PiedotTaste's Blog

Another status report

2011-06-13T01:31:00.000+01:00

Only posting at significant junctions in life is becoming quite a theme. I have now completed my second year of university and await my results (impatiently), before hopefully beginning my third year...

Tomorrow is my first day back at uni, having finished my exams on the Monday just gone. Now, most people have a few months off here, hohoho. They are lucky. I am trying to join an experimental course which is actually a masters instead of bachelors. It means that, before they even finish marking my exam papers, they're going to start teaching extra modules right now - instead of a summer holiday. There's a chance any of us might have failed our second year, or more realistically, not achieved the 60% required to move onto the masters course. This isn't stopping them from teaching though!

I start tomorrow with a LASER SAFETY COURSE. That sounds awesome, and I will hear nothing to the contrary.

I'd like to just provide a heads up that this post is entirely me procrastinating because I do not want to go to sleep. This happens a lot these days. I have nothing to really worry about in the coming days, but I tend to stall before going to sleep as if I might miss something. It makes for very, very tired mornings.

I don't think anybody subscribes to my blog so this shouldn't be a problem, but if anyone received a flurry of RSS updates today it's because I edited every single blog post to A) use a 'Read More' or 'Jump Break' thing, this just makes my blog look tidier when you visit it. (It also forces people to navigate to a webpage just for that blog post, which makes for better statistics!) and B) remove all of the worse crap I've posted over the years. Being a teenager is full of personality forming situations and the such like, but I don't think all of those ponderings were really worthy of being spoken aloud, yet alone broadcast online.

On the subject of coding, I don't do a lot in my own time now, I do a smidge at university and plenty enough at work. Projects I start at home seem entirely less satisfying than coding at work. That isn't to say that I don't enjoy hobbyist programming, far from it, it's always thoroughly entertaining... it just never gets finished, there's never a full sense of completion, and it generally isn't helping anyone but my own interest. When I write code at work it helps people do their job, I get praised for it, it gets finished! It's just different. I also get paid, that's a bonus.

In fact, as far as spare time goes, I don't do a whole lot. I tend to be either checking the internet for updates (facebook, email, google reader...), playing games, coding or juggling. Checking for updates takes little to no time at all, I don't code all that much as I mentioned before, and juggling is not something I would use to occupy large periods of time! As for playing games... I've really only been playing StarCraft II regularly.

StarCraft II.

The problem with this game, is that it is difficult. You have to practice, and practice, and practice. I don't have the motivation to sit down and play a video game to the point of being good enough to be competitive. At least, not a game that makes it so difficult. An FPS I can pick up, and you play it casually until you're good at it, it's generally full of many rewarding moments. An RTS is a different thing... you start, you have jobs to do, things to manage. Then after a while, you exchange some battles with the enemy... from here the game can go many ways, some enjoyable as you pull of minor victories through good tactics... and some depressing as you're crushed by somebody far better.
It's a lot of work, for a game.
On balance, a great game, but not something I can play for hours on end before I get fed up of losing!

What else has happened...

A friend of mine has had a child recently! Whilst it was very much a surprise for him and ourselves (as we are all rather young...) he's coping with it. Him and his girlfriend are managing, life is going on, and they have a beautiful child. I'm really happy for him and I wish them all the best. Children are awesome. I hope I have children one day.

If I wasn't a lazy person, if I was perhaps more sociable and responsible, I think I would potentially make a good teacher. I love conveying knowledge, I love the idea of explaining things to children, helping them learn things about the world. Of course, not being around children in every day life, I try and explain things to my parents all the time. I'm usually trying to explain something to do with computers, programming, electronics or video games. They cannot be expected to express much interest in these things, they have far different interests, which is frustrating for me and furiously boring for them.

Unfortunately being a teacher is a really hard job, which is not really respected in the UK. People tend to grow up hating teachers because they didn't enjoy school, or didn't enjoy learning in some way... their opinion then spreads to thinking that therefore teachers have "easy" jobs. People assume that because children have 6 week holidays (or similar), that the teachers therefore have super easy jobs with huge holidays. Teachers not only do work in those holidays, but they put in a hell of a lot more time during their working week than most other professions. Some people work 9-5 and then get out of there, teachers are usually there at 8 or earlier, preparing notes, handling before school clubs, arranging the myriad of things required to educate. They then stay after school, marking books, preparing more lesson plans, writing reports, attending meetings, handling after school clubs. They can stay well into the evening, and regularly do. Even when they get home they usually have more books to mark and reports to write! Their entire day involves coordinating the lives of up to 30 or more young people whilst trying to educate them, ensure their correct behaviour and prepare them for the next stages of their life. You would have to be insane to think this is a straight forward task.

I feel quite strongly on this, with a parent who teachers primary school children. Imagine, therefore, my frustration when in 2009/10 (I forget), at a Christmas meal for work, my boss just went on about how useless teachers were and how crap they are, how easy their job is. Blugh.

I don't think I can postpone going to bed any further, I need to be in Birmingham for 10:00, and it is 01:25 now. Time for bed.

Status report! D:

2010-10-05T01:05:00.005+01:00

I am in my second year of university now, it is full of science and stuff.

The electronics looks a little scary in the sense that I find it hard to believe that in the next few years they are going to take me from what I know now, to being a competent electronic engineer...

I find this a little strange. I'm all for learning, but I'm not so good at the more abstract things that go with being a student. They're preparing you for the work place and that involves lots of seemingly arbitrary business related lectures. They're necessary but this is not immediately apparent and they're certainly not interesting.

It is also unfortunate that I suspect the working world of electronics rather involves a lot of stringent testing and proving that your work is reliable so as to be passed off by various european or global committees for production by whoever you work for. Unfortunately I can't see myself enjoying these sorts of responsibilities, and it makes me wonder if I will be good at this.

Ultimately I am doing my course because it is what I am interested in, unfortunately my interests - or more importantly, my ways of working - do not seem to align completely with how industry wants me to do things.

I am counting on this just resolving itself, and that either I will become a competent engineer who enjoys the engineering and tolerates the tedium of documentation for the love of his job... or alternatively it won't work out and I'll end up in a more computer-science oriented job.

Perhaps neither will work out, and I will have to do something arbitrary. Maybe I will have to make my own business so that I can pursue my own interests. I doubt it, though, I don't think I am suited to business.

Time for sleep!

Hrm.

2009-12-13T15:03:00.006Z

I really like Chiptune music for some reason, I can only assume that an entire childhood of Nintendo hand-held consoles using 8bit sound generators has done this to me.

I suspect I'm partially procrastinating here, I have Java coursework to document so my parents can get it printed at their work places tomorrow. As well as 250 words of business management report to write for tomorrow... *shifty eyes*.

Oh yeah, and I'm totally working on a computer game for an indie game development competition called Assemblee. There is no prize other than nice words and a warm fuzzy feeling in your tummy.

I'm not going to win, firstly the other competitors are super 1337, secondly one of the other competitors is MAKING A GOD DARN MMO O_O.

Still, it's fun trying. Here is my thread on their forums:

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=9756.0

:D

Should be interesting. I'm mostly in love with the title screen, so chuffed to bits with that, ha ha!

Oh yeah, and for Electronics we're doing an audio amplifier as our projects :O I hope I do all right, the electronics I'm fine with - but it's just the background research, documenting and referencing I suck at... >_>.

Rawr.

Being a home student:
Pros:-

Comfy
Parents do stuff for you
All your stuff is here
Familiar

Cons:-

Spend about 3 hours every day just getting to and from university
Social life is measured on a scale of non-existent to I-saw-my-Nan-today-by-chance

Logistically balances up, but god does the travelling suck >:C! Plus meeting people might be cool.

This doesn't mean I'd want to not be a home student, mind, don't get me wrong. I just feel a little bit like some of the social side would have been welcomed :( maybe.

Oh my!

2009-11-22T20:34:00.002Z

I'm a university student. Woooooaaaah!

Surprise.

I am surprised. I hope you are, too. Electronic Engineering & Computer Science, it makes me cool.

I deleted a few older posts, because they were too coding oriented, and let's be honest nobody gives a damn about coders and their code except other coders - and that's rare.
Although to be fair, nobody is going to read this either, but whatever. I felt that if I was going to have somewhere on the internet to post things from time to time, people are going to find it sometimes, and if they have just met me and find this blog they'd probably avoid me from then on - so I figured it was time to remove the boring parts.

So now I'm trying to just discuss interesting bits and pieces. Or... just myself. *cough*. Yes.

I'm currently coming to you from the power of the mobile broadband usb dongle, because my house's broadband is... unhappy... or something.

I haven't been playing so many games recently, and not too much coding, either. Spending a lot of time just thinking when I'm at home, and thinking is dangerous!

University wise things are pretty okay, the computer science aspect is represented so far as just Java programming, which is like a much easier version of C++ so it's mindlessly easy. Then there's the electronics, which is more difficult but also interesting enough to make you learn it.

Socially at university, I've made a couple of friends so far, who I see from time to time and chat to in lectures a little bit, but most of my time is spent reading books or travelling to and from uni.

That's right, travelling. I'm one of those home students. They're right, it does put you out of the social loop, and on one hand I'm fine with that - I'm not a social person at all, I mean for gods sake I'm blogging to a non-existent audience. So you know. On the other hand, I'm spending a lot of time in my own mind, reading, in lectures or sleeping. Is that normal? I sort of wish I being forced to meet people.

Oh yeah, Pringles taste good.

Currently writing here but simultaneously providing tech-support for university students who are stuck with their coding coursework, whilst trying not to help them in a way that is cheating.
I seem to attract these people.

Oh yeah, in the midst of my angst-y lack of socialising I had an awesome Skype conversation with Sinéad and a group of her friends at Glasgow university. That cheered me up a lot, just a bit of time - albeit electronically - chatting with some people, most of whom I'd never met before. It was cool, I feel like we got on somewhat, and it was nice.

And one of them was Russian.

Coolest. Accent. Ever.

Except maybe Irish and Welsh and Australian. They're cool, too. I really appreciated that conversation, if any of you read this at some point, somehow, perhaps Sinéad.

I use return keys a lot. I just had to edit this to use about 2/3rds less newlines.

You'll notice I write a lot, that's because stuff just comes into my head and my touch-typing just lets it splurge out onto the screen in a stream of conciousness for editing later, and I seriously don't have anything better to do. Haha.

I've played a lot of guitar today, both real and guitar hero. I love my guitars, they make me feel better when I don't feel so great. Acoustic only, though, electrics are clearly for losers! Haha.

Okay I've written stuff, wondered whether or not to actually post this, is it too angst-y? Is it too boring? WHO CARES IT'S MY BLOG bwahahaha. People either read it or they don't, it's up to them, I guess it's not really my problem.

Perhaps just writing stuff makes you feel better, in which case why not just write a word document and then save it away or delete it? I guess maybe people who write blogs like this really hope that somebody will see it and respond nicely or something. The whole idea of a blog is kind of attention seeking. Blogs don't work without attention.

Harumph.

I'm going to... go and... um. Sit here and check my google reader and google mail obsessively for a few moments, find it's not changed since 5 minutes ago.

Quiet time, maybe.

w00t!

2009-04-23T09:19:00.002+01:00

I would just like the world to know, my computing coursework is now finished. Yes, that's right.

Finished.

Sorry, I just want to say that again.

My computing coursework is finally finished.

Mmmm. It feels good to say that. Finished.

Yeah, so I'm happy about that. I do, however, still have less than four weeks until my exams and very little physics and maths revision under my belt. I'll leave you to guess as to how stressful that is by yourselves, but here's a hint, an insight from my mind: "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!"

Just sayin'.

I wish all UK A-Level exam takers good luck for the up-coming weeks. Anyone else taking exams, good luck to you also, but I don't know where else has exams around May/June? Except of course secondary schools. They have GCSEs around now, don't they?

Whatever, I'm at college now, I don't have a lesson until 11:30 but I've been here since about 8:30, as is my tradition. It sounds weird but it turns out it actually takes less effort for me to get here really early than it does for me to get here 'on time'.

I really need to revise. *sad*

Oh, by the way. Left 4 Dead survival mode is out. It is very awesome. I shall have to post images at some point in the future, oh yes. As it is the awesome. You never saw so many special infect in your life! It's also very hilarious, I might add.

I'll post again Soon (TM)!

Okay, so 7 months later...

2009-04-14T18:27:00.002+01:00

I'm 18 now, don't you know! That's quite cool.

I bought GTA IV recently for the PS3, golly gee whizz it's awesome. What's novel is the total lack (without a USB headset, do you have a USB headset? I don't, who on Earth has a USB headset!?) of ways to communicate with other players in multiplayer. You have to resort to primitive dance, the whole actions speak louder than words.

Of course this is difficult when everybody elses actions just seem to say "BANG BANG! U DED!". It's a tough life, GTA. I mostly like the helicopters. They are muchos cool.

Also worth note, technically complete a campaign on Left 4 Dead with the difficulty on Expert the other day - even survived the Last Stand. Sadly I had joined this particular game half way and got no achievement. *sadface*.

A point here, feel free to add me on playstation network. My username is, coincidentally, PiedotTaste. I mostly play GTA IV or Killzone 2 (similarly awesome).

College is 'interesting' at the moment (despite how I'm in the Easter holidays?). I have less than five weeks until I must sit my A-Levels, the results of which shall determine my ability to attend university. Good fun.

I need to achieve BBC to get into my chosen university, Aston, in Birmingham. Technically I'm currently working at ABC. These grades - in order to keep them - require that, firstly, I complete my computing coursework.. which is in dire need of some loving. Secondly, I must revise much maths. I'm talking lots of practice, learning trig identities, etc. Thirdly I must do a fair amount of revision for physics.

So this basically boils down to "revise, damnit!". This is true. Unfortunately, 1) Revision sucks. I'm sure you're all aware of this, but I need to re-iterate because of the severe importance of this point. 2) Coursework sucks more than revision. Some of you might disagree. I don't blame you, some people really dig this coursework stuff and find it easy. Give them a checklist and promises of a good grade and they'll go right on and win life. Sadly I fail at coursework, I struggle to make my mind concentrate on it.

Oh yes, I'm rather into animé you know. I haven't mentioned this in my blogs before, but I am.

Mostly since starting college and being guided towards the good stuff by new friends who also have the animé bug.

I'm currently completely up to date with Bleach and Naruto, working my way through the first episodes of One Piece. Bleach is easily the best one, here. It's just great. Naruto is certainly okay and One Piece is shaping up to be fairly good.

The worst thing about getting into an animé is that when you start, you've got over two hundred episodes (in the case of Bleach) to watch (214 episodes as of the time of writing, supposing you were to start now). If you skip the intro and outro of each episode you're looking at about twenty minutes an episode. That's just under three days of animé. It seems like you've got loads to get through and when you have spare time you can just gorge on it. It's wonderful. Then after many gorges and many weeks, you eventually end up at the current day episode. It really hurts if you're mid-gorge. You're getting into the animé and there's a cliff hanger, you go to press 'next episode' as you have the past 213 times... argh! What is this? No... n-no next episode? WHAT IS THIS?

Then you have a little cry, in a dark room. There there, my child. There'll be another episode.. next wednesday.

"WEDNESDAY?" you cry, in anguish.

I'm afraid it's so. Then after that, another week of waiting. The next wednesday.

It hurts. I know. We must endure this for the greater good of animé.

I've also recently discovered twitter, it's pretty cool. The awesome likes of Adam Savage and Grant Imahara from Mythbusters use it, and it's cool to see the stuff they post.

I'm going to go ahead and sate your drooling mouths and tell you my Twitter account name, I know it's hard to guess, .. hey. Calm down, I'll tell you in a second. You rabid fans, you!

It's PiedotTaste. Try not to fight over it and subscribe atll at once or anything, don't want to break Twitter with the sheer mass of you! All... zero readers.

Hrm.

On that note, I bid you adieu!

Swoosh!

Woah, you're doing something for once!?

2007-07-08T09:02:00.002+01:00

Yes! I am! >:D

Yesterday I felt like stalking around (haha, pun that will make you laugh later, honest.) the Garry's Mod forums in the custom Gamemode sections. Some people had made some interesting mods which I checked out.

One mod which, sadly, i found no servers for but seemed a bit interesting was Stalker RP (GET IT NOW? I AM SO FUNNY!). It was a role playing gamemode that was based somewhat on S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadows of Chernobyl. It obviously wasn't as good as the real game but, that's given as S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadows of Chernobyl is godlike.

So anyway, after playing this mod I realised that it had essentially tried to take the "main" game elements and stick them into Garry's Mod, these being "Get artifacts", "Avoid anomalys", "Trade with people". An extra feature that never shipped with the final game, i believe, was "Blowouts". The Stalker RP mod did implement this in an... interesting... way. As in there is a timer to the next 'Blowout' by which time you have to be 'safe'. When the timer runs out radiation blasts from (some mysteriously unknown locations) and kills you if you aren't 'safe'. Sadly the mod never actually tells you how to be 'safe'. Although once I did, out of desperation, seal myself in a dumpster and enter a vehicle pod, sitting out the radiation quite unharmed.

Playing this made me think that, surely if it can be broken down into such simple elements it wouldn't be that hard to make a basic implementation in 2D, right!? So, I decided to set up a google code website for it (i'm too lazy to use a USB stick to transfer my projects between PC and Laptop ): and made a partially complete to-do list on there. Now I should be able to start cracking on with things.

As it stands, my to-do list currently states that I should be making a rather interesting map-editor. Hmm. It seems I have plenty of work to do, eh? ;_;

~~For anyone interested in watching the project the google code page is~~ here~~. Go there now >:[~~
[Edited (13/06/2011) - like all things I start, this died a few weeks later. This link is dead now]

Hopefully this will be one of those projects I finish... ;)
[See above - ahahaha no]

You didn't post yesterday! I'm gonna break your legs!

2007-07-03T22:19:00.002+01:00

Noooo! >:

So anyway. I didn't post yesterday, or possibly several other days. I can't remember, but as a scapegoat I blame laziness.

However, in this time I have successfully taught 30 children or so to animate, learn about Method Pointers (as i've sadly never bothered to look at them before), coded a small particle engine in 2D for Allegro but it kind of sucks a little bit and other usual stuff.

I'm hoping to be blinded with some mystical motivation to code something soon. Something worthy of being categorized as a program. Hopefully. Sometime.

;_;

At the moment i'm annoying people on #Coding at irc. dynastynet .net. I've gained us a new community member calling himself Ricky26, because I stoled him from real life. I am so sneaky.

This is the end of another blog, I will post again at somepoint with more fascinating (and not trivial in any way) stuff.

THE Hello World

2007-06-30T15:50:00.001+01:00

Because I am 1337 and completely original - Hello World.

Everyone at #Coding is making a development blog, at my request, because i'm sad and have no life - The internet is big and good content far between. Solution? Force people to make good content FOR YOU but trick them into thinking its for the good of man. Mwahaha.

So yes, this will be my blog for posting general stuff and also my development blog, detailing current projects.

At the moment I am coding little, generally investigating some interesting little OOP things such as signal/slot etc.

Now I leave you to do what you will, fictional viewers.