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.
Category: projects
It's Sunday… yet I'm still excited
Hey guys,
Steve here.
It’s Sunday, the day before the long stressful week starts, however I’m still in as good of a mood as I would be on Friday. First of all, it’s the start of the week of my birthday, and second of all I’m seriously almost done with Trash.
To start off, let me tell you what I mean by “seriously almost done with trash.” I don’t mean that it’s almost ready to beta test–it’s still too buggy to play; I mean it’s in the process of being tested, and almost all bugs have been eliminated.
Since I last posted, here’s what I’ve implemented:
-wild card. What is a card game without a wild card? So far, you can place the wild card on any position that doesn’t have a face up card already in it, however the computer can not yet utilize the card. When this is complete, I plan to have it where you can move said wild card around. Why you ask? Say you have the wild card in the second position, and you draw a 2. Say that then you still need a 5. I want you to be able to replace the wild card in the second position with the 2, then put that wild card in the 5. See what I’m saying?
Moving on, but also on the subject of software, I didn’t get a chance to test the visual aspects of sQuad word on Friday, because Luke, the friend I’m testing it with, decided it would be a great idea not to come to school. Oh well… we’re not in a hurry with this, are we?
Also, something that happened to my sister gave me an idea for another feature. She had almost finished a, I think 50, question test, when her computer shut down, causing her to lose her answers. So, I decided, as that has happened to me before, that I would implement an autosave feature. Thus, I think this will further delay sQuad word’s release… but you can rest assured that your documents won’t be erased should your computer unexpectedly shut down.
Completely changing topics, I had quite an awesome weekend. I spent both nights Skyping Danny, beta testing his snow boarding game for the blind with him, and programming and testing Trash. As for yesterday during the day, I had to get up at 6:00 in the morning, because my sister had some test, and then her, my mom and I were going to north park mall with one of our vision teachers, MS. Kristie Smith. I’m not sure why we were going, but it ended up being fun.
So after Libby’s test, we went to the mall as expected. There were other blind and visually impaired kids there. While we were there, we went to the apple store (I got to test out an iPhone 5, and an IPad air). Ever notice how light an iPad air is compaired to other apple products?
Anyway, after that, we went to build a bare, and just for the fun of it, I made a white bare and named him “bob.”
Afterward, we tried out tea samples, something I wasn’t a big fan of, since I’m not a tea person. And after that, we tried out some lotion samples, then ate ice cream.
When we got home, I crashed for about an hour and a half, before eating lunch… and spending my night talking to Danny and all that stuff.
Today was a more relaxed day. The only thing worth blogging about that I did was going to church.
Well that about concludes today’s post. I’m ending this so soon because next Sunday is 5th Sunday singing, and I’m going to the church at 5:30 to practice a song I’ll be singing… and I have to get ready. That, and I don’t have much else to say.
So, I hope you look forward to steve eve, and the day of the best. Also, don’t forget to stay in tune for the Monday’s musings post tomorrow night.
Spring has arrived
Hey guys,
Steve here.
Did you know today is the first day of Spring? Yes, we all made it through that cold; harsh winter of 2013 and 2014.
Call me negative, call me paranoid… but there’s one main thing that comes to mind when I think about spring–tornadoes. Tornadoes are probably my biggest fear, thus the fact that we’re entering a 2-3 month period where they are possible, if not likely to happen, is a bit disconcerting to me.
As a more posative thought, spring also means my birthday, as well as the blog’s birthday. It also means that there are no more seasons separating us from summer break; I don’t know if this has occurred to you before, but summer break starts on June 6, and it’s not even summer officially until June 21. And on a completely unrelated note, I can also get some storm recordings now. Since thunderstorms tend to occur during the spring more than any other time, and the ones that happen during spring are the most epic ones, I’m bound to get some rather nice recordings… and expect them to be in stereo.
Aside from it being spring and all, I have some exciting news, along with upcoming events. Trash is going very well–not only have I completed the computer draw from junk pile procedure, but I have even done a win round procedure. (see the post on March 6 if you have no idea what trash is or when I started programming it). If progress keeps going how it’s going now, I expect a testers version out (not to you, to my friend), by Steve eve or the day of the best. (the day of the best being a reference to my birthday, because I’m so narcissistic like that).
As for sQuad word, (used to be ultra pad until I quit collaboration with Mason), I’m still fixing visual stuff. Since I only see my friend from school… well… at school, testing that is going slow. I get him to look at it, come home and try to fix it, and get him to look at the next day… etc etc. I’m going to look at a notepad example either tonight or tomorrow and see how they visually did theirs, and copy that for mine. (I won’t copy any code, just the x and y positions, and the width and height of the edit box where you type all your text). Anyway, if I can do that, and my friend tests it and says it looks good, I’ll get it out to you tomorrow or this weekend, and if not, next week. Remember, that when I publish it, you’ll know because the software page will be renamed to “sQuad software.”
Besides software and such, let me give you a brief, and I mean really brief this time, life update.
You know the zombie book I was reading, (it was called “Feed, newsflesh trilogy #1” in case you don’t remember (it was also mentioned on March 6th’s post))? well by golly I finally finished it. Sure it was 2 and a half weeks after I got it, but I! finished it! Not that it’s exciting (it was a good book), but it took me forever to finish that. It must have been 600 pages.
Well As you know with all trilogies, they have 3 books. So, I’m now reading “Deadline, newsflesh trilogy #2.” It’s turning out to be good so far.
Besides all that reading, I haven’t been doing much. Literally, for this whole school week, my evenings were spent on Skype with Danny, and programming. But how can you blame me? Danny is my closest friend, granted we don’t see each other, and programming is one of my hobbies, and hopefully future career. And hey, if those colleges see I want to program, and have done it for several years already, they’ll have no problems letting me in… right? :))
Looking ahead to the future, it’s almost my birthday. A day that, if you like this blog, you’ll be as happy as I’ll be–isn’t it true that if I was never born, nor would this blog be? And of course, don’t forget the upcoming birthday of the blog.
And on a final note, speaking of the blog, we’re almost at 10000 views–and I won’t say the usual “keep viewing and I’ll keep posting” line again, since that really makes me sound like I’m posting for the views; something I am not doing.
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.
A mid week update
Hey guys,
Steve here.
Well spring break is over, along with two days of our first week back to school. Isn’t it amazing how time can fly by so fast? I mean even when posting the Monday’s musings post… I was amazed–it’s already been 15 weeks of Monday’s musings? And yet it seems like Monday’s Musings 6 was written last Friday. Well not really, considering Monday’s musings posts are written only on Mondays, but you get my point anyway.
For you storm recording fans, I have some good news for you. On March 15, we got a pretty big storm, and I was able to record it not only in stereo, but from an out-of-the-window vantage point. Yes, you will hear wind hitting the microphone, but that can serve as more proof I recorded it vertually outdoors. And if you hear some talking, and you will, it’s because I was at my church friend’s house at the time of the recording.
Aside from storm recording, my spring break was one of relaxation, and forgetting school all together; acting like it didn’t exist, and waiting until Sunday to do violin practice, because after all that is an aspect of school, that I believed I didn’t need to worry about over the break. After posting that blog post last Tuesday, I had two of the same days–spending my time being lazy and playing on the computer. On Friday, however, my mom, sister, and I fed the ducks at white rock lake. And now that I think back to it, didn’t we do the same thing on the Friday of spring break last year? It’s even written in a blog post from around that time.
After feeding the ducks Friday, we went to a palio bakery, and tried some of their desserts. I got to try a cookie, and a cupcake, both made with absolutely no milk. Now how weird is that? Even weirder, the things tasted good!
After our day out, we came home, and I programmed, and skyped danny; nothing productive for the rest of the night.
On Saturday, we had goal ball practice, and then we went to my church friend Oscar’s house to spend the day. We went because I guess my mom and dad planned to spend the day with them, but didn’t tell me about it until Saturday morning, so once again I didn’t tell you guys in advance.
So basically, after goalball, I ran home, made sure I had my recorder and stereo microphone, and weather radio, and we were off. So, that night when we were still over there, the storms hit, and I was able to get that great recording. But due to noise and microphone positioning, it took me like 5 attempts before I finally got the perfect recording. Welcome to the world of audio production. *sighs*
Later on that night, we had ice cream… or should I say everyone but me had ice cream. I accidentally fell asleep around 10:10 or so, and they had ice cream right after that. (lololol) I don’t know how I always fall asleep at parties and get togethers like that right before they have dessert.
Skipping ahead to Sunday, it started off with church as usual, and the rest of it was spent getting ready for school, and on the computer. And as for yesterday and Today, I had school, and was on the computer in the evenings. (well I guess we’re officially back into the routine).
In other news, Trash is nearing completion. I am already working on the winning procedure–and when that’s complete, I can put up an early beta, but sadly you guys won’t be able to play it because I need my friends to check for bugs before I toss it out to you guys. But hey, even if it takes long, at least I’m trying to make it as bug free and enjoyable as possible before giving it to you guys.
Speaking of software, Mason and I stopped colaboration on Ultrapad, because we wanted to release it on our own and do different things on it. Besides, there was some stuff in there I wanted to take out, and replace with different stuff… so it’s for the best. Anyway I think I got the bug fixed–and if that’s true, you’ll know by the nice little link posted on the software page. Also, when I release that, the software page will be renamed to sQuad software, so be on the look out for that in the next few days. (yes, in other words, check back often:).
Aside from all that, My birthday is only 8 days away! So in exactly a week from now, that’s right, it’ll be Steve eve! I decided not to have a birthday party, however I will be eating stake n shake for my birthday dinner. MMM there shakes and chicken tenders are so freaking good!
As for what I’m wanting for my birthday, there are two things–one of which I must see if it exists. I want swamp, and a talking rain gage. Or at least a braille one anyway. I’m not complaining here, but it is a matter of fact that there just isn’t a whole lot in the way of accessible technology out there, thus is the reason I’m having to make sure if such a thing as a talking rain gage exists.
Changing topic, Spring is just around the corner, which also means tornado season. That literally has to be my least favorite thing about spring; even reading about a tornado watch that was issued for Florida (my friend lives there and I was checking the weather) had me shaking, mainly because I know that weather is bound to hit any day now.
As another change in topic, high school transition night was supposed to be tonight. It’s some night where they show you the layout of the high school and you can meet the teachers… but I didn’t bather to go; there will come a day this summer where I’ll go up to the high school, give it a tour, and meet the teachers anyway.
Speaking of which, I’m sort of hoping I don’t get put in Pre AP next year. I thought of that, because my o&m teacher and I were going to talk to the high school counciler (not mental guidance counciler, the one that manages your schedules and such), about me being in pre AP next year. Call me lazy, call me under acheaving… whatever, but I just don’t feel like doing it. You see I’m one of those who doesn’t want to drop out of high school, or even just graduate with 70’s and 80’s as my average; I want to graduate, be successfull, and have a’s and b’s in high school. I don’t care about this whole destinguished program stuff, (although my sister does, and I’m proud of her). I just don’t feel it’s nessessary; if I can get into a college that’s not poor quality, and has programming and/or meteorology classes, I’ll go for it.
But with all that said, I guess that’s the end of tonight’s post. I hope you enjoyed reading it, and look forward to my next post.
(and yes, I have my next 4 posts scheduled, but I’m not releasing dates :).
Thanks for reading,
Type you later,
Steve.
P.s. There are only 10 Mondays left of school! Hurray!
P.S.S:
this is the first one of my posts that is over 1000 words… isn’t it?
good and bad news, along with current life events
Hey guys,
Steve here.
Yes, you read that right. Today is one of the rare occurrences of bad news on this blog… so I guess I’ll tell you the bad news right now just to get it out of the way.
You know Swamp? The game I’ve been addicted to for about a year now? Well due to the fact that there are so many hackers, attacks, and other unwanted things happening within the game, Aprone (swamp’s creator) is making it a paid game. I won’t have to pay for single player, but if I want multiplayer, that’ll be $24 per year.
I have a visa gift card, so hopefully that will work. If so, I might consider paying for swamp. But if not… well I’d better step up my game (quite literally) and program some audio games worth selling.
Speaking of audio games, the good news I mentioned earlier is about Trash, the card game that I am programming for the blind. let me tell you how much progress I’ve done on that.
-I completed the player system, testing it out to be sure it works. Now, you can draw, place cards at the desired position, junk, and draw from the junk pile.
-mostly completed the computer player system. The only thing I need to do for the computer player system is to add the draw from junk pile procedure, but I figure that’ll be easy.
-began the process of adding sounds. I’ve already added a deck shuffling sound for when you start the game and the deck is shuffled, but I don’t think I’ll add any more sounds until I’m completely done with all the other stuff.
Speaking of sounds, I found my flash drive of sounds, which I believe contains over 1000 sound affects. That’s good news for future games.
Moving on to my life, we’re well into spring break now. To start off the break, my friend Oscar from church came over to spend the night. It was another surprise my parents threw at me–one minute I was on the computer, chatting with Danny over skype, the next I was scrambling to clean my room and the bathroom so they didn’t look like a complete mess when Oscar came.
And three hours later, my mom and I picked up Oscar, and him and I spent the rest of the night playing wii, and hanging out.
On Saturday, I had goal ball practice, however Libby didn’t go because she went to the mall with the church youth group to ice skate (yet another event that I was going to, but didn’t figure that out until after my last update, I think). Anyway, Oscar came to goal ball as well, so he got to see my awesome skill!
Right after goal ball, Oscar, my dad, and I met up with Libby and the rest of the youth group at the mall, where I attempted, but failed, at ice skating. But hey, It’s not really about how good I was, it was about hanging with friends, (at least that’s what I hope). But seriously, even though I was ice skating along the wall, I still managed to slip 3 or 4 times, but luckily I didn’t fall.
Skipping ahead, after ice skating, we all went to in and out burger for lunch, before heading our separate ways and going home. Oscar got to hang out with me for a few more hours–and for dinner, 2 hours after we ate lunch, we had more burgers and fries. But hey, there’s no such thing as too many burgers or fries in my book :).
After Oscar left, my Saturday night went a little something like this. Lay on the couch, watching from the side lines as the rest of my family played Yahtzee on the wii, as my head pounded and throbbed, feeling as though someone knocked it with a baseball bat or something. I’m not sure why my head hurt so bad, but luckily it was gone in about 2 hours.
Besides church, Sunday was uneventful. And as for Monday, the only thing I did outside the house was go out for lunch with my sister, mom, and dad. And today, besides a lot of programming, I didn’t do much of anything.
But aside from getting out of the house, my last 3 days have been filled with Skyping my friends, and playing my games, all day, and until 2 or 3 in the morning.
Ah. Isn’t it fun to be a teenager?
Anyway, that’s about it for today’s post. I know you’re sad because you don’t get to read any more of my words at the moment, but you could always:
-read previous posts, like posts before you started following this blog.
-eagerly await my next post.
–but all joking aside, I hope you enjoyed tonight’s post. And remember last night’s Monday’s musings post–I wasn’t lying. I really do enjoy writing these posts.
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.
A couple things to be excited about
Hey guys,
Steve here.
Since the last time I posted a blog update (not counting the Monday’s musings post), I’ve began to work on yet another sQuad product. As you know, sQuad word is about ready for release. I won’t say that again, because you’ve heard that, what, three times now?
Anyway, There’s still an annoying bug where when you have “show version number” checked, the version number will overlap the text you’re typing, so until I fix that and test it with my friend at school I won’t be able to release it.
Meanwhile, I’ve started on something else as was previously mentioned, a game for the blind. Now you sighted folks, I wouldn’t recommend playing this because I haven’t tested it, and probably won’t test it, with my sighted friends, because I want it to be an audio game. However, if you have a deck of cards and want to play it, or want to program it for sighted users, you can do so. The game is called Trash. But since I’m not too good at explaining stuff and don’t want to spend over half this blog post explaining the game, I’ll give you a link to learn more about it yourself:
http://www.wikihow.com/Play-Trash
I hope to get that game finished by this weekend or next week, but we’ll see. Also, as a last note on software I’m creating or helping create, I’ll hopefully release ultra pad if we can just get rid of that bug. I think it’ll be easy though.
In other news, I’ve been doing well the past few days. If I wasn’t programming, I was reading, eating, at school, in bed, or at church. And listen up fellow bloggers, you’re gonna like this. In the book I’m reading, though it’s about zombies, blogging is a pretty big part of society. You can get a blogging license, upgrade it depending on how good and experienced you are, and lots of people look to the blogging community, because we tell the uncensored truth.
Like even when the zombies started rising and attacking people, people looked to bloggers, because bloggers would tell them how it was. They didn’t have to lie or cover anything up.
As far as the future goes, it’s almost spring break. If I can just wait one day, it will finally be here. It doesn’t seem like it was a year ago that spring break last occurred, but I guess time just flies by sometimes. As for what I plan to do over the break, I have a few things planned. Chill, forget about school, program, Skype, church, and whatever else unexpected things my parents throw at me if any.
Speaking of which, that trip we took to the lake last weekend, I didn’t find out about that until Thursday night, when my mom brought it up in a conversation, as if she expected me to have already known about it. I was pretty shocked.
As for my birthday, I’ve decided I want a family dinner, because I’ve ran out of ideas for a party, and it doesn’t sound very appealing to me this year for some reason. I haven’t decided what I want for my birthday yet, but I’m working on that. As for your part, remember to mark Steve eve (March 25) and the day of the best (March 26) on your calendar. And for you readers who haven’t clicked the follow button yet (you’re still awesome anyway), Mark April 21 as well, because the blog will be turning 3 on that day, and I’ll be putting an annual report. And for you followers, though you’ll get the report in your inbox, you can mark that day as another milestone for one of your favorite blogs, and think back to the previous years and look forward to the next ones to come.
But we aren’t quite there yet, so we still have a few more posts to go until then.
I hope you enjoyed this post!
Thanks for reading,
Type you later,
Steve.
An exciting end to a long blogging break
Hey guys,
Steve here.
Woe! It’s already been almost 3 weeks since my last blog update. I mean the only evidence that I still exist (to you guys anyway) is my Monday’s Musings posts, but even those get scheduled sometimes if something bugs me enough on another week day. Don’t worry, this will not be an often occurance–even I need a break from the blog for a while. I think my break is over, so expect more life updates in the future.
As is with all way overdue life updates, I have a lot of stufff to tell you about. First, let’s start with d now, since it was the first thing that happened after my blog post.
As all d nows are, this one was quite enjoyable. On Friday afternoon (valentines day), I only had time to go home, pack, eat some candy, before leaving to go to the host home (the home I would be staying at for the weekend). Basically, the host homes were divided by gender and grade level, so the 6th grade boys would be in one, the 6th grade girls in another, and it would be that way for all the grade levels from 6 to 12. Anyways, shortly after arriving at the host home, getting to know the people I would be staying with, we all went to the church, where we had fajitas for dinner, and then played a getting to know game.
The rest of our Friday night consisted of worship and church service, going back to the host home, small groups discussion (a time to discuss what we learned from the service, but that ended up being small groups comity because I kept telling jokes and making people laugh), snack, and then just chill time until it was time to go to bed.
On Saturday morning, we awoke to a breakfast of breakfast tacos, before having quiet time (a time to study the bible). Then, we headed to the church where we had another worship service, lunch, and finally our mission project. A mission project is when we go out and do work, and it’s separated into host homes as well. Our group had to go and pick up trash (I forget where we went).
After the mission project, instead of a scavenger hunt, we did random acts of kindness. In that game, each group would drive around doing random acts of kindness for people, and taking pictures of it. I believe that the winner would be the group with the most pictures.
Finally, it was time for dinner, and then my friend Joseph and I spent the free time after dinner reading the bible.
After another church service Saturday night, we had small groups discussion once again, but I was more serious this time. Then, Joseph and I read the bible some more until bed.
On Sunday morning, we had another quiet time, before going to the church to have breakfast, a Sunday school service which ended up being people telling about their experiences from the weekend, and then a final worship service. After that it was time to go home.
Although I didn’t want to go home, I had a wonderful time at D Now. It was a great time for me to connect with friends, and get closer to god. I really look forward to going next year.
Now that you know about d Now, let me tell you about sQuad word. On Sunday, I found out that my friend Mason was also making a word pad. He had some stuff in his word pad that I didn’t know how to do, and I had stuff in my notepad that he didn’t know how to do. So, we decided to colaborate, combining our word pads to create ultrapad. Thus, sQuad word is now known as ultrapad, and is just about ready for release, except one small bug that is easily fixable. I don’t have a definant release date at this time.
As for my last 3 weeks, not much has happened, that being one of the reasons I haven’t blogged in a while. This weekend though, my family and I went up to my papa and nana’s lake house, and spent yesterday and last night there, because my dad had to help Papa with something.
Also, there is a winter storm warning in affect. It’s in the 20’s right now, sleeting, and the temperatures are still falling. This is really hard to believe considering it was in the upper 70’ss 24 hours ago.
On a final note, I have a few events to tell you about.
For one, it’s Steven D awareness month. Yes, I’m so awesome, I named this month after myself, so everyone could be aware of my awesomeness. 🙂
Also, Steve eve, and my birthday are coming up. Steve eve is the day before my birthday. Steve eve is on March 25, and my birthday is March 26.
And finally, on April 21, this blog will turn 3 years old, thus meaning I will have been blogging for 3 years!
On a last note, this blog is almost up to 10000 views (9,755 at the moment). Pretty cool… huh?
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.
P.s. Glad to be blogging again. 🙂
An exciting weekend coming up
Hey guys,
Steve here.
As the post title suggests, I will be having an exciting weekend. My friend has once again invited me to D Now, which if you remember I went to last year and the year before. D Now, for those of you who don’t know, is a weekend long event for kids… I think 6th grade and up but I’m not sure to worship god and do some other fun stuff.
I don’t know if it’s the same this year, but normally we have worship services, a scavenger hunt, a mission project, and basically just a good time. If it changed this year, I’ll let you know on my next life update.
In other news, SQuad word is almost ready to become a public beta. I haven’t done much this week, except exterminating bugs, and making sure it has everything it needs to become public. I’m not going to add any new features, even the font chooser, until I fix all the bugs (and to tell you the truth, there were only 2, but now 1 because I fixed one of them).
The bug I fixed had to do with closing the program and menu options. I don’t know if I mentioned it before, but it used to be that you had to active a menu item like say, open file, more than once before the open file screen came up. And, you would have to click the close button multiple times before it actually closed. However, I fixed that bug by majorly tweaking my code on Tuesday afternoon.
Since then, I haven’t done anything on the word processer, just taking a little break for now. However, my friend discovered a bug yesterday when I was using sQuad word to type my Spanish assignment. For some reason, the text doesn’t appear to sighted people, meaning I’m going to have to change the height and width of both the window, and the editor, so you guys can see what you’re typing, and the window won’t be super tiny when it starts up as it is now.
Besides sQuad word, I haven’t done much over the past several days. I’ve been talking to Danny, as he is one of my best friends and is helping me learn pure basic, and also I’ve been playing games. Speaking of which, I think I’m getting a relapse of my swamp addiction. At least that means I’ll be motivated to create campaigns for swamping with Steve, the series of “swamp let’s plays” I started on my podcast.
As a final note, I will try and squeeze in a couple podcasts. Now that Stranded is finished and released, and I don’t have a release date for sQuad word, I can set aside more time to do podcasts. Hopefully I can do them before Sunday, (this being D Now weekend and all), but if I can’t I’ll do them Sunday or Monday, because as I forgot to mention this will be a 3-day weekend. I hope to perhaps get a beta release of sQuad word out by Monday, but I can’t promise anything. I still have to fix that last bug, so the word processor will actually be useable for you sighted people. *wishes the world could be full of blind people*
Thanks for reading,
Type you later,
Steve.
Stranded release and Monday’s Musings 10: My thoughts on how people should learn to program
Hey guys,
Steve here.
Stranded part 3 has been released! It’s called “the end game,” and has lots of exciting things in it! I hope you enjoy playing this gamebook! If you haven’t played stranded part 1 or 2, they’re available on the game books page.
Monday’s musings post:
Ever since I got into programming and computers, I always thought certain things about being a programmer:
1. you must know multiple languages.
2. To learn a programming language, you have to read the whole manual until you get all the concepts.
However I have figured out that is not true.
The main thing that got me into believing that was the manual for BGT (blastbay game toolkit), a scripting language for coding audiogames, or games for the blind. That manual basically told you to read a chapter until you completely got what it was talking about, then move on. But I have realised that’s not the case.
When I first started learning Pure Basic, even though it was just about 4 days ago and I still don’t know it completely, I figured out that language didn’t have a chapter book to read. No, it had basically a list of the commands, and how to code them in. So instead of reading all of those, I came up with a plan, that I believe people should always use when programming.
1. The reference manual is called a reference manual for a reason. It’s not there just for a good read or 2, it’s there in case you need help at any point while programming. So don’t try to read the whole book, Read what you need, and keep looking back on it as you go.
2. learn by experience. When trying to lose wait or get muscle, you don’t just watch the fitness tapes or just listen to what a fitness instructor says… do you? If so, you might know how to do all those exercises, but you wouldn’t have developed the strength needed to do them. It’s the same with programming. You can’t just look at the manual and expect to know the language, you need practice. My suggestion, program as you learn. take my word processor for example. I didn’t know a lick of pure basic before I began coding it, but look where it is now. I have gotten this far simpley because I thought of a feature I needed, and looked at the reference manual for assistance. Doing this has taught me file management, menu creation, using enumerations and procedures, and even a few other handy tools I’ll need to use when programming.
3. Experiment. Sometimes, you aren’t always going to find the answer to your questions in the reference manual. On the occasion that this should occur, use your knoledge and experiment with code you think would work. Move some lines around. Delete or add extra words or characters. Either way, you’re not gonna get far without experimenting.
4. resources. The reference manual is not the only thing you can go to for help. There’s always the good old world wide web. Think about a subject in school. Would you learn math only using the textbook? No. You need a teacher (in programming, you’re usually teaching yourself), yes you’ll need the book sometimes, and you might also need the web. But either way, remember that the reference manual is not your only answer.
5. And the final thing I’ve figured out about programming, is that you need to stay determined. Programming is not a skill you can pick up over night, it takes time. Get frustrated. Back away from your computer. It’s going to happen sometimes… but stay determined and motivated. Don’t let anything or anyone hinder you.
I hope this will help people is it did for me. And if you’re wondering how this qualifies as a Monday’s Musings post, I am sharing my thoughts on learning programming, and how I think it should be done.
So if you guys ever become a programmer, take in mind my advice–because it might just help you some time.
Thanks for reading,
Type you later,
Steve.
Life updates, winter weather, project news, and all that stuff.
Hey guys,
Steve here.
We had some snow on Thursday. And guess what? Another 3 day weekend! At first, none of us (me, or mesquite ISD) thought we’d have the day off, that is unless MISD was just waiting until 6 in the morning to tell us we weren’t going to school just so we couldn’t sleep in… but I highly doubt that was the case.
Originally, there was just an inch of snow on the ground from Thursday when it snowed all day long, but as people drove across the snow, it thawed out and refroze as ice. Thus, the ice prevented us from going to school.
How did I spend this unexpected but rather pleasant 3 day weekend? Well I did pretty much nothing except program, goal ball, and work on stranded. My sister and dad were gone to some goal ball tournament, so it was just me and my mom. We didn’t do much, so that’s why I had plenty of time to work on my projects.
I know I posted my last life update last Tuesday… but there isn’t much to say about the remainder of the school week before this 3 day weekend. It was just school, and stranded… that is until Thursday night.
On Thursday night, my friend Danny got me started on this programming language known as Pure Basic, or PB. Deciding I liked Pure Basic, I began programming a piece of software, learning the language as I went. That is what I’m referring to when I say I was “Programming” or working on my “projects” The name of this software is “SQuad Word,” SQuad being the title of my software company. It might be just me in that software company… but if I am actively producing software, I should give myself a name. SQuad stands for severe storm steve software by the way.
If you’re wondering, there is a reason why I am very determined to get this software completed and fully functioning. On Thursday night, when I first started programming SQuad Word, I ran into some trouble. And do you want to know what my friend Danny said to me? He said “Maybe a word processor isn’t the best thing to start out with.”
And since then, I have continued to develop this piece of software, making sure it is working, and adding new features to it, to let him know that while a word processor might not be the best thing to start out with, I will not let that fact hinder me, and no matter the cost, I will make a fully functioning word pad.
I have almost accomplished this goal: you can create, edit, open, and save files, and you can select text, undo, copy, cut, and paste. Now the only thing I need to add if I want this to be a word pad worth anyone’s time is the ability to change the font, and I am working on that. As soon as I do that, and make sure the program is bug free, I’ll upload it to the software page.
Getting on to Stranded, it will be released tomorrow. I don’t have much to do on it, and I will make sure it is released tomorrow.
Other than that, I don’t have much else to say. I believe I’ve caught you up on everything, and I’d better work on stranded a bit more before I go to bed, which will be very soon.
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.