Ferby's Blog

Game Night!

2009-06-10T09:35:00.002-05:00

Another fun game night has come and gone. Many thanks to my wonderful wife for cooking, the nachos were awesome! For those that don't know we like to get together about 3 or 4 times a month at someone's house. We'll make dinner (each bring something) and then play cards or board games for a few hours. So far it has been a nice way for us to get together without the usual "Well what do you feel like doing?" "I don't know/care." Too bad Chris couldn't make it, but Radford and Maggie both did so that more than made up for it. I'm looking for nights next week to set up the next one. If anyone has any ideas for dinner let me know.

2009-06-05T08:34:00.003-05:00

Unfortunately most of the things that I've been doing lately have been work related and therefore I can't really talk about in detail. What I can tell you is stuff in general terms. Like this... I'm working on integration between a couple of our apps while supporting problems with integration between two of our other apps. It sucks tremendously.

Kahre, Plink, Candace and I have started up game night again. Its been going for a couple of weeks now. We do dinner at someone's house then play cards for a few hours. Exciting I know. If anyone wants to come just call me and I can put you on the call list when we set the next one up.

That's it for now. I'll be thinking of something to put in here that we all can consider an actual update.

If you want a pretty good WoW related blog, then I'd suggest this one which is written by a guildie of mine.

SVN Up and Running

2009-01-28T11:24:00.003-06:00

I got the svn server back up an running. I plan on doing a code run through at lunch today and tomorrow to figure out what is left to do on the rpg.

RN2 Terminated

2009-01-15T13:01:00.002-06:00

That's right we decided to just kill the project (well our involvement in it) instead of finishing the changes for 2.1 that we still need. Motivation is the key here. Neither of us use RN and we both want to move onto other projects. The project is open to anyone who would like to take it over. I think we will move onto finishing my RPG game next and then onto the mod.

Wedding Photos

2008-08-14T10:29:00.002-05:00

We got the wedding photos in the mail this week. Hopefully I'll have DVDs burned for everyone this weekend.

RN - Unofficial Events

2008-08-11T15:50:00.004-05:00

I have committed the changes to allow unofficial events. Users can create them, only modify their own and anyone can view them. If a user has admin event edit permissions they can modify any unofficial events. The events are displayed as separate lists in the calendar. We still need some visual clue for the signup page.

This completes my todo list for the 2.1 release. So I've started looking into the in-game addon. I'm trying to find some info about the API for the WotLK event calender to see if we can use that. Otherwise I'll have to try hacking out my own.

RN - Armory Links

2008-07-30T14:47:00.002-05:00

Got armory links finished up yesterday. Names on the signup pages are links to the armory site defined in your admin config. Nate will probably move the links to a different spot once he has the xhtml redesign finished.

RN - Calendar Fixes

2008-07-15T12:06:00.002-05:00

I implemented some fixes to only display the current year's events. I also fixed some corner cases such as a raid scheduled for midnight on the 1st of the month or 23:59 on the last of the month. Raids at these times will display properly now. I also tweaked the SQL query so the page should load a little bit faster now.

RN - Standalone Level Support and Calendar

2008-07-15T09:44:00.006-05:00

I added in standalone level support. So now if you set a minimum level to your raids the characters will be filtered on the sign up page. Also I added a check in the signup method to check that the character's level is valid for the raid. Before we were relying on the fact that the characters are sorted and no invalid character would be allowed to signup.

I also made some changes to the calendar. It will now display all the raids in a day instead of the first one. The raids are now sorted by start time. Also I made some changes to greatly increase speed. Nate was having some problems with it on his windows machine. The calendar was taking 6+ seconds to render. Which is odd considering my ubuntu laptop and debian server were dishing out that page almost instantaneously.

Nate also discovered last night that the calendar will pull all raids for the current month regardless of year. So right now if you set your display times to be 10 years ago and have the raid reoccur every week. Then raids for next July will also display on the current calendar. I think I'm going to modify the SQL to only pull raids from the current month. When I hacked this code together I just grabbed all the raids and sorted them by hand. I only did this because I wanted to get some prototype up and running and I didn't want to mess with dates in the SQL WHERE clause.

RN - Unlimited Classes and Characters for a Raid

2008-07-08T13:00:00.006-05:00

I implemented true unlimited caps for the classes and characters in a raid. If you put a "*" or "unlimited" or leave the field blank for max characters or one of the class max fields then that field has an unlimited cap.

So if you have a raid with a Mages and Warriors in it. The max for mages is 2 and the max for warriors is unlimited and the character max is unlimited. Then only 2 mages can sign up but any number of warriors can.

Now if we create a new raid that has wars, mages, and priests. The priests have a max of 6 and the mages and wars have an unlimited max and there is a 30 character max for the raid. Now only 6 priests can sign up, but any number of mages and warriors can sign up. Once the raid has hit 30 signups then no more characters can sign up even though there is an unlimited cap one or two of the classes.

RN - Permissions Update Again

2008-07-08T10:20:00.003-05:00

I've updated the rest of the pages to correctly check for permissions. The only current permission not implemented is the unofficial events, and we are not sure if that will be a feature that is implemented. Only minor testing has occured so this will be something we will need to test extensively during the 2.1 beta.

Radford

2008-07-02T09:06:00.002-05:00

Radford is blogging again. Woohoo!

RN - Permissions Refactor

2008-06-30T13:48:00.002-05:00

I refactored permissions again. This will really only affect developers and users shouldn't notice a difference. In common.php permissions are set by $permissions = new Permissions(); And now calls to get permissions look like this: $permission->isAdmin(true); Where the boolean passed it determines if the user should be booted if they don't have the permission. If you pass in false the function will return a boolean telling if the user has the permission. To check for multiple permissions on a page call $permissions->checkForPermissions(array('admin_group_add', 'admin_group_edit', 'admin_group_delete')); This function will boot the user if they don't have one of the permissions defined.

I have refactored the permissions page and the group pages to use this new system. Right now all other admin pages check for $permissions->isAdmin(true);

RN - Calendar

2008-06-25T14:00:00.003-05:00

Fixed a bug and added a feature to the calendar.

The bug I fixed is that my compare function to compare the calendar date to the raid date was comparing the raid date it gmt time so depending on time zone of the server some of the raids were displaying in the wrong dates.

The feature I added is that the calendar now displays the raids in the user's set time zone. So if the server is in pst and the raid is schedule for 11pm, but the user is in est then the raid will display in the next day of the calendar for that user.

Next up is to set a user preference to switch the raids to display in the user's timezone or the raid's timezone.

RN - Rss

2008-06-24T15:32:00.003-05:00

I added an rss.php page that will output the visible raids into an rss feed. This will display the raids in the server's time. We can't use the user's time, since this file is accessed without a login session. I haven't done any extensive testing yet, and I need to get all of the useful information for the raid into the feed (right now it only displays the raid name, date and notes).

Raid Ninja Calendar

2008-06-18T16:20:00.004-05:00

Thanks to Jon I was able to copy most of the code for a calendar view. All I had to do was modify it to fit in RN's templating system, and that wasn't hard. Right now all it does is display the current month. I gave it a basic style in the rn2.css file and I added a link to the nav bar for it.

Raid Ninja Calendar

Raid Ninja Permissions

2008-06-17T14:54:00.005-05:00

I wanted to expand on the permissions in Raid Ninja a bit more. Over the last week I created a page to allow admins the ability to edit user permissions. The page displays a list of links that are the user names. Click the link and the page will display a list of checkboxes for the various permissions. Those permissions that the user has are checked. The admins can then (un)check permissions as they see fit.

Now previously RN used an adminCheck page to see if the user was allow into the admin pages and if not it booted them to the main index. In order to set up Raid Ninja to use this new permission system I had to create a helper function, checkForPermission($permissionName), which will check if the current user has the permission and if not it will boot them to the main screen. So I replaced all instances of the include('adminCheck'.$phpEx); line that I could find with checkForPermission('is_admin'); All seems well. This checkForPermission() function will check for the permission passed in and the 'is_admin' permission. Since if a user is an admin they will have access to anything regardless of other permissions.

If you want to check if a user has a certain permission, but don't want to boot them. Like say you want to display a button for adding groups, but not if the user only has permission to edit them. $checkPermission($permissionName) will return a boolean if the user has this permission.

I have to talk to Nate to about where to put these checks for other permissions, but once I have an idea I'll be updating the other admin pages with the specific permissions that are needed.

I haven't quite decided on my next project for RN, but I'm thinking I might take a look into the calendar view.

Updates

2008-06-16T11:34:00.002-05:00

Implemented the permissions editing for users in Raid Ninja, and added the attendance table to the stats page. Then for my rpg I implemented inn keepers took about 10 minutes.

Oh yeah and I got married on the 7th.

Attendance Status

2008-05-22T15:33:00.003-05:00

Got started on the attendance status stuff. They basics are in there. I need to create a new page to change them right now you can change them where you change the sign up types of other users, but them sharing a page is too cluttered. So some more testing and a new page to edit them, then its on to figuring out some place to put them on the stats page.

Yesterday at lunch I started work on a xml writer for my rpg. It is designed to be an all-in-one. I pass in an object and it uses reflection to get the data members and writes them to the xml. In theory I can use this same stuff to parse the xml files into the objects. I'll have to keep working on this. It is tedious, but if it means I don't have to write a new parser/writer combo for every game object I create it'll be worth it.

Oh mutlispeak how I hate you.

Stats -> Templates

2008-05-16T14:18:00.000-05:00

The stats page has been converted to templates. Now its time to talk to Nate about setting up the attendance status so there'll be a record of when people don't show up to raids.

Raidninja

2008-05-14T13:30:00.002-05:00

I've put the rpg on hold for the time being. With the wedding getting close and our OMS project about to go beta I don't really have the time or the energy to doing much hobby coding. I'm thinking that I'll give the rpg a rest for a couple of months and come back to it after things die down this summer.

Until then I've agreed to give Nate a hand with his Raid Ninja Project. I'm currently working on a stats page so that the raid leaders can view signup statistics on their raiders. Currently it can filter by name, class and dates. I might add some more filter options if we come up with any that would be useful, maybe roles. My next step is to convert it to the template system and after that we are going to implement an attendance status system to track if people acutally show up. Then I can add those stats into the stats page.

It Has Begun

2008-03-19T10:07:00.002-05:00

I got bored with working on the menus so I have implemented some more game logic. Yesterday I created an exp bar which sits right under the mana bar for now. I think later I'll move it down towards the bottom, but that will come after the alpha phase when I do a complete sweep over the GUI elements to get them in the right positions.

I created an Inventory class to hold the logic for accessing items. I also created a class called SpellBook to hold the logic for accessing spells. These will be used by the hero, monsters and vendors.

Saving the best for last I have begun work on the combat system. I've created a few interfaces that the combatants will have to implement in order to be used for combat. I've also created some graphics to use. Since I've already created the random chance encounter now I'll just have to use that method call to change the game state so that combat will be updated instead of movement. I already have the basic flow of combat laid out on paper, and now all I have to do is get it translated into code.

Vendor Selling

2008-02-28T21:47:00.002-06:00

I set up selling to vendors. Now vendors will buy your items and have them in their inventory. I plan on saving this information out so that the player can always buy their items back if they want to. I am setting up a buy price and a sell price for each item. I plan on making items cost more for the player to buy than to sell.

I also set up a couple of constant class that will have static strings for the menus and focus components. This way if I decide to change something I do it in one class instead of the dozen or so classes that access that field.

Buying from Vendors

2008-02-23T20:16:00.002-06:00

Tonight I put in most of the code for buying from vendors. I still need to do some testing and put in the code to sell to vendors.

Vista Trials

2008-02-18T11:59:00.004-06:00

I've decided to go ahead and reinstall Vista onto my laptop. Since I don't have any vista install DVDs I'll have to use my recovery disks that HP sent me. Which means I'll have to go through and remove all the bloatware that HP thinks I need. This will of course mean that I need to reinstall everything that I had on there. First thing though is saving all my data that I have on XP to my jump drive first.

I can't seem to get the sound working in XP and since I can't even get the ethernet working in Linux I'm left with little choices. Basically I just want to be able to use everything my laptop has. I'm tired to trying to fight with it to get things to run. Plus this will give me a chance to try out Vista and a new platform to test out projects on.

Design Patterns

2008-02-18T11:58:00.001-06:00

I've been reading some design pattern posts on gd.net lately and I have come to the conclusion that some of my design choices aren't the greatest. I want to refactor my code to fix these design flaws, but I'm worried that I'll just end up burning myself out and I won't want to finish the game. There are a few smaller things I can fix, but I think I'll have to leave the major ones in for now. Once I have fixed these smaller ones I'll then see if fixing the larger issues is a reasonable choice.

I think the first thing I'm going to work on is removing the FocusComponents. Instead I'll create an interface with the methods that are supposed to be called and then have each menu implement that interface. This is really what I should have done in the first place instead of create a new object to handle the input for each menu. This is mainly be a matter of copy/paste the code in the focus component object into the menu object. It will also make it easier to deal with writing the menus. This way I won't have to jump back and forth between two different classes in order to create or debug a menu.

Item Questions

2008-01-30T14:51:00.001-06:00

I've got some design questions that I'd like you all to answer for me. I've been thinking about the item system over the last week and I've been pondering what the user should be able to do with the items. Originally I wanted the user to be able to use, equip, or destroy items from the inventory menu. Now I'm not sure that destorying items is needed. I think if the user wants to get rid of items they should just sell them off. I don't have any plans to have an inventory limit on the number of items or number of slots that a player can have. If there was I could see a reason to let them destroy items. So what do you think? Should there be some kind of limit on how much a player can carry? Either way should the player be allowed to destory items?

Right now vendors are loaded with the same inventory everytime the game is started. I started thinking about when I put real items in the game I'm going to have certain things that I don't want multiple of or maybe very few in the game. So my solution is to save the vendors during a save to keep their inventory updated. This led to this question. If the player sells something to the vendor should they be allowed to buy it back? If so should the vendor never get rid of this item until they sell it back to the player?

Menus Updated

2008-01-30T09:17:00.000-06:00

Got some more work done of the menus last night. The Vendor's buy and sell menus seem to be working, next is actually buying and selling items. The spell menu is also working. Next up is the item select menu and actually casting spells from the menu. Only ceratin spells will work from the menu. After that its on to the combat menus. Then combat itself.

New Year Resolutions

2008-01-02T08:51:00.000-06:00

I've been seeing posts like this in some of the blogs that I read. So I decided to copy them and post how my goals for last year went and what goals I'm striving for this year.

2007

First on the list was to learn and use Linux as my main desktop environment. I think that I completed the first part of that. I messed around with the desktop side for my bot PC. I got a server up and running. It had apache, php, mysql, ventrilo, and subversion running on it. Unfortunately it didn't survive the move, but now I have a different PC running as my server. This time its a Debian box instead of an Ubuntu box. I have not converted myself fully to Linux though. I still find myself addicted to games and too unwilling to give them up. Hopefully my desire to create games will overpower my desire to play them. Maybe even just playing the games that I create will be enough to satisfy my addiction.
Learning C/C++ was the next on my list. This didn't happen at all, but this goes hand in hand with...
The Mod this started out as the big project of the year and never left the planning stages. Due to things like graduation and other projects time for this monster never seemed to be available. Maybe once Nate finishes Raidninja and I can get the rpg out the door we can resurrect this beast.
Lastly is the rpg I'm working on. While I hoped to be in either alpha or beta by now I'm not disappointed at all at my progress. Working full time as a programmer leaves me with very little desire to work at my computer when I get home. Also having the new house has left me with very little free time anyway. I'm still very pleased with what I've created so far and I'm hoping to have this finished up by the end of the spring this year.

2008

Finish rpg by the end of spring.
Make Debian my default desktop enviroment.
Start working on my next game. I'm not sure if this will be a sequel to the rpg. Or maybe a top down shooter similar to Project Skirmish.
If I can talk Nate and Jon into it we will get working on the mod.
Do some Factor hacking

Fonts

2007-12-27T13:43:00.000-06:00

I got custom font loading implemented today at lunch. Unfortunately my choice of font is pretty hideous.

Server Progress

2007-12-26T09:42:00.000-06:00

I got my server deployed again. Subversion, web and Ventrilo services are all set up again. I've got my project uploaded into svn and the eclipse projects updated with the new repository.

I'm hoping that I can get some time this week to get the menus displaying in the correct positions so that I can move onto the logic behind vendors and inn keepers. Once that is taken care of opening chests will probably be the next step.

I did get the basic code for combat written down in my notes. I still need to do the code for combat formula stuff and the random chances, but that is more tedious that difficult.

Progress for a Change

2007-12-18T15:23:00.000-06:00

I've actually made some progress during lunch. I've implemented props. Which are just stationary objects like tables, chairs, signs, etc. You can "use" them like Npcs or vendors. That way you can read a sign or a painting or something.

The other thing I've worked on is vendors. They are in the game, but until I have time to work on the menus you can't buy from them.

I have random encounters working, but nothing other than a System.out.println() message happens.

My next steps are to get get the menus working and looking as they should. Once all that is done then I can work on buying things from vendors, sleeping at an inn, and spawning monsters.

Debian

2007-12-03T10:42:00.000-06:00

First off I installed the new hdd into my main pc and booted up my XP cd. Turns out that the cd is trash now. It thought my 160 and 300 gb hdds were 130 each. When I tried to make a partition with it on my main drive I think it might have nuked the data on my data drive. So I could be looking at a loss of about 270 gigs of stuff. Really the only crappy thing about that is my 30 gigs of music. I'll have to drag my tower over to my parents house to get my Dad's back up of music. Then I'll have to re-rip all of my cds again.

So instead of windows I'm going to try a Linux only system for a while. Which might mean no more games for me for a while. I'm going to look into getting wine working well enough to try and emulate some games. More than likely I won't be playing HL2:EP2 or TF2 any time soon. Not like I have any time right now to do that. I'm going to put together a guide for setting up a Debian Desktop. It will be what I did on my system. Since I'm using this for more of a testing/learning system I'll post up guides on doing the extra things like compiling a kernel. So far I got a basic system up. Then compiled and installed the latest Openbox, obconf and obmenu. The last thing I did was get Firefox(well Iceweasel) setup to my liking. I'll work on those guides and probably have them up next(not this) weekend.

Happenings

2007-11-27T11:53:00.000-06:00

I still haven't gotten to the server yet. I've been busy(lazy) with other house things. I do plan on getting most of the pc work done tonight. My list of things include...

Swapping my 80gb hdd from my main pc with the new 160gb drive.
Installing that 80gb drive in my server pc as a data drive.
Imaging the new pc with windows and installing updates.
Installing the appropiate software for the machine.
Moving files from the server's main drive to the data drive.
Reformating the main drive on the server and installing Debian
Updates and server software installation on the server.
Running and crimping network wire to Annie's office.
Moving her pc up to her office and setting it up.

Lets see how much of that I get done tonight.

Interwebs

2007-11-23T08:36:00.001-06:00

I got the internet hooked and running last night at the house. So hopefully by the end of this weekend I'll have the server up and running again.

I Ownz a House!

2007-11-07T15:46:00.000-06:00

There are many adventures reguarding this home purchase, and I'm sure many more to come. I figured I'd detail the things that have happened so far, because I like to keep all of you informed... all three of you.

Wednesday(10/31/07)

I did the final walk through on the house. Just to check things out and get a feel for what kind of work we had ahead of us. Annie and I brought some of our things over and left them in a back bedroom. And that was it for the first night.

Thursday(11/01/07)

After work I went home and packed up some things for painting the house. My dad and I drove over to the house where Annie and her Mom where busy cleaning and moving Annie's stuff into the house. After looking around to know how much paint to get my dad and I drove to Lowes to buy some paint and a few other things. Once we got back we puttyed up the holes in the walls in the master bedroom and then taped off the trim. After that I spent about 2.5 hours edging out the room (painting around the trim and in the corners, etc.) Then an hour using a roller to paint the majority of the walls. I got done with that at about 12:30am so we cleaned up and left.

Friday(11/02/07)

I got up early to drive to the bank to get a cashier's check for the down payment. Went to the drive through at the bank where they told me they don't do cashier's checks through the drive through. They told me I'd have to come inside to get it and that they don't open the inside till 9am. Btw my closing on the house was at 9am, 20mins away. So I called the title company and explained it to them, then waiting to get the check. Finally get in and they screwed up printing the check the first time. They stamped it so that the signature for the bank was halfway off the check. So after printing it a second time I was out the door and on my way to the title company.

After I got to the title company I spent about 45 minutes signing my life away. I signed probably around 50 documents, half of which I had already signed before. Gave them the check and let them make a photocopy of my driver's license, and that was that. I had offically bought the house.

After a brief stop at my parents' house to pick up my painting clothes I drove back to my house(so nice to say that) and meet Annie at my sister there. While I was off signing stuff my sister had put the second coat of paint in teh master bed room and Annie had been taping off the living and dining rooms. After telling them that everything had gone fine I drove down to Rothman to buy the furniture that Annie and I had picked out last weekend. That took about another hour and then I was on my way back to the house.

When I got back the girls were out getting lunch so I spent some time on the phone trying to get ahold of a few of the utility companies to get service hooked up in my name. Didn't get anybody before they got back so I gave up.

After lunch I started edging the living room and hallway while they finished up taping and then rollering the parts of the living room that I hadn't gotten to yet. At about 4 my parents showed up and my dad started painting the kitchen and dining room. We probably were painting till about 9 or so, then we cleaned up what we could and left for the night. We decided before we left that the living room and the accent wall(red wall) needed second coats so we left the plastic down and everything.

Saturday(11/03/07)

So got up early then my dad and I rented a truck. He drove it to Annie's mom's house and I drove my car there. Chris and Kahre met us there and we packed up her stuff. Then we drove up to the storage locker and filled the truck.

Once back at our house we unpacked the truck and then Annie and our Moms spent their time cleaning and moving the boxes around. They ended up cleaning all of our kitchen stuff. While us guys(even my brother showed up) went back to the locker to empty it out. While we are there unloading stuff theres a family moving things either in or out of a different locker a little bit farther down the parking lot. I say either moving in or out, because they spent way more time yelling at each other than actually working. As Chris said, "not only do we get to help you move we get to watch an episode of Springer while we do it." So we wrap that up and I go inside the office and cancel the lease on the locker.

We get back and unload then take a break for lunch. Afterwards my dad and I take the truck back to his house to unload some stuff that was in the locker that they are keeping. Then we take the truck back to Uhaul. Once back at the house Kerry (the previous owner) shows up to help us move the washer and dryer that is in our house across the street to his in-laws and then move their washer and dryer into our basement. Those things are very heavy and are a pain in the ass to carry up and down steps. We had straps that would go underneath the appliance with loops on the end that you would put your arms through to pick it up. My forearms where so scratched up it looked like I spent all day doing heroin.

The rest of the day we spent unpacking things and hanging drapes. My mom and I put the second coat of paint on the living room and accent wall. Then we passed out.

Sunday(11/04/07) thru Now

After church it was a day of unpacking more stuff and doing some minor house work. More drapes were hung and more things cleaned. The washer and dryer were hooked up and testing to make sure that there were no leaks. We fixed a leaking faucet outside and shut off another one for the winter.

Monday morning I called to get all the utilities hooked up in my name. Turns out that while I was on hold with the gas company they came out to my house and turned the gas off. Then they tell me that Thursday morning is the soonest they can turn it back on. So that's three nights of freezing temperatures with no heat and no hot water. So yeah... Fuck you Laclede.

We still have boxes every where and I still haven't cleaned any of the basement. I plan on starting that this weekend then I can paint the room that will be my office. Once that is finished I'll be setting up my PCs, bookshelves, stereo, etc. in there. Then I can focus on getting our extra things packed up and stored in the corner of the basement.

Finally

I have to say a huge thank you to our families and Kahre and Plink. Without you we'd still be moving things in from the locker. Seriously I can't thank you all enough.

If you've managed to make it this far then either I'm not nearly as boring as I thought or you are a masochist. I understand that this whole entry is boring and rather dry, but there is a good reason for that. I suck at writing. I'll also let this prove that occasionally I do post personal entries here, and not only things related to my programming adventures.

Now that things are relatively settled you'll all have to stop by and have a beer or two... So I can put you to work. =)

Keyboard Bug

2007-10-31T08:42:00.000-05:00

The biggest bug currently in the game is that when you click on a window outside of the game, like Firefox, and then click back to the game the game will (most of the time) stop accepting keyboard input. I thought this might be because of the code I wrote to manage keyboard input for what ever component had focus in the game, menus and maps. I figured that the component that had focus after coming back wasn't what it should be, but I did some testing last night and it seems that my key listener isn't even registering the key presses. So I'm at a loss on why this happened. Maybe it has something to do with the graphics changes I made. Maybe on JFrame or Canvas objects are lossing focus and not getting it back. I'll have to do some more testing later to see if I can find a solution.

Dev == null

2007-10-25T09:00:00.001-05:00

My development time over the last two weeks have been non-existent. I've been way too wrapped up in getting the things for my house in order and as of right now I have nothing to do but waiting to sign my life over to the bank a week from tomorrow.

I still plan on releasing the new version sometime soon. It will probably be a day or two later than I had originally posted. I'm going to try to get an ANT build process set up so that I can just do a build that way and run the jar to test my code. This will make it easier to test that resources get pulled from the jar instead of having to create a folders on the user's computer inorder to access the assets the game requires.

Another thing that I've been looking into is packaging a font to go with the game. I need to look for a free font out there that fits the game and that will look good on the menus and such. Once I find one and get the code in that will load and use the font, then I need to go through the menus and gui components and make sure that the alignment is still looking ok.

Near Completeness

2007-10-16T08:28:00.000-05:00

I have now finished all but one of my required items for the next version of the game. I want to get the animation code in, but I keep holding off on it because I don't have any art to go along with that animation. I know that whatever I make myselft will end up being ugly programmer art and will take me an insane amount of time. I think I'll give it a try to night just to have something in though.

I will be releasing the next version around the 27th or 28th. This version should have all the required elements as well as the spell menu, inventory, and opening chests. Although the chests will probably only be half complete. I want to be able to add the ability to put monsters into chests so that when you open one you end up in a fight. I won't add this part until I have the specifics for combat worked out. I'm not entirely sure how that coding is going to go but I have an idea that might work. If I end up with any more time before the release I will be working on vendors.

When I post this release I'll also have a new progress list for the next release, which I hope to be doing around the end of November. One release a month sounds pretty good right? This next release will be finishing up anything I missed on the current release and everything combat related. I'll see how far along I am on this stuff before I commit myself to anything specific.

Item Menu

2007-10-06T16:58:00.001-05:00

Finished up the Item Menu.

Menus

2007-10-02T22:48:00.001-05:00

Bolted on the menu system to the game. Now you can hit the cancel key (Esc, Q, or q) and it will bring up the main menu from there you can make your selection with the movement keys. Right now only Item and Quit work. The Item menu has been created, but the functionality hasn't been implemented yet. I still need to get the items displaying correctly and then I need to create and hook up the Item Selection Menu to it. Hit the cancel keys to back out of the menus.

Screenshots!

Blitting

2007-09-30T14:21:00.000-05:00

So I messed around with the graphics today and changed the way the game is drawn into a blitting strategy. This allows for me to not use Java's default way of handling graphics. So instead of a GUI way to doing things I am now using more of a game way of doing things. Read here for more information on what I used.

I also reworked the fps counter so be more accurate (counting frames rather than guessing based on time spent updating and drawing). I have also fixed the collision so that npcs will not run over you. Plus a few other minor code changes.

I'm getting between 100-120 fps now which is more than enough, but I'm still having the movement bug that Nate noticed. Sorry not sure what that is about yet.

Input goes OO

2007-09-27T22:18:00.000-05:00

Created the Key Manager. Now I just have to add a check and a new class when I create a menu or something else that needs key input. I also refactored some code into an update() method in the for(;;) loop. This seems to be a performance hit. I'm not sure why or if it might be my imagination. Either way menus are next.

Chatty Entities

2007-09-27T18:29:00.001-05:00

Like I said last time I got portals working and while doing so I refactored code a bit which produced a familiar bug that entities would move a few pixels every time I'd move and then snap back to their tile. This was a familiar bug, one I had fixed with a couple of methods that would check direction and adjust the entity's position accordingly. It seems that when I refactored the code those methods were no longer needed. So now the drawing works like it should have before without the hacks.

You can now talk to Npcs and they will cycle through their dialog. I also have some more collision detection in to make sure that you don't run over an npc. Now if only they'd be so nice to check to make sure you're not where they want to walk before they run over you.

Portals

2007-09-24T22:46:00.000-05:00

Yay, portals and changing maps are in. I also added a fps counter to the title bar and I added a delay to the update function for Npcs so they don't wander constantly now.

Version 0.1 Demo

2007-09-19T22:27:00.001-05:00

I just released the first demo of the game, release 0.1 (Yay!). You can find all the details about what is in the demo by following that link. This release is basically a graphics demo. There are no real game elements to it yet. Fortunately there are a lot of things happening in the background that are game related that you don't see, and they will make my life easier when I get to more game logic stuff later.

One of the things I want to do with each release is to post what I plan to have for the next version. I posted a list in the release thread of those things that must be in the release, those that I want in the release, and those that I'd love to have but most likely won't see till a release after that.

There are three basic things that must be in the release: menus, changing maps and the object managers. Now the first two are things that you will see and be able to play with in the next demo, but the third is one of those background things that helps me but you never see. Right now I have plans for three managers to help me handle things. First is the key manager which I talked about already. It will handle key presses for the various "focus" components(anything that requires navigation). The second will be an asset manager. This one will handle any external files, images, sound files, etc. This will store all of these files and allow me acces to them from anywhere. This will save memory space by not having each object have its own file when other objects use the same file. The last is an entity manager. This manager will store all the game objects, the map, hero, npcs, etc. Since these objects get passed around to all kinds of different classes it will be hard for me to make sure that they all point to the same object in memeory. This manager is my answer to that. If a class needs the map object then it will call a method in the entity manager and the manager will send the object to that class. Thus making sure that every class uses the same instance of that object.

I haven't set a date for my next release mostly because I don't know when I'll be ready for it. With moving coming up in the next couple of months my time will be shrinking rapidly and my motivation will no doubt wain. Still I'm thinking that I can get this next one out the door before the move happens. And I'm hoping to have an Alpha release ready to play by the time Christmas break rolls around. More details about the Alpha will come later, but I'm thinking it will have all the basic game play ideas in, but not the story.

One last note: I do plan on releasing a postmortem about this game a few months after I finish it. I'll be hitting you all up for proof reading when that time comes.

Parsing and Drawing

2007-09-14T08:53:00.001-05:00

I hit over a 100 revisions last week(Yay).

I've written 4 of the potential 8 parsers. Chest, Map, Npc, and Portal are finished and I'm waiting on Hero, Item, Monster, and possibly Options. I'm waiting on the first 3 of those till I'm working on combat since I don't know what things I will need to store for the monsters and items yet. I'll have a much better idea later when I'm acutally working on them.

In the mean time I've been working on the GUI. I've sperated out the drawing code and I created wrapper classes to handle drawing certain this. I have Panel with at the moment just draws a background with a possible border. Eventually I think I'll make them so they hold other components and I can just "attach" labels and such to them and only worry about having to draw the panel from the drawer class. I created a Label class which will draw text with no background, you'll have to place a panel behind it. StatBars are for things like the health bar, mana bar and possibly the experience bar. I'm currently working on the ChatBox and once that is done I'll do the MapDrawer. Once I have those finished I plan on working on menus for combat and game options. I haven't decided how I want to handle inventory stuff yet. I'm thinking I'll have a menu for that. You go into your inventory and select an item. Options on what you can do with it will pop up (Equip, Use, Destory, etc.).

As always comments and suggestions are welcome either here or on the forums.

NPCs Are Here!

2007-09-08T15:56:00.001-05:00

I got the NpcXmlParser working and now npcs are being loaded into the game. I also have the drawing code implemented for all entities. Npcs who are mobile now move around the map with the same smooth movement and animation that the hero has.

Next up is finishing the other 4 parsers and doing collision checks for the entites and randomizing their movement.

Loader Problem Fixed

2007-09-05T23:00:00.001-05:00

I fixed the problem I mentioned earlier. I also finished the MapXmlParser class and now I can copy that code and edit the elements to match the other 5 parsers.

Xml Woes

2007-09-05T17:55:00.001-05:00

After starting the code on the loaders I realize that the way I want to do it might not work. I might have to use the DOM API instead of the SAX API.

I created a map viewer that you pass in the [map name].rpg value and it displays the map and allows you to run around in it without any collision detection and skipping the smooth scrolling stuff.

I'm going to have to sit down and think about how I'm going to do this xml stuff now.

Resturcture

2007-08-30T20:15:00.000-05:00

Restructed the project a bit. Moved classes into groups with other similar classes and made packages out of them. Created the skeletons for the Xml parsers now I just need to sit down a write up some basic xml docs for the various objects so I have some info to test the loaders with.

I will be out of town this weekend. Going to Springfield to be drunk and stupid. If you wanna hang out give me a call. I'm pretty sure I'm available whenever, except for Saturday night.

Map Converting!

2007-08-27T22:13:00.000-05:00

I wrote a little map converter that will take in a basic map, 2d character array, and write out an XML based map that will be the basis for my new map. I'm going to see about modding this to create all the XML for the maps(where entities are placed and such). This might take some fiddling with. Hopefully I can use this to base my map editor off of.

Eclipse Woes

2007-08-23T08:36:00.000-05:00

So I sat down for a couple of hours of dev time and ended up blowing it all on getting my Eclipse project to work correctly.

I decided to add in a trunk and branches to my svn project instead of having all my files in the root of the repository. When I did this my project broke and any file I would edit couldn't find any of the other class files. So I said "No problem." I just deleted the project from my hard drive and deleted the eclipse project files from the repository and created a new project and added the source files back in. For some reason this didn't work. It couldn't create build files nor could it use my Enumerations class. Hmm... I spend an hour and a half trying deleting and re-adding files into the project. Finally I figured out that when I needed to reset the sdk I was building off of to 6.0 instead of the 1.4.2 that Eclipse defaults to. So finally I go it finished and then Annie got home from class so I was out of dev time. =(

Second Game Incentive

2007-08-17T15:37:00.000-05:00

Jon and I have been discussing what we could do to put some incentive into a sequel that would make people want to play through and finish the game before that. We've been tossing around ideas that wouldn't horribly break the game for the person with the special item and wouldn't make the game way too hard for the person with out the item. Here is the my latest idea and the one I like the best so far.

I'm thinking about implementing a Relic item slot. This would just be pure stats. +5 Str, +10% resist on spells, etc. Depending on how many of these you have when you transfer your character will determine the power of the new relic you get. I'm thinking an exp modifier. Say there are 10 relics in the first game and for each one you get 5% extra exp while having the bonus relic equipped. So if you had collected all 10 relics in the first game you would have a relic in the second that would get you 150% exp while equipped.

Any ideas yourself? Post them here.

Internal Musings

2007-08-17T09:39:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the lack of updates lately. I haven't had much time to sit down and write up what's been going on. Been busy hanging out and watching The Unit.

I've managed to get some coding done. Mostly internal stuff like getting the map object classes stubbed out. I've played around with an XML parser and I think I have a pretty good idea what I'm going to need to do to load and save game data. I also have designed out the structure of the data, mostly in my head. And I sketched out the basic flowchart of the game. So I know what screens go to what other screens. I think the next couple of weeks of working on this will be getting the abstracting more of the game entities' functions and working on the saving/loading.

Please, if you have any comments, criticism, or suggestions comment here or make a post on the forums.

Smooth Scrolling

2007-08-08T22:36:00.000-05:00

Smooth scrolling is completed and checked in. To try it out check out the source, open a command line in that directory and type "javac *.java && java rpg" without the quotes. It is frame based so if you have a really slow pc it will probably look choppy.

Next up will be the animation code which should be just changing the picture every x number of frames.

RPG Stuffs

2007-08-07T22:59:00.000-05:00

Quick update. Refactored the Hero class to extend an entity abstract class so that I can keep all map entities(non tile objects) in the same list and make it cleaner to do some drawing. Next up is the smooth animation and then on to the map refactoring. Once both of those are complete I can change the drawing code around to draw all entities, since the xml format for map objects will be working.

Merge

2007-08-03T10:59:00.000-05:00

Just merged the two blogs together into this one. I found a neat utility that can backup and restore blog posts. So I backed up both separately and restored both to this one, and tada! Just keep in mind that you can only post 50 times a day so if you have more than 50 you are trying to restore you have to do it over two days.

The Future is too Far Off

2007-08-03T09:38:00.000-05:00

The next couple of months are going to be busy dealing with finding a place to live. So little free time will be had by all. And yet, hopefully, I'll still be able to post some things more frequently. I think I'd prefer to do one or two posts a week with just a paragraph rather than a whole book every two to three months. So I will try to push these out a bit quicker. I had originally planned these last two entries to be one, but decided that I should break them up since they were both a bit lengthy.

Hopefully once this living situation is settled and we've moved I can knock a few things off of my todo list. Which has just bee piling up over the last couple of months.

First thing I really want to get done with is to reformat my PC. I really need to wipe both partitions. The XP one has a bunch of crap on it for MSU's vpn and apps for classes I've taken over the last year. I think that vpn might fix some problems I'm having with recognizing other PCs in the network. This will also allow me to get rid of some of the cruft that has built up. The linux partition is a 64bit based install and is a version back. I want to just wipe it and install a 32bit version of the current release. Which should allow me to install WoW on it and give that a spin. Once that is done I can get started with pumping out some development on the rpg.

I'm thinking I'm going to have to wait a while to get a laptop. I really want to get a Mac Book Pro, but I don't think I'm going to have the spare $2700 laying around anytime soon. So I might just spring for some cheap dual core dell or something that I can get linux running on and just use that for the time being. Really want the Mac though. Either way once I get a laptop it'll replace my bot pc and be my dev machine. I'll then just convert my desktop to a gaming machine(mostly). I'll have to get a new monitor to plug the laptop into to use when I'm at my desk. I think I'll just get another Samsung 226BW, I'm really liking that monitor.

I'm also looking into getting some of my own webspace. I think my current choice is http://www.dreamhost.com/. If anybody has anything to say on them, good or bad, just leave me a comment about it. Also if you have a web host that you love leave me a comment and tell me why its so great. If I get them then I'll just install wordpress and use that as my blogging site. Leaving this and my dev blog to wither and die. Not that I dislike blogger or anything, I just think its time for something new. Plus this will give me a place to host my projects and screenshots. I'll have to build a site to hold all this stuff, but that doesn't bother me too much. Plus I've got Nate to bug about all the silly standards I'll have to follow. A word of warning I won't be adding in hacks to get it to display properly in IE. Nothing personal to those of you who still use IE, but I don't want to take the time or the energy hack up my page to display in that broken browser. So if something is messed up you can just switch to Firefox.

Speaking of the dev blog I'm really tempted to merge these two together and just post everything in one blog. At the time I thought keeping them seperate was a good idea since they deal with different things, but I haven't been updating either of them nearly enough for me to justify keeping both. So I'm thinking about combining them, maybe this weekend. I'll copy the posts over and move the line count module over here.

I've been missing gaming lately. I haven't had much time, been busy working and such and have been having an itch to play some FPS stuff again. So I'm wondering if anybody has any interest in getting a weekly night going to play CS:S or DOD:S. Basically we start at roughly the same time every week and join the same server(or servers if we move) and just frag each other or other people for a few hours. If anybody has any interest let me know what nights are good for you and what times are preferable. I'm usually in bed by midnight so an 8pm or 9pm start works best for me. Also Friday nights are a no go for me, since those are date nights with the woman. But, yeah, leave me a message on here or aim or something.

On a final note yahoo mail pissed me off by adding ads to their new email program. This in of itself isn't a deal breaker for me, but the semi-constant lack of reliability on the program itself is. I've had problems over the last few months of it locking up or not loading correctly, and it doesn't work properly in Opera. So I've created a gmail account and I am looking for current emails from you all. Not that posting your email on the internet is the best practice, but send me a message on aim with what address you are using and I'll add ya in.

What's going on

2007-07-28T08:35:00.000-05:00

Work

The biggest thing going on right now would be the new job. The job is awesome. The internet content filter is not. But alas I shouldn't be surfing the internet I should be coding. Which I am doing quite a bit of.

The company I work for, NISC, makes software for utilties and telecommunication co-ops. The team I work on has a few smaller projects for out "software suite" and the project I work on is for prediction where power outages occur in a co-op's grid. We have a current program in production and we are writing a new one using our frameworks, which is what I'm focusing on. I really have no idea what I can and can't talk about reguarding my project (probably nothing to worry about) so I won't post any details on the interwebs. Just send me an IM or email or something if you are curious. Most of the company's projects are written in Java but we do have some older systems that were coded in COBOL, as well as a few minor projects that we support that were written in VB and C++. I also here a rumor that we have some Ruby scripting floating around somewhere.

I'm really enjoying the job. Its nice not having to worry about web standards and hacking up web pages so that they work for IE(why can't we burn it?). We also have a very large framework that we use for all of our projects so I'm not having to spend really any time having to research how to create something from scratch. The first 6 weeks were really just learning the frameworks and how out apps get put together. The only problem is that I can't google for any problems or questions that I have since our frameworks aren't publically used. Luckly the people I work with are very knowledgable about the frameworks so I guess it evens out in the end.

Unfortunately this new, wonderful job hasn't left me with much free time. I work 8-5(with an hour lunch) and there's a 45min drive tacked on either side of that(our office is in Lake St. Louis). Hopefully they'll install a new video card in my machine soon so I can hook up the second monitor that they gave me.

Purchases

So I recently purchased a new monitor as a graduation gift to myself since it will be a while before I can afford a laptop(house has to come first). I went with a Samsung SyncMaster 226BW. I went with a widescreen since my desk isn't big enough for a dual setup and another single monitor setup for my bot pc. It gives me plenty of space to work with and being 22 inches makes it much better than my 17 inch CRT for viewing movies/tv. I played through HL2E1 to give the gaming a test spin and I'm happy with the way it preforms. I'll have to do some CS:S to give it a real workout, but I don't expect any problems.

I also went on a spending spree and picked up some books. I grabbed four novels and five used pc books for about $5 a piece after shipping. Four of those pc books are related to game design and scripting, and the other one is the book on the making of Doom3. I've read the first chapter so far and its pretty interesting to me. I did already read Masters of Doom and enjoyed it so this book, which is kind of picks up where the other one left off, will no doubt entertain me. Here's a list.

Novels

Computer Books

PCs

I've been slowly getting some work done on my PCs. Mostly Linux-y stuff. I've been playing around with using OpenBox for my window manager, and right now I have no panels so when you log in all you see if the wallpaper. Having the right-click menu is pretty nice and so far I prefer it to a start menu. If you use Openbox you have to install obmenu and you have to install it from source. It makes editing your right-click menu a thousand times easier.

I've been trying more and more to convert completely to Linux, but right now Candace is using my PC more than I am and she can't seem to live without Windows. So I've been just leaving it booted into XP and taken to playing around with my bot pc which I've set up in the corner of the room. Once we get our own place I'll get her PC setup with internet and she can use it instead.

Finally a few updates

2007-06-10T21:52:00.000-05:00

Working 40 hours a week staring at code doesn't make it easy to work on hobby projects during my time off. Lucky for you all I managed to get some done tonight. You'll have to wait for me to hook up the SVN server again to see it, but well one thing at a time.

First up I installed eclipse and created a project for this game. Secondly I did some clean up. I changed my method names to have a naming convention. Which basically is like this, camel-case and full words. So instead of GetMsg() it would be getMessage().

Next up I added to each class a String CLASS_NAME, and every method that uses logging a String METHOD_NAME. This change makes more sense with my next item to mention.

Finally I updated the logging system. I tossed it all in its own folder and plan to make a package(.jar) out of it so I can reuse it. Next up I wrote a Message class that has a MessageType, time, className, methodName, and message text. This gets created each time the log.add() method is called. It makes it a whole lot easier to debug when every output comes with a class name and a method name. Plus it allows me to filter out what gets displayed in the chat box and allowing me to dump everything to the console.

Hopefully I can manage some more motivation over the next weekend and actually get some game play implemented and do my map refactoring.

Map Wrapping and Text

2007-05-22T15:38:00.000-05:00

I have gotten the map wrapping to work so now we don't need to put a 7 tile border around the map now. You can just walk off on side and onto the other. The other thing that I have gotten started is the textbox at the bottom. I have the basic Log class written and I have the box that the text will go in. Right now it can only display the last 11 lines and there is no scrolling. I might later rewrite it with some sort of real control so that you can have scrolling and a history of the chat.

Yay Done!

2007-05-17T18:44:00.000-05:00

Finished with school, and I walk tomorrow. More updates to come soonish.

Health/Mana Bars

2007-04-27T14:38:00.000-05:00

I got the Health and Mana bars working. Right now I'm working on getting some of the basic story written since the next things to work on either depend on the story or will be major components to add and I don't have the time to get into them.

Check here for discussion on the game.

Big Maps

2007-04-24T08:53:00.000-05:00

So I changed the tile drawing code so that the player is always in the center of the screen. It will now load a map much bigger than the drawable screen and just pick the tiles it needs.

I also added collision detection. It should prevent the player from moving too far off screen, since that will cause some null pointer errors. It will also prevent the player from walking over walls, water, and mountains.

A little bit on map design. For this game there will need to be at least 7 tiles on every side that the player can't get access to. So like the player could be on an island and have 7 tiles of water off the shore. This is because the screen has to draw 7 tiles past the character and it needs you to place those 7 tiles so it doesn't freak out and crash. The other thing is that you can create rectangular map like 25 tiles high and 300 wide. This will allow me to create a bit more flexible world.

Next up I will be working on the chat box to give me a place to toss debugging info and a place to put combat info and conversation info. I will also finish up the character stats info and finish up the health/mana bars.

Screenshot 3
Screenshot 4

FilesStats Update

2007-04-19T09:46:00.000-05:00

FilesStats is updated and working. Here is some sample output.

..
..\drawer.class
..\drawer.java
..\Hero.class
..\Hero.java
..\images\chest.bmp
..\images\desert.bmp
..\images\dirt.bmp
..\images\dirt.png
..\images\floor.bmp
..\images\grass.bmp
..\images\hero.bmp
..\images\mountains.bmp
..\images\mountains.png
..\images\trees.bmp
..\images\villian.bmp
..\images\wall.bmp
..\images\water.bmp
..\images\water.png
..\Item.class
..\Item.java
..\maps\dungeon.rpg
..\maps\main.rpg
..\rpg.class
..\rpg.java
..\Slot.class
..\Slot.java
..\tools\FileStats.class
..\tools\FileStats.java
Total Files: 28
Total Lines of Code: 461

FileStats

2007-04-19T08:47:00.000-05:00

So with a test and a paper due tomorrow did I do any school work last night? No. Instead I worked on my little FileStats program. Excluding the recursion it works great. For some reason it can't figure out which files in a directory are subdirectories. So once I figure out that little bug it should work great. Then I think its on to finishing up the graphics engine (if you can call it that).

Small Update

2007-04-18T16:02:00.000-05:00

Old Screenshot
New Screenshot

RPG

2007-04-17T01:33:00.000-05:00

Over the last few weeks I've been working on a Dragon Warrior 1 clone. I haven't gotten too much done, but I do have it drawing map tiles, the hero and some text info on the screen. I'm currently working on getting the collision detection working for the things like water and mountains.

The next few things I'm going to work on are getting the large map support in. Right now it only loads and draws the whole map. I want it to be able to load the whole map and only display a certain grid of tiles arount the hero. After that I will be adding a text box of sorts for things like combat spam, npc conversations, and debugging info.

My future plans for it include, npc interaction, random encounters, combat, itemization, map to map transitions(i.e. going from the world map to a dungeon map) among other things.

The current source code is in my svn server. You can obtain it from http://ferby.no-ip.org/svn/rpg. Down load the folder and then open a command window or terminal and navigate to that folder then type "java rpg" and that should do it.

Keep checking back, all my updates for it are going to be here. I'll also post current stats of the project (number of files and lines of code) in my future entries.

Quick Update

2007-04-10T14:44:00.000-05:00

I'm in the process of looking for an apartment, and a job. So I don't have much time to anything else. Its getting close to the end of the semester (5 weeks of class left) and the assignments are starting to pile up. What little free time I do have has gone to working on a game. It'll basically be a Dragon Warrior 1 clone. I'll post more about that and a screenshot or two next time.

Jobs

2007-02-07T11:52:00.000-06:00

Candace and I were talking last night about our futures and one of the things that came up was that she didn't know what I wanted do as my career job. Which has has me thinking since last night, and I believe that I have an answer. To put it simply I don't know.

Through out my computer career so far I have had several ideas about what I wanted to end up doing. Here's a quick list followed by a brief explanation of each.

Computer Technician
Web Designer
Game Programmer
Network Security Programmer (i.e. Anti-hacking)
Operating Systems Kernel Developer
Web Applications Developer

When I first took Mr. Roth's A+ Certification class in high school I thought that I'd be perfectly happy doing computer tech stuff for the rest of my life. But after taking a sort of internship at St. Louis Community College, Florissant Valley I realized that it wasn't quite what I was looking for.

Since I liked doing this tech stuff, but not enough to do it as a career I looked at my other hardware option, computer engineering. I like computer hardware, I like math, but I don't like physics, and this was the downfall of this career.

So I started thinking about what hobbies do I have that I could pursue as a career. At that time I came up with two. Web design and games. I had already been working on The God Squad web site and liked doing it. So I thought I could try to pursue that line of work. Designing, building and maintaining web sites. After a year or so of this I realized that most well designed sites have really good art (images). And after creating some images for various sites I had worked on I noticed that I just wasn't any good at that. I realize now that my art had a name, Bad Programmer Art.

Games have always interested me. I've been hooked since the NES days. I still love playing games. And through the years I have been a pretty avid reader of game development sites such as www.gamedev.net. I especially liked reading the post mordems of games (the stories from the developers about what they did as the made the game), and the developer journals of amateur and indie game developers. This has always been in the back of my mind as an ideal job. And until recently one that I thought I might still go for. In the last couple of years I've realized through reading a few books and online articles that being a game developer is not all it is cracked up to be. First off it is extremely hard to get a job in the industry. And once you get the job you are expected to work up to 70 hours a week. Which means that I'm probably getting paid more per hour at Dillions than I would working on games. I wouldn't mind working 50-60 hours a week during crunch time, but I'm sure Candace would.

Next we move onto Networking Security Programmer. This is the anti-hacker. These are the people that try to thwart the hackers from breaking into their systems. Off and on I've been reading about encryption (computer and non-computer) and computer security. I like the subject and I'd really like to learn some more about it. Unfortunately the best way to learn these methods is to learn about hacking(cracking). Which is illegal. So it makes it hard to learn these things. This is still something that I haven't thrown out of the hat yet, but something I definitely need to learn more about first.

Last spring I took my Operation Systems course and I loved it. To this date I think it was my favorite class. In the class labs we got to go through the source code for the OS we were studying(Minix), and change it. I really enjoyed doing this. I seems that for one to do this they'd have to really understand the system and the low level programming of C. I don't know either, but I am willing to learn about it.

And last but not least is Web Applications Developer. This is what I currently do at school. This isn't design. We take templates of the design that they already created and just put our applications into that design template. For the most part this is enjoyable. At times it gets a little repetitive, but I think that happens with any job. And maybe if I was doing it as a real job instead of a student worker I would get to work on some more interesting things.

At the moment we are working on a Mod for Half Life 2. This is giving me some better experience into game development. I also want to take a look into maybe doing some development work for Linux. That will be a long shot, but I think I'd enjoy it.

Simply put I don't know exactly what I want to do, or where I want to work. Its not that I don't care, but more like I can't make up my mind. I'd be just as happy working at a university doing some coding for one thing or another, as I would be if I were living in Washington working for Valve or Google.

Classes

2007-02-01T15:29:00.000-06:00

I figured that since I've been too busy with school to post anything here I'll just bore you all to death talking about those classes. Because being my last semester I have all interesting classes(yeah right!). So here they are.

GEP 397 - Capstone Course for General Education classes.
PHY 391 - Advanced Mathematics for Engineers.
CSC 482 - Senior Seminar for Computer Science Majors.
CSC 440 - Intro to Artificial Intelligence.
MTH 345 - Statistics for Scientists and Engineers.

GEP 397 is basically a special topics class that you are forced to take so that they can say you are more well rounded, but really we all know the real reason is to suck some more money out of us. The section I'm taking is taught by advisor so it computer science related. It is called "The Digital Inquisition" and covers things like ethics in computing, security, encryption, digital rights management, etc. Overall it seems like it will be one of the more interesting classes I have this semester.

PHY 391 is a math course that picks up sometime after calc 3. It is for engineering and physics engineers. I'm taking it because it will cover my other 2 hours that I need to my physics minor. I'd really like to not have to work this much in a class that is outside my major, but this one is better than thermal dynamics.

CSC 482 is my senior seminar. It is 2 hours long, only on Mondays, and is a block class. So by the time midterms roll around I'll be done with it. It covers a lot of the same things that are covered in my GEP class. Although it focus more on the ethics/privacy.

CSC 440 is my last real computer science course. I started out with high hopes of this course when I first read about it in out course catalog. Then I had a class with the teacher who always teaches AI about 2 years ago and I realized that I didn't think much of him. I didn't agree with his teaching style (which was too lax). Then going through the catalog again a few months ago I was trying to figure out what elective to take and this was the most interesting of the bunch. I figured that since this was going to be my only programming class of the semester I might as well make it something I'd actually be interested in. So after the first week of class I was starting to regret my choice of AI. Same teaching style, but this time with 40 people instead of the 8 I had in his first class. So when he asked the class how we wanted our game to play out I just thought "Oh shit." Of course everybody had different ideas and we didn't get anywhere. That was Tuesday. Today we come in and he actually has a decently rigid design done with really the only thing we have to figure out now is the AI (instead of the whole game like it seemed on Tuesday). So now I think it is a toss up on whether or not this class will be good. It is looking better but only time will tell.

MTH 345 is my statistics class. What can I say about stats that won't bore you to death? Its one of those classes that I can see being kind of useful, but I'd still rather not take it.

01/31/2007

2007-01-31T11:49:00.000-06:00

I believe that I have SVN set up so we all can use it. Seems like Nate can commit changes and I assume that Jon can too. So my next goals are dedicated to get some more documentation written. I want to get a How to on HowTo use SVN from the command line. I also want to flesh out the Tortoise HowTo a little bit more. Then I will work on my little text rpg side project. Which I'm doing so I can get some good practice with C++. I also need to get the Mod project files imported into the SVN project and then start on the basic code layout for the Mod.(Which I have no idea how to do)

01/23/2007

2007-01-23T21:46:00.000-06:00

Well I didn't make my deadline. I hate being lazy. Now I'm not going to have as much time to get things finished, since I have homework to do now.

I did manage to get a bit more of my hard drive cleaned up and half of the C++ stuff done. I also think that I have gotten the Subversion set up and I plan to write up a guide to use it tomorrow along with getting the project files in there.

Now I have to come up with more goals and a new date to get them finished by.

01/17/2007

2007-01-17T00:20:00.000-06:00

Since school was canceled till the beginning of next week I've been able to push back my due date and I'll hopefully get a few more things finished. Today I managed to get Ubuntu installed on my main pc along with the apps and programming languages that I'll need. I won't ever be totally finished with this since I'll need to install more stuff as I find it. I still need to configure conky and install an ati driver, xgl, and beryl. I also started looking up some C/C++ so I've begun that as well. But since TBC was released today I imagine that I won't be getting as much of that done as I'd hope for.

Primer

2007-01-12T14:03:00.000-06:00

I'm creating a second blog to talk about our mod stuff. I plan to post blurbs on things I'm working on with it and just give brief updates to the goals we are working on. All of my personal stuff will stay on the other one.

Version Update 2007.01.09

2007-01-09T14:20:00.000-06:00

Life goes on and usually in too big of a hurry. I guess the biggest thing to happen recently is that a guy that I used to drink with and that I've worked with on the stock crew since I started my tenure at Dillions shot and killed himself on Friday morning (01/05/05). I won't go into any more details because the story only gets sadder.

In other less depressing news I've gotten roughly about 60% of the things on my to do list finished already. Looking at it now I doubt I'll be able to finish all of them by next Tuesday, but I'm really going to try. I'm hoping to have everything but some of the more advanced C++ stuff done by then.

Now with the New Year here I guess its time for some longer term goals (i.e. New Year's Resolutions). The main goal I want to get to this year is taking better care of myself. I will be finishing college this May and using that excuse isn't going to cut it anymore. So I plan on eating right (not perfect, but more right than I have been), and exercising some what regularly. Till May it'll be mostly running I figure and then after than maybe some gym time and hopefully some hockey.

A few other goals I have are to get this mod up and going and finished... ok so maybe not finished. I also want to get more hobby programming going. I'd like to set up some web space to host my projects and that'd give me a place to work on more webby type stuff. Plus I also want to have some time to work on an old school RPG ala Dragon Warrior 1. I have some (what I think are) good ideas for it and the games that will follow, but we'll just have to see what will pan out.

And finally I want to make sure to do one of these a week even if it is some little dinky post just saying "Hey, I didn't do anything this week."

Hopefully that isn't too much to ask of myself, but considering that in 6 months I'm going to have to move and find a real job it could put some extra strain and stress and push those goals to the back of my mind.

We shall see...

Free Time!

2006-12-21T10:33:00.000-06:00

Ok not really. I'm putting in about 52 hours between both jobs this week and it'll be a steady 40 after that till school starts. And yet this has still given me some time to myself, the 20 minutes I spend in the shower each morning. Which had previously been given to homework problem solving during the semester.

Due to the lack of my friends updating their blog or not having one at all, I've become bored. So since I'm bored I'm going to bore you with some details of my life. Aren't you special?

A couple of days ago Jon, Nate and I were talking about goals for the end of the year. I decided that I don't have enough(read: any) free time between now and then so I decided to extend my goals accomplishing period till the end of my winter break. Which just so happens to be January 15th. We all decided that more time dedicated to the mod was important, and thus I have been working up some goals that go right along with getting that all important goal on track. I guess I can list them out for all ya blog readers.

More time for the mod. (duh)
A few mod related things that I need to do are to get out my C/C++ books and brush up on my C/C++ syntax. I also need to get Hammer, and the Source SDK installed and working. Then it will be on to some research on how to get started with this mod.
Reformating the main pc. I'm going make it a dual boot between WinXP(50GB) and Ubuntu(30GB). Windows for games and Mod work, and Ubuntu for everything else.
Clean up various parts of my apartment. I need to clean up some stuff in my room and rearrange my book shelves.
Setup one of my pcs as an Ubuntu Server for things like Apache, PHP, MySQL, SVN, Vent server, etc. There is an extremely slight chance that this could turn into a file server in the future.
Get books, folders, and notebooks for the next (and final!) semester of school.

I have gotten a bit of those finished. I have cleaned up part of my room and organized one of my book cases. I also reformated my main pc last night and started installed windows on it. I hope to have the programs and most of the games finished up by the time I head to job number two. With any luck I'll have the pc totally restored and the cleaning done before I head home for New Year's Weekend. My plan is to set up the server and the mod stuff once I get back. With the first of the year here my hours and Dillions should be cut back and maybe I'll only be working 35 or so hours a week.

A goal I plan to do through out this next semester is one I keep telling myself that I'll do every semester, but I figure that since it's my last I should at least try it once. I will stay on top of my homework. I will start if not finish it on the first free (non-Dillions work) night after I get it assigned. Hopfully then I can avoid the hell I went through the last two weeks of this past semester. I also think only have one programming class instead of four will help as well.

I remembered to check my grades yesterday and I managed to pass all my classes, even the databases one that I had the crappy project to do. I ended up with 3 B's and a C. Not as good as I would have liked, but I passed and my GPA stayed about the same so I'm not complaining too much.

I guess I had better get some work done. I could sit here and bitch about people and how they suck. I even had a whole rant lined out instead of this entry, but I ultimately decided that its life and I'm just going to have to get used to it if I want to be in this line of work.

Side Note: If a person who writes a blog is a blogger does that make those who read a blog bloggees?

Data Structures: Part 1

2006-12-14T23:18:00.000-06:00

Disclaimer: I could be way off base with some of this, but for the most part (if not all) this should be accurate.

Here is an article on some data structures that programmers use. I'm writing this mostly for Jon's homework assignments that I'm giving him. To most of you you'll probably find this to be boring and really not useful, but that is what most programming articles are, boring and useless. So here we go.

In this first article on data structures I'm going to cover three of the more basic structures that programmers use. They are the ArrayList, Linked List and Stack. A few that I hope to get to in a later article are the Heap and Binary Tree.

Background

We'll have to cover some back ground first. I'm talking about Arrays, and I'll give a description of them and their uses. Most people know that as a programmer you have a few different types of information that you can store (i.e. integers, floating point numbers, characters, etc.). Well what if you want to store 20 integers instead of just one? You could declare 20 different int variables and store them one by one. But this leds to a couple of problems.

The first being that really its just bad programming style. If you have 20, 30 or even a 100 variables in your program (one part of it) you've done something wrong. This will lead to messy and inefficent code. You'll have to spend extra time trying to figure out where to use what variable and just have that many more lines of code to go through when you debug your program.
The second and more important of the two problems is that it isn't as effiecent. When you declare 20 variables the program will allocate the memory for those where ever it can find a spot. So you can have 20 different numbers stored anywhere in the footprint of your programs memory. This can lead to increased time in execution or even a bigger memory footprint. Lets say that an int takes up 1 byte of space(in reality most ints take up 4 bytes). When a program allocates memory for a variable it grabs the first spot that can fit it. If this spot is 1.5 bytes big the int will fit just fine, but you now have 0.5 bytes wasted in the memory footprint. Not much I know, but imagine it with thousands of variables doing this for a bunch of different programs. It adds up.

Arrays are nice to store large amounts of similar data. The only problem is that they have to be declared statically, meaning that their size can't change. To get around this we have a few different datastructures that we can use. I'm going to talk about three of them here (and maybe more later on).

ArrayList

An ArrayList is just an Array that can grow(hold more data). Most languages come with them in some form. Most main stream languages have them in their standard library. Java and C# have ArrayLists and C++ has Vectors. Using Java as an example, it implements an ArrayList as an object. And doing so it has allowed for them to create several extra methods to use on it. You can insert in the middle instead of just at the end, as well as remove from anywhere in the list. It also has a few other nifty methods associated with it, look them up in the standard library.

Linked List

A Linked List is similar to an ArrayList. The only big differece is that an ArrayList is made up of an array and when that array gets full it creates a new, bigger array and copies the information to the new array. A Linked List is a line of Nodes. A Node holds some information and a pointer to the next Node in the list. So doing things like removing a Node from the list is easier since all you do is take the pointer that the previous Node has and set it to the next Node in the list thereby cutting out the middle Node. The methods that are usually associated with a Linked List are the same as an ArrayList.

Stack

A stack is a bit different that the other two I talked about. It can be implemented as either an array based or as a linked Node based. Stacks are much simpliar that the other two. They have to main functions, Push and Pop. To add something to the stack you Push it on. It goes to the top of the stack, and it can't go anywhere else. To remove you'd call a Pop, which will remove the top element of the stack. Now this seems rather limited in its uses, but they are widely used in programming. As you read this your computer is using multiple stacks just to keep itself running.

And so this article comes to a close. I hope I have't bored you to death and that you learned a little. Later I'll discuss some more data structures. Most likely they will be the Queue, Heap, and Binary Tree(probably BST).

Finals Time

2006-12-07T13:35:00.000-06:00

So all of my projects, papers, and assignments are finished. Now it is on to finals. I've got one on Saturday at 8am and then one on Tuesday(my birthday), one on Wednesday, and one on Thursday. Then this semester is over and I can get extremely drunk.

I'm going to do another article post next. It's going to be over some data structures that programmers use. Jon needs the information for is homework that I'm giving him. So this will give me a chance to talk about them for his sake and give you something to read.

Appeasing the Masses

2006-12-04T16:32:00.000-06:00

So another homework assignment and a project done. Tonight I plan to get my paper done and started on the Lua project. I'm hoping that I can get the script to run and get it to accept some acceptable input strings. This is a long shot considering that my paper could take all night by itself. Three more days of "crunch time."

Busy Busy Busy

2006-11-28T16:17:00.000-06:00

Two more weeks of class then a week of finals. I've gotten two of the homework assignments done and about two thirds of a project done. My GPA is going to suck this semester.

WTB 2 more weeks plzkkthx

2006-11-14T11:41:00.000-06:00

So if you ever think that taking 3 programming classes, plus a physics class (that is all programming itself) don't. Save yourself the time and just buy a 4"x4" and shove that up your ass. It's about as pleasant as the homework load you'll get. I'm taking CSC 333: Languages and Machines, CSC 335: Databases, CSC 465: Networking, and PHY 324: I forget the title name, but it's all assembly programming with a microcontroller.

So aside from the 4 finals I have to do in 4 weeks I also have an assload of homework/projects.

In CSC 333 I have a compiler due this morning that is still not finished. I have a paper over a language that I haven't looked at yet that will count as our second test. I have have another homework assignment that will add the ability to use user defined functions to our compiler, and I have a group project in that language that I haven't looked at yet.
In CSC 335 I am going to have another book assignment in a week or so. I also have a group project to design a database and a frontend application along with 76 pages of documentation. This database will need to adhere to some standards that we might get to in our next lecture.
In CSC 465 I will probably have another book assignment before this semester is over. I have a test in there in a week or maybe this week, I can't remember. I also have another project to do. It is either research 5 questions (that probably aren't talked about in our book) and write out mini-essays for them each, or do a programming assignment. Normally I'd be excited to try this kind of assignment out, but with the time constraints, lack of teaching ability of my professor and the huge load of work I have this isn't going to be fun. We are to write our own networking protocol (i.e. write our own TCP). This must be done in C, and it has to be tested/used on a *nix system where we can acutally change the networking protocol that we use.

This, needless to say, has me stressed out and seriously considering quitting one of my jobs. Luckly I keep remembering that I am in debt and can't quit either of them. While my posts are few and far between, for the time being they might be fewer and farer between.(Don't worry Jon I'm still working on some problems for ya I just need to take the time and write them up.)

For some good humor: My hero.

CS Guide

2006-11-07T10:41:00.000-06:00

So here it is, in all of it's glory.

Disclaimer:

Please take this for what it is. This is just my view of things and should not be considered a be-all end-all guide. With that being said I still think that there is much truth in the things in this blog and I hope it helps somebody (or at least keeps you all entertained). If I state anything in here as fact and it is (in fact) not true, then remind yourself that these are my thoughts and not an encyclopedia.

Languages:

As you know there are many different programming languages out in the world today. Some of the big ones are C, C++ and Java. At work I happen to use one called C# and for one of my classes I use one called OCaml. Something less obvious that that there are many different kinds of languages. For the sake of simplicity I'm going to group them into three categories.

Normal: This would be the category I'd put C/C++, Java, and C# into. Most general programming is done with one of these languages. Everything in these languages are data driven. You pass in variables or constants to functions and they return values.
Functional: These are programming languages were you can pass in functions or methods as parameters. Some examples are Haskell, OCaml, Scheme, and Lisp.
Scripting: These languages are used to complete small tasks. Usually they are used for web sites, or system administration tasks. Some examples are Perl, Lua, Ruby, Python, and PHP.

Now the category I put those languages in isn't totally exact. Python can be used as a normal programming language and it has some functional language properties to it.

My suggestions if you want to become a programmer is to learn a normal language first. My advice is Java. Learning a normal language will teach you all the basic programming concepts, variables, operators, control statements, loops, and functions. Next I'd work on I/O reading in input from a user and modifying it in some way and printing the changes back out. Then work on file I/O, read in a file do some work to it and save it back out. Once you have those done then I'd work on Object Oriented Programming (OOP). Learn about objects, classes, methods, and abstraction. Take some of the basic data structures (a linked list, or a stack), and build it from scratch using OOP.

The next type to learn is a scripting language. PHP is easy, but I think you can learn a lot more from one of the others. Perl is a powerful language, but I think the way it is designed is god awful. Ruby and Lua look very promising to be a good starter for scripting. Doing a scripting language next is a good choice since all the concepts are pretty much the same as a normal language. The differences are the problems you are using a scripting language to solve. Write a web page that stores a record into a database. Or write a Perl script that will count the number of files in a directory that start with the letter 'a'.

This leaves the functional language. The thing I'd do before learning a functional language is study algorithms. I'm not saying that it is necessary, but I do believe it helps immensely. Functional languages are unique in that they allow you to pass in a whole function as a parameter into another function instead of just data. This is a hard concept to explain, but safe to say the concept it implements is awesome. OOP allows you to abstract over data. If you have a bank account you can create an object called BankAccount and store a person's name, address, and account balance, all as separate variables inside of that object. Making all the related information for an account in an easily obtainable location. Functional concepts allow someone to abstract over code. This allows for much shorter and clearer code. If you are lost don't worry, post a comment or send me a message and I can try to explain it better. My recommendation for a language to use is OCaml. This is what I used to learn functional programming and I think it is wonderfully easy and clear. I've heard horror stories about Scheme, and Lisp. Although both of those are more widely known and used.

I suggest learning Java, then data structures, then Lua/Ruby, then algorithms, and finally OCaml. Perl is the most commonly used scripting language in system administration tasks. So if you plan to be a *nix system admin Perl would be a value to you to learn. C is the biggest low level systems programing language. If you plan to write a graphics engine or an operating system it is the language to learn.

Operating Systems:

Now on to OSes. 99% of the people in the world know and use Windows to a moderate degree. This is fine for most people, but if you want to be a computer scientist and a programmer then windows is not enough. Aside from windows there are several big operating systems. I'll keep the the bigger ones I know, which are Unix, Minix, Linux, BSD, and OSX. These are all similar in nature and are derivatives from each other.

A Brief history real quick.

Unix: It started with Unix which was created by Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson. This was the first main stream operation system. It was used mostly by universities.
BSD: Berkeley University took the source code and modified it to their needs creating BSD. From there the BSD was updated and improved and still is.
Minix: Minix was created by Andrew Tanenbaum to be an operating system for teaching the concepts that go into making an operating system. This is primarily used for educational purposes and embedded systems. I mention this one because if you want to do some kernel hacking and not be entirely overwhelmed this is a good place to start.
Linux: From Minix Linus Tovarlds created his own OS called Linux. Over the years hundreds of people have contributed to the GNU Linux movement and to date there are about 52 billion different distributions for Linix floating around.
OSX: This leaves OSX as the last, but not least OS to talk about. OSX is made by apple who most tech people seem to dislike. I say this because these people hate the idea that they can't upgrade their hardware and that OSX is a bad OS. I have two points to this. One, yes you can't upgrade your hardware very easily, but they do have excellent customer support who can do it for you, and besides how often do you really upgrade your hardware? Two, OSX is not a bad OS. It is based of of a BSD kernel so all the under the hood stuff that happens is done very efficiently and safely. As for the other stuff, the GUI is beautiful and seems pretty user friendly. I think using one menu bar to to represent all of your open windows is a pretty cool idea. Basically which ever window is open it's menu bar is at the top. This can save a lot of desktop space.

So we've established that you know Windows. I'll assume that you'll learn to program on windows. Get used to using a text editor and using the command line to compile programs. This is great, invaluable knowledge to learn. You can cut/copy/paste files, navigate through folders, and basically do all of your day to day stuff in windows.

I think to really be a good programmer, and computer scientist you need to be able to understand and use multiple systems. So assuming you know windows (if you don't then that should be one OS that you learn since > 90% of the corporate work uses it) I suggest that you learn some *nix system. I think learning OSX would be easiest since it has such nice GUI capabilities, but learning a system that uses a command line heavily would be more beneficial. I suggest Linux. There seems to be a bigger following for Linux than BSD on the internet so you are more likely to find a wider range of HowTos and more people willing to help you solve your problems. Unix is an option, but since it is now mostly used it corporate or university servers it is harder to get a hold of a place to work with one, and finding help might be harder. You can use Minix, but is a much simpler OS. I highly suggest Minix is you want to do kernel hacking or want to really see how the concepts of an OS work.

So I recommend Linux, and out of the 52 billion distros out there which one do I suggest to you to use? Ubuntu or one of it's variantes, Kubuntu, Xbuntu. They tote themselves as the most user friendly distro that "just works" and I think they are right. They have nice GUI elements, less command line dependent than other distros, fewer config file tweaks, and it supports a wide range of hardware out of the box. I think it's a great starting distro and they have a wonderful community that are always willing to help people out.

So are you still reading? I realize that this is huge and it only covers two topics, but I think they are the two biggest topics out there. From my experiences as a CS student these are the two that have had the most impact on my learning. If you have any questions feel free to post a comment of send me a message on aim: Ferby7424.

Lazyness pwns me

2006-11-05T02:42:00.000-06:00

So not only has it been over a week since my last blog, but I haven't completed anything that I said I was going to do. While I haven't done any of the things that I talked about I do have a very good excuse... I'm lazy. That and I've been really busy. I'm currently in the process of writing a tiny virtual machine for a homework assignment. So between that and work it's kept me with little free time. I did start writing that guide and I will have it posted by monday night, so look for it Tuesday.

Updates

2006-10-24T11:58:00.000-05:00

So I actually started going through my files and deleting some of them to get rid of the crap. It's going to take a while but I should have a good share of them done this week. Then I can spend less time and media backing them up. I talked about writing a guide to programming or guidelines to being a computer scientist. I'm still not sure what it is going to turn out to be. It's coming, but I haven't had the inclination to sit down and write it. I've still got 3 homework assignments due next week, so I feel that I should get those done first. Firefox 2.0 was accidentally released yesterday. I guess Mozilla removed the linked folder from their public ftp until they are ready to release it "officially". Blizzard's WoW Expansion: BC had it's release date pushed back to January 2007. It was supposed to be released at the end of November, but I guess they decided that they didn't have enough time to polish it. I'm just glad that they didn't pull an SOE and release broken content so that they could get it out the door faster. I started watching Battlestar Galactica season 3 last night. I actually started with the webisodes. There were 10 of them and they were about 2.5 mins a piece. Kinda interesting idea to put those out there. They didn't really have any major storyline content, but they added some of that filler that you miss out on when you have to focus on all of the main story elements. Is it me or are headlines hard to come up with most of the time? For me (at least) either I have that "Aha" moment or I can't find anything that I like. A few days ago Plink asked me to give him some ideas for a headline for a story he wrote for his website. He'd been trying to think of one for a while, but couldn't come up with anything. So he asks me and on my second guess I give him the perfect one (almost perfect). The headline for this post is one of those I couldn't come up with anything, can you tell?

Bugs and Chores

2006-10-23T13:25:00.000-05:00

Yeah so here it goes. I hope you're happy Pinkert. In my last post I said that I would be using this blog more for technical stuff, and I plan to. The next entry I write will be a guide of a sort to being a programmer/computer science geek. This isn't going to be an absolute guide or "the guide" but one from my point of view. So on to this post. Tech things... hmm...Well as for work (at school) I should be wrapping up my current project today or tomorrow. I have a list of the final bugs to work out. Then I just need to do a test on it and hopfully I can get that done when Nate comes in at 3. The only thing that bothers me is that if the teacher has some long comments about the student that particular cell gets stretched out and makes the table look bad. Unless somebody wants it changed I'm going to leave it that way anyway. I need to start clearing out my data harddrive at home. I've managed to fill 300gigs with mostly TV shows and movies. So maybe I can spend some time this week burning those to DVDs and freeing up some room. Then I'll be ready to reformat my main pc this weekend. On October 26th Ubuntu is releasing a new version (6.10), and I plan to make my main pc a dual boot WinXP/Ubuntu. This way I can keep my WinXP partition for all my gaming needs and what ever Visual Studio .NET projects that school requires me to do (or maybe a project in my free time). Then the Ubuntu partition will be used for all my interweb surfing, email, bittorrent, and development needs. Of course this means that I'll just end up goofing off and playing warcraft all week instead.

Yeah, so I'm back

2006-10-18T13:11:00.000-05:00

I've decided to use this for something. I figure that I need a place to talk about the more technical stuff going on in my life. So I figure that I'll use this blog to talk about it. Things that will end up in here is going to be mostly programming and computer tech stuff. Like my projects at work, or class assignments. Also whatever projects I'm working on in my free time. I'll try to post the first one once I get back from class... I guess I should get back to work.

Sold out...

2006-04-25T14:37:00.000-05:00

http://www.myspace.com/ferby7424 stuff is here now ...

Busy Month with a Bright Spot

2006-04-19T23:00:00.000-05:00

So with the last month of class upon me it's crunch time. My software engineering project is due in two weeks, and I still have to finish writing the graph plotter and figure out how to set up an installer. Then for my OS class our final project is to design and program a Bomberman clone. It has to be written in java and networked with multiple threads (a bunch of jargon to most of you, I know). Lets just say that we have 3 weeks to do it and it's going to be a ton of work. Especially since we don't know have to do any of the work. You can find a design spec for it here. I have a 3 page paper for Intro to Religion on an ethical situation. Then I have 3 finals to study for.

And on to the bright spot for the week. I just got an email from the transfer credit evaluator saying that my Oral Comm class is going to be accepted for my Public Speaking credit. That means ~$250 for next semester and no classes this summer!

Hello, World!

2006-04-16T03:14:00.000-05:00

Boo... Started 24 season 2. Have lots of school work to do and have to work a ton. More to come, and hopfully I can change this layout out a bit.