  Let's get it on. | 
Posted - 8/30/2005 2:03:22 AM | Today I'm starting an eighteen day cram session to polish up my C++ skills and to delve into some more advanced topics. As I venture through this campaign, I'll be journaling about the subjects that I read about and am currently studying. The roster for this endeavor look like this :
1. The Art of C++
2. Advanced C++ Programming styles and Idioms
3. Win32 System Programming
4. The Revolutionary Guide to MFC
5. Visual C++ Goodies
6. ATL COM Programming
This means I have to roughly digest an average of 175 pages a day. The good news is I already am familiar with a lot of the information found in these tomes, but I'm looking to get my focus out of bottles and back into binary and books. Away I go!
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| Saturday, August 27, 2005 |
| I've fallen and I can't get up! | |
Posted - 8/27/2005 1:15:00 AM | The title is in reference too the fact that my journal had fallen off of the journal page for the first time since I started this journal.
I have to work about twelve hours or more tomorrow night. I'm tired as hell right now, but I have to stay awake so that I can work tomorrow night, and not be tired then. I spent a few days coming up with a cool idea for the 4E4 compo, and as more time goes by, I realize that I'm not going to have time to really complete a submission. Especially considering I haven't even started yet. I could have had plenty of time had I not wasted so much time the last couple of months.
Two days ago, an old friend from highschool shot and killed himself. That is the third friend I've lost to suicide in the last two years. Sad really. He was facing some federal prison time and evidentally decided that Mexico wasn't his cup of tea. I just hope that if anyone out there ever has similair thoughts that they can talk to someone. It seems that the ones that have left us due to these circumstances have been some of the most isolated people I've known. They always had smiles on, but never really talked about anything real or personal to other people. I hope my friends grand parents are doing as well as they can. The funeral is tomorrow, but I have to work, and seeing as I'm the only employee in Ankeny for my job, I can't have anyone cover for me, because there is no one else. It's just the same though. I haven't been one much for funerals lately. I realize death comes for us all, I accept it, it's more so the living that I am more concerned with, and realizing that most of the people that will be at the funeral will mostly be other people who maybe looking at prison time, or just got out of prison. These are people that I've tried to stay away from the past five years, the type of person I once was. Unfortunate, but in my own way, I've already said good bye.
So, I'm going on a new health kick. I've quit smoking again, I've always eaten pretty healthy, I've also quit drinking, (my liver will thank me for that), and I'm starting a new exercise routine tomorrow. I'm not out of shape by any means, but I have been rather excesive on the intake of carbon monoxide and alchohol for many years now, and I figure it's better to change my life style now, then later ,or never.
I haven't gotten shit done on C.F.L. this last week, and in fact I'm still on the same task list from a month ago. I also want to start working with some animation stuff once again. I've dabbled with animation in the past, but really have never made a hudge amount of progress. Maybe I'll work on some animations for Phoenix, and DecipherOne Productions.
Oh, and one last thing. My Never Winter Nights executable continues to crash. It may take it like two or three hours, but it does crash non the less. I'm thinking of writing BioWare and complaining. I've got a pretty mean machine, so I know that's not the problem. It's just frustrating everytime I'm in the middle of an epic quest and, oh were sorry, your executable doesn't want to work any more. Oh what's that , you forgot to quick save the last twenty minutes of gameplay? Muhha ha!
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| Saturday, August 20, 2005 |
| Welcome to the World of Tomorrow, Today! | |
Posted - 8/20/2005 8:50:29 AM | I just saw this and I had to share it, this maybe burried somewhere on the forums, but for anyone who hasn't seen it check This
out. Remote controled humans.
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| Vroom! Vroom! | |
Posted - 8/19/2005 12:39:35 PM | I've been without a car for a year and half. A side from seeing lots of nice sceneray and keeping my cardiovascular system in good shape, it really has been rather annoying. For instance it took me an hour to walk to work, and was like this for about a year and a half. That was until yesterday, when I was finally able to get a 1991 Honda Accord. This is great news for all! Let the towns people sing up as one voice, and let there be drinks and food and women for everyone, even the women!
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| Wednesday, August 17, 2005 |
| Ha ha | |
Posted - 8/17/2005 8:42:35 AM | Well my sanity aside, I'm seemingly getting focused again. A partner of mine recently quit his day job to concentrate on games and comics full time. I've been in contact with him for three years now, and we've had a lot of great ideas, but they never seemed to get off the ground in the past. It is my hope that with his full attention that will now change. It's been as much my fault as any one as to why these projects have lacked progress in the past, but I'm finally getting settled into my new job, as well as getting some decent content created so we will have to see where things go.
Not really much else to say, I've been working a shit load, and well sleeping. My bodies having to get used to all the manual labor I've been doing, and lately I've just felt drained. I can already tell that the exhaustion is starting to disapate and I actually am starting to feel better all around. That may have to do with the fact that I'm no longer binge drinking too, but no that couldn't be it. I guess that's the great thing about being a twenty something year old. When ever you feel lost or out of place, you can grab a few cases of beer for a few months, and it seems almost expected in our culture, kind of sad really, where the rest of world drinks their entire lives, but does more so without the excessiveness. I suppose it comes down to each individual though.
A few weeks ago I compiled a bunch of gaming trivia for C.F.L.'s battle system, at that point in time, I found out that Atari was responsible for the creation of Chuch E Cheese's. I grew up where there was Showbiz Pizza, in the South, atleast until I was thirteen anyways, and I always thought they were the same place, except marketed differently to cater to the different cultures. Billy Bob the Bear for the Southerner's, a ho down Jug blowin bear, hopped up on moonshine. For the rest of the country, Mice like cheese. I never even made the connection that they were competitors even when ShowBiz became Chuck E Cheese's in the late eightees. I always thought I was a bright kid, I guess I didn't have much business sense when I was eight though.
Thank you Atari for games and pizza, two of my most favoritess things.
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| Randomization | 
Posted - 8/12/2005 11:12:24 PM | Well, I've finally gotten some time in working on C.F.L. a bit more today. There really is a hell of a lot to do. At any rate, I have a selection structure for a trivia element with 500 questions listed in it ranging through about ten different categories.
I spent about an hour or so looking into better pseudo-random number generation today. My main source was Mathmatical Techniques from the Infinite Game Universe series by Guy W. Lecky - Thompson. Although he goes over two algorithms and seeding, which I've had an understanding of for sometime, I couldn't really find any useful information. Aside from creating various switch statements that use various ranges of numbers to come up with a random total, I can't seem to come up with a good approach to finding an algorithm that works very well at all. Everytime I run through that segment of the game, it seems that the results tend to be more in the first one hundred questions then anywhere else, this is probably about eighty percent or more of the time. I suppose I'm wondering if anyone out there has a solution to better randomization of numbers, or can point me in the right direction. Thanks in advance if you can help, if not :p.
EDIT: I suppose I should say that I am using the rand() function with srand based on time, actually here is the code. What the F@# I just realized what the problem has been all this time, I only have a total of one hundred instead of five hundred in my random number generation. That explains a lot. DOH!
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| Thursday, August 11, 2005 |
| Howard Hughes is one crazy SOB | |
Posted - 8/11/2005 11:15:19 PM | I just watched the last half of the aviator. It was definately a good movie. WEll, I have a phone call now, so I'll cut this short, later.
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| Wednesday, August 10, 2005 |
| Time Constraints | |
Posted - 8/10/2005 9:34:39 PM | There is a lot of things to do in a day and there always seems like there is not enough time to do it all. It seems that development, out of all things, is the one area that is suffering the most right now. I suppose I still am in a transitional period somewhat as I just started a new job, am in the process of working on a car that I am buying, and have been spending quite a bit of time with my friends. I just hope that I can get some dev time in when I get off work tomorrow morning.
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| Work, work, work! | 
Posted - 8/9/2005 11:47:08 PM | Yep!
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| Like a Sherpa, guided for the very first time. | |
Posted - 8/8/2005 6:00:37 PM | After driving for ten hours, I made it back from the beautiful shores of Spirit Lake in Okaboji Iowa. I've lived in Iowa for eight years, and I only recently found out about the lake up there. It probably is the most beautiful lake in Iowa, atleast that I've seen. Of course the ten hour drive was there and back and was the journey to save a dogs life as well as one of drinking coffee and listening to hours of silence because my friend couldn't find the car adapter for his xm reciever, so we were forced to listen to either crappy static stations or silence. All in all it was a fun trip, all except for having to see Neo the dog go but I'm sure that I will see him again.
As for the rest of this week, I'm going to be extremely busy at work, and I am going to get a lot done as far as content addition and coding go on C.F.L. I have managed to add about a quater of the content that I've created within about the past month, but I haven't taken the time to really catch up yet.
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| Screwed the Pooch! | 
Posted - 8/6/2005 6:23:35 PM | One of my really good friends has a four year old pitbull named Neo. My friend recently ran into some financial problems and had to end up moving back in with his parents for a short amount of time, and as such, he can no longer keep the dog. This is do to county laws, as pitbulls are illegal in this town. His dad basically told him to get rid of the dog, or he would find a new home for him in a shallow grave.
Armed with this knowledge myself and a few other friends went to work on the Save the Neo Campaign 2005. I wanted to make shirts and a website, and have a benifit concert and a bunch of shit because, well he's a really good dog and it would pain me greatly if he had to die simply from lack of effort. We didn't really have time for that though, so instead my friend found a home for him in South Dakota, and we're going to meet Rob, the guy who's going to take him, halfway there tomorrow. Adventure, excitement, a Jedi craves not these things. I am glad however that we saved his life.
If you wish to be a part of the save the Neo effort donations are being accepted for gas money ect.. just let me know and I'll guide you through the proper donation chanels DecipherOne at hotmail
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| Tuesday is for Taco | 
Posted - 8/2/2005 11:39:46 PM | Not really much to report. I've finally managed to get back into working on C.F.L. after about a two week hiatus. With the new bus charter job I'm able to setup my own schedule, and as such, once I've gotten my head out of a certain orafice, I will be able to get a lot accomplished. I know that if I'm still going to get my 4E4 submission in, I'm going to have to buckle down these next few weeks and get that next version of C.F.L. out.
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| Enter August | 
Posted - 8/1/2005 7:57:27 PM | Living in Iowa, August is the time for hundreds of thousand of people to come from all over the world to the state fair grounds for the Iowa State Fair. This usually consists of countless vendors, farmer's, 4H Cluber's, many different musicians, food, and of course the heat. If you have time to waste come to Iowa, and see one of the largest spectacles of wasting time around. I personally don't like the fair, and this has nothing to do with anything really, but it's interesting that we can unite to eat giant chicken legs and ride rides, but we can't unite for things of importance unless pressed from some kind of influence. Oh well, I suppose I may actually go this year and eat a turkey leg, and have a five dollar beer.
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