rands

The QA Mindset

My first job in technology was a QA internship. The summer between my freshman and sophomore years, I tested the first release of Paradox for Windows at Borland. As an intern, I started by following someone else’s QA test plan – dutifully checking each test off the list. After a few weeks, I knew my… more

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December 2, 2014
Tech Life
38 Comments

The Force Awakens – A Collage of Iconic Images

(This brief article assumes you’ve seen the trailer. If you haven’t what are you waiting for?)

The Return of the Jedi came out on May 25, 1983 which is really the last time that you saw new material on the Millennium Falcon was 31 years ago. If you were alive, close your eyes and imagine what you were doing 31 years ago. I was furiously begging my parents to let me see Return of the Jedi again.

As teaser trailers, The Force Awaken checks all the boxes. Introduction of characters. Check. Establish that the Star Wars universe has evolved since we last saw it. Check Bad guys. Check. Good guys. Check. Potentially annoying guys (Rolling ball droid?). Check. Lens flare. Check. Tip of the hat to the original series. Check.

Based on reaction of the rest of the family, everyone is excited to see the movie, but the trailer does little to introduce where the story is headed. It’s a delicious collage of iconic images. For me, there is only one shot that matters and that is the Millennium Falcon. We had a hint of the Falcon in Episode III as a much earlier version of the ship is docking in Coruscant, but that was three seconds and who knew who was flying it? We don’t know who is flying it in the trailer, but there is high probability it’s folks we know.

The Millennium Falcon is all I needed to see. I’m hooked.

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November 28, 2014 1 Comment

FriendDA Updates

I’ve made small changes to the FriendDA based on feedback to this post.

  • All the proposed changes in the post have been put into the latest version of the FriendDA.
  • I’ve changed the Creative Commons license to be ShareAlike – it is no longer No-Derivatives.
  • There’s a Github repository that contains the current Markdown and HTML versions. Fork away.

These changes, I believe, will make the FriendDA slightly more useful. Thanks to everyone who contributed feedback.

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November 5, 2014

Brief Thoughts on Marvel

Marvel announced their Phase 3 plans for the Marvel Cinematic Universe yesterday and the best way to describe my reaction is they succeeded in diffusing my excitement about Avengers – Age of Ultron and I’m pretty excited about that sequel.

Some brief thoughts on the state of Marvel:

  • In 2009, Disney paid four billion dollars for Marvel. It turns out this was a tremendous deal. Check it out…
  • The first Avengers had a production budget of $220 million and worldwide total lifetime gross of $1.5 billion.
  • The last Iron Man (released last summer) had a production budget of $200 million a worldwide total gross of $1.2 billion.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy (released this year) had a production budget of $170 million and, so far, a worldwide total lifetime grow of $752 million.
  • You can check out the rest of the portfolio’s performance on Box Office Mojo, but the point is: it appears they’ve already made their money back in five years and then some.

Four billion dollars still felt aggressive in 2009, but think about what they were buying. They weren’t just buying a catalog of heroes, they were buying a massive collection of stories about these heroes, their origins, their adventures, and often, their deaths.

These stories have been tested. Marvel (and DC) have no issue mucking with continuity to improve the quality of the universe. It’s called retroactive continuity (or retcon) and it allows writers to resolve errors in chronology and reintroduce popular characters.

I think of retcons as bug fixes. It’s the writers not only making sure the stories all fit together, but also that the stories are relevant and entertaining. When you add the fact that comics are a visual medium, you understand that Marvel wasn’t just buying a catalog of heroes, they were buying a whole universe of compelling and tested scripts and story boards.

The cherry on top is the Marvel Cinematic universe is a retcon unto itself. The script writers of the movies are picking and choosing their facts and stories and knitting together what looks like decade long plot lines designed specifically for the big screen.

Can’t wait.

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October 29, 2014

FriendDA v2?

If you don’t care about the FriendDA you should stop reading this now. The FriendDA was written in late 2008 and it was intended as an experiment to place a smidge of formality on the discussion of perceived precious ideas. Happily, the FriendDA has legs. Since the original publication there has a small, but steady… more

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October 26, 2014
Tech Life
8 Comments