For the last few months I've been seeing ads for Marriott's new "Ultra Adaptable" rooms in various video podcasts. The ads feature stark white rooms with shape shfting futuristic furniture: giant pulsing speakers, a massive fold-out multi-screen display, a magic spinning holocube.
All the ad says is: "Plug in: the first ultra adaptable room from Marriott." The viewer is left thinking what am I seeing? Is this real? What is an ultra adaptable room? It's one of those commercials that is well suited for web viewing because you can quickly search to find out what the comapny is actually trying to advertise.
I resisted the urge to look it up for a while but today I cracked. It turns out, Marriot's new rooms are a faaaaar far cry from the Phillip K. Dickian future world presented in the ads. But, they are, in-fact, more interesting. We get a mid-def LCD TV (1366, 768) and a front-mounted jack panel with AC power, VGA-in, DVI-in, composite-in, headphone-in, phone, and network. Many times I've brought my own gaming console and wanted to hook it up to a hotel tv only to find no available connections. It always feels like a subtle push to pay for the overpriced on demand flicks. Now, Marriot is giving their guests what they want and making it as convenient as possible.
In fact, that's what the ad should say. Next time, guys, skip the confusing "art" ad and just show us the rooms.
The last few days have been almost surreal. On Sunday, my wife and I were recuperaing from my best friends wedding and I suggested that she give the DS a go. She has been playing Super Princess Peach off and on for a while now and I expected her to hit up that old standby. But, to my surprise, she grabbed Age of Empires and at that moment she was lost to me.
For the last three days our free time has been spent sitting together on the couch playing video games together. I've been going through my usual gamut of any and everything, she has been grinding through the campaign levels in AoE. I finally know what it is like for her when I am engrossed in a game and only give half replies, head cocked to the side slightly, hoping to give enough of an impression of I'm listening to not elicit further distraction.
I don't blame her at all. It's actually quite a relief to know that she now gets how I can spend so much time playing a game. Seeing her, a level headed non-traditional gamer, compelled to finish an epic 45-day campaign makes me feel a bit better about myself.
I was watching CrankyGeeks 67 and I had the personal revelation that Robert Scoble looks exactly like Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Update: Of course I wasn't the first person to notice this but this was the first time I had thought of it.
I have listened to .NET Podcasts on the topic, I've read the Wikipedia article, I've subscribed to testing blogs. I've even written actual NUnit testing code while following a tutorial. But still, I have no idea how to do Test Driven Design.
There hasn't been any other programming concept that has been as elusive to me as TDD. I feel like maybe I should be doing it. It is one of those things that programmers talk about in floaty idealized language, like Agile. The difference is, I get Agile. In fact, I use Agile (sort of) in my day to day work. When people talk about Agile they talk about it in terms of projects and deadlines and clients. Those are concrete terms that apply to my day to day work.
When people talk about TDD they tend to only talk about how great it is and how everyone should be doing it. Okay, you sold me. I'm a joiner, a sheeple, whatever. Now I need some tangibles to move from abstract concepts to actual production code.
An example like this:
http://www.agiledata.org/images/tddStates.jpg (source: http://www.agiledata.org/essays/tdd.html)
tells me very little about the nuts and bolts of TDD.
I'm willing to accept that it's a personal shortcoming that prevents me from moving from theory to application but it definitely isn't from lack of trying. Hopefully, I'll be able to just ride this fad out and get a jump start on the next big thing when it comes along. (Oh please let it be LOLCode!)
