YMFUHBML is a new form of markup language that I just invented. It stands for Your Mother’s Fucked Up Home Brew Markup Language. Actually, I only invented the acronym as the credit for the actual language specification goes to the International Guild of Incompetent Programmers.

YMFUHBML is designed to fuck up your mind and your XML parsing techniques. Whether your using XmlReader, XmlDocument or some other standards based solution, YMFUHBML is guaranteed to break it because, believe it or not, in one document it manages to break two important rules that are associated with real XML documents (there might be more discrepancies but these two annoy me the most):

• XML documents should have a single root node
• Attributes consist of name-value pairs

Not too hard now is it? I though so too but apparently some people (like the designer of YMFUHBML) even manage to screw this simple stuff. Take a look at the following horror which resembles a response message that I had to accept a while ago:

<status>ok</status>
<message>the request has been successfully received</message>
<file file.001>
foo
bar
quux
</file>
<file file.002>
baz
</file>

And yes, those are the complete contents of the response I get. Now to be honest, parsing this is not hard but my pet peeve is with the fact that some people who should know better mistakenly think this is XML when it is actually YMFUHBML. Where the single root node we all know and love? And what the fuck is that file stuff supposed to be?

If you’re not going to adhere to what XML is supposed to be then why the fuck are you using those motherfucking tags to add structure? Please, stop doing stuff like this that because it is wrong and gives the impression that you are a business developer who maybe should consider moving to another field of profession.

XML is so simple yet every time I hear that someone is going to give me some XML to consume I get YMFUHBML instead. In the end it all boils down to common problems like people reinventing the wheel and not using the right tool for the job which is causing a lot of unnecessary friction and annoyance.

The powers that be probably won’t like it all that much but programming remains an art. To those who want to argue that it is a craft instead I say: a craft is just a special form of art. So we are both right. That doesn’t have a lot to do with the stuff below but I wanted to get it out of the way nevertheless. The problem is that there is a large class of programmers who don’t share this opinion. There is even a special name for them: non programmers. In this post I like to talk about them for a bit.

Programmers in Disguise

If you consider yourself a programmer (maybe even a good programmer) then consider this: how many of the great people in our field do you actually know? For example, do you know who Jim Gray was? Alan Kay or Adele Goldberg perhaps? Martin Fowler? Edsger Dijkstra maybe? Yukihiro Matsumoto a.k.a. Matz? Why the Lucky Stiff? Guido van Rossum? Simon Peyton Jones? Alonzo Church? John Backus? Anders Hejlsberg? Not to mention a whole host of other giants. Most of them still active today. Note that I was about to link all those people to their respective pages but that was just starting to look like a giant search engine lure. If you really want to know more about them then I recommend Google videos. You’re abound to find some other interesting links too to start your research with.

Who doesn’t know about Douglas Engelbart with the Mother of all Demos in 1968!. Shame on you if you have not seen this before.

Some of the people I talk to and that pretend to be programmers haven’t even heard of these people. Now, that’s not too bad in itself. Knowing these guys doesn’t make you a better programmer but it does show something about the passion you have for the field that you are working in. It’s not whether you know them or not – it is about the desire you have to learn about them (you can abstract this to it’s not whether you know [A; B; n] or not – it’s about your desire to learn about [A; B; n]). Most of the times, they just shrug their shoulders and off they are, on their merry if-while-case away.

Often, I encounter this attitude with business people who know a little bit about programming. Maybe they programmed a VB app in the 90′s or maybe they know either the SQL Query Designer or (everyones favorite) FrontPage just a little bit too well. Sprinkle that with a suit and smooth talking skills and you have yourselves a business programmer. Usually, these guys are living in an ancient world where only while, if statements and global state seem to exist. The unfortunate fact is that they somehow seem to be able to get things done without any respect for the art (or craft if you insist). I can only use the words of Prince (as I ironically like to call him) when I say that those dudes still party like it it’s 1999. In fact, it’s even slightly worse but unfortunately that’s the best I can come up with so I’m being lenient.

A lot of times, these are the same guys that breed giganormous if-trees of loop, more if, while, more loop, case (we’re talking some serious VB here), even more while, more if, even some more if, another while, yet another while, yet even more if and then another case for good measure all in some humongous monster of donkey eating, steel shitting angry pile of smelly thing that those dudes like to call Sub.

Sometimes they even dare to call it a Function but at this point it doesn’t even matter anymore. You could just as well call it SmellyPileOfCrap Foo and nobody would even care. It would not even be that bad but the worst part is that all of this is copied meticulously over from another +6000 line method that does exactly the same as the other one except for one or two lines that are apparently not worthy enough to be duplicated. But then again, things only get really interesting when you find the same pile of crap duplicated across a bunch of other piles of shit. It’s like finding a cake of shit with other kind of shit sprinkled on top and then finding that same cake four or five times more in unsuspected places all scattered in something that resembles your house. It’s all one big fantastic crapfestaciacious vision of crapunholiness.

Just Being Pragmatic

Oh my sweet Jesus, do I like to talk about being pragmatic? Hell yes! See, you weren’t expecting for me to answer that question did you? You just assumed I was asking one of those fancy so called rhetorical questions? Well let me tell you sonny: assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups! And yes, I am aware that this quote is from an incredibly bad movie.

Still though, there is something magical about being pragmatic. Just look at the fucking definition that Google gives us:

pragmatic
A pragmatic way of dealing with something is based on practical considerations, rather than theoretical ones.
A pragmatic person deals with things in a practical way.

You know those agile guys? They are being pragmatic. You know what? Those functional guys? They are being pragmatic too. Just in a crazy mathematical kind of way. Those Ruby guys? Pragmatic. Python? Pragmatic. Lisp fanatics? Pragmatic. Unix kernel hackers? Pragmatic. The absolutely waziliously huge PHP community? Just being pragmatic (well maybe not all of them).

Looking at the definition, that sounds like something a business person would love. It even goes so far as to tell us that a pragmatic person deals with problems “based on practical considerations, rather than theoretical ones“. Now what’s not to like about that from a business perspective? In reality though it means a bunch of so called coding craftsmen working their ass off with the simple tools they have. From my perspective, it’s like watching a bunch of cavemen trying to rebuild the Twin Towers with a rock and a stick. The only unfortunate part that I am one of those cavemen.

So apparently, at least from this perspective, being pragmatic means behaving like a software cavemen and treat everything with familiar tools: a rock and a a stick. Or respectively, in our case, a while. and an if. The sad conclusion is that most of the industry is either not doing it or we are doing it wrong.

Those business people should like being pragmatic too but unfortunately they don’t think being agile is cool. They also don’t like someone hacking on their precious code. I can’t tell them a piece of code is shit anymore. I have to tell them that it is not exactly what I would’ve written. Even if the piece of code is something I wrote myself a few weeks earlier. They like guys who are being pragmatical by throwing a bunch of copied while and if loops at a problem until the problem seems to be solved. Then, when a few weeks later the issue regresses it is registered as new and solved by throwing yet another rock and stick, doing the lucky dance and hoping that no new bugs crop up.

The powers that be once told me to implement a look-ahead search for one of our websites. Unfortunately, the look-ahead would need to function with a particularly awkward set of columns and I knew this wasn’t going to happen with our current setup. First, I tried to convince them to building a set of indices for that particular set of columns so we could get to the results more efficiently. The fact that stuff would not be real time was just too much. Then, I tried asking for more raw power but in the end, the reply I got was a casual: “Google can do it too, so we can too”. Now that is being pragmatic I tell ya. Those so called pragmatic guys I mentioned before should take a page from his book and just take a look at Google.

Bonus

In fact, there’s another useful abstraction that I think of now that I’m writing this. If you are wondering whether some [A; B; n] is the right thing to do, ask yourself this: what if everyone did [A; B; n]? If the outcome is a positive vision then its probably the right thing to do.

About a year ago, my brother and I were playing Guitar Hero 3 on PS3 and really wanted to play Rock Band instead. Unfortunately, the game was nowhere to be found for that particular system but we did manage to find it for the Xbox 360. So, instead we bought that version, the Band in a Box instrument kit and also an Xbox 360 console and life was good.

Over the course of last year, the amount of games and the time I played that console grew larger and larger and now it’s definitely the most played console in my house. At least, until three minutes past five yesterday. After spending the last few days achievement hunting together with my brother we managed to unlock the infamous red ring of death.

Before that, I was hoping (but never fully confident) that my Xbox would be devoid of any problems. Sadly, I was wrong and it seems that the buzz around the failure rate of Microsoft’s console is not entirely unjustified.

The good news is that I can send it back to Microsoft for repairs for free. The bad news is that repairs will take two to three weeks and I’ll be damned if my two days old copy of GH5 has to gather dust for all that time.

So this afternoon, my brother will pickup a new Xbox and we will just transfer the HD from the broken one as it has to be removed before sending it anyway. In the end this means that we will have two Xboxes but that’s not a problem. We’ll just put one at my parents house and use that for backup in case the new one decides to bail out too.

Let’s face it – Nintendo’s Virtual Console is great. It’s like having every console that ever existed (before the PSX at least) plus a classic arcade machine and a C64 all tucked away neat and tidily in that cute white box that we all know and love as the Wii.

When I was a little turd, I was fond of being a stupid prick and sold my NES with an awesome library games so I could buy a SNES. I later pulled the same stupid stunt when I sold the SNES (which turned out to be the fucking greatest console ever) for a PSX (which luckily turned out to be OK too). I blame myself it every day but thanks to some geniuses at Nintendo I can now, at last, play a significant part of my library again on the Wii’s Virtual Console.

Nintendo would not be Nintendo however without fucking up a brilliant idea. And that is exactly what the rant below is about.

The Cold War

The first ten years of my life, during the full 80′s, for me, the U.S.A. was the greatest country on earth. Yeah, reflecting upon that makes me sad too but alas, that’s how it was. As a little kid my days revolved basically around three things: Nintendo, movies and Lego. Friends had to be interested in either one of those. Life was simple.

There were a few basic rules when it came to games and movies: the US would always have the coolest movies first, the US would also have the coolest games first and finally they would also always have more of either one of them. Now that was completely understandable as the market over there was simply much bigger. Looking back now, it makes sense and as a little kid, not knowing better, I was cool with that too.

Back to the Future

Fast forward twenty years and here we are, well under way in the glorious year of 2008. I would like to say that things are better but they are not. Things are different though but the fuck ups are the same. The amount of games that differs between the two VC libraries of the pond is down to five games but now the difference is in the actual games that are in each library.

You see, instead of just creating a global Virtual Console channel for the Wii, Nintendo, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to divide the world into regions. Yeah, that’s right: regions. How the fuck you can divide the world into regions is beyond me but God damn, unbelievable as it is, Nintendo did it. Now, in the words of the AVGN: “that’s bullshit!”

Each region has games that the other region would like to see. All of those games are perfectly releasable in every region but instead Nintendo is handing out the cool games to individual regions. Its like you and your little brother or sister both want that awesome toy but only one of you gets it. I know, it’s shit.

Fuck Me, Regions?

Unfortunately, I am so completely fucking mystified by the fact that some dick flippers at Nintendo were able to divide the fucking world up into regions that I just have to get this little side rant of my chest.

Fuck monkey shit, it’s stupid as hell but below are the “official” regions, the numbers represent the size of the VC library as of August 25, 2008:

• Japan (357)
• North America (248)
• Europe (243)
• Australia & New Zealand (230)

Now, how the fucking hell are you able to divide the world into that pile of shit? What happened to, you know, those things we call “continents”? Are those not just fucking right when you want to divide the world up into pieces? Noooo, instead we have these arbitrary regions that make no sense whatsoever.

What the fuck happened to countries like, just to name something, Russia? Is that not a real country? Does that not almost span Europe and Asia? OK, maybe some people think that Russia is in Europe but not part of Europe. It does not really make sense, cool.

But what the fuck about China? I guess nobody is playing VC over there. All those countries in South America? Maybe we can extend our logic and make that part of North America. They are connected after all. Yeah right, while we are at it we can fit Africa in just about anywhere. But I guess nobody is playing VC there either. Only some tribes that can’t stop killing each other there so why bother, right?

I though that was it but wait… Fuck holy manure! After looking this shit up in Wikipedia I found out there’s a fucking fifth region:

• South Korea

You might be thinking: “Damn shit those Koreans, a whole region of their own?” But actually, it seems that Nintendo is taking a little piss on those poor South Koreans because only 22 titles have been released so far. Also, the store “updates irregularly on Tuesdays”. I feel almost sorry for ranting now. Almost.

Back to the Story

With that whole region shit comes this crazy release policy that should only make sense to the turds who cooked up this pile of shit in the first place. Now the fact that Japan is the dog’s bullocks in library size makes completely sense. Most of the games that they have over us (EU, NA, A&NZ) are just too plain weird, stupid or hard for most of us. Let’s face it: those guys are hardcore and just way more insane when it comes to gaming than us. That’s cool.

They deserve that huge ass library. More power to them and that kind of shit. Not to mention the fact that it is the easiest market for Nintendo: huge name, huge market, no localization, no limits – no question about it. That does not mean they should treat the rest of the world like shit, which frankly, sometimes it feels like they do.

Love Not War

It seems like the Japanese through Nintendo are conspiring to drive “The West” apart while at the same time keeping the South Koreans on a nice and tight leash so they can throw them a few bones once in a while. Of course this idea is totally absurd but it is a good example what kind of crazy shit can happen when you leave a reasonably sane person wondering about what the fuck is happing for too long.

A large part of the VC games that we are given so far is superb and hopefully a lot more good stuff will follow. It is just the little things like what happened today that really tick me off: USA VC Releases: Ys Book I & II and Samurai Shodown II.

Samurai Shodown II is cool but what I’m really very pissed about is that Ys Book I & II are available in the US as we speak while in Europe we are wondering what the fuck we did to deserve this. Did we not pray enough? Did we not drew blood of those damsels and did we not offer it on the blood stone below the full moon on those sacred nights in February and September? Damn you Nintendo and all your offspring! May the joy of children bring you blood and evil until the world is no more!

The Other Side

To be fair, those guys at the other side of the pond (or those down under for that matter) are just as fucked by Nintendo as we are over here in the region they call Europe. While they are treated to the fabulous Ys Books we got Super Mario RPG last week. We also have Mega Man 2 since the 14th of December last year. We also have a bunch of old school C64 gems that are not available over there yet. I think it is a master stroke to provide C64 games on the Virtual Console but am absolutely stupefied why they are only available here.

And on a personal note: who is the fuck hole’s banana bearing pickle licking pile of dick weaving professional hamster shit diving ass wrinkle that is responsible for me now almost craving a year for Axelay? It hurts man!

Why the Fuck Is It So Hard?

Come on now people, we are living in 2008. Birds are singing, the sun is shining and a large part of the world is connected, at least, the part of the world that matters is. Now, fuck those tribes in Africa for a minute and never mind that there are actually some reasonably civilized people living in other parts of the world besides those living in the sacred parts of Nintendo’s official region system. Now ask yourself this question:

“Why oh why, in the name of our beloved Lord and saviour, would we differentiate between the east and west side of the pond and those unfortunate to live down in the underbelly of our beautiful earth?”

I asked myself this question a thousand times. A few times I thought I had an answer but unfortunately, after giving it a little more thought, it never made complete sense.

“It has to be localized for Non-English speaking European monkey”

While this is often the case for current games this cannot be true for VC releases because those games where localized once already (if any localization) and you would be hard pressed to find a publisher who will go through all the trouble of localizing a twenty-year old game just to release it in Europe for the VC. As far as I can see it, there are three scenarios:

• If the game has already undergone localization to English it will most likely just appear in that form
• If it has not been localized to English then it would be completely reasonable to only release it to the Japanese market and be done with it
• If it has been localized to English but not to, for example, French or Italian or some other stupid Nationalistic language there should be no reason to withhold it from the European market

By the way, if you are offended by that last sentence you may also want to see the closing note.

“European monkey won’t like it”

That may very well be the case. But you know, the beauty of our world wide web is that it is – like – world wide. While I can understand the motivations for releasing some games in Japan only there is nothing in my mind that can find any reasonable understanding for the policy of releasing some games only in one or more of the other regions while depriving the other regions of said games.

“European monkeys rate slow”

I can understand that some regions use a different kind of rating system than other regions. And some institutes work faster than others. Agreed. But that still does not explain while some games take over more than a year to appear on either side of the pond.

A good few of them even never appear for the folks down under at all but they are not very vocal about so I’m not sure how they feel about that. I do know that a lot of people are hugely frustrated by some of the games popping up but in the wrong region and rightfully so. This shit is not right.

Fuck This Region Shit

There’s no reason that Axelay should not be released here. Likewise there is also no reason to not release Megaman 2 and Super Mario RPG in The States. It is a fucking download for crying out loud! Why the fuck should it cost more money to just have a single access point for the rest of the world instead of this crazy region shebang we have now?

I hate this fucking region shit. I hate it on the fucking DVDs I buy and I hate it even more on the fucking VC. Its fucking useless. It does nothing but it is only there because some corporate ass holes deemed this shit looked like a solid plan. In the end, it only frustrates fans and customers.

Fuck Axelay, I don’t even want to play it any more. And even if, I will just download an emulator, play the bitch for a few hours and be done with it. Saves me some money too.

Closing Note

If you live in Europe and can not understand English well enough to play a few video games well: fuck you. Why are you fucking it up for the rest of us who took some time to learn another language or two?

Note

Before anyone gets the wrong impression: I love this game. I have to restrict myself because once I start I can’t stop playing it. I even got to grips with the level up system and have managed to learn to play to accommodate it but still hate it. I must confess that I owe a great deal to the fantastic folk who maintain and contribute to the UESPWiki. Without them I would’ve never had the knowledge I needed to play the game to satisfaction. It’s a resource more insightful than the Arcane Library itself and also a wonderful example of what can be done with a wiki.

Overview

The leveling system in Oblivion is genius and fucked at the same time. Below are the rules.

• There are twenty one skills and seven of them are major skills.
• A character has eight attributes.
• Each attribute except for luck governs three skills.
• Every time you use a skill you gain experience for that skill.
• You gain experience for major skills more quickly.
• There are also some other experience modifiers but it’s complicated enough already.
• The game shows your progress towards getting a skill point and we should all thank The Nine that it does.
• Once the bar fills up you get a skill point and once you have ten major skill points you level up.
• The game also shows your progress towards a new level up.
• Once you level up you get to assign a positive modifier to three of your attributes.
• The modifier for luck is always +1
• The modifier for all other attributes is determined by the total of skill points gained in all three skills governed by that attribute.
• The modifier for all other attributes ranges from +2 to +5.
• You get the +5 modifier if the total number of skill points for an attribute is equal or greater than ten.

And that’s basically it. However, gaining a level in Oblivion is not always a happy event because the whole damn world levels up with you. That’s right: almost every treasure, NPC and enemy will level up with you every time you gain a level. This tends to fuck with your mind. Only if you are prepared and sure to get good attribute modifiers must you level otherwise you risk underleveling and getting fucked in the behind by a mud crab.

Fucked by a Mud Crab

Underleveling happens when you level up too quickly and unfortunately this happens all too easily. When you are picking a character it is natural to select a class (or create a custom one) with the skills that you use most often as your seven major skills. This seems the right thing to do and, looking at the predefined classes, recommended but it will also set you well on the way to underleveling. If you selected all the appropriate classes and play the game focusing on your character you will find that, making good use of your major skills, levels come pretty quickly.

This should be a good thing but unfortunately chances are also likely that you will get small bonus modifiers when you level up. Maybe +3 but usually +2. This is not good because enemies will grow stronger too and if you’re not careful they will grow stronger more quickly than you. At this point your only remedy is to turn down the difficulty slider (more on that later) but if you have to do this every time you level up you will quickly find it at the lowest setting. Unable to turn it down even more when the next level comes it’s highly likely that you’ll be trampled by a deer.

Being Careful

Besides getting fucked by a Mud Crab or getting trampled upon by a deer, it is also very easy to fuck yourself in the ass by sheer stupidity. Remember that you need ten skill points for all three skills governed by an attribute? Let’s just say you’ve got two of the three attributes covered and you are working on those last two skill points to cover the +5 bonus for the last one. Acrobatics is one of your major skills and you can see that you’re about to gain a skill point. However, you don’t want to yet because you already have the ten points to cover your speed attribute.

Suddenly, you fall of a rock and fuck shit, your acrobatics skill has increased. Blam! “You should rest and reflect on what you learned…” (that means I can level up). God #@$ ^%$&! Not only have I wasted a skill point for my speed attribute. I also accidentally levelled and now have fucked myself because I don’t have enough skill points to cover my third attribute (the game stops counting when you have ten major skill points).

Controlling the Fuckage

For me, controlling the fuckage basically means one thing: keeping meticulous notes where my skill levels are at when I gain a level. This provides an essential reference point during the next session of questing and training because I can now always find out how many skill points I gained since my last level up. Even though the game lets you know when you gained a skill point it is easy to miss these messages during the heat of battle. It is also useful to have an idea about which attributes you want to improve on your next level up so you can make wise decisions about which skills to use (e.g. don’t go picking locks but use an open spell when you are trying to improve your willpower).

When you try to accurately train your character you’ll have to pull off some seriously strange shit with your character. Your mage will be walking around wearing heavy armour, sucking rhino ass because she’s so slow and her spells are so ineffective. Your Orc will look like a daisy because he’s wearing light armour in order to upgrade his speed. Your thief will be the grand champion of the Arena because you wanted to upgrade his or her fighting skills and the Arena is a controlled way to do it which pays off pretty well too. (Note to self: remember that your initial choice of armour is not final; you can grab a different piece of certified Arena armour from the back cabinet next to Owyn).

The Final Stretch

When you are near to a level up it is time to think about your attribute modifiers. I keep another set of notes for this and just write down the skills and their increases grouped by the attributes. All these notes make me look more like an accountant than a gamer but that’s the price to pay for decent leveling in Oblivion. I also keep track of the total number of points per attribute to make it easier to see on what skills to work during play. It’s also wise to start thinking about which skills are easily trained by yourself and for which ones you may need to buy training in order to avoid wasting too much skill points of other skills trying to get it up by yourself.

Most offensive skills are pretty hard to train without training other skills too. Fighting usually means wearing armour so your light or heavy armour skill will go up. Blocking is also pretty common during a fight. You might opt to not wear armour or block but then there is a good chance that you will have to rely on restoration magic and/or potions which means that either your restoration, alchemy (if you make potions) or mercantile (if you buy potions) skill will go up too.

It is not all bad though because most skills are pretty easy to train without risking wasting skill points on other skills. All the magic skills except for destruction are easy because you can just repeatedly cast a cheap spell on yourself. Security and speechcraft are pretty easy too. Mercantile is a little bit harder because you need merchandise or money to work with. Armourer is pretty hard to train too because you can’t always easily damage your armour or weapon in a controlled environment.

No Honour

Because of the skill juggling game that Oblivion wants you to play we have to find a good way to train our skills in a controlled way. Luckily this pretty easy to do thanks to an unexpected combination of conjuration magic and the difficulty slider. I have put aside my scruples about using the difficulty slider because I figured I would have to turn it down eventually. But instead of turning it down each level I now turn it a little bit up each time I level up and keep it there during questing. When I’m near a level up and need to train some specific combat skills I turn it full up or down to suit my training.

It is essential to become an apprentice in conjuration as soon as possible so you can conjure up weak creatures for training. The only problem is just that the creatures are so weak that you are likely to kick their ass in just a few blows. This forces you to conjure up another one and this can lead to rapid skill increases in conjuration. The trick here is to use the difficulty slider to your maximum advantage. If you are training an offensive skill just put the slider high and use a weak weapon. If you are training a defensive skill like heavy or light armour or block then put the slider low.

Training defensive skills is ideal in this way but training offensive is still risky. You may not always want to block or wear armour to avoid wasting skill points but with a high slider position this can be dangerous and might force you to use restoration magic. The Lord birth sign can help with this because it offers a pretty good health regeneration spell that does not influence your restoration magic.

I can heartily recommend the secret chamber behind the necromancer’s sign below Benirus Manor in Anvil as a controlled fighting environment. You can lock it up so your conjured creatures have nowhere to go and once Lorgrens corpse disappears it’s actually quite cosy in there.