11.29.05
NaNoWriMo 2005
With one day left I’m sitting at 20k words (ish). No way in hell I can finish. ::sigh::
Next year I will participate again and (hopefully) be better prepared.
Another Tuesday
Second hour we discussed about how my class has been really lazy and only a few people (myself included) have really sold anything. We need to sell a lot of stuff. Sell sell sell!
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Creative Writing was great today. I thought Mr. Wilkinson really connected with us (if anyone else was paying attention) on a serious level today. While his poem was personal and I do not remember it, it was quite meaningful to him. It was compelling to see such emotion from someone largely stereotyped (even rightfully) as a big hulking athlete type man.
As such, he has asked we write one last poem. Any form. Any style. Any length. The only requirement is that it must mean soemthing. Something deep. Something within your soul. Perhaps a feeling supressed or something you never knew was there. Or perhaps the expression of something you’ve known all along. Meaningful poetry is the best kind of poetry.
Some people groaned at his request, but I have never felt that I would be allowed to write something incredibly personal and pass it off for schoolastic credit. I wrote some things last year in LAE that, of course, were rather personal. My poetry (even for a class) usually is. However, I’ve never felt this compelled to write with deep sensation for school. I think Mr. Wilkinson is an amazing teacher.
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After Creative Writing I went home and played with my dog. He enjoyed it quite a bit, as he usually does. Later I played with him in the snow, which was quite amusing. My dog is pure black, so when he sniff’s in the snow and raises his head he looks like he’s been on crack. I threw snowballs, which had him both interested and excited, but overall left him a bit confused (same as every year). Where did that white ball go!? Its much more amusing when you actually hit him with it.
I spent close to 3 hours at Panera helpping a fellow Comp. Sci. student. Hooray for that. I think I made the woman at the counter mad though. Not only did I ask only for a drink (which seemed to annoy her), but I paid for it with a five (it cost like 1.09 or something).
Off to the hospital with Dan and after various tasks here I am. I have none of my homework done. Crap. Off I go!
I want to break free…
Yesterday at about this time I was getting home from Allen Hospital. My mom is, for the third time in four months, in the hospital. Its really terrible. Just as life was getting good too. ::sigh:: Figures, right?
I have five classes at UNI left before finals. Oh joy. Actually these finals shouldn’t be too bad. Taking finals now also gives me the added bennefit later when the high school has theirs. I should have four finals, but CW and ALPHA will be done ahead of time. On the day where we have 1,2,6, and 7 I will only have 2. On the day we have 3,4,5 I will only have 3 (and I’ll have to stick around for 4I think…). Crazy on a stick.
Registration for my two UNI classes for Spring 06 is on Mon/Tues. Kind of exciting. I can’t wait to get Computer Organization. I think it will kick the hell out of Discrete Structures. Don’t get me wrong, DS has been alright. I’ve learned a lot of interesting things. I’ve also learned things about things I already knew. Crazy, yes? But computer org. should be much better (and its with Fienup, the robotics helpper).
For anyone interested, my schedule next semester is looking to be thus:
1. Computer Organization (Fienup)
2. ALPHA Autonomous (McCrea)
3. Advanced Algebra and Trig (Staniger)
4. Comp. Sci. II (this means I get my pick of lunch shifts) (O’Kane)
5. ALPHA Activity or In Depth (McCrea)
6. Eastern Civ (Engel I think?)
7. Great Books (Demoss)
Note that Comp. Org is Tues/Thurs from 8 to 9:15 and that Comp. Sci. II is ever Mon/Wed/Fri from 12 to 12:50. So, whats this mean? Well, Mon/Wed/Fri I don’t have to be at school until 9:30ish. Other days of the week I don’t get to sleep in but I do have 2,4 and 5th off. Yay. I think I’ll need it. This is not a confirmed schedule!!!! This is just what I have come up with to get everything to work. Next year I still need to take these classes:
AP Psych
Great Books II AP
Comp and Rhet (II AP possibly?)
Intro to Business (dual credit, yay)
Pre Calc
Physics A
Life is going to be crazy next year. Thats at least 9 of 14 slots filled. If anything, I may boot AP Psych (not that I wouldnt enjoy it), but I need everything else to graduate (well, not everything, but thats what I want).
Supposing I can juggle those classes (and the AP tests) and the college classes, when I graduate high school I should have 27 credit hours from UNI, 3 from Intro to Bus, 3-9 from AP and whatever I can manage in the ways of CLEP or classes over the summer. This brings me to the range 33-39 (not counting any CLEP or summer UNI classes). Supposing 12 credit hours is average for a college student, I should be (or close to a) 2nd semester sophomore+. ::boggle:: I hope I don’t die next year.
So, I think its shower time.
Oh, by the way, the title of this post isn’t really relating to anything besides the song I’m listening to.
Comp. Sci. I - Final Assignment
Time: 5 hours
Total: 78 hours
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O’Kane posted the final assignment. It proves to be easy, yet it is posing trouble.
Synopsis:
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Create a book class that contains various things a database of books would (title, author(s), ISBN, publisher, cost) and the member functions to manage, access, and print these values. Then write a program to test it all.
Commentary:
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I’ve had this window up, waiting to write this post for days now. And I finally got the conviction to do it today. I sat down just a few hours ago with relatively nothing in the ways of the test program, and getline was being screwy, but now I look at a complete program.
I realize I am probably the only student in this class (Comp. Sci. I) that would spend this kind of time on an assignment. However, to do this assignment justice, I don’t think I could do anything less than I have. I went above and beyond the call of duty (like usual) by making it so you can add, save, and load the list of books. While some may ask why, and others may think it overkill, I did not want to input the 8 or so pieces of information for several books every time I wanted to run a test.
The loading/saving isn’t great. If you mistype something, don’t use the correct format, or similar it will get all messed up. Again, this isn’t a real problem for people who are paying attention to what they are doing, but its nice to have some error handling. I’ve incorporated a bit, but it has a long ways to go were this an actual program for people to really use.
Overally, you could use this program to manage a small book store. I wouldn’t call it Barnes and Noble quality, but a small book store could bennefit from the simplicity (though a graphical version may be better). It would work, but it would take a while to input everything.
I’ve discovered a wierd trait of this code. When adding to the list everything is pushed in the front. When saved, the list is actually saved backwards compared to how it was before. This is by no means a problem, but kind of amusing to a tired programmer.
I must go export the code.
11.23.05
The Wade
So, yesterday was definitely fun. Got to see Wade for the first time since he left for the evil wicked place named Ames.
Started with some Super Smash Brothers Melee. That was a lot of fun, though I kicked everyones ass (I did lose once, but still got the most kills…).
Later we moved to Munchkin, which was, well, Munchkin. Not much to say really. We all beefed the hell out one monster so Dwayne/John couldn’t kill it. Twas quite amusing.
1000 Blank Cards at Taco John’s was great fun. Lots of interesting cards. The game is a lot of fun when you have a lot of people. Well, any game where you make up the cards is a lot of fun. On one of them, Dwayne saved me from choking! I had to give Dwayne a hug.
So, at the end was the drinking game. This is where Dan finally showed up but we lost John/Tom. This was one of the best drinking games, and twas quite informative. Kind of amusing how the Aces (truth or drink) got some dumb questions, but then we asked other questions later that were more interesting and they got answered despite the lack of an Ace.
Oh, and before you all think something bad, we were drinking pop.
11.21.05
KaladeaMUD - The Beginning
Time: 4 hours
Total: 73 hours
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Spent a few hours working off SocketMUD++ today. I’ve managed to get some of the basic framework done (mainly the outlines), but this project has hundred of not thousands of hours in it.
In any event, I put up a list of what I consider accomplishments on the ALPHA page. Some things from today include:
- Creation of project
- Outlines command structure and created the ability to extract a command from the input buffer
- Bidirectional pointing of vital structures (wow, that sounds complicated for something so simple…)
- New list to hold all of the current characters
Its been two hours since I tested the code, as the largest additions (character/player info) has to go in simultaneously and thus will be hell to test later.
Sometime over break I hope to get a Cygwin compatible version of the Xlog Library so I can use it on this. Otherwise I’ll have to copy and paste…. grrr.
Yeah, I’m ready for a break from academics. Yay for coding again, finally.
11.20.05
CS 1 - Basic Interpreter - Finished!
Time: 5 hours
Total: 69 hours
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I decided that with only a few weeks left of this class I should sit down and finish it. It turned out pretty good and quite capable.
I’ve updated the ALPHA Project page with more information (at the bottom). You can see the code, scripts, and download all of the scripts/binary to play with it. Most notably would be the small game (game.script) where you have three guesses to guess a number between 1 and 10.
The links are:
Code & Scripts -> http://ew.xidus.net/download/cs1/final/
Download Binary and Scripts -> http://ew.xidus.net/download/cs1/final/final.zip
All State - Really Damn Amazing
So, yesterday was really spiffy.
Of course the show was amazing. Why does everyone feel the need to ask “How was it?”. Did you honestly think it would be bad!??!! All of them are quite talented, and that song from the choir that sounded like it was raining was probably the most incredible thing I’ve ever heard.
The damn chair people take too long! Shut up, we came for the music!
My discomfort dropped by, um, 100% when the people in front of us left and I was able to stretch out my legs. Woot! My legs were very annoyed with me at that point.
The trip home was quite amusing. We missed the exit for highway 20 by a bit (damn you Fort Dodge sign). On the good side, we found two amazing road signs that had question marks on them. I’ve never seen such a thing before.
Beyond that, a lot of jokes and a lot of laughs, and a great time. (”They don’t have a Wendy’s?! I need to blow that city up….”)
11.18.05
Lack of the Profound
I feel like I have a lot to say, and yet I have to words to describe exactly what I want to describe. ::sigh:: Since when am I at a loss of words?
In any event, there is one topic I desire to touch on. Ever wish you made something so awesome, so incredible, so brilliant and artisitc that it caught peoples attention or just made you think deeply within yourself? I get this desire quite frequently, especially after watching some especially impacting video or movie.
But alas, my art talent is so limited! I’m thinking eventually I’ll work with the version of trueSpace I have and make some kind of freaky 3D animation with lots of shapes twirling and do some nifty camera work. However, thats an ALPHA project for another year.
Ignore the silence. Dance anyway.
11.15.05
Snow & Comp. Sci. I
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Okane just posted an assignment in which we are supposed to use our old assignment and make a few changes to use structures. I e-mailed him with the question of what he wanted me to do because mine was based off a class already, and he said resubmit. Woot! No homework in CS I for another two weeks.
On another note: We totally got snow to today. Other then that, life is pretty much alright.
We messed with iambic pentameter in Creative Writing today. Needless to say a great many people were confused. With our poems we were allowed to basically do whatever we wanted length wise as long as it was suitable and contained the same number of syllabels in each line. Luckily he let me do a few haikus, so I may post them later. On KoL there is a haiku chat channel (the only channel that I happen to ever use), so writing them wasn’t too terribly difficult. Then again, haiku’s never are.
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