Style from the Dark Side

So awesome, Christmas break. It's been probably one of the best weeks of the year, no doubt. After the crazy stresses of this semester that I've complained to everyone about, I'm finally able to relax, watch some movies, goof around, and play video games. It's great. I managed to pull of 3 A's and 2 B's this semester, which stunned me. I guess I zoned out during the semester and just did all the work I could, it went by fast however.

I went to LAN with my cousin Kalen for a couple days, we had about 3 route 44's from sonic and ordered a crap load of this taco pizza from Joe's, which was DANKITY by the way. It was a good time, although I should have been working on some website projects. Eh, work can wait, right?

For Christmas I believe I'm getting a PlayStation 3, if not I'll let you guys know :). The reason I asked for it is because of the new SOCOM game that's out. (SOCOM: Confrontation) It's the first SOCOM since the first one that has been the exact same style of the first socom. At one point in my game career, I was number 7 in the world in the singles ladder. It's an achievement I'm proud of, and it was great being unstoppable anywhere I went. It was great too because with my name tag being -}X{- Mojave, I would join a room and in the lobby, people could talk on mics to eachother. From time to time I would hear "Holy Shit! Are you Mojave, like THE Mojave? Leader of -}X{-??" I mean... that'll make anyone feel great about themselves. Yes people, I am bragging. Anyways, I tried this latest socom out at a friend of mine's house (a guy I used to roll socom 1 with -}X{- Jynx) and I noticed that the shooting was the exact same as socom 1. The reason I didn't play socom 2 or any of the other was because the shooting mechanic of the game was so entirely different. The bullets weren't as precise, and the damage seem to be turned way, way down. So this got me excited and really thinking about what I should do. If I get this PS3 for Christmas, I'll be joining back with Jynx and his clan [U]prising. I'm not guaranteed a spot, but after practicing at Jynx's house for a bit, the old Mojave came back. My skills will most definitely be good enough for [U]. After I get fully used to the game, who knows what will happen. Hopefully I'll be able to come back on here and brag :) SOCOM, welcome back to my life. I've missed you.



So here's the plan now from here on out. Once I get socom all set up and going, I believe we are playing for 48 hours straight. After that I plan on going to work for my Dad to earn some cash. He needs a website built, and I'm trying to get my new environment with Google Web Toolkit set up still, and having troubles with the debugger. Hopefully I can get it fixed before I go back to work with him. I also have one of my Uncle's companies wanting a website designed for Childrens Furniture group they have. It sounded pretty easy, nothing complicated.

Oh yeah. Brian's wedding. It was a blast, and I think I fell in love with a bridesmaid. It happens from time to time. That was the most fun I've had on a trip in a while. Brian's parents were great in getting the groomsmen a room and providing the tuxedos, and it was good being able to be part of Brian's wedding. I've known him for so long I can't believe we're to this stage in life already, at least HE is, not me, I've got a ways to go :) Meg's great for him, all the groomsmen agreed that we couldn't see him marrying any other woman. I didn't get to talk to her much, but hopefully over Christmas break I can hang out with the newlyweds and truly have time to catch up with them.

After the wedding, Brian and Meg decided to get a suite in a separate hotel, away from the family and the bridal party. The groomsmen MAY have called each hotel in Texarkana and found out where he was. We found his truck to finish the job we didn't have time and supplies for at the wedding. Here's some pics!! hahaha.



The culprits who took part in creating the massive condom-mobile that Brian's truck was.



That's it for now, time to get some sleep.

I think I hear Santa........

An instrument everybody loves

This video was pretty hilarious, I can't say I've tried that with my keyboard yet.



Why couldn't church be like this when I was young? Hahaha, geez


Anyways I've been kickin' it around the apartment for the past week. I'm starting to learn more about Google Web Toolkit, which basically lets you build awesomely interactive and powerful websites from Java code. Pretty amazing stuff, and I can't wait to get it working...

The University of Arkansas Police Department I work for wants me to put together a slideshow, but the event is tomorrow and he has yet to tell me which pictures he wants me to put on there. Yet again, I hate relying on people, especially the OLD ones, ugh. :P

I'll be heading back to Fort Smith for the holidays this Wednesday, then I've got one of my best friend's weddings on Friday. Should be pretty fun, I don't think they are doing anything huge but hey sounds good to me. Glad to finally be done with finals, for sure. We'll see how my grades turn out, so far so good.

I'll be sure to let you guys know how Google Web Toolkit goes :P

Oh yeah you can check out some of the stuff I did over the semester at this link

Some of the stuff will work on your computer, some will do absolutely nothing. I haven't made controls for the keyboard on all of them, but be sure to click around and see what they do... I probably should add descriptions to each one. Well I'll save that for another day.

Back to fixing a friends computer and programming, gotta love it?

-ms

One. More. Day.

Why not? I need more posts anyways.

maybe I should drop out of college and become a professional boxer. It's something I've always secretly wanted to do...

I love my few close friends I have. I tend to push the acquaintances away.

people would say I'm overly good-looking, well built, outgoing. --- Nah, people would say I'm a nerd/cool guy

I don’t understand women. Although a wise man told me once that I never will.

when I wake up in the morning I do the OCD shower/brushteeth/shave/get fully clothed (including shoes) even if I have nowhere to be. I don't know why, but I feel like my day never started unless I do those things. Oh, and I still skip breakfast.

I lost my will to get my assignments done by the end of the semester. Bad time, huh?

life is full of computer problems. We should fix that, no?

my past is full of good laughs, carelessness, and enjoying life day-by-day.

I get annoyed when people do small things that don't make sense or unnecessary. I let them know too. Kind of like the other day when I was with a friend at this convenient store by this parking deck, and my friend accidentally dropped a shot glass he was looking at. The owner started getting all mad and saying "Why'd you have to do that??" "Why would you do that?" "What is your problem?" I was thinking the whole time, dude, he's Indian (the friend was), lay off him. The owner just would not shut UP. I was planning on paying for it since the friend had no money. I finally was like "dude I'll clean it up just calm down it's not that big of a deal." He says "No it's fine I'll clean it up and you don't have to pay its just fine" I say "Then shut up, it's totally unnecessary for you to be acting like that." I was mad for like 3 hours after that. Pretty ridiculous. I know it doesn't sound intense on text...but it made me mad.

parties are lame. You meet people and then don't talk to them again. :yawn:

I wish I had an excuse to not do my assignments.

dogs are awesome.

cats are not.

tomorrow I'm TURKEY DAY.

I have low tolerance for unfairness.
I’m totally terrified of flying things with stingers. My entire family would tell you that. I still am.

I wonder why I I'm charismatic but I don't go out that much. Is it because I'm busy? That's my excuse at least.

never in my life have I wanted a personal cook so badly.

high school was :yawn:

when I’m nervous I usually keep a cool head. I might say a couple of weird statements, but other than that I'm usually not so bad.

take my advice: go to all your classes.

making my bed is a bi-weekly event.

I'm almost always on the computer. Playing games or doing homework. blah.

I’m addicted to video games (surprise)

I want someone to bring me food. i'm starvinggggg


Who starts these lists anyways?

So it begins...

Yea, I did it.
So what.


Ohhh the dangers of having a roommate. John, if you're reading this - 1) I had to. 2) You thought I was kidding. 3) Thanks.

Haha but yeah anyways, I moved my roommates 42" JVC TV into my room, for the ultimate computer monitor. It's almost... *ALMOST* too big. I was surprised to find out my graphics card wouldn't force it to a higher resolution, so since I'm so close to the screen, some images appear blocky. All the pictures I've viewed on it so far though are actually beautiful, and come in clear. So I'm actually thinking about getting one for Christmas, maybe? It'd be nice at least. And probably around 30 " would do nicely. Either that or a PS3 for Christmas, but we all know that is terrible for my GPA.

Today I had my Game Programming class, and he announced it was the final lecture, and the rest of the class periods would be used for assignment questions and such, even though I've been in his office near everyday since about a week ago. He's a really cool guy, knows a lot, and loves talking about video games. Definitely someone I need to talk to about getting started in the industry, and he's already guided me in the right direction. He tells me that I need to really look into DirectX10 and Visual C++ if I want people to even consider me as a programmer for their company. Visual C++ is basically the C++ that handles all the real-time graphics and such, unless I'm mistaken. He also told me that the 'x' in DirectX was sort of a variable, since the entire 'language' has libraries or whatever such as DirectInput, DirectAudio, DirectWhatever, I thought that was pretty interesting since I've never even really considered DirectX as something to put on my 'to learn' list, which is growing everyday. What sucks about that is, once I learn that crap, I'll have a whole new list of things to learn, since technology advances so much. I guess I better enjoy learning.

Anyway, I went to try and meet my robotics lab TA so I could pick up the newly ordered Accelerometer for the Lego NXT Robot kit. Our final projects is that we have to choose some sort of robot to build and program using these legobots. Since my room is a mechanical engineer, and I'm a computer scientist, it's basically a perfect set up. Over thankgiving, he took the functional parts home so he could build the main part of the robot, and I have the sensors and the actual 'brain' of the bot so I can program it and see the output/input stuff, and get it ready to set up wtih what he builds. We were inspired to build a lego 'missile' turret from a video on youTube which can be found here. Looks pretty sweet, hopefully it won't be too hard. If I had more time, I'd explain how it works and different ideas we had on it, but I could literally go on forever, and this post will be long enough anyway.

So after trying to find my TA, unsuccessfully (i'll have to get it from him tomorrow at noon) I went to Wendy's and got the dreaded BACONATOR, and dominated it back at home. I've basically been programming my 7th assignment for Game Programming since i've been home. (yes, that's 7 hours of programming). In this assignment, we have an avatar, and we should be able to click anywhere on the screen, and it uses a pathfinding algorithm to get to it in the shortest path. There are three different algorithms

-Breadth-First Search
-Best-First Search
-Dijkstra's Algorithm
-A* Search Algorithm

Since I wanted to fully understand the assignment, I coded all four, even though it may have been a waste of time. I really want to take the time to explain them here on this blog, since that's half of what I'm using it for, but I'm too far behind in my assignments to spend my time typing it out, unfortunately. Dijkstra's was the hardest, that's for sure, and the change from Dijkstra to A* was extremely simple, took me like 10 minutes, which was definitely nice. Also, we were supposed to animate our avatar using 'sprites', which are basically seperated frames - images - of a guy walking and his different positions, and based on the avatar's global orientation, and the amount of time he's spent walking, you can calculate which exact frame you need to be using, and apply that to the avatar. It was really simple to understand, hard as crap to program, it was terrible. Once I got it though, it was great.

I have so much I want to learn, and it sucks knowing how much work it'll take. Oh well.

Anyway, I thought since I finished that program tonight I'd allow myself some time off and play Fallout 3, a new game I bought on release night a few weeks back. It's probably one of the coolest games of the year for many reasons. You can choose to fight turn-based or in real time, although the turn based way is probably always the best choice. It's called "V.A.T.S" (i forget what it stands for) but you can basically stop time and look at your targets, choose which part of the body you want to hit, and it'll give you the percent chance to hit, and you can judge your shots based on that. You can only do this so much as it drains your Ability Points, which regen over time. So I mean when you have a super mutant that just took 4 shotgun shells to the head and he is STILL about to swing his huge spike board at you, things get pretty intense, since you have to fight him in real time. I usually end up running, fighting back, or just curling up in a corner in my room and crying since I was so scared.

I'm going home at some point this week, but I'm not sure when I should, since we are actually having thanksgiving where I'm living (Fayetteville). I still want to go back home (Fort Smith) and relax (meaning working on programming every waking moment) and seeing all the old' friends. Should be pretty fun.

I don't know when I'll post back, it's going to be a busy two weeks.

-Mojave