You will beat those who wield sticks.
Went and registered for two comp. sci. classes the other day at the University of Northern Iowa (UNI). Luckily both were available. I then proceeded to get my student id (looks like crap, but hey, dont they always? 
Got my books, that was exciting. Looks like fun…kind of. So yeah…there you go.
Got the Dungeon Master’s Guide II and Monster Manual III today. First D&D books I’ve bought in quite a while. Anywho, I’m going to post a bit on creativity and how D&D can help you write things. Expect it sometime later.
Hit the W3 icon at the bottom to validate the XHTML and whoa, it was quite a mess because of my silly additions. However, a few minutes of fixing the syntax (XHTML sure likes its correct syntax comared to HTML) and things seem alright again. Wooty.
Added my Xanga to the blog roll because it details things that I dont put in this blog readily.
Was reading a bunch of material Nick May gave me and some EvilPuff gave me, which I feel can come into play.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAMP
L – Linux
A – Apache
M – MySQL
P – Perl/PHP/Python
I can honestly say I’ved used all of these and am quite proficient with several (and quite less proficient with others).
Anyways….
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I read a bunch of material on hacker’s, their true meaning, beliefs and ethics. As it turns out, I am a hacker. Thus the new symbols within the page. Read lots of amusing terms and their hack-related meanings, such as hairball, hackishness, larval state, true-hacker, demigod and munchkin.
Been review C++ for my interview, as they will most likely be using it. C++ has some cool features, but really isn’t that fantastic without STL. I need a book on STL before I can truly elaborate on that though.
Currently I havent done a whole lot with C++. I’m creating a small one player command-line based RPG with it. Don’t worry, it will be small. I have other projects on top of the list, but this is taking current priority.
Reading through some material, I read that the even the string class provided with most compilers is rather…well, crappy. I am referring to this line, “If your compiler doesn’t already provide a String class (and perhaps even if it does), you might want to write your own.” So, thats what I did for a bit. It appears to work correctly is rather small and dandy.
It will be more efficient with a list or table of some sort to really make use of the reference counting, but that will come later.
Anyways, you can view the class and code at the links below. This is my first time uploading via the WP option, so I am not sure how it will turn out.
[EDIT]
Uhh, yeah, uploading doesnt work well because I’m not allowed to change the owner or permissions, so you wouldnt be able to view it. Back to the old way…
And thus starts my professional career…hopefully. About a month ago I applied for a part time (student) position with John Deere. They said my application and resume were in “processing and identification of qualifications”. I figured I wouldn’t get it, but recently I got a call requesting an interview! As a technical assistant or some such thing. Pretty cool, eh? I only hope I can get the job. How kick ass would that be?
Anyways, I have some unprofessional experience. I did some freelance work for Christopher Sullivan, a fellow who needed a few features for his MUD. He is very nice, and seems very devoted to mudding.
Oh, you can view the resume at http://www.nick-cash.com/pers/resume/resume.pdf . I exported it from Works, so naturally it looks like crap. Ignore the bad formatting.
Alright, I decided to add the basic streaming project to the projects page. In doing so, I realized that Campaign Developer wasn’t on there, so I added it as well.
Also, I’ve decided I strongly dislike the page structure stuff for WordPress. I think I may change it eventually so each project has its own post and the project page just keeps links and dates. My main tiff with it is that it won’t let you click the title and get rid of the annoying sidebar and view the document fully.
[EDIT]
Going to update that story since pico screwed it up.
Just wanted to say I exported the code for you all, just like always. It sports a few features, such as pausing, restarting, looping (toggle), and volume control.
Note that the program itself is kind of weird, so, yeah. If you want to compile it, just change SONG_FILE to the path/name of the song and change SONG_BYTES to the size of the song (in bytes). You may need to change the paths to your libraries and includes for the DX stuff. Then it should play your song using DX (compiled using version 8).
Btw, the only reason DX is useful for this is because DSound can mix wave files for you, which is very important if you are making a game.
Code available at: http://www.nick-cash.com/download/stream
Alright, well, I wanted to tackle this for my LAE project but figured it was beyond me for that purpose. So I stood by and let the song eat up the memory, though not too much. This really impacted EvilPuffBall’s game more, where the sound ended up taking rather massive amounts of memory.
The solution to a song being read at once is, of course, streaming. Streaming, if you didn’t know (shame on you), is where only part of the song is read in at once. This is a professional technique used to slash the amount of memory music requires on a game/program. Let me tell you, its quite scnaazzzy!
Without going into too much detail, the sound file is opened via mmioOpen. It stays open until the end of the program, and denies write access. The program reads about 2.1 seconds of data from the song and throws it into a DSound buffer. The current buffer for the song is switched (as it is a pointer) to the new buffer with the new data, and the old one discarded. This allows you to use much much less memory.
While it dosent directly bennefit small audio, its effect is great amongst larger songs. This is quite obvious with any music playing program you have. Take WMP for example. Mine runs at just under 8 megs and its playing some freakishly large files.
Anywho, I may post the code for this eventually. It is also Windows specific, as that is the nature of the competition it was written for. It still needs some tinkering as it is command line and could not utilize windows timers (not that I could get working anyway) so it is based of GetTickCount. This works alright, but is really a rather hackish way to do things. And when you switch windows (away from the CL window) and come back it will skip out on the current buffer a bit (I think).
And WHEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!! 
Gotta love streaming audio! Fight your programs quest for devouring memory! MWAHHAHAHAAHA…erm, right.