DanHulton.com

Solving the Node require() path problem for once and for all

If you’ve worked in Node for any length of time, you’ve seen it before: something along the lines of require('../../../lib/util/db/models/system/user). Now, that might be a bit over-exaggerated to prove a point, but I’m willing to bet that there’s one or two of you out there right now thinking...

The Ethics of “Buy or Earn” Microtransactions

Man, lootboxes, right? They’re everywhere these days. Lootboxes, paid DLC, subscription fees, boosts, it just seems like there’s hundreds of extra ways for a publisher to ding you again and again after you’ve bought their game. Recently, Star Wars: Battlefront II has gotten no end of bad press for...

“In Support of Racism”

Shopify recently posted a piece on Medium entitled In Support of Free Speech that they really should have titled “In Support of Racism”. To summarize, Shopify hosts the store for Breitbart, and they refuse to kick them off the service because the ACLU defended some Klansmen once. Just in case you’re...

Code faster with simple Sublime Text improvements

Whether you’re just trying out Sublime Text or you’ve been using it for years, there are almost guaranteed to be a few ways you can tweak it to improve your productivity. There are plugins to automate common tasks, check your code on the fly, or even just pretty it up and improve your morale. In this post...

An open letter to Rob Oliphant, new Liberal MP

Dear Mr. Oliphant, Congratulations on your victory in our 42nd election. Your campaign was hard-fought and well-fought, with door-knockers showing up twice at my apartment, the second time with just 40 minutes to go before polls ended. That’s dedication! Congratulations are due as well to your national team, who...

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News

If it can happen to Reuters, it can happen to anyone

Recently, one of Retuers’ blogs was hacked, and false stories were posted as if they were real news. Now, while that’s news in and of itself, the big takeaway that’s relevant to me and PanicPress is that if...

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Coding

Yes, yes he should.

Nerd humour time. I’m having some trouble with my coffeescript compiler. Every time I try to get my webserver to compile a new coffeescript file as part of developing this new website of mine, I get the following error:...

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Uncategorized

PanicPress – Coming Soon!

Well, it sure has been a while since I’ve posted. I have that terrible habit, of course – I get so involved in Doing Other Things that I neglect the ol’ blog in-between. Apologies. Won’t happen again. (Yes...

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Games

So much fail.

The only thing worse than this video: Is the comments beneath it. lol, is this supposed to be “hot” or something? I guess this kind of marketing works on virgins or something, but it’s funny how much this shit...

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Coding

Run Apache as your user for fewer conflicts

When writing code, so many things can go wrong. So many little things can be forgotten or overlooked and cause bugs and interruption. However, your time is finite and your patience is limited. Removing all these little causes of...

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Design

Spreadsheets: A game designer’s best friend

Seriously, if you haven’t fallen in love with spreadsheets yet, you’re doin’ it wrong. I’m currently in the middle of figuring out a multiple-week game loop with really tight targets. How the heck would...

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Coding

Female game developers

I follow a bunch of female game developers on Twitter. Now, I also follow a bunch of male game developers on Twitter, too. In fact, it’s fairer to say that I just follow a bunch of game developers on Twitter. But...

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Coding

Broken glass

Imagine, for a moment… You’re the new guy at BlokkStone Games, and you’ve had a pretty good first month. You fit in with the other programmers, and your team has made some excellent progress towards releasing...

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Coding

Creating a development Virtual Machine – Part one: Ubuntu, Apache, MySQL, PHP

If you do web development on Windows, you’re probably used to making do. XAMPP can go a long way, as can Cygwin, but once you want to start playing around with anything state-of-the-art, you’ll start feeling left...

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Coding

The Curious Case of The Missing Memcached::casMulti()

I understand I’m a little late to the game, but Memcached is friggin’ awesome. (No, I’m not talking about Memcache, I’ve known about that for a while. I’m talking about Memcached, the younger,...