I didn’t have anything due tomorrow that I was putting off (but I probably should be studying for my Linear Algebra test), but I once again spent the evening designing another poster draft in Photoshop and demonstrated why I should be kept far away from any tools that require artistic talent to use. This is something that as of yesterday I learned would be desired tomorrow, but that’s probably just not going to happen. Deadlines are fine, being informed two days before a deadline is not.
The game project demo went off very nicely, and now I have a week to expand on that demo to make something playable. I don’t think taking my laptop down to Austin is absolutely necessary, but I figure that any work I can get done either on a bus ride (probably very little) or at the hotel during down time is better than sitting around doing nothing. If I was going to be at home what I could do would be even more ambitious, but unfortunately my schedule was not consulted when planning the dates for this trip.
Speaking of Austin, the schedule this year is in some ways much nicer. The most apparent way is the fact that I only need to be at HP by 8:45 rather than at 4-5 in the morning. I’ll actually end up being there early since my mom will be dropping me off closer to 8:00 so that I don’t have to leave my car there for three days (same as we did my senior year). The weather forecast is still bearable with high ranging from 66-71, so unless the weather gods decide to spite us in some other way, I’m predicting a good trip.
Personal - Dallas
Rather than working on a Flash “demo” for tomorrow like I had planned on doing, I instead spent tonight creating a mockup of a poster for the game conference I’m a semi-organizer of. I guess that means I’ll be doing my Flash work tomorrow in between Ed Psych and the time we meet with our teacher. It’s not like this is due tomorrow or anything, so it won’t be the end of the world if I don’t have it as finished as I’d like.
Tomorrow evening is when I’ll find out how Thursday is going to work: when the bus is leaving, what time I need to be at HP, and other fun stuff like that. I’m looking forward to it, and luckily I’m not really missing anything all that important in my classes which allows me to even be able to go. The thing I’m honestly most excited about is the fact that it’s not going to be freezing cold while we’re down there. The last time I checked the weather report the highs were in the 60s and 70s which is definitely warm enough for me at this time of the year.
Personal - Dallas
As far as the project for my game class goes, I’ve made immense progress this weekend. I’ve learned more about Flash, I’ve read some of the documentation on the server, and I’ve even started to outline in paper the code flow some more. The downside to all of this? Well, in a little over 36 hours we meet with our teacher for the last time before the half-alpha is due, and I have nothing running on the phone at the moment to show for all my mental progress. Since when did education become about making stuff and not just gaining knowledge?
I did finish up my OS project today, however, and fortunately one of my friends told me something that will probably save me from pulling my hair out tomorrow when I actually go to submit it. Apparently even with all the includes and such, compiling the project on the Solaris servers at UTD requires two flags or else the sockets cause it to barf everywhere and not compile correctly. People wonder why Linux is (relatively) popular? Well, my code compiles just fine there…
Personal - Dallas
I’ve been playing Halo 3 with Sam and him room/suitemate for a little over an hour, and his suitemate is the one with Sam’s headset on. In between matched he made the comment that I “was a champion” to which I responded “Yeah, but I don’t feel like one. There’s no music or anything.” This was apparently extremely funny to them; what can I say, sometimes great statements like that just come to me.
I did a little bit of Flash development today but spent most of the time reading through the various tutorial/examples on how to interact with the server. The more I read about it, the more I’m thinking that finding this is going to make our lives infinitely easier. Also, I see no real reason why we wouldn’t be able to use it. This isn’t coding any part of our gameplay; it’s just acting as the networking glue to make the multiplayer part work (and seeing as how that’s a requirement of the game, multiplayer isn’t an option).
Personal - Dallas
Long story that I don’t feel like typing out right now, but it turns out that Mary Kay (yes, them again) called yesterday and wanted to set up an interview with me at the start of next week. Well, I of course got it around 10:00 tonight which leaves Wednesday as the only real day that anything could be scheduled for now, so we’ll just have to wait and see. There were also three other unheard messages, so at least we just ignore it completely rather than picking and choosing the messages to ignore.
My tomorrow went from being busy doing HP Baseball to busy doing UTD homework once I learned that the scrimmage that was happening tomorrow afternoon got moved to today. When I called Coach Gibbins to let him know that I wouldn’t be able to go as a result, he wasn’t even aware of the change. I’m glad that even 3 years removed from being a senior I have good enough friends on the team who think of mentioning stuff like this to me because obviously the trainers still aren’t in on the info loop.
Personal - Dallas
I think Spamalot may just be my favorite musical that I’ve ever seen. I got the soundtrack shortly after returning from Vegas, and aside from a few songs in the second act, I’ll listen straight through the whole album on occasion. I know that there were a couple scenes that I had issue with, but the music is just that absolutely awesome. In fact, if I’m not out of the Dallas area for an internship this summer, I may go to see it with Andrew (his parents saw it, but he didn’t get to) when the tour hits Fort Worth in June. That’s the reference in the title, so hopefully that should clear up any confusion.
Our “grail” is specifically a server that’s designed to be a multiplayer/MMO server for Flash-based games. Finding this solves one giant issue that was going to have to be dealt with relatively soon, and while it doesn’t instantly make our game work, it should cut out a huge part of work that was going to have to be done otherwise. Now it should be much easier to “look on the bright side of life” while we continue on with our development.
Personal - Dallas
Nothing much needs to be said about the title of this post except for the fact that I have so much stuff going on at the present time, I could really use a larger plate to put everything on.
I got a slight reprieve for this weekend since the due date for our OS project got pushed back until Wednesday, but I don’t want to put it all off until later because I also have my early Linear Algebra test on Wednesday. What that boils down to is probably a little more time this weekend spent on the game project at the expense of the OS one even though ideally I should get the latter done relatively quickly. I won’t be crying tears of sadness when I finally get my life back from all this school work, I can guarantee you that.
Personal - Dallas
I have two weeks to become familiar enough with ActionScript and Flash to be able to produce a semi-working, partial demo of our game concept (also known as the half-alpha stage). I expect time to be the biggest factor of anything, mainly because I not only have to do the coding but also conceptually think through the game as a whole. Where my own “motivation” for learning Python and the like has failed, holding the grade gun to my head I’m betting will be an extremely way for me to become familiar with ActionScript extremely fast.
My Automata quiz tomorrow rounds out my big things happening for the rest of this week. I then get to focus my attention on the aforementioned ActionScript coding and also working on the second project for OS which is due on Monday. All the latter is is a slight adjustment to the first project, so that should take me 1-2 days tops to complete. Of course, I say that now and I’m still going to be working on it Sunday night trying to find the elusive bugs that haunt me in my sleep.
Personal - Dallas
When I don’t go to the baseball scrimmages on Saturday, it’s extremely comfortable and in the 70s. Tomorrow when I am going to the scrimmage tomorrow, the high is only in the low 50s. Why, weather gods, why??? Oh well, at least it’s only one scrimmage tomorrow rather than the three last week, so it shouldn’t be quite as cold by the time I get around to leaving.
My OS test went fine I think; my grade will probably be very dependent on partial credit (as in, I think I got most of the problems right, but there are a few that I’m pretty sure I didn’t get 100% right). Next up is my Automata quiz on Wednesday, so I’ll be spending tomorrow night after I get done with baseball preparing for that. Good thing I don’t want to do anything else for the next couple weeks like play WoW — who has the time??
Personal - Dallas
Kinda surprising that I’ve never used this title before, but apparently that’s the case. Tomorrow starts my busiest two and a half weeks of school that I’ve had in a long time (beginning with an OS test tomorrow and culminating with an Ed Psych test and the half-alpha of our game project due the Tuesday after I get back from Austin). As long as I keep a good flow and don’t let any work or studying stack up on me, I think I should be more than fine. I still haven’t really figured out why I have all this stuff due is such a short amount of time; I’d expect a load like this closer to the midway point of the semester.
I got my new (very glossy) printer today, and the couple of documents I’ve printed off on it look fine. This should end my computer hardware spending for a while unless something breaks. One thing I could see me buying is a memory card for my phone, but I hardly classify that as “computer hardware”.
Personal - Dallas