08.31.05
Protected: Journal 2 – Sense, the World Around Me
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08.30.05
Journals (and School)
Today in Creative Writing, an article we read made a good point, and Mr. Wilkinson drove it home. If I wan’t my writing skills (not english skills per se) to progess, a journal is a good idea. Write everyday, at least a half a page typed, or a page not typed.
These can consist of whatever. A short story perhaps. Maybe events from the day. Maybe ideas, characters, or some other form. While generally considered different then a diary, the kind of uphold the same purpose. A diary, however, is usually more personal. Until a later date, writings of that nature will remain on my computer (or in my notebook’s) and away from the outside world.
On the other hand, my journal will be here. I will give it -at least- 3 months of writing day to day (unless I feel like COMPLETE crap, or die, or some other horrific event happens) before I even consider stopping. Project date for analysis is Nov. 28th.
The posts are password protected. If you wish to read them (why? I have no idea why you would.) then ask me and we’ll see if I’ll let you have the password. They are generally for my bennefit, and I’m not really looking for critics on them right now.
—–
Today was pretty easy and laid back. My ALPHA stuff is ready for thusrday, though I may put in an hour or two tomorrow. I’m not sure yet. I stuck around for 6th and most of 7th hour today despite my ability to leave.
Not a whole lot of homework. I need to do my DS homework, and I would like to get my Entrepreneurship homework done, though I could do that tomorrow. I have an Advanced Algebra and Trig (AAT) assignment due thursday, so that is the bottom of the list.
Creative Writing was good today. At least I thought so. We get time to write tomorrow. I’m thinking I’ll start my story. With nothing to do in study hall (my DS book was at home, as was my ALPHA stuff, didn’t want to do math), I did another free write. They are not the stupid spanish ones where you log the number of words. We did one in CW as well. You write across the page, using entire lines, leaving no spaces, no paragraphs, no indentation. You write your thoughts. If you get stuck, think and write about something else. It doesnt matter what as long as your pencil/pen keeps moving.
It was a very mind freeing activity. It was my inspiration for my first journal. It is a type of journaling, in fact. However, its not one I would choose. I like to read over them, and this type kind of prevents such things.
Back to my story, and study hall, I got done with my free write and didn’t have anything to do once again. I wanted to give my hand a break, as I’d already filled a page (front and back). So, as we also discussed in class, I wrote up a bubble diagram (is that what they are called? I forget). It was nice. Its easier to think free form and non-linearly on the subject of writing (not counting code). Needless to say, it filled up quickly. It also became very complex, sometimes having six or eight bubble connect to eachother, only to have the last connect with the first and make a complete circuit. Interesting. Its a strange looking paper.
Alright, thats all for now I suppose.
Protected: Journal 1 – Math
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08.29.05
SGE – Scripting Enhancement
Kind of going in a strange order. You can change screen size via scripting like noted in my previous post, but I got annoyed that if your background bitmap was smaller then the screen then it would just remain black (as I paint the screen black first for such things as this). So I added a bit of background functionality. You can now set it to be stretched in such an event (that is, the bitmap is smaller than either (or both) of the program width and height). You can also make it immune to stretching if you wish. All of it can be done via script as well.
I was wondering why I always loaded bitmaps via code. I never added them to the script engine. So guess what? Its in there. You can load two types currently. One, make a generic one colored bitmap with colors, width, height, and name specified. Alternatively, you can specify a filename and load it that way. I hope to add the ability to load from resource as well, but currently that is just an idea.
I also need to work on two more things related to scripting: documentation, and files. File scripting will be much easier then the crap I do now, but the way I do it now is required if you don’t want people messing with the game files, though that can be a fun feature.
I’ll get to work on other stuff later. I have things to do. And some testing. Yup.
———
Wow, this weekend messed up my sleeping schedule. Badly. I didn’t get to sleep till like, 3:30 am. Oh well. I kind of dragged a bit today, but not bad. Though in Discrete Structures the last 15 minutes were pretty daydreamish. Today in CS I we got to play around on linux machines. No one besides me knew how to maneuver around the shell, compile, and all that jazz. It made me kind of sad.
We actually didn’t know we had to go to the lab. About half our class sat in the DS room (our standard meeting room for CS I as well) talking because we had no idea what was going on. Before we left someone was like, “Oh, you said you were in high school?” I said yes, but then we all got up and left. I don’t think people realize that I’m in high school and taking this course because I’m required to. Kind of silly. I wish O’kane would let me sit there and work and ignore him for the next few classes while people learn how to do basic crap.
They all compiled their hello world programs. They thought they were spiffy. But theirs didn’t have a short pause, come up with RAWR!!!?!?!!, and then wait for you to press a key to exit. MWAHAHAHAHAHA! Yeah, it was a bit boring. I was messing with my .bash_profile and related configuration while O’kane explained how to change directories.
08.28.05
SGE – More Updates
Alright, I have done a little bit of stuff. Added the ability to change the screen size based on the level scripting. Also made a lot of comment changes (or flat out addition of comments) and other cosmetic changes to the engine.
I still can hardly believe I wrote it. While I’m sure it sucks compared to most, and the fact that it isn’t optimized, I can’t help but feel grateful, inspired, and honored to use it. I sunk a lot of time into this beast, and it really has a lot of functionality that I’m looking for.
I still need a name for this project. I suppose until I name the game (though I have the concept) it wont really have a name. For now I’ll just refer to the engine (SGE), as I’m working mainly on engine enhancement currently.
—-
I am not looking forward to gym tomorrow. I just don’t feel like playing soccer or tennis, but I suppose it could be worse. We’ll have to see.
I still don’t have my DS homework done. Better go do that…
ALPHA – The Decision
Alright, I’ve decided. Last night Brian and I were talking, and the current contest at GameDev. They finally updated with the prizes, and wow! There is some good stuff on there!
So I picked up my LAE project (the Stickman Game Engine, SGE), which I had previously ripped all of the fruit stuff out of, as well as object collisions (opposed to sprite collisions). Spent an hour figuring out what was wrong with it. Turns out since I had previously only used IMAGE (that is, bitmaps) for the background, when I added COLOR it kind of died. It wasn’t set up like the rest. Changed it to make it like the rest and bam, works just fine.
A little new functionality. Backgrounds have always been able to have null image’s and just use a color instead, but the level scripting never allowed you to set it. It had to be hard coded. Now that is changed. Also, instead of specifying what the bounds of the level are (you almost always want to use the whole screen), you can specify PRGW and PRGH which use the respective values within the engine.
I plan to make it so you can also set the window size. Thats on my task list. Should be simple. Also on the agenda are screen transitions, some type of dynamic text graphical stuffs, and being able to load level scripts rather than stick them in the buffer. Loading a script via file would be much much easier, as I have plenty of experience loading from files (hooray for mud programming….can anyone say asteroids?). Of course I would rip off the style from SWR. Luckily I won’t really have to deal with the saving portion….unless I make a level editor? That could be fun.
The level scripting system does need some documentation as well. I find myself going back to the code to find what I can do, and the right syntax, because it has no error handling and will just crash your program. I suppose that is something I could add. Some error handling within it would be nice.
—–
I am supposed to go to Iowa City to see my mom again today, which would be great. However, my dog is sick (poor thing), I have a fair amount of homework (20+ problems for DS, my AAT assign, etc), and I need to get a few things from the store. So, I don’t know what will be going on till I talk with Dan.
Apparent Winkle can get me out of 5th hour study hall with Ewald Tues/Thurs. if I agree to help with the web site. Kick ass! 
—–
Edit: Umm, not going to elaborate on previous post. Forgot what I wanted to say.
Edit2: Steve McCrea is actually leaving next year! 
That is very sad. In fact, that sucks. I’ll have to, as Nick May put it, “Soak up as much Steve as I can”.
08.26.05
Day three of both worlds…
Third day of high school this year. Third day of college. I’m rather tired, and I wish I would have gone to sleep a while ago. Apparently getting a decent amount of sleep (meaning more then 4 hours) and waking up at a decent time can make you quite tired if you work hard through the day. Needless to say my programming and computer related endeavours have suffered and have been put on a halt this week.
A few reflections to note before I elaborate later.
Got my DS quiz back. Needless to say, he counted the problem wrong. I want to explain my logic on this, as I still think it makes more sense. The problem was:
Given the following argument:
This number is even or this number is odd.
This number is not even.
Therefore, this number is odd.
A) Represent the statement form of this argument using letters to stand for component sentences.
My answer:
p XOR q
~p
Therefore, q
This question stood between me and my perfect score on this quiz. While he only took off 0.1 from my score, I’m still a little annoyed. Analyze it. A number will be even, or odd, but never both odd and even. That is clearly an exlusive or. Not inclusive.
—-
Apparently I took it wrong when O’Kane said I had the skills of a college sophomore at least. As he puts it, we are learning C, not C++ right now. He has to teach people how to move in a *nix environment, what a compiler is, how to use them, what PuTTy is and why they should use it for SSH, whats nice about cygwin, and all of that. This basically means I won’t have much to do for a while in CS I.
It was kind of a realization today when he wrote a hello world C program and everyone in the class thought it was fairly kick ass. He said I probably won’t learn much besides a small bit of C++ styntax this semester. Oh well, I could use 4 credit hours that are easy.
—-
Now all I need to decide is what to do for my ALPHA project. Expect some elaborations tomorrow. Supposing I don’t leave too early or come home too late from Iowa City.
08.25.05
Another Day
Another day. Yup, one more. Though the day was good, things are strange. Maybe its because I’m tired, but the world seems so, depressing. Not that thats any different then normal really, but reading a few people’s xanga’s really just reminds me of a time long ago.
In any event, today was ok except for one thing. Turns out Ewald is my SASH teacher, and she moved the class from the cafeteria to her room. Uggggg. Hopefully I can get Mr. Winkle to work out something with her so I can go to the journalism room instead, and in return I’ll help with the web site they need.
So, my first day of being free after fifth hour. Yup. I talked to winkle/dan for most of 5th hour, and went and talked with McCrea, Logan, and a few other people during 6th about Alpha Autonomous (now referered to as alpha or auto, not AA because thats something else… 
). That was cool. McCrea is awesome. He is definitely the coolest teacher ever. Anyways, apparently all 3 of my ideas could work. His suggestion was to do something I was interested in and could have fun doing, rather then some hard core thing to put on my resume. I agree. This year I only need to fall off the cliff. Next year I’ll go ahead and splatter across the ground. Ok, ok, bad analogy, I know. Leave me alone.
I went home early, not doing anything 7th hour. Really tired. Havent done much. Watched college jeopardy with my dad (apparently my parents think I could go win money to put myself through college….crazy people). Got another card from Caltech. I think they may want me, as I’ve recieved like, ten things from them I never asked for. ::sigh::
I’m tired. Very tired. With homework to do. Before I go off on a tanget about ambition, dreams, not letting go, depression, and the like (whoa, sounds like a recent conversation) I’ll just stop now. Perhaps later. I have stuff to do.
08.24.05
First Day… Again…
The first day of my junior year in high school is everything I thought it would be. Pretty good, as the first day is, before the real work sets in.
First hour was alright, as good as gym can really be. Luckily I have Dwayne in my gym class, so life won’t be too terrible I guess. That reminds me, I need to go see McCrea about my ALPHA project (after gym is ALPHA).
Second hour was interesting. Entrepreneurship should be a good class, though there are a few people I generally just don’t like in it. I do happen to have Jake Schaeffer in it though, which makes it amusing.
Third hour was fine. Like always, I manage to get relatively few people worth talking to in my math class. Notably are Alex Gilbert (gilby) and Doyle, but as always it is math class. ::mutter::
Fourth, Creative Writing, is interesting. Mr. Wilkinson seems like a nice guy and I think I will really enjoy the class. However, David and I are really the only ones of our “crowd” in it. There are a few other people I know, but no one I’d really want to talk to very much. Like my astronomy class last year, we have a strange but interesting assortment of people.
Fifth, well, not much to say. I told Koble I wasn’t going to be there M/W/F and she said alright, and she’ll be expecting me on Tuesday/Thursday. Yeah, I didn’t stick around long after she said that.
As I walked out to my truck (frank!) I got to see Mr. Stewart and spent a minute or two talking to him, which is cool. I don’t really know why so many people hate Stewart. I think thats probably just because he teaches driver’s ed. I dunno, I like having class with him. Then again, I enjoy history.
Turns out I have plenty of time to get over to UNI it seems, as I ended up with at least ten minutes of time waiting outside of class, which is great. I didn’t go very fast to get there from my truck, and if I ran it would probably only take five or eight minutes to get there from the parking lot.
Discrete structures was interesting. When he asked me a question (oral quiz!) I messed up my answer a little and only got 2.5/3, so I was kind of annoyed with myself. And later after we took the written quiz I’m pretty sure I messed up because I used an eXclusive OR (XOR) rather than an inclusive or. Oh well.
O’Kane kind of rambles about random crap. Overall we talked about the history of the computer, the difference between RISC and CISC chip architectures, the progression of programming languages and various things like that. To further my liking of him and his class, he is they very first professional that claims C++ is not a different language, but merely a superset of C. And as such, we will be learning C for the first part with a few C++ exceptions, such as using cin and cout rather then printf, getche, scanf, and similar.
So, thats my first day of high school as a junior, fall of 2005. I’m tired, and I have homework. I suppose I’ll go turn on my Coldplay and do my homework.
08.23.05
Intelligent Falling
Found this article via David’s blog and thought it was quite amusing as well.
Article -> http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4133&n=2