PHP is fun

Today's lectures were not amazing, pure and simple. After the lectures I went home and checked up on WoA stuff and then returned to Uni for the Student group that make websites (there's a name for it but I cannot remember it). David Ndzi knows that I can write PHP and MySQL and so while the rest of the group are working on something for a company called "RM Marketing" I was asked to create a user registration system for a conference. Users could register and then login to upload documents. David: When do you think you could have it ready? Me: I've got a group project thing to do for Thursday, so I'd say that Friday or early next week would be quite possible David: Could you have it for tomorrow? Me: Ummmm, I can try... Now, I know how fast I can write stuff if I put my mind to it and I reckon I can have it ready tomorrow. I plan to ask for some money for it (in the words of Martin Cripps "the word 'pittance' springs to mind") or the possibility of a Student Placement for someone making websites. I then journeyed to CU. As you're likely aware, I am currently in the middle of a phase of attaching pegs to people. On Sunday one of the ladies I pegged was (and I assume still is) called Sarah H (so not the Sarah R that is normally mentioned). Last night on MSN (after I had pegged her), the following was said... Me: see you tomorrow Sarah: yeah. night night xx Me: and I'll peg you without you noticing too :P Sarah: wanna bet?! Me: no, betting is wrong, but I'm sure I'll manage it ;) Sarah: lol Me: and then I'll blog it too :P Well, the gauntlet was thrown down! I pegged her once and left her alone, this was all part of my cunning plan, she'd been watching me carefully any time I came near and it took several tries to get this one peg near her without her noticing. Of course, after that peg was pointed out by someone else I waited a little then attached 6 or 7 pegs to her in the space of a few minutes. In the end Lawrence felt pity for her and went over to explain that she had been well and truely pegged. So, as we can see, I won. Becca was intent on not getting pegged yet tried to peg me at least once. However, years of being a computer nerd have sharpened my hand-eye coordination to the point where Lawrence said I was like a ninja (I'd just successfully put two pegs on Becca). I repeatedly got Becca for the rest of the night. Sarah R seems to like watching, yesterday she dared me to peg someone over 40. Some funny stuff happened but it was more of a "you had to be there" sort of thing so loses a lot in retelling. I'll post tomorrow regarding what happens about this database project, most of it is already done.

Energizing!

I got up nice and early and got to Siän's house for 0830! There I got a lift to Church for 0900 where all the students had a big fried breakfast. Andy and Cora not only organised it all but did the cooking. It was really really nice, very much appreciated and all around awesome. The service itself was about following Jesus and the cost of it, how Jesus rearranged priorities and that he knew what he was going towards yet still went. After the service I went home and did WoA stuff for a bit before leaving for the International Christian Students Fellowship meeting. There were lots of people from all over the world there and most wearing very bright clothing native to their country, it was really nice. The service started with something similar to the singing from the Blues Brothers. I came close to expecting some people to start somersaulting to the front to dance! There was a sketch about how God works and then a guest Pastor spoke. He explained how Jesus made an offer. And to illustrate his point he held up a £10 note and said that it was there for the taking. After 3 seconds I started to vault the chair infront of me (I was in the second row and the front row was empty) but as I did so Chris Brough thought to himself "I can't let Teifion get that" and ran ahead of me. However, when the pastor held up a book I got that so it worked quite well. The book is currently in the possession of Justin as I asked him to hold onto it for me and forgot to get it back later. After the talk and some more (slightly more coherent) singing there was some free food served. I went to the loo and when I came out I asked where I should go (assuming I'd be told where to join the queue). I was sent straight to the food so that worked out really well. What didn't was that almost all the food was laced with spices and/or vegetables. I left holding a few cans of coke and went to see Greg get Baptised at Kings Church. Kings Church has a much louder and more "modern" band, as it were, than Eastney. I don't know that it's better as such, but it is nice to have a change in style of singing. Overall I see Eastney as being a very family based Church while Kings seems to have a much larger youth population and so works differently. It was really good to see Greg be baptised and be there to show my support. The speaker there was a guest speaker from Australia. He had some odd things to say, however, the crux of the message he brought was that if we give and pray on behalf of others, God will act. He had some stories to tell explaining it all and drew from the Bible too. Afterwards there was a load of prayer stuff and I asked to be prayed for which was really good, I then went home and went to bed feeling closer to God than I have in the past few weeks.

Tired

I got up and for the rest of the day played Warcraft 3 and wrote Java. As per usual, here is the link you want, and the changes are... - 1 type of powerup added - Simple tail added to the ball - Passing a level gains you a life - Basic readme printed on the game when paused - The game now responds to mouse-clicks when the mouse is moving I also sliced three boxes of Mushrooms, tomorrow there's a big group breakfast at Church. The problem is I need to be up early...

No progress

The project has not been updated today as I was busy all day and thus distracted. However, I have a new activity to try. I am going to say something I like about every person I met today. I don't mean "I thought your t-shirt was funny", I mean things that make the person nice to know and be around. The people should be in the rough order that I spoke to them (I saw lots of people I know but most never spoke to me). Speaking over the internet doesn't count for the purpose of this exercise. In addition, the people must speak to me at least once a week or I simply don't know them well enough to list them here. Ceryn - Almost always excited with a big smile on her face and an attitude to match, interested to talk about anything troubling you and offer impartial advice Siän - Always innocent and well-meaning (as in, moreso than anybody else) Lorna - Happy to offer uncompromising points of view, won't compromise her principles to sound better Sarah - When not tired, always excited and awake, full of energy that enthuses those around her Brierley - Always has something positive and supportive to say to people, somehow seems to have some sort of a rota and seeks out different people each time to offer words of encouragement and renew social bonds Ryo - Talks about anything geekish but also happy to just listen to anything he understands, also has a very good sense of humour Huw - A sense of humour on the same level as myself, what more is needed? Lauren H - Happy to make sure I'm eating well, if she's making some food and I want some she'll make extra if I help cleanup and suchlike (actually, she doesn't require it I just do it out of courtesy but it's similar) Gareth - Has a similar sense of humour to myself and is happy to help with most geekish things Pete A - Is happy to share what he has if you haven't got it yourself

Progress?

I got up and went to the Group Project lab, it's not looking good but next week we've got our presentation. I'm going to be making the report, as such the Breakout game is going to have to slow-down a little. Speaking of which, the latest version is here. And the changes are... V0.3 - Some basic graphical acceleration used, it now redraws less per cycle than in V0.2, there might be more I can do so I am going to leave it as a "to do" item - The game now has three levels, the blocks change colour each level (Black, Green, Blue) - Lives and current level down the bottom are now colour coded - Speed is now displayed in the label at the bottom and increments by 1 for every 12 blocks removed, there are 48 blocks per level Tomorrow I hope to have some powerups functioning along with some cooler effects and the ability to turn said effects on or off with keys (for those with slower computers). If you're wondering why a slower computer is struggling under such a basic game, well, it's because of Java. I shall explain why. "Compiled" Languages such as C, C++ and Objective-C are saved in a language the computer understands. "Interpreted" Languages such as PHP, Python and Ruby are saved in a language the computer does not understand very well, but there is an on-the-spot translator saved with them Java I believe falls somewhere in between the two. I shall now explain the above concept in linguistic terms. C (a very fast language) saves itself in English (we're assuming computers speak English). PHP (not as fast as C) saves itself in German. As such, to run PHP programs, the computer must translate the program before it performs each instruction, thus, slowing it down. Java stores itself as a German language with some English notes in it, thus making it easier. Does that make any sense to anybody or have I simply confounded the issue?

More work done, maybe I should be Chairperson?

Firstly, the Java project of Breakout. The correct link for yesterday is here, sorry for the broken link. I didn't bother going to the Java lecture, this semester they have been very poor and I would rather work on my project than attend a lecture that teaches me nothing. The project is coming along nicely, it now does several things. - When the ball hits a block, it bounces correctly, inverting only a single axis (based on the direction it hits the block in) rather than inverting both. - Pausing it really does pause it properly, it no longer resets the ball position, good luck cheating now! - The ball accelerates by 1 pixel a cycle every 10 blocks destroyed, it starts at 5 pixels a cycle - Download it here Midday there was an SSCC meeting. For some reason there seems to always be an item that is of interest to me and the rest are of no interest. Well, today's was the chairman item. Prof Cripps has been Chairperson for 10 years and has been trying to get a Student Chair for a while, he started by hinting at it and now he's put it on the agenda. There was a 2-1 ratio of Students to Staff today and of the vast horde of students, guess how many were eligible to be chair? Correct, just me. The rest were 3rd year and so would be leaving, I told them that if I didn't get a placement I'd accept it but my Mum has very helpfully found another company to apply to. Back when HP told me I was unsuccessful (I've re-emailed them to make sure they got my message asking why) I talked to a friend called Daan. Daan has had some interesting theological discussions with me and I told him that my faith was still strong and that despite the HP incident, God still has a perfect plan for me. Obviously, you can take the view that an 800 mile round trip to Newcastle and Back could be God's idea of a joke, maybe it is. The key thing is that I still believe He has that perfect plan. The thing is, I have to be able to accept that God does not want me to take a placement, it occurred to me while on the loo, "what would God do if He didn't want me to take a placement?". What's happened so far would be a good start in my opinion. So, unless something big happens, if this next chance fails then I will probably not take a placement. Tomorrow's Java project should have some speed optimisations, apparently a single core 1GHz computer isn't quite as good as a Dual Core 2.33GHz computer, odd that!

Maybe I should do some work?

Today (yes, I'm missing out yesterday) I decided that seeing as my Java project was due in in about 3 weeks (I've been putting it off for a little too long) I should at least think about which of the three options I'd take. - The first was a "chat" program. Well, after the chess game, I hate Java and Networking (at least for now, it's probably because I couldn't understand it at the time) and so don't want to do that. - The second is a game called "breakout". I asked Ioannis how hard it'd be and he said it'd be really hard because Animation in Java is really hard. - The third is a "Customer Database System", it's also a 4 man project (apparently). Tempted as I was to do #3 I decided to do #2. Having no idea how to perform animation in Java or respond to input I was not enthusiastic about it. Thankfully, the first Sun Java tutorial page told me all I needed and even gave me a load of code to start with. Over the course of about 6 hours, I have expanded somewhat upon the code that Sun have on their website to produce something that should get me a pass. I am of course going to be ensuring a First in this Coursework so will be improving it. You can get a copy of V0.1 here. Incidentally, animation in Java is just as easy as in REALBasic, I was very much "at home" as it were in writing most of it.