of the Beginning Android Games book this has been put on hold due to all being set aside for the most joyful space adventure that is Mass Effect 3. Its been a while since I used my free time to do any fun video gaming and what better way to lose myself in a game than with one of the most immerse universes ever created. I wont dump a full game review now, but expect me to not shut up about it over the coming posts. So far I like all the things they fixed from the previews game combat system and all the things that they brought back from Mass Effect 1. The story has become its most immersive, given the focus on its political galactic drama of gigantic proportions. I revel on it. All healthy sleep and food has been put on indefinite hold while I save the galaxy from the Reaper threat.
Work brings about the most boring things of the industry. Lately I have had the fun opportunity to mess with reporting middle ware. Is not as engaging as writing a game loop but there is something exhilarating about learning new technology and tools. My massive disappointment was when I came to the conclusion that reporting middle ware is so far up behind in terms of usability that were still wasting too much time creating reports as much as we worry about them. While analyzing and crunching your databases er.. data is critical to your business decisions, the resources in terms of time and skill it takes to generate meaningful reports is something that the computer industry should be ashamed of it self. We should have solved problems like, calculating totals from a column and importing data from a database eons ago but somehow the middleware created for solving this manages to make the process as complicated and convoluted as ever. A developer sometimes finds himself/herself wondering if it should just end up writing a program from scratch to generate the report instead of fucking around with shit like Oracle Report Designer for 2 weeks only to find out how outdated and unfriendly the tools are. Don't get me wrong, I am the type of person that will read a whole 300 page book to learn a new tool (I do it on a regular basis) but at some point it just becomes counterproductive.
Oracle needs to get their heads out of their asses and provide a tool that lets create meaningful analysis of their database product that doesn't look like it's stuck on 1995. It's 2012 and data formatting and presentation should be one of the things that we should have solved long ago, like search and social networks.
Of all the tools I tried, surprisingly, (and I try not to puke all over my shirt when I say this) Microsoft's Reporting Services Designer came out on top in terms of usability. It still has a few conventions from how Microsoft likes to do things in their software like it was an evolved version of Excel but its the only tool that didn't want to make me pull my hair out and I'm glad that I know now how to use it (more or less).
Still between all this kerfuffle I have managed to write an excuse plot for the game with the help of my development partner and also managed to make one or two character designs thanks to a certain talented artist that helps me out when is not being such a lazy ass. Honestly I'm lucky to have met such talented bunch of people but I wish they were more willing to exploit their talents for profit and glory. I might need to prepare myself to distribute a couple of rounds of ass kicking over the next few weeks.
While most of my brain resources are being consumed by analyzing the games lore, on the back of my head I find peace that once again I can have the freedom of choosing on what I spend my nights on.
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