friday code nights

Well, I think i'll be making this a weekly thing.

Got together with my coding buddy to start on the design of our platformer. We're going to create it in Dr. Racket first, and translate it into Java if we feel that it's necessary (in theory, it shouldn't be thaaaaat hard).

Here's a picture of some of our early work on the design (featuring teammate, Leon)

Definitely the most exciting thing I've done all week. 2.5 hours of discussing the game's mechanics, potential problems, and writing out the full data definition along with preliminary function design. Crossing my fingers that this thing turns out playable - better yet, fun.



Aaand since Caro asked, here are the requirements I put out for the group, ordered by importance:

1) Must have free time - no current honors students, cannot be taking more than 5 courses per term

2) Must be intending to go into the compsci field after graduation, whether it's for industry or research

3) Must be on a similar skill level as the rest of the members - varying skill levels will result in an unsustainable group environment and will probably be destined to fail

4) GPA is irrelevant

5) Must be: trustworthy, reliable, be willing to self-learn, (insert more positive character traits here)

Purpose: to create our own projects together and learn how to code effectively in a group setting

If interested, apply now.

more programs

I went back to the drawing board for my expanding program, made some major changes which now require re-coding the little I already made. On the upside, it allows for better data management and allows for user bubble inputs straight from the running program. Downside, I need some more crazy coordinate algorithms. Dang, gurl.

To add to the list of news on my blog, I finally recruited one member to my coding team. I have a loong checklist of strict requirements for it, and this man qualified. Nice to see that he's eager to take part. Current objective: get a simple platformer prototype code up and running on Dr Racket in order to get more efficient code design for when we eventually move it onto Java.

Haven't been this excited for a while. Fuck the stat midterm, that shit can wait.

Update: studying stats now :'(

$?

My mom always had her views on what money is and how it should be seen. During grade 12, she always told me "don't chase after money. You'll get what you work for, no more, no less."

What? But what about the dream jobs that require you to work very little and give you a lot of money in return? I later realized that those jobs did not exist. One can make serious money as an accountant, but of course that will come at the cost of working crazy hours a week. One can also make serious money as an entrepreneur, at the cost of mind-racking stress levels that your idea won't take off and countless hours working away on something that won't necessarily result in money coming your way. The same applies for a lot of careers, actually.

The second bit of philosophy I remember my mom telling me is that once I get a job, I should be content with earning enough money to live comfortably. There are always (always) problems that come with having massive amounts of money, and supposedly it will twist your priorities away from what they should be on. And the reason why people with a lot of money have financial problems in the first place is that they spend it on the dumbest shit. Be a smart spender and I will not have those problems, she says.

Obviously, I won't really know what to think of money until I grow older and actually start my career, and I can't be sure if this is even relevant this day and age when a homes in Vancouver cost over a million bucks, rent prices are also sky high, and video games still cost $67 tax included (I mean, come on!), but I'm willing to take my mom's word on a lot of this stuff.

One of my ways of thinking is that a lot of the things you do in life should reduce stress in your life. Worried you won't be able to do that? Get a decent degree. Worried about your GPA? Go friggin study some more (and study smarter). Worried about whether or not that girl (or guy) likes you? Go ask the bitch out. All of these reduce your worry levels. But if doing something causes more stress in your life, and doesn't seem to reduce stress a whole lot on the long run either, it's doesn't really make sense to do it. Taking up a job with a higher salary to jump on a plane every day, jumping from city to city? Working in an office with miserable co-workers? Late-night hours at work? No thanks.

watched finding a friend for the end of the world

- featuring Steve Carell and Keira Knightley. I chose this over an action movie, and wow do I feel girly after watching it.

Not that I'm complaining. The ending made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, even though everybody dies.

12 hours by a screen

I sat by my computer for about 12 hours yesterday trying my best on the CodeSlam competition problems. This is how my schedule went:

2.5 hours: developed algorithm for stock question
3 hours: frustrated over not knowing how to implement BufferedReader/InputStreamReader
1 hour: contacted friend who helped me understand how to implement said things, sigh of relief
1 hour: frustrated over not understanding that the main class cannot access non-static variables
0.5 hours: finished off what I could for code, got part marks

1 hours: developed algorithm for game bot competition problem
2 hours: messed around with it, tried out variable terrible ideas
1 hour: submitted and waited for it to verse other contestants, had a 9th place standing for a short amount of time

(Right now my bot code is sitting at 49th place out of 95 or so "finalist" contestants, I'm really too burnt out to try to improve it though)

Holy crap did I have tunnel vision after that. I needed to stay away from screens after a while, but couldn't since I promised my brother a good gaming session on the Xbox. As I lay on my bed that night, I felt strangely relaxed.

Although a lot of my time was wasted/spent inefficiently (3 hours over input methods? Ahahaha), the experience as a whole will undoubtedly prove useful in the future as I walk deeper into the thick of computer science. A lot of mistakes were made, a lot of new things were tried out, a lot of frustration was had, and a lot of things were learned. The act of coding itself became a whole lot more interesting, and right now I can't wait to finish off all of my boring school assignments so that I can focus all of my efforts into working on my expanding mindmap  program idea.

tough week

Definitely not as tough as the weeks some others are having, but still, 3 midterms in a week. Quite the change of pace from the laid back weeks I've been having.

Personal to do list (to organize my thoughts):

- fix up bike or look into new ones; it feels like it's about to break apart
- poncho on rainy days!
- 24hr CodeJam thing this Saturday, go learn a thing or two from it
- help sister out with calculus, she seems to be having a tough time with derivatives

Bonus:

-are people the average of their friends?
-are fobs inherently closed-minded?

mornings

Hell yes I just created a morning flowchart, took 10 minutes.

You're friggin welcome.

(save as to gigantify)

wanting to go home and program in my free time like a nerd

Nerd updates. For the heck of it. Written from my semi-useless Phil 120 class.

I have started developing a small java program that I just call the expanding mind-map. The idea is that it graphically displays a bunch of pre-entered information in the form of a mind map, but they're all bunched up into one bubble initially. Upon clicking the a bubble, it expands into the next level, and so on.

In my mind, the coolest part of this is supposed to the the look and feel of the program, how smoothly the transitions happen and the cool small animations that occur whenever a bubble is clicked. Unfortunately, I have very little clue on how this fancy GUI stuff works, so all I've done is work on the boring number bits (which I believe is actually the hardest part of the program - almost a total of 3 hours working on ArrayList, String, int, and char manipulations, with a dash of trigonometry and line vectors? Whew. So far I have a program with no red underlines (the syntax is a bitch), but who knows if it's runnable yet. Many more hours to go...

What's really exciting about this to me is that it's really my first 'project' that I thought up of on my own without textbook influence. Of course, realistically it'll look like a lame program written in the 80s, but my strong visual imagination will carry me through. If I have time, I might make a concept video/animation on how the components work.

CPSC 110 is really the most amazing course I have ever taken, especially so because I self-learned Java on my own but never really learned how to properly design a program. After learning a bunch of things from DrRacket, and learning the equivalents for some DrRacket operations for Java, I now know what the point of classes are, can create data definitions, and most importantly, create methods many times more efficiently due to better planning.

When writing out a program, I find that writing a bunch of comments and pseudocode initially greatly helps with the actual coding aspect.

I will work on this very hard and pray that I don't end up with a messy pile of shitty unusable code.