Last Tuesday we got a homework assignment in Digital Logic that was assigned to be due tomorrow. I, being the ever so proactive student that I am, didn’t bother to start working on it until this Monday. Well, I should say try to start working on it as the PDF that contained out questions was not functioning. To make this story more interesting, our teacher was out of town (hence why I didn’t have Digital Logic yesterday) and didn’t get the problem fixed until just over an hour ago. You’d figure that the homework wouldn’t be due tomorrow because of this, but I’ve seen no evidence to support that claim as of yet. I decided to go ahead and start on it just to show that I did something, and this has to be by far one of the easiest homework in recent memory. Of the 8 questions, the first 7 are “look at the diagram and trace where the lines start and stop”; the 8th is slightly more difficult, but more in the time consuming way than mentally challenging way. I guess if there is a homework that I’d prefer to start working on the night before its due, something like this one definitely fits the profile.
Even more news today on the game front is that Unreal Tournament 3 comes out on the 19th, adding another week to my game release stream. My Shuttle computer at my house is beginning to show its age with difficulties running some of the latest games, so UT3 may be solely destined for my computer out here (which will then actually be going to my house 1-2 days after I get it). Hard drive space is becoming the enemy though, so I may have to do some creative application management or start installing games to a drive besides my C.
Personal - Dallas
This is one of those posts where I had a really good title for it a couple hours ago but of course have managed to forget it by this point in time. However, my Wordpress dashboard has imparted some very important news to me: as of yesterday, I have reached 600 total posts on The Daily Goob!! I’m also approaching another milestone in the not too distant future; assuming I remember to announce it, you’ll find out what it is once it happens. :)
I beat Super Paper Mario today and also picked up Zack & Wiki (although I haven’t started playing it yet). There are actually quite a few games coming out in the next couple weeks that I’m picking up, but for this weekend at least I think I’ll be putting most of my effort into finishing Prime 2 and starting Z&W. Tomorrow will probably be split between HL2: Episode 1 and WoW in the afternoon, but chances are that WoW will see the greater amount of playtime.
Personal - Dallas
I am coming closer and closer to being ready to (hopefully) enter into the game industry, so I figured that maybe starting next year it would be a good idea to may go to one of the big gaming events that are held throughout the year. Here’s what my research turned up for how some of these events are scheduled:
- Game Developers Conference (San Francisco): Monday-Friday (February)
- Austin Game Developers Conference (Austin, TX): Wednesday-Friday (September)
- E3 (2007 – Santa Monica, CA): Wednesday-Friday (July)
- E For All (2007 – Los Angeles): Thursday-Sunday (October)
- Penny Arcade Expo (Seattle, WA): Friday-Sunday (August)
The first three on that list don’t even take place over the weekend, and half of E For All doesn’t either. GDC and Austin GDC are fairly mature events, so I’m guessing that those schedules are pretty static. This is the first year for E For All and the first year for the new version of E3, so those may or may not change. Also, I couldn’t even go to E3 if I wanted to since it is designed for the media and press rather than gamers in general. It looks like if I want to go to anything, it’ll have to be PAX since I could at least be there for the majority of it.
Personal - Dallas
What’s the deal with all of my classes starting to have more work to do now that we’re in the last month (excluding exam week) of school? Homework in Data Structures (which I’m done with) and Digital Logic, test in Programming Languages, projects in Technical Communication and Digital Logic. My education class has the weekly field experience, but at least I’m almost done with that. Seriously, balance is nice, people.
I guess the good news is this: after my Programming Languages test, I have none until exams. This past Data Structures assignment was assigned over a whole month because of the amount of work, so future ones are likely to be easier. The project in Digital Logic is really just spending the time to sit down and do it. None of it is really so much due to difficulty or lack of knowledge but lack of free time during which I have the motivation to do it. On Tuesday I actually *only* have my Programming Languages test, so I’ll probably spend most of the rest of the day doing Digital Logic stuff.
Personal - Dallas
I was proactive once again today and worked on homework that I knew would take a longer than usual amount of time so that I wasn’t completely freaking out over it tomorrow. I’m still not done, but what I have left is much more manageable in a one day timeframe. Overall this has not been a fun homework, so I can only hope that future ones are slightly easier and/or less time consuming.
Even though UTD still does not appear to have “officially” posted the spring course listing, I made up my draft schedule before I went to sleep last night. It’s definitely a schedule I can live with, and my only complaint is that my single Friday class is at 2:30. This is Linear Algebra which is pretty much only offered either then or at 7:00 at night with the problem section following it, and since I can’t opt for the middle of the day one in the fall, I figured I would just go ahead and bite the bullet to get it over with. I also have two other courses going directly towards my CS degree (Automata Theory and Operating Systems), a class for my teacher certification (Educational Psychology), and then a class that I figured I would never get to take (Advanced Computer Game Development). This last one is taught by the same teacher I had for CGD my freshman year, so I’m almost positive that the class is going to be a blast. This actually works out well since taking Linear Algebra directly conflicts with the game programming class that my Data Structures teacher has asked us about. I could drop Linear Algebra in favor if it and take Advanced CGD, but even I’m not that suicidal to try to deal with two classes in one semester that deal with creating games.
Personal - Dallas
Even though it wasn’t supposed to go up until Monday, the spring classes have been posted online (and then apparently taken down, but I guessed the URL of the PDF that contains the master listing). This means that I’ll probably spend the majority of tonight in Excel drafting up various versions. I already have a spreadsheet with all the classes listed that I need to take to graduate, so I at least know what to be searching for. Hopefully if I’m able to create a schedule that I really like, nothing about it will change as updates keep getting issued to the listings.
HP steamrolled over Forney tonight 42-7. Apparently some people earlier in the week were nervous about the game even though Forney was 1-6 going into tonight, but us being up 21-0 at the end of the first quarter I think dispelled any lingering doubts. Next week I only have a Friday game, and then there’s only one week left in the regular season before playoffs. That’s when it really starts to get exciting.
Personal - Dallas
Here’s what I have going on: next week I have two homeworks due and a test. Next week course listing get released for next semester, so I have to start making my schedule. Before the end of the semester I have a project due in Digital Logic. I am currently in the process of doing a redesign on a website. I have just jumped on board with a much more ambitious project in the web designer role. I will the person in charge of contacting game companies for a GDC-like event we’re very likely having on campus in February.
I think there are only so many more things that can be added to this list before I become I pile of exploded Jeff dust. I don’t list all these things to complain necessarily (I could back out of everything that’s not directly related to my classes), but I do think that listing it out at least shows others how much stuff I (willingly) do. December 3rd can’t come fast enough…
Personal - Dallas
For the past few days I’ve had many things that would imply that I was sick: sore throat, stopped up nose, and coughing to name some. The thing is though, I’m not really “sick”. No fever, no feeling horrible, no limitations on anything that I want to do. Apparently only part of my body forgot that I’ve been sick maybe all of three times in the past 5 years, and it needs to get with the program soon so that I stop having this health dichotomy.
I finally made some significant progress on my homework due Monday rather than playing games today, and hopefully I can keep up a nice pace over the next couple days so that I’m not busy doing everything on Sunday. Doing something less than trivial when you haven’t even looked at anything remotely related in around two years tends to cause a little slow going with all the research and looking stuff up that goes on. Amusingly, what’s probably going to happen is that I won’t need to do anything like this again for at least another two years, so then I get to repeat the process all over again. :)
Personal - Dallas
In Programming Languages we’ve learned about two languages so far: Scheme and SML. Yeah, I’d never heard of those either, and while I picked them up fairly easily, I never figured I would actually use them. Well, Microsoft has “promoted” F# to a full .NET language in the Visual Studio family, and guess what two languages it can be closely related to? Yep, maybe learning these will actually be applicable in my programming life.
I started Episode One this afternoon and played through slightly over a level, then the rest of my time was spent on WoW. I actually need to give my “main” character some time to rest for my XP bonus to recharge itself, so I’ll either be playing one of my two lower level characters or starting a new one over the next day or two. I’m definitely back at one of my WoW peaks, so it’ll be interesting to see how Tabula Rasa impacts that.
Personal - Dallas
Sunny and in the 80s or 90s yesterday, rainy and down in the 50s today. Ah, how the weather can change so quickly here in Dallas. I’ll blame the weather for my sore throat that I’ve had all day long, and both the weather and my sore throat are the reason why my mom let me stay at home tonight.
I’ve done virtually nothing useful today except go to school and play WoW (either of which could be argued as being more useful), and tomorrow will likely be more of the same with some HL2: Episode 1 thrown in. I’m almost to 40 in WoW which means that I could theoretically get my first mount, but my lack of necessary funds and the fact that I’m a class which has a speed bonus means that I will get one eventually, but I’m in no big rush. I also believe next week is the release of Tabula Rasa which I do still have a preorder down on, but it’s sluggish performance on the computer at my house has limited my time to really play and try to get into it some more.
Personal - Dallas