Hey guys,
Steve is still here.
Today, out of pure bordem, I decided to do a bit of browsing around my website. While doing so, I discovered that including this one, there have only been 3 posts published to this blog since June first. Please know that I’m not losing interest in blogging, it’s just that there hasn’t been very much to blog about. But since it’s been 18 days since my last entry, and I went to a camp during that time, I figured it was definitely time to write a post.
For me, the 4th was quite uneventful. All I did that day was sit around and listen to episodes of we’re alive, an audio drama about people who are trying to survive the zombie Apocalypse. I watched from chapter 40 to 47 that day, and chapter 48, the finale, will be available to listen to on the 29th of this month. I can’t wait!
Moving on, my family spent Saturday and half of Sunday traveling to camp. Since Lions camp is in Kerrville, about 5 and a half hours from my house, me, my mom, my dad, and sister drove to Austin Saturday afternoon, and spent the night in a hotel, and made it to the camp by about 1:30 in the afternoon.
Since Sunday was the first night of camp, all we did was the opening ceremony. Also, since I was in the oldest age group, I got to choose 2 block classes (from 10 to 12 each morning, the first one we’d go to Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and the second we’d go to on Tuesday and Thursday). I chose cooking, and center stage, a sort of acting class.
Camp turned out to be quite a blast. In cooking class, we cooked omelets, granola bars (they were more like blobs, but they still tasted good), and angel food cake. In center stage, we learned stage combat, and went on a field trip to see a play on Thursday night. Although we had to leave the play early due to some inappropriate content, I still got to miss the dance, which is definitely okay with me.
Besides block class, there were several activities including ropes (where you climb things), r&a (recreation and athletics, similar to gym class), swimming, horses, archery, and swimming.
At ropes, I actually managed to reach the top of the 30 foot rock wall, although there was a lot of nausea, heavy breathing, and breaks involved, because I’m not really in shape; but what really matters is that I made it :).
Each night after dinner, we’d have a night activity. On Monday, it was something called carnival, where there were games and snacks. I ended up eating a pretty good size stick of cotton candy, and let’s just say I was very hyper the rest of that night.
Tuesday, at least for my unit, was camp out, which is pretty much self-explanatory. For dinner we had hobo packs. In mine, I had meat, potatoes, and some seasoning.
On Wednesday, we had Night Court, where you could file a complaint about one of your councilors, and there was a chance that counselor would get punished in front of all the campers. What would normally happen was that they got lots of nasty stuff poured on them.
Thursday night’s activity was the dance, but since I went on that trip, I didn’t go.
And on Friday, we had the closing ceremony. Since my sister is 16, she graduated camp, but I still have one year. I will definitely be going back next year, because I had a blast.
All I really did last week was unpack, and get back in to the normal routine. Today was mostly the same, but my mom, sister and I went swimming this afternoon.
Besides that, for those of you who have followed this blog fir 3 months or more, you probably remember a post where I said I didn’t particularly want to take pre-AP english next school year. For those of you who commented on that, telling me to take the class, you’ll be happy to know that I am, in fact, taking it. Proof of this is the summer assignment I received yesterday… ug.
I have to create a dialect journal over a book of my choice (thank goodness it’s not like last year where I did an assignment over a book I didn’t care to read). I don’t remember the exact assignment off the top of my head, but I’ll look at it and work on it tomorrow.
Also, we have to do some research on Homer’s Odyssey. This is a relief because I actually thought I’d have to read the book over the summer. But thankfully, we’re not reading it until the school year begins, so I guess that makes things a whole lot better for me.
Well this year, unlike last year, I won’t wait until August 20 to begin the assignment, in case 4 days of summer isn’t enough to complete it.
On a completely different subject, I haven’t done a podcast in quite a while. Recently, however, I’ve obtained a few great games to demo in the podcast, so expect that to change. For those of you subscribed to the podcast feed, the episodes will show up in your feed July 27, August 3, and August 10. For those of you who haven’t subscribed to the podcast feed, the url to copy into your pod catcher is https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/49289052/stevendpodcast.xml
.
If you don’t have, or know how to use, a pod catcher, then check back to the podcast page on each of those days to listen to the episodes, which will be 23, 24, and 25.
Well, I guess that about wraps up today’s post. Hopefully, I will have more to blog about in the next few days, so I’ll be able to write more frequently. And if I don’t write soon, know that you’ll get to read another one of my awesome posts somewhere in the next couple weeks.
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.
Category: happyness
Updates and stories
Hey guys,
Steve here.
I can’t believe it, but it’s already been 3 weeks since I last posted to this blog–and a fun 3 weeks it was. I have quite a bit to tell you, but I’ll try to keep this post as short as possible.
The first 10 days after my last update were pretty much uneventful. The only thing I did worth blogging about was going to the lake house, that is, except being without a sister for a week (she went to a PE class at the Texas School for the Blind).
But on Sunday, June 22, I went to TSB for a writer’s workshop class which lasted two weeks. In the class, we’d start the day by coming up with a theme. Some of the daily themes we came up with were darkness, anger, love, emotions, and on the first day, why write.
After we came up with, and had a consensus for the daily theme, we’d usually do some free writing. For the first two days, I was unable to come up with anything (I finally wrote two or 3 pieces, one of which will be at the bottom of this post).
In the afternoon, the teacher would give us some inspiration, which would be different each day. One day, he taught us about song writing, other days it was different forms of poetry, some being different types of writing. After that, we’d have more free writing time, then we’d share what we wrote.
Also, we did this thing called “work shopping,” where we’d go through an investigative report paper which would ask questions such as what’s happening, what were details that really stood out to the reader, could the story have a different title, could it have a different starting point etc.
On Thursday of last week, since the inspiration for the day was Eco poetics, our class visited a place called Bright Leaf nature preserve, where we had a guided tour of a forest filled with plants and trees you wouldn’t normally see in your back yard. I would’ve taken pictures, but wasn’t sure if I was allowed to, and besides I didn’t bring my phone to school that day.
After visiting the nature preserve, we ate and had the daily inspiration lesson at a park, which was practically swarming with peacocks.
Besides that, we went to a coffee shop this past Tuesday. There, we did some free writing and editing. I don’t know if it was the caffeine, the chocolate coffee drink I had, or the fact that I was getting to a good part of the piece I was working on, but that was by far my most productive day of writing.
At the end of the two weeks, there was an end of program show, where we displayed our work, or in the writers’ case, read our stories. I read my story Desperation and Frustration; I’ll post the recording on a different post. Also written by me was a piece (not exactly a complete story, but I guess you could call it an excerpt) called Unyielding Vines, which I’ll include at the end of this post.
To sum it up, I had a lot of fun during that class. If it still exists next year, It’ll definitely be on the list of programs I might want to sign up for, most likely somewhere at the top.
Well, I guess that wraps up this post. I won’t be doing any more posts for at least the next week, because next week is Texas Lions Club Camp. I’ll tell you all about it when I get back.
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.
P.S. my story.
Disclaimer: If you are not okay with reading about horror or blood, please do not read this story.
Unyielding Vines
I could only lie there, paralyzed with fear, feeling the terrible sensation of the vines tearing into my wrists and ankles, their thorns biting
into my skin. The night was bitterly cold, a harsh wind rustling the densely packed trees and bushes surrounding me. Mixed with the sounds of
the forest were the sounds of countless vines surging toward me, a horrendous crackling pressing in from all sides.
Muscles bulging, I desperately tried to pull my hands free, tugging at the vines with all my might. Thorns sliced deep into my wrists in
protest, blood oozing over the tops of my hands and wetting the ground beneath them. Shrieking with pain, I fell back, gasping at the burning
sensation of thorns digging into my deeply cut wrists. The pain was quickly forgotten as more vines reached me, stabbing through my white t-
shirt and carving searing cuts down my sides and across my back as they wormed their way beneath me. Wincing, I sat up, the vines ripping there
way out of my shirt, other ones clawing at my clothes, shredding the material and slashing the skin underneath.
Riddled with pain, I lay back, landing in a bed of vines, Cringing at the pain of thorns stabbing into my back. Trembling with pain and the
biting cold washing over my newly exposed skin, I let my head rest upon the cool, damp ground. Closing my eyes, I lie still, doing my best to
ignore the intense pain raging through me.
All of a sudden, a vine began to work its way under the right side of my neck. Within a second or two, it was wrapped around all but the far
left side. While I still could, I snapped my head to the left with a harsh popping sound, pain coursing through my spine. Angrily, I craned my
head forward, biting down on the nearest vine I could reach, tugging and wrenching with all my might, the vine stretching and creaking, the
muscles in my neck bulging with the effort. Driven by raw fear and the immense pain, I tugged with a force I never even knew I had, heavy
breaths escaping my tightly clenched teeth.
Finally, the vine gave way with a harsh crack, the ends quickly retreating into the forest, my head smashing into the ground, lights flashing
before my eyes. Dazed, I lie there, as yet another vine shoved its way under my neck, wrapping around my throat with enough force to jerk my
head to the side, the sore muscles in my neck screaming with pain. Suddenly, it became impossible to breathe, and boiling panic swelled within
me, urging me to fight.
Frantically, I began thrashing, vines slicing through my skin and clothes in retaliation, the burning pain intensifying to an uncontrollable
roar.
The pain of a thousand raging infernos erupted from my throat as a thorn stabbed into the side of my neck, a fountain of blood pouring from the
wound. My mouth flew open in a silent scream, my body violently convulsing with the immense pain and the desperate need for oxygen.
My strength quickly fading, I stopped struggling, falling into the deadly grip of the many vines wrapped around me. As I lie there, the darkness
closed in, a comforting veil separating me from that awful, unbearable pain. It seized control of my mind, pulling me down into its comforting
embrace.
Steven Daugherty
A pretty awesome 3-day weekend
Hey guys,
Steve here.
Few, this weekend went by incredibly fast. We had something planned every day, so there wasn’t much chill time, and what little chill time I had, I spent talking to friends, reading, or sleeping, though I did squeeze in a bit of gaming here and there.
To start off, we went to Friday night fellowship last Friday night, as I said we’d be doing in Wednesday’s post. In case you didn’t know, Friday night fellowship is where everyone goes up to the church to play games, eat, and socialize.
Being that we were having a lot of fun, we didn’t end up leaving the church until about 11:00, thus I ended up crashing when we got home.
On Saturday, we had goal ball as usual, then we had to baby sit for some of our church friends because they were attending a graduation. They have 4 kids, the youngest being 2, and the oldest being 12. Thankfully, the 12 year old is a boy, so I hung out with him the whole time.
On Sunday, besides going to church twice as usual, I relaxed during the afternoon, and after evening church my family and I ate dinner with 2 friends of ours from church, though not the same ones who’s kids we baby sat on Saturday. Once again, this ended late, so we didn’t get home until around 11.
As for today, we had that family get together I talked about in Wednesday’s post. Also, I downloaded the game River Raiders, which you’ve probably heard me talk about on this site before. In fact, I’ve recorded my scores on the game scores page, and done several demonstrations on the audio game reviews and demonstrations page.
Well, after downloading it again, I got addicted to it. And around 8:35 or so, I started a game that lasted me 20 minutes, (the time you start out with is 5 minutes but the copious amount of bonuses and superbonuses I got added on time), and the end result, a score of 1,822 points. That’s by far the highest score I’ve ever earned in that game!
As for how I did it, the ghosts kept cursing me (I talked about this in the review I did on the audio game reviews and demonstrations page but when ghosts curse you it calls all the monsters in the river to your location), and I was able to escape the mob of monsters. In fact, the cursing better gave me an idea of where the monsters were, since it put them all in one place.
Also, I kept getting monster super paralyzer bonuses, so I was able to freely move about the river for short periods of time. So all of those, combined with my awesome skills, made for a wonderful, record breaking game.
Well, I guess that about wraps up this post. I hope you all enjoyed reading it!
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.
Great news and a busy week
Hey guys,
Steve here.
As the post title implies, I’ve got some good news to tell you guys about. It might not affect you as much as it does me… but I figured I’d share it with you, this being my blog.
Remember that Spanish exam I talked about in last Thursday’s update? Well I figured two good things about it:
1. Turns out, that won’t determine whether or not I fail or pass Spanish 1. It’s the semester averages combined, not the semester exam scores as I previously thought. And judging by the fact that my grade in that class has been passing all year long, that answers the question of whether or not I’m done with Spanish 1.
2. The test has been moved back a week. So even if there were a good reason for me to be panicking, I could give my nerves a rest for about another week.
Oh man, you wouldn’t believe how relieved I was to learn that. I’m not terrible in Spanish, though I’m not the best either.
Moving on, also mentioned in the title, I’m having a rather busy week this week. There’s been church, concerts, and will be more church, and even… I think a family get together on Sunday.
To start off, we went to church twice last Sunday, as we normally do. On Monday, my sister had an orchestra concert, followed by my choir concert on Tuesday. Tonight, we’re going to church, and Friday night fellowship will be this Friday at our church. And finally, on Sunday, I believe we’re having a family get together.
Monday will be memorial day, and there’s nothing planned that day. I think I might spend Monday programming, because I haven’t done much of that in a while. Come to think of it, besides playing games and doing a late podcast, I really haven’t done anything productive in the world of technology in quite some time.
Moving on, but still kind of on my previous topic, there are only 11 days of school left, one of which will be Tiger Bash, a day of fun and absolutely no school work. And, the last days of school will be early release days. I guess after that, until June 23 when I go to church camp, I’ll have plenty of time to program, Skype, blog, and podcast; so if I’m not blogging a lot now, just remember that I will when school lets out, because I’ll have plenty of free time.
Well, I guess that about wraps up tonight’s post. I hope you enjoyed reading it, and I promis to blog more often.
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.
P.S. Episode 23 of the Steven D podcast hasn’t been forgotten. I’ll get with danny and we’ll record it together.
Getting back into it… hopefully
Hey guys,
Steve here.
As you might already know, this blog hasn’t been updated much over the past 20 days. The reason for this isn’t that I’m losing intrest in blogging, but that there hasn’t been much worth blogging about over the past several days. As of yet, nothing extremely interesting has happened, however I felt the need to end the extreme blog post deprivation I was putting you guys through.
One year prior to today, a tornado outbreak broke out across north Texas. Though more states might have been involved, I performed little if any research on the outbreak. But as far as I know, there were 18 tornadoes (judging by the last post I posted about it last year), leaving 6 people dead. And I recall, that on that day, there was a low tornado threat. Makes me think that though meteorology has greatly improved over the past centry, there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done. Because after all, I don’t think anyone could’ve guessed that there would be 18 tornadoes; and come to think of it, the next week when there was a huge outbreak predicted, the storms were hardly even severe.
Changing topics, I finally got the 22nd podcast done, though some of you might already know that, judging by the fact that it’s already been downloaded. As for how many times, I unfortunately can’t check that, but I know that it’s in the top clicks widget. This podcast episode was a bit different; instead of having several segments, I featured a game review. This might occur sometimes, since it seems more sinsible to do game reviews in podcasts, since not only is it hard to muster up the motivation to do a game review at random, but a podcast seems the most likely place for people to look for one.
While still on the topic of game reviews, Danny wants to do a let’s play of Dead Space, and would like for me to join in. If this occurs, I will blog about it and put it on the audio game reviews and demonstrations page.
Moving on, I have some pretty big school related things coming up. First of all, my choir concert, the last one of the year, will be on Tuesday, May 20. Also, there will be an orchestra concert, also the final one, on May 29.
But there’s one more daunting task looming ahead, one which I know I’ll have to prey really hard about. It’s the Spanish 1 final exam, which is going to take place next Thursday. And if I don’t pass it, that will be one whole year of assignment after assignment, and memorizing vocabulary and grammar of another language, wasted. Because should my grade fall short of 70, I will have failed the class and will have to take it again next year.
While still on the subject of school, there are only 15 days left, two of which are half days. It’s hard to believe that I only have 15 days left in middle school–exciting, oh so exciting, but very hard to believe. But of course, there will still be more checkpoints and test in the last couple weeks of school. Though unlike the Spanish exam, these tests don’t really worry me; they’re just more obstacles on the path to freedom, from middle school that is.
Well, I guess that about wraps up tonight’s post. I hope to get back into a regular blogging routine.
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.
I'm back at last
Hey guys,
Steve here.
11 whole days? Has it really been that long? Wow, I can’t believe I made you readers spend a week and a half without reading my awesome blog posts!
As is with posts such as this, I have quite a bit to tell you, because though it is possible to take a break from blogging, I can’t say the same for life.
The weekend after my last post, my family and I went down to Round Rock for a goal ball tournament type of thing. After getting up at 5:17 AM to be exact, I got dressed, had a bight to eat, then we drove up in a rented van with Julie, one of our goal ball players.
When we got there that morning, we did a few small events just to pass the time before lunch, and the tournament, or more accurately “series of games,” took place after lunch, lasting until about 4:30.
I call it a series of games rather than a tournament because there was no formality what soever. Throughout the so called tournament, we, along with a couple other teams from the Texas school for the blind and Round Rock itself, played against each other, without keeping track of who was winning. There were no awards at the end, no team got “first place,” it was just a series of games, albeit a fun one.
Since roundrock is so far away, and we had to drop Julie off, we didn’t get home until about 10, at which point I was pretty tired.
Sunday was a normal day. I recall mentioning that there was the possibility of Tornados on Sunday, however we were once again spaired. However, people in places such as Arkansas, Iowa, Alabama, and a few other states that I can’t think of at the moment weren’t so lucky. The tornadoes that swept through the nation’s mid section Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday left 35 people ddead. In fact, in a city called Tupelo, a meteorologist had to take cover during a live broadcast.
changing topics, also around the time those tornadoes were sweeping across areas to the north of us, revival was going on at my church. Though I don’t know why it was considered a revival to this day, one thing I can say is that the singers and preacher we had were awesome. For some reason, we had a different preacher preach during revival, and different singers leading us in worship.
And now that it’s over, I miss those people. I hope they come back to our church soon.
Switching back to the topic of my life, besides the revival, not much happened during the school week. But on Friday night, Dars (That stands for something, however I don’t know what it is) had an over night stay at the fortworth zoo planned. My sister and I went, and it turned out to be pretty awesome. This was the 3rd time I’ve been on this particular trip, but it was by far the most fun. It was much the same as last time–get there, eat dinner, go on a tour, do an arts and crafts activity, go to bed, wake up the next morning and have breakfast followed by an animal presentation, take another walk around the zoo, eat lunch, go to the gift shop, and then leave… but this time I had some cool people to hang out.
Well, I guess that brings us to here and now. I’d tell you about Sunday, however it was like any normal Sunday; church in the morning and evening, cleaning, and talking to friends. And today at school… well that was boring as usual. On the bright side, we only have 23 more school days to go! And then, it’ll be summer, then I’ll be in high school.
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve
Ps. As for the podcast, I couldn’t do that on Friday because I was in a hurry. I’ll do it tomorrow though.
3 whole years!
Hey guys,
Steve here.
It’s already been 3 years everyone! And together, we can celebrate another year of this awesome site…
Well yeah, that is true, but let’s cut to the chase. As with all annual posts, I have a stats report to show you guys. If you’d like to compare the stats report below with the one from last year, click here.
- 10198 views
- 138 followers
- 757 posts
- 32 categories
- 1203 search tags
- 22 pages
Those are just some of the stats for this blog. However, I have more to talk about than just stats in this post, thus is why that list was so brief.
April 21, 2011 at 5:05 PM, I published my first ever post to this blog. Can you believe that? That means, at the time of this writing, this blog is approximately 3 years and 4 hours old. And yes, believe it or not, most of the views and followers came in the last year! In fact, there were only 44 followers, and 4902 views on April 21, 2013, and that number has since doubled, or maybe even tripled over just this past year… talk about astonishing!
switching topics, let me give you a brief life update (it probably won’t be brief :). But anyway, Wednesday and Thursday of last week were normal days. However, on Friday after school, my family and a few of our church friends went to the lake house.
We stayed the night and came home on Saturday evening. It went mostly the same as last time, except there were quite a few more people, and I didn’t get a sunburn, mainly due to the fact that I had to lather myself with thick layers of sunscreen practically every hour… but it’s better to be safe than sorry… right?
Anyway, the excitement of the weekend didn’t end there. No, after going home, showering, and chilling for the rest of Saturday night, we had to get up at 5:15 in the morning to attend Easter sunrise service at our church. After that, we were there until 12:30, because of Sunday school and regular Sunday morning service.
After church, we met up with Justin, and went to my papa Dutch’s house for easter dinner, where I had pork, sweet potatoes, bread, and candy.
We ended up staying until around 4:30 or so. And after we got home, I took a nap, and woke up thinking it was Monday already. Yes, I actually woke up, panicking at 7:40 last night because I thought it was 7:40 this morning. I didn’t truly know what day it was until 3 minutes later, after getting upset that there was no coffee, and having pulled out a plate, when I absent mindedly checking the date on my watch and realizing it was still Sunday.
Well, the night ended well anyway–a nice energizing cup of warm coffee, and a thunderstorm. Unfortunately however, it wasn’t one worth recording, but none the less it was pleasant to listen to.
As for today, it was your average Monday. I had a doctors appointment, but only missed choir and part of math. However, on a last note, there were 2 more storms today. I didn’t record any of them though.
Moving on, I am excited to tell you that I have our next episode of the Steven D podcast planned out. I will be recording it tomorrow afternoon–so, if you’re subscribed to the feed via a pod catcher or podcast receiver, check that at some point tomorrow. If you’re not subscribed to the feed, however, be sure to check the podcast page.
Well, I guess that about wraps up tonight’s post. I hope you enjoyed it!
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.
Ps. I’d just like to thank you guys for putting up with, and reading this blog. I hope it’s been funny, intertaining, informational, and exciting!
You guys have been awesome for putting up with delays, forgetfulness, and procrastination on my part. Even on those 3 week blogging breaks, 2 week gamebook release delays, and month long podcast delays, you guys patiently sat through it all, and had faith in me, knowing that I’d get the job done some how.
Well, if you guys continue to read this blog, you can look forward to more of your favorite posts and content over the coming years.
Thankyou for reading everyone, and have a great week!
Great podcast news and life updates
Hey guys,
Steve here.
I’m going to try and keep this post long. Let’s see if that actually works, and makes me keep it short–because after all, when I say I’ll keep it short, it ends up being long, so let’s see if this little trick of mine works.
Anyway, it’s now April 15, the day before the pole on whether or not this site should have a home page will close. So, if you’d like a say in the matter, tonight and tomorrow are your only chances–at 8:00 tomorrow night, or somewhere thereafter, the pole will no longer exist, and I’ll do what you guys decided.
So, since it’s the last day, I’ll put the pole on the post:
[polldaddy poll=7937065]
Moving on, let’s sstart off with the great podcast news. If you listened to the podcast episode 20, you know that I said I’d try and do an rss feed for the podcast. I’m not sure whether or not I mentioned this on a previous post… but who knows. Anyway, with that said, I stuck to my word… and we now have a podcast feed, which you can subscribe to by visiting the podcast page.
Moving on, my life has been pretty normal over the passed 5 days or so. On Friday and Saturday, not much happened, besides school and goal ball. Sunday, however, we went to church, then some friends from church came over and hung out and had lunch with us. Also on Sunday, Justin came over once again to visit.
Yesterday was a cold, windy, and blustery Monday. Speaking of Mondays, I didn’t write a Monday’s Musings entry because I didn’t have a topic once again, and by the time I got off of Skype with Danny, I’d already stayed up passed the time I prefer to go to bed on nights before I have to get up at 5:45 in the morning, so writing a lengthy blog post was out of the question.
As for today, it was the beginner orchestra festival I talked about in two of my most recent posts. As was expected, I missed most of school, then had a proceeding concert this evening. There were, literally, about a thousand people, so when I was done, I grabbed on to my dad, and him, my sister, and I had to make our way through the massive croud in order to get out of there. If you ask me, putting a thousand or more people in a gymnasium isn’t the most brilliant idea you could come up with, but I guess I didn’t really have a say in the matter. Other than the large abundance of people, the concert went quite well. I think, that I had all my bowings correct… but who knows. And if I didn’t, no matter.
Well I guess that about wraps up this post. Hmm, seems my trick worked. I guess that on any post I want to keep short from now on, I’ll put “I’m going to try and keep this post long,” and vice versa.
Well besides that, I hope you enjoyed this post. I’ll talk (and by that I mean make you guys improve your reading skills and vocabulary by reading another one of my posts:) to you all later.
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve
Podcast and programming news, and a brief update
Hey guys,
Steve here.
Since I posted here on Tuesday, I’m going to try and keep this short. Also, instead of presenting you with the pole again, I’ll instead advise that you visit the post from Tuesday and fill it out; I’m sure you don’t like me posting it at the top of every post. But if you’re wondering, it’s a close battle. 3 people voted in favor of a home page, while 2 others voted in favor of keeping the blog posts on the front page. We’ll just have to see what happens. So if you haven’t voted, please do. I need all the feedback I can get on that pole. And remember, just 6 more days, and I’ll quit all this pole talk.
Moving on to what this post is mainly about, let’s start off with software news. As of now, I still don’t yet have a Patton for my software. This is a pity, because sQuad word is now ready for release. That’s right, it’s actually ready! With all the features necessary for a note pad application implemented, and now that I got the visual aspects of the program usable, I feel it appropriate to say that, sQuad word version 1.0 is ready to go! Another feature I want to add, however, is the ability to recover documents you haven’t yet saved. I think how I’m going to do that is first, when the program launches, checking to see if the file tempfile.swd exists. If it does, an alert box will pop up asking you if you would like to recover the previous unsaved document. If you hit yes, it will recover the tempfile.swd file, allowing you to edit and read its contents. If you hit no, however, it will delete that file, and create a new temporary file, and bring you to the editor, where it will proceed to save your work in the tempfile.swd file every 30 seconds until you hit save as and specify another file to put your current work in. After you hit save
as, it will delete the tempfile, since it’s no longer needed, and auto save will work as normal on the new file you are working on.
This is useful, for example, if your computer unexpectedly dies or shuts down, and you haven’t yet performed save as on the document that you’re working on.
This feature will be possible to implement, though it will take a bit of tweaking on the code. I guess I have time to do that before I get my Patton and permission to release it.
Besides that, the only thing standing in my way is, that Patton. Well now that I have something to show for my work, I’ll show my dad and tell him about what it can do this weekend, and hopefully we’ll then get a Patton.
Also, while still on the subject of programming, Trash is still being worked on. It’s not an abandoned project; I want to play it as much as you do, so I’m still working on it. Unfortunately, there’s still work to be done on that, along with a lot of thorough beta testing before it can be released.
Besides that, I have some good news for my next podcast episode. I’ve been holding it off until I can find a place to record it without that annoying chirping (you listeners of the podcast may be accustom to hearing small chirping/beeping noises intermittently throughout the podcast. That is my smoke detector, its batteries are running low). However, I’ve found a new place to record the podcast, where the obtrusive beeps and chirps will no longer occur. Good news… right?
In other news, as you know, I probably will not post to this blog again until late this weekend or next week. But on Saturday, one of the days I won’t be posting, Danny’s 17th birthday will occur. Danny, if you’re reading this post, (I know you are), Happy birthday!
Besides that, I have a positive future ahead of me for the time being. After this long, boring day at school, I’ll go home, and then tomorrow will be that Firewheel fieldtrip! Thus, I’ll end up missing all but part of first period, and I think part of 6th period and all of 7th period. And after those are over, it’ll be the weekend. As for next week, we have that beginner orchestra festival I briefly mentioned in Tuesday’s update. In case I didn’t tell you, that’ll cause us to miss all but first, part of sixth, and all of 7th period, kind of like Friday’s field trip. In addition, also mentioned in Tuesday’s update, we’ll have a concert Tuesday night.
Completely off topic, we’re expected to get some storms on Sunday afternoon and evening, with the passage of a cold front. It appears that the strong cold front will collide with warm moist air, so there is the possibility of some severe storms. I’ll let you know if we get any though. Note, however, that as seen last week, severe weather situations can evolve at a last-minute notice, so I’ll be watching that.
Well okay, I’ll admit this post probably wasn’t as short as it could’ve been. But on days like today, I tend to have lots to say, which is weird, since I blogged like two days ago. Well, thanks for reading this post. I’ll talk to you guys later.
Thanks for reading,
Type you later,
Steve.
life and programming updates
Hey guys,
Steve here.
I’ve been wanting to write this post all day, but since my school recently got a new website blocking filter, wordpress has been blocked, thus eliminating the possibility of that happening at school. And when I got home this afternoon, I was far too tired to produce anything better than a sloppy, short, rushed life update post.
Okay guys, I’m really sorry for annoying you… but it’s really important to me that you vote on the, you guessed it, pole that will be presented below. Unfollow me if you wish… but I need to get your opinion. If you can just bear with me, this will only stick around through April 16, but until then, here you go.
[polldaddy poll=7937065]
So you want to know what’s up with me lately? Presumably, seen as how you’re reading this post. Well Since last Wednesday, much has happened in this life of mine. So where do I start? Well I guess how about Thursday and Friday. Yes, I’m sorry, the most boring days of my last week.
Since that severe weather day post was posted on Thursday, you could gather that we had another severe weather outbreak. The day was still rather uneventful for me; all the storms stayed north of us, and I spent the evening practically attached to my radio.
As for Friday, nothing much happened then either, and besides goal ball and my favorite weather (rain), Saturday was the same.
Sunday, however, was a good day, right from the moment I woke up. Sunday morning was one of those rare occasions when I get to wake up to the exciting yet comforting sound of thunder. And when I got up, I had a wonderful breakfast of eggs and sossage, then it was off to church.
After church, and a little bit of house cleaning, something really awesome happened. My brother Justin, whom I hadn’t seen in 3 years, came over for dinner! It was nice, but shocking, to finally get to see him again. Man… he’s already 20, and has a job. I still remember those days when he was 15. And, the day I last saw him was April 12, 2011, just 9 days before I started this blog!
Anyway, after the excitement of seeing my brother again, Monday and today were normal. I didn’t even have to write a Monday’s musings post last night; I wrote it on Saturday, and scheduled it to appear on the blog last night. That’s another neat feature of word press :).
As for the future, I’m going to miss school on Friday. My o&m teacher is taking my sister and I, and I think some other kids, to the firewheel town center. I’m not sure exactly what the field trip is for, but I’m looking forward to it. Since I don’t know exactly how the day will go, I’ll be sure and blog about it.
Besides the field trip, the beginner Orchestra Festival is next Tuesday. Basically, my orchestra class will be going up to a high school, where we’ll practice our songs (I might be wrong), but then we’ll come back in the afternoon. And at 6:20 Tuesday evening, we’ll have to be right back up at the high school, where we’ll be performing our music.
I guess that’s it for future life events.
Moving on, I did mention programming updates in the post title… right? Well here’s why.
As a programmer, you know I couldn’t stay away from my code for too long… so I didn’t. Last night, I decided to start working on sQuad word once again, and messed around with some of the code. By messed around with some of the code, I mean adding autosaving (never worry about your work being erased), and majorly tweeking the configuration. It used to be that, if say you wanted to show the version number in the window title, you’d have to check that option in the options menu, restart the program, then it would take affect. But now, it will automatically do it, no restart required. This is the same for the word wrap option.
And while on the subject of software, my dad and I will look in to getting a Patton (I think that is another word for software license) soon. If we get that, I’ll publish version 1.0 of sQuad word. But remember, I still have some visual testing to do, to at least make sure the thing works for you sighted users.
As for Trash, that will require a bit more tedious code work. Thus, I’m not even going to bather with that until I get the patton.
Well I guess that about wraps up tonight’s post. I hope you enjouyed it. Have a good night all of you, and try not to get bored to tears by the end of this workweek. Believe me, I’ll take that advice myself :).
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.