2 days left...

I started on my weekend project today. Woke up early, around 10 a.m., then surfed the net for some information on Ruby (which is the programming language I'm using). Then my mother wanted to use the computer, so I had to wait. After lunch, I went out to play soccer.

Came back around 10 p.m. Didn't really get to do much work today, haha. Right now, my shooting game looks like some red blood cells are attacking white blood cells. I'm going to plan out a list of to-do items here:

1. Implement the controls
2. Create the scoring system
3. Put in a few types of enemies
4. Figure out how the game ends
5. Steal some nice graphics from sites like this
6. Put those graphics in the game, and some background
7. Make a main menu
8. Package everything into an exe file

Seems like a lot to do. I'll get to it tomorrow.

By the way, I've been using this bittorrent site a lot lately. It kicks ass, because the anime episodes are packaged in complete series, and they have manga, plus live-action movies too. If only it were updated more often. You need a user account though. Get one from here.

Slack

This week was quite a good week, and we had quite a bit of time to rest and relax. There was an IPPT test again, which I somehow managed to pass. That leaves SOC to clear. Finished watching Constantine on my palm. It was fairly entertaining, despite Keanu Reeves. It's crazy how much content I can fit on my Palm, I almost have to force myself to go through them. Maybe I will start writing some reviews of comics and anime. :)

There's just so many distractions around me. I still remember when I first came to BRC, I set a few noble goals for myself:
1. Learn Japanese
2. Learn Ruby
3. Improve my guitar skills
4. Make a video game
Ok, maybe they're not so noble, but at least it's a lot more productive than... whatever I'm doing now. 10 months into national service, and I'm still no closer to achieving anything. I really do need to focus a lot more, and treasure what time I have.

Weekend project
I had this idea of using the coming long weekend( due to labour day ) to focus and build a small game. My chances of success are slim, but even if I can't meet the deadline, I hope to learn something and gain a small measure of satisfaction. If it gets done eventually, I'll write up a "game diary" of all the steps taken, which I'm sure will be lots of fun.

Fun PDA stuff

Having a pda definitely makes my life less dreary during the long hours spent in camp. I can safely say that all those days spent away from home has forced me to find new uses for my handheld. Anyway, here's a list of things I do on my Palm :

Manga
I download manga from websites like this. Then I upload and view them using GrxView. I can fit about 7 volumes on my 256mb SD card, inclusive of all the other crap I put in there.

E-books
The screen on my palm is sufficient to read books comfortably. I use iSilo and Repligo to view my books. Sometimes I put web articles/ guitar tabs in there too.

News
Using Plucker together with Sunrise lets me download web pages/ Rss feeds for later perusal. If you don't know what rss is, think of it as the pure text portion of a web site.

Games
I used to think emulation was dead on the palm, but then I recently found Little John. It can emulate snes/ genesis/ gameboy games at a decent speed.

Blog
At the moment I'm writing this post on my palm. It's the first time I'm trying this, but I should have thought of it earlier. Perhaps now I can add more entries to the site so it doesn't seem so damn dead.

An invaluable tool I use is cardexport, which allows me to access the sd card in my palm directly. It's much faster and more convienient then using the default palm install method.

Smooth buttery pleasure

After some technical handling, my computer is up and running again. It turns out the problem was with a few bad sectors on my windows drive. Fortunately I had two OSes, so I was able to run scandisk to solve the problem.
I'm running counterstrike:source as I'm typing this. It's great that the developers had a 'run in window' option. Initially the game gave me some problems with lag due to my wireless network. Turning off "wireless zero config" under windows services solved the problem. Multiplayer is a smooth buttery pleasure now.

Infrequent updates, superficial content. What's the point of this site really?

I created a del.icio.us account, so anyone can visit it. Maybe gain some insight into my viewing habits, and learn of some interesting links, which are all stolen from other users anyway.

I just learned that my friend army vocation consists of maintaining web sites. Chatting and surfing the net while playing games. And getting paid to do so. As if that wasn't ludicrously fortunate enough, he's being sent on some advanced dreamweaver/flash course to upgrade his skills. I ought to wish him all the best, but my thoughts consist only of jealousy and rage.

Been toying around with Firefox lately. I just installed an extension which offers IRC chatting capabilities. Poking around the #singapore channels and such gives me the impression that IRC denizens are a pack of sexual predators.

Yet another quickie update - I'm just squeezing them in the best I can. Recently purchased Half-Life 2, which probably needs no introduction to any PC gamer. It's very slick and intense, and I'm just at the beginning. Quite a few things have been keeping me busy lately. These things mostly include the playing of video games. It's not like I can help it - it's been a month full of blockbuster games so far. My "To-do" list includes the aforementioned Half-Life, Vampire: Bloodlines and Metal Gear Solid 3...

Meanwhile in my military life, I've failed to get into the bike course, which means that I'm staying in camp while my compadres get to race around on scramblers. Oh well, at least I have quite a bit of time off, to do my own thing.

A random smattering of links

del.icio.us a bookmarking website, i just use it as a source of interesting links. seems to be updated every time i click the refresh button.

ruby take the hassle and pain out of programming by learning ruby, a high level programming/scripting language. not only is it easy to use and flexible, it can also be integrated with Java or C, so you're not throwing your existing skills away.

shacknews games news, updated daily with interesting features like 'late night consoling'

Hehe, another sproradic update. I'm having a long weekend right now. Life at my new unit is real slack at the moment. I wonder how long it will last... real training will probably start after my motorcycle lessons. It's getting hard to update this site, my life is so routine at the moment. Time really passes when you're in the army. Plus, blogger keeps eating my posts :)

Argh

Guess I forgot to update the site this week. It's not been particularly busy, since I'm on leave. But having fun is my priority. I'm really into Kohan 2 right now. It's innovative and deep; a refreshing change from traditional RTS games.

Finished reading the Da Vinci Code. It's not the most well-written book I've seen, and I would say it's a slightly above average thriller. What sets it apart from the competition is the "inflammatory" nature of it's contents, regarding Catholicism and christianity in general. I guess it must be approached with a pinch of salt if you're the religious sort. This wikipedia page has a writeup on the controversy, if you want a bit of spoilers.

Ok this place is going through some serious neglect. I'll be completing my basic training course in a week's time, then taking a week off. So there'll be time to update a bit more. I hope life will be better outside of Tekong.

Bye Bye

I'm off now

Not that anybody actually reads this site, but it's sort of disappointing to have so few updates. It's been what, a month already? There isn't much to say about army life, really. I'm a lot fitter obviously, but still below the standard required here. Slowly but surely, they've been teaching us the tricks of the soldier trade. We learned about our main rifle, close combat and some basic first aid this week alone. It would be pretty fun, if the pace wasn't so hectic. We're lucky if we get more than 30 mins of free time before lights out each night.

There was also a recruitment drive this week, with all the armed forces trying to get us to sign on. Some very attractive pay + benefits packages were offered, and the presentation was super slick, but I didn't take the bait. I guess I'm just not ready to sign away 10 years of my life so easily.

Watched I,Robot last weekend. I found it to be a decent movie, although very generic and typical of a Hollywood action film. I think it got my attention only because of the book tie-in.

I've been thinking what to do during my short weekends away from army life. Resting seems like a good option. I'll go rest now.

Gah

I just came back from a movie + dinner with a group of friends. It had a "Last Supper" kind of feeling, and afterwards everybody said their last goodbyes to me.

Updating this website is going to be a pain in the next couple weeks. But I hope to post about my early training experience, if there's anything interesting to share.

But anyway, tomorrow I shall be reporting to the island of Tekong, where I will solemnly vow to spill my lifeblood for my country. Then after the administrative paperwork, there'll be the head shaving ceremony, tour of the facilities and an introductory session, before training begins in earnest.

I only hope I'm not too pampered and spoiled to adjust to army life, which is already pretty slack where I'm going.

Last Days

7 more days to NS.

My original plans to work on the games project don't seem to be going anywhere, especially when everyone's busy/not interested. Well, it's their decision to make. So the question is, how to spend the last week of "freedom"?

My problem with the Army is that it requires total dedication, you're stuck in camp and there's no room for anything else. Which sucks, because I've not finished learning everything I want to know yet. It certainly won't be easy to start learning again after the next 2 years. I guess it's my own fault for wasting so much time.

I can't think of anything interesting to write. It's been a pretty dull day. I went back to my school to showcase a project, but I didn't really do much except to get in the way. Our "customers" were all secondary school students. Their knowledge of technology was pretty good, and they asked some smart questions too. The worst part about presenting the showcase was that I was a freeloader, so I felt pretty lame.

My dad is talking about buying a Palm device, so I don't get totally out of touch during NS. It's a nice gesture, but I don't think expensive hardware can be/should be brought to camp. Man, it would be great to read e-books and play a few games during long hours though.

Perth

So anyway, here's my take on Perth, in case somebody out there actually wants to know.

Perth is a very laid-back, relaxed city. There's a lot to see, a lot to do, things to touch and experiences to be had, but it's incredibly peaceful and quiet, especially after 5 o'clock (there's no nightlife whatsoever). So, it's a good place to settle down and live... when you're 60. Thrill seekers, look elsewhere.

The shopping here is decent, nothing compared to Hong Kong or Malaysia though. You can buy some interesting Australian-themed souvenirs. Kangeroo scrotum (said to bring good luck, except for the original owner) comes to mind. A wide selection of "indigenous artifacts", made by real tribespeople, is also available, which include paintings, digeridoos, boomerangs and ... rocks. Also check out the local foodstuffs. Fremantle (a town right next to Perth) is a port town, so there's plenty of delicious fresh fish and other seafood available. Chocolate, ice-cream and any dairy-based products are also good, because the cows are right next to the factory.

A highlight of my vacation there was the 1-day tour of Perth. A charming and fat gentleman, called Ron took us to see a wildlife park, a chocolate factory (free chocolate tasting), a vineyard (wine tasting), a fruit store, a convienience shop, a boat cruise and finally his own house. That's right, his own house. Where he cooked a very tasty bbq lunch for us. His mom showed us his 3 story house (located on prime waterfront land, with a glorious view) and his personal yacht.

It turns out Big Ron's a multi-millionaire.

What a mess

I tried porting over the project to use JME, but it's been surprisingly difficult so far. Surprising because most of the original code was ripped off from there in the first place. Now I've reached what appears to be a dead end.

Here's some background info on the project: It's a Java game project designed for multiplayer, originally created for a school project. It makes use of the lwjgl project, to allow 3d graphics and sound. Features of our project include:

- "Martian" terrain with textures
- 3D player models, which were stolen from polycount
- Powerups
- Multiple weapons deal out death and destruction
- In-game chat
- Lobby system where you can set up a game with others


Right now, what I'm trying to do is to replace the in-game engine with JME, because it has a lot of cool features and special effects.

Back from holidays. Nothing except National Service to look forward to now. At least I have the spare time to work on the game project.

Eclipse came out with a new version recently. The most obvious changes are the appearance of the interface, and code folding (you can hide any block of code away).

On my todo list today is to write some JUnit tests for the project. Not sure how to proceed with this one, but I just like the idea of having automated tests filter out bugs at the touch of a button.

I was originally going to post a short blurb on the different Java IDEs out there, but I realized that it's a highly personal choice. There's no real killer feature that distinguishes one from another. The IDE I'm using right now is Eclipse.

A short guide to getting Eclipse running from scratch:
1. Go to the downloads page on the eclipse.org website.
2. Click on the main download site
3. Select the latest version available(currently 3.0M8)
4. Select your operating system.
5. The download will start now.
6. Unzip the file to any location you choose
7. In the eclipse directory, double click on "eclipse.exe". It's the one with an eclipse icon.

Eclipse will start up immediately. No installation required. At this point, you may want to create a shortcut for Eclipse on your desktop or start menu.
I would definitely recommend going through the help contents, which can be accessed from the "Help" menu bar. For standard users, you can go through the "Workbench User Guide" and the "Java Development User Guide".

I'll be taking a short vacation in Australia with my family. Be back next week.

So, we had a meeting to discuss our group project yesterday. I think we must have spent 5 minutes total in discussion. Then we went to play street soccer.

I'll be watching Troy later on. I hope it's good, the last movie I watched was Van Helsing.

A good site to visit if you like technology in general is Ars Technica. The site mainly covers news in the IT world, but they also branch out into a lot of interesting directions. Be sure to take a look at their forums too.

Finding this site really made my day. I love this show.

A group of friends and I will be meeting up today, with the pretext of discussing our games project. I predict that the day will be spent playing Winning Eleven 7, and then some real football later on.

I really need to get some proper sleep now, seeing myself in the mirror scares me (hello outbreak of pimples, didn't see you yesterday. have you met mr.dark rings around my eyes?)