More programming hilarity March 8, 2008

While all my other projects stew and simmer with a myriad updates and includes from the latest brews over at boost.org, I’ve found myself having to code a computer geometry project. It’ll be a particle engine that uses Relative Neighborhood Graphs, and it’ll be hilarious. My professor is convinced we cannot make a geometry project into a screensaver. As such, my practical reasons behind the particle engine are ’simulations’. Currently, I think I’m going to simulate crowds of people under attack by zombies. It will rule. And while I might get a horrific score, my presentation shall rock boxers like b-grade sci-fi flying saucers on fishing lines. I’ll ALSO be posting updates on that if and when I get a chance (besides the AJAX work and other things).

A big note: for all those reading this saying “Wha? You haven’t posted a real ‘update’ on anything… really”. I just gotta say, I don’t like wasting people’s time (stop laughing! I’m serious!…. almost)… and so I’m going to wait until I get something concrete with pretty pictures. You’ll see what I mean. Eventually.

Arrrgh.

Goodness Grief… AJAX and ASP and SQLServer February 22, 2008

Good and bad news.

I got a job!

But It’s with SQLServer 2000, and I want to do Ajax.

I’ll hopefully be bringing you some cool hacks that will make web development easier…

For instance, I know that if I work on it, I’ll be able to get an ASP class that turns SQL queries into well-formed “For XML Explicit” queries. Of course, I want to make it a class because the admins claim they’ll be getting sqlserver 2008 sometime soon (of course, they also had planned to get sqlserver 2005).

Also, I’m currently using spry, and so I’ll be trying to make that rather dandy too. I think that the number one debug issue I have is detecting malformed XML from the sqlserver, so I’m going to be making template xml pages, so that my AJAX will quickly throw out a “Oh snap, one of these things is not like the other” error. Mainly, that’s going to be heavy and slow things down a lot, so I’ll code that later when I start hitting more bugs as I grow my database… that way I can load it and it’ll hopefully integrate with the spry debugger (that thing is spiffy).

What this all means for this blog is that, as I figure stuff out, I’ll hopefully log it in here.

Up next: getting RHS to make my AJAX create bookmarks and a history for the web browser… and somehow get it to work on everything (except safari. As it is, I’d rather ‘explore’ than go on a safari. And lizards are neato. So, I’ll be prejudice and also the incompatibilities that I overheard about DHTML and safari were… cooky sounding. Anyone know if I’m off base to exclude safari?).

Also, I’m going to be making some strange uses of SPRY that… might break it. I’ll post if something goes awry.

How the code goes November 20, 2007

Well then, I neeeeed to update this space. I’m going to be getting some high quality updates here soon too. College has been eating my heart out.

Xcode 3.0 has been awesome. The refactoring is stellar for all that cruddy functional programming that my data structs class requires because now I can just extract things several times and whallop all the profs nitpicks on when I should modularize my functions more. I’ve also been using the 3.0 snapshots system in epic proportions… it kicks arse. The whole way that the new system shows differences and wot-not has been invaluable is seeing how I’ve screwed things up so that snapshots can be very potent ways of debugging (I’m sure that most people wouldn’t recommend that, but oh well).

As for previous projects, I’m currently working on the brush system of a small sketch program. Since it needs a save-file format, I’m also starting to dabble more with boost because I want to add in some sophisticated file formats for saving and loading work. The boost-spirit library seems right up my alley for this problem, and I’ll have a lot of fun with it from the looks of things.

I’m also creating a wiki with moinx, and that’s helping me out a ton. Graphviz is my tool of choice for the class layouts (sorry, but the xcode class modeling system has been irritating and overly detailed… I’m a “gist of it” kinda fellow, so I only need phrases and pointy arrow bits).
Visual Automata Simulator has been good for when I need to design a state machine or two in the code (always a must with input-output scenarios).

If anyone ever wants to know what patterns I’m using, then I’ll throw that out along with my graphviz work. The networking and sockets will be tricky. I want to use something clever… something that will be very good at penetrating firewalls since the info that I’ll use for my program will be undoubtedly simple. Bah! I’ve just got ideas… that’s it! I don’t know how I’m going to make this a good programming, sketch blog. And now… a sketch/inking I’m working on for someone’s character (a bubble dragon):

proof I am not dead September 14, 2007

woo! giftart for someone:

Progress and stuff August 13, 2007

Okay. I guess this place really needs some updates. As usual, I actually do a lot of what I say I will, but tell no one about it. So, here’s some stuff that’s been happening:

• STILL! working on the commission for the CAT clan.
• Working on rremleh in 3d still… have more rigging finished, but still have more to do before animating starts
• STILL! working on the comic cover idea I got.
• Finished about three more tunes in logic since I last posted… all of them weird. Also, finished two experiments.
• Got 2 gigs of ram for my mbp (PTL!)
• Got Adobe CS3 for mac (again, thank you GOD!)
• Been offered to be trained for sound engineering position of sorts
• Currently aiming at attending USF this fall and next spring… so I’ll graduate from there with my compsci bachelor degree
• FINALLY got passed the first milestone in my coding project for a new paintchat

The paintchat milestone has been a serious battle. Mainly against some lies that got in my head about not being able to code anything that serious. Well, there it is… a mac carbon interface… fully working with verse… loads images and send them to a server then downloads them.

There are synch errors though if you have more than one client. Those are going to be easy to fix, but my next trick will be to get a simple brush edit working… I want to just have a single pixel and doodle simple lines (no undo or anything like that). Later, I’ll need to add convolution and edit the server to support a new message “Add tile” which will combine a tile with the current one, and then send a ’tile set’ message to all clients (NOTE! I am LAZY! I refuse to get the clients to support add tile for now. Though maybe later I could do the opposite, and send brush events to the server and have it ripple to clients so they can more accurately show off what you’re buddies are drawing in their own screens and such).

so yeah… things are getting uppity and nuts. I can’t wait to tear into illustrator, though I fear it will only make me want inkscape to have tablet support on macs even MORE. Arrrgh. That’ll be a bugger and a half.

Also big news! I downloaded sonicbirth. That means I’m giving reaktor the finger (well, really my wallet is. although I’ve played with it before on a different computer and in general already didn’t get good vibes like sonicbirth is seeming to ooze). I’ll try to start getting modules working, and hopefully this will facilitate me to get into audio unit coding and eventually work me off my butt so that I start making some cool plugins for people to goof with.

Now, half a cheer for cookie dough! *shovels some in his mouth then gives a loud gutteral: “Hip hip, HOO!”*

Back from Scotland June 10, 2007

Back from Scotland (which was a huge success!) and ready for action. I’ll be posting work on an insignia I’m doing for a clan in Treadmarks and also work on a character that was inspired by my mind-blowing experience of Scotland… I love it. I love cold weather, so I especially just loved it.

I might also be posting more wordy bits soon, so I’ll try to get a buffer of good Scotland pictures and doodles before I go really into this. But wow, I continue to neglect this place so badly. It’s really just to help me order my thoughts and sorta get a grip on what I’ve made public and what I haven’t (I wish I was kidding there).

Doodling May 24, 2007

I just recently have gotten the hang of paint chat’s watercolor brush.

I’m rather proud of what I was able to accomplish with it (in the worst, most conceited way, of course). Behold:

However, I still don’t let it off that easy. The server wiped itself about three times before stabilizing enough for my doodles to survive more than 15 minutes. I really really wish I was smart enough and had enough time to just all out recode paint chat to work perfectly in those kind of situations. And also it’d be nice to have enough money to host such a client. Oh well.
HAH! I’m believing in God to help me really actually code this, and so I’m pretty sure it’s doable (no, really!). I’ll keep ya’ll posted on progress as it comes

Hot ride May 19, 2007

Well, here’s an ode to Tread Marks, and also something of a illustration of how my career now stands… I’m at least alive and smoking a bubble gum cigar, but that’s about it. Oh well… I’ve still got a tank, and that counts for something (based on my favorite tank, the Talon, and with my fav insignia, the comet… both of which come from Treadmarks, a great game from Longbow Digital Arts, http://www.ldagames.com )

Times are changing May 16, 2007

Well, due to the fact that my GPA was not high enough to keep my scholarship, things will be in a tussle here as I move to USF or UCF… currently weighing all factors before making a straight choice. For now, USF is looking good.

Blargh April 30, 2007

So, a lot of things have happened. The jist of it is as follows:

While I’m once again unsure of how college might go, my summer looks to be more free than normal. I didn’t get accepted into the SoC, but that doesn’t keep me from learning how to code for blender anyhow. I simply love that program too much, and it keeps deciding to compile from cvs on my mac. Who can say no to that? I mean, when something compiles frequently, you just have to suddenly start tweaking a little here and there with it.

Anyways, one fellow is going to be coding an update to the renderer. I want to see if I can help out, and also I’ll just sit back and wait for a better opportunity to do my brdf/SSS ray-tracing shader. I really need to get a life, but so help me, I still have no one around in the summer, so I pretty much do stuff like this or die of boredom.

So yeah. I’m currently messing around with blender here and there and actually am still working on that dragon animation project. Perhaps I’ll post more progress pictures here as they come up. This year still has a lot of kick left in it, but yeah… wow… currently the world has regarded me as a hopeless wreck (speaking of my GPA, people’s expressions at my visions of what I’ll do in the future, and generally how I’m trying to get into neuroscience). Wonderful. And you know what, I find myself starting to agree in a laughing, humoring manner. This provides me with the most awkward introspect on my career ever. That is, I believe it’s worse than what most other people who have had such trouble could have ever felt.

Oh well. I sure am having fun. At the cost of respect that really has been flaky to begin with.