Sunday, December 11, 2011

Adobe Kuler

Found a sorta interesting iphone/android application from Adobe today: "Adobe Kuler".

The idea is, it allows the creation of "inspirational" color palettes of 5 colors. You can either take photos and find the most important colors of it or create the gamma yourself. Sharing and all included.

Sorta cool for drawing, application and webdesign



Thursday, December 8, 2011

Game Programming - Motivations

So, I'm learning applied C# programming in a part of my free time. Since Im a geek at heart and apparently spent some days (*cough*) playing at the PC in my life, I decided to give game programming a short. Im using XNA (apparently I allready blogged this a while ago, damn, Im bad at remembering stuff and keeping it up to date...).

While, I have some defined examples of some games that probably will be fun to play and sorta innovative, they are pretty complicated, so I want to start small.

Some Jump&Run will do for the first I said myself. So I wanted to look up some simple games I know. Soon enough I re-remembered Canabalt. ( http://www.adamatomic.com/canabalt/ )

The game design is simple, yet amazing and addictive, especially if you got an exam next day. A big part of its charm comes from them music. So after doing some tracing, I soon found out what other games had music written by the same author...

Especially 2 are noteworthy:

Super Meat Boy - Now I know this one since a while. What identifies it primary, is it's difficulty level, that is pretty much absurd. Basicaly it's your good old mario, with the difference, that the fireman is replaced by a cube of meat with legs and arms, princess peach with Bandage Girl and the big fat green ugly turtle boss, by the charmant Dr.Fetus.

(I still have no idea why Bandage girl is called this way, besides considering the fact that she's geting kidnaped ~320 times in this game, they should rather call her bondage girl).

Oh and the world. Basicaly you dont jump on anyones head or shoot fireballs or collect shrooms. The world is mostly grim, bloodred (actually only in the hell chapter, but dying >200 times/hour, covers surfaces with red stain quite a bit and no im not exagerating) and 99% filled with things that move, are sharp and will kill you instantly if you get too close.

  To sum it up: here haf a video: 



A second game by the same "meat team" (what fiting name), is Binding of Isaac, that features a small kid who is trying to get murdered by his fanatical mother who hears the voice of god... so he hides in the basement, that is filled with horrific things that all want to bite and kill you, starting with flies, over zombies and mutated kids down to the four horsemen and even satan himself.

Luckily there are hundreds of upgrades Isaac can collect, which makes this game so awesome....

TL;DR: this thing distracted me for like 3-4 days from my thesis


It might be the D&D blood (+1) talking in me, but if something can buy me, when it comes to games, its upgrades and randomness. And Binding of Isaac pretty much shows a good level of it.

So i might try to make a project like this I guess.

Sure it wont be even close to this complicated, "good" looking and interesting, but its all learning I guess.

Friday, December 2, 2011

Game programming

I got bored of programming thesis stuff and since my neurological system programming is sorta in a hold (what do you mean "do other things") because I need a good GUI and apparently the perfectionist in me doesn't feel like the standard windows GUI and a few dots are good enough for such a minor script...

So I started looking up on DirectX (ofc 11 only, because well... nevermind me) and OpenGL

One thing led to another (and its never a good thign, when we are talking me) and I ended up with a version XNA on my PC and me ready to program a small game, in order to learn the graphical aspects of DirectX a bit more and also because im bored.

It definitly won't have any priority over the thesis, but it certainly will provide a bit of change here and there

I swear, this is gonna end facepalmworthy...

Friday, November 25, 2011

Gym

Finally dragged my lazy ass to the gym and got a new subscription.

A trainer suggested to work out a good plan for me, so after taking some data it turned out:

Apparently I'm:

Overly underwatered - my body is only 40% water, while 55-60% is normal
Hypertonic - 130-140 blood pressure is normal for me, also my heartbeat is too strong
Hyperstatic - My chest area+back+shoulders is overly strong in comparison to my arms
Too "mobile" - aka weirdly flexible and stretchy
Also have like the lowest alcohol and coffein comsumption they saw in data since ages...

oO, now i feel like im sick - /goes to grab a beer

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Skeletons (Part 1)

I guess everyone has his skeletons in the closet, but with every passing day I get more and more sure, that parts of my families closets are officially registered graveyards.

I dont even know where to start, especially since there are quite some stories going on out here. I think I start with the family on my mother's side. This family tree is full of women with characters of all kind. One of my grandgrandmas had 4 daughters and her sister had also a daughter. While the grandgrandma alone deserves quite some attention, I wont focus on her in this little gibbertext.

Still some words: This particular grandgrandmother was living back then in Sibiria. Not the easiest place to live. Especially when you have 2 children (back then), german blood and your husband fighting the second world war - that's going on during that time. Neither Stalin's nor Hitler's soldiers are the friendliest fellows either, especially to a german-blooded long haired (she had incredible hair, as I was told) in russia, so they decided to move southeast, where the weather is "warmer", the distance from the frontlines higher, food (and people) raids less often. Also relatives.

So Tadjikistan it was. On the way there, during one of Russia's cold winter snow storms and one of the small girls lost her fur hat. It's hard to find a black cat in a dark room during the night, especially if it aint there. And with the wind going on, the hat wasnt there either. Sadly the temperatures during a sibirian winter are -15°c and lower, so losing your hat equals death by freezing.

The mother gave her hat to her daughter and tied her hair around her head in the attempt to keep it warm. They somehow made it. She lost all her long hair however.

In Tadjikistan life was easier. Sure, people were still starving and sovjet raids were  taking people to work camps (back to sibiria mostly), because they were of questionable blood, said something wrong or simply because someone had to be taken. Stalin was releasing lists, with a certain ammount of people from each social level group, that had to be eliminated, in order to maintain full control over the country. In addition to this schizophrenic behaviour, also people of "questionable" origin were to be taken to camps (in waves) or dealt with otherwise. My grandgrandmother was german and thus of "questionable" origin and allways under such a risk.

However, first her husband returned or more like was carried back from the front. Multipple heavy wounds and Diphteria weakened this man, he could barely move and was spending most his days in bed. (I'm actually not sure if it was Diphteria or Tuberchulosis, seems like both were fairly "popular" in my family tree during those times).

One of their neighbours and friends, who had acces to higher levels, informed them, that the next wave of arrests was incoming in a few monthes. Leaving or runing would be no option, with 2 children, her incapacitated husband and famine all over the land and there very few reasons to get spared from such a arrest. One of those was pregnancy.

When then soldiers arrived and told her, that she has 5 minutes to pack her things, she allready was pregnant. She was spared. Her husband died few days later however from the severe illness and fever.

To be continued

Developers Hell


This device will definitly haunt me after my death. Not only is the manual for it as simple to understand (also wrong in some technical aspects) as a quantum physics book, that was translated into english from japanese with google translator, in addiotion to this the manual to the DG2020 is also completly lacking any important programming information.

The engineers automaticly asumed that anyone using this device will have access to LabVIEW , the software that costs just some thousands euro... The best part of it: its my job as a student to make a standalone DLL now o.o

Friday, November 18, 2011

No I don't


Actually, I sorta got bored of the game and don't even get to playing anything lately with all the stress around me, but I like the vid :)

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Monopoly

For study purposes I was looking for control sequences of a DG2020. Had to discover that every single website, documentation etc. was refering to LabVIEW which has a license that costs thousands...

The official documentation doesn't even cover any other options or direct programming. Gross.

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Nope, not a sphere

Finished todays planned and schedules programming part.

Was doodling and filterplaying with photoshop, while thinking about tommorows plans. Outcome:

Out of order

Well I guess I finaly managed to fuck up properly this time,

time management was never exactly my strength, but after finaly passing all projects and exams, slacking at the bachelor thesis might have not been the best idea I've ever had.

Now that I think of it, I lost around 2 weeks of pure thesis time and in addition nearly 4 weeks of mixed exam-thesis time, that means around 1 month. It's not like I wasn't doing anything, but I should've spent at least the tripple avarage of daily time for my work

On the bright side, I did program quite something, sadly however its completly unrelated to my project. ALSO on the second bright side I unlocked quite a lot of League of Legends champions AND managed to get to level 33 in 3 days in Skyrim, which isn't bad at all, with the exception that it's not helping my project now too...

Oh well.

The good thing is, its still perfectly makable, so I guess it's back to planing hourly again, so I get back on track.

Plan for today: Install a copy of VMware player with ubuntu on my second PC, get the system im programing on runing (which somehow didnt work for me yesterday), write down and analyze the LabVIEW core structure properly and THEN do whatever i feel like.

Let's see how that turns out...

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Skyrim

For those few people who does NOT find that games are a spawn of satan and will bring doom and oblivion (well they sorta brough doom and oblivion, even if oblivion was definitly a better game) to us all, the partielly longawaited game oblivion was released 2 days ago.

And I have to say, it is quite impressive. A good skillsystem, huge and amazing world and fun gameplay mechanics makes it a great playexperience.

The downside to this is, that I still have to finish a huge ammount of work until monday and chances are i wont be able to finish the game so I can focus on my thesis :x

Friday, November 11, 2011

Mrmmmmf

Mrmmmmf! No I'm not kidnapped and gagged (yet?), was just at a dentist. I hate my teeth

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Failing at basics

While working on a programm i somehow absolutly forgot that a subclass of a class is still the class...
Result:

Cell=Space

Glow

Found a neat turtorial today, while googling for a way to make glowing lines look optimal.

Monday, November 7, 2011

Disturbing

Good morning,

woke up quite ahead of time. Had some very weird, also disturbing dream. Apparently my unconscious finally find something, that would not make me turn around and go sleep again, as regular nightmares do.

In the dream I allways had this feeling of having a presense behind me, that was making fun of me and observing me, yet I was not able to see or find the presense. What was even more disturbing, is that I had blackouts in the dream and could not remember if I did something or not. For example, I closed the door, but then I discovered that the door was still opened. I went to jogg a round, but had to find out that my clothes were allready sweaty and I was sorta exhausted myself. etc

The disturbing part of the dream was, I was never sure, if this presense was some personality split of me or guy hijacking my identity in the background.

Irony: I discovered this picture when trying to log on one of my accounts:


I go get breakfast, if I will discover that it's allready eaten away, I'm calling the ghostbusters

Neuronal Networks

I'm not exactly a great programmer, in fact I'm (sorta) studying and (sorta) learning by myself to become (sorta) one at some point, but I did allready had (sorta.. ok i shut up) some contact with C++, VB, Delphi, Labview, French, Matlab, all kind of web-stuffs and other languages so far. However C# is a new one. And while it's good old C in its principles, starting programming a Neuronal Network in it, might have been not the best idea ever. It also feels like I'm being outsmarted by a single (even simulated) brain cell.

On the bright side, it is a project I've been planing and researching along since ages, so it's finaly time to programm somethign that will probably contradict all of my asumptions and theories, but heh, that's how it works I guess.

Anyhow I'm sorta ready with the design of my first "amplified node" and the classical "node" in the sense of neurological networks. Really looking forward for the point, where I have their "phasing", priorities and the GUI worked out, so I can give em a try. Will prolly take quite a while.

Though, I'm allready now wondering, how good the idea was to allow nodes to get bored and annoyed. I swear if the programm will sell my gloves on Ebay (for reference purposes: I programmed some gaming bots at some point, and they sold their equipment, especially the gloves pretty often in the first phases), I pick up some other study...

Ohai

Heya dearest Diary, (I hate you)

I guess stuff got better recently, which means 2 things:
1) No more emoish blog entries, I'd keep em out of a public blog (as in, you CAN find it, why/how is a enigma for me), if it wouldnt be for me knowing You would read it (see the capital Y, it's intended)
2) I should get my schedule straight again.

 So ye, my schedule for tommorow.

1) 8.30 Wake up and stand up
2) 9.00 WAKE UP and STAND up
3) Check on important information (aka mail etc)
4) Take a shower and actually eat
5) 10.00 Go visit the university and do some test with the recently compiled code
6) See if anything changed about the installation there (unporbable) and test out my first programming attempts to adress a DG2020 (ew).
7) 12.00 Proceed with the Neuronal network programming (more on this topic later)
8) 14.00 In case I won't (will) get bored earlier (later) this far - it's LoL time, gotta fix dat ranked score.
9) 16.00 Thesis work until 19-20.00
10) 20.00+ Whatever

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Classy

Object
Object.Space
Object.Space.Neu.
Object.Space.Neu.Node
Object.Space.Neu.Node.Heavy

Finaly got the structure. And yes I know I dont need the object part :p, but hey, shhh

Thursday, October 27, 2011

28.10.11

9:00 --- Wake up, feed, shower
10:00 --- League of Legends normal+ranked (1 round each)
12:00 --- Programming
15:00 --- Thesis
18:00 --- Aardvark project
19:00 --- Make arangements, write emails (university, thesis related), also organize C# project folder
20:00 --- "Whatever" time
22:00 --- Unless She is online, watch a movie

Things should get postponed into the Whatever time, if she is online during it, making a flow daytime plan and not risking upseting anyone.

Should've made the Layout Emoish... oh wait

Deary "Diary", I hate you,

for once, because i hate speaking to an not-so-living object unless it's a wall (those make fairly good conversation partners) and because it's kinda late but I should keep posting stuff up, but I'm sleepy anyhow

Basicaly I slacked today,

for once because I felt like it (well i sorta do all the time)
and mostly because a sorta annoying talk the day before (if you dont count the fact that "today is tommorow" allready) sorta shattered me for a while. I definitly learned quite a bit from it, but I'm not sure about the conclusions I did back then, neither yesterday, nor today. I hate it when stuff "happens" to be so complicated and decissions are hard.

Especially when you have to choise between pretty much giving up a hobby or upseting a upset perosn even more. Though I'm still not sure how well a relationship can evolve, that is based on denial instead of  trust and tolerance, especialy considering the fact that the "disruption" is pretty rude and the conflict dubious and I also I sorta still dont get the issue, but thats prolly just me as allways. Though on the other hand, I can sorta understand the discomfort.

And what am (was?) I suposed to do in such a situation? And where does one get advise, especially if you are confronted with such thigns pretty much for the first time? Ask the oracle? Friends (sorta makes me giggle)? Oppose the person I care for or just shoving another one away? Usually I sorta have this strong feeling of justice. Or at least what is right do. And it is usually the same as what is fair to do. At least in my oppinion. And it's not exactly often correct.

But for once, I really don't know. Right and fair are totaly different things, making even their own definitions questionable. I wish I could find a optimal solution or at least get some sort of distant idea of what to do.

It's not fair to ditch a person for no reason or because she might have/had feelings (i'm not even sure about that part), even if she is dating someone allready and is generelly nice to everyone, especially if this person has helped you quite some time.

But is it right to go with exactly this perosn to a dancing course. And is, not-able-to-find-any-other-person-who would go to the dancing course with you (must be female+age(18-27)+student or somehow related to students+willing to dance+know me+be single+get the fact that there is no romantic stuff involved) a valid excuse to not ditch her?

Can a partner in a long-range-relationship demand from you to stop dancing? Is it fair or right? Doesn't it show mistrust?

But how should one act if the person is upset and not exactly cheerful because of multipple events, that are partielly related to your own blindness and forgetiveness. Does it change something. Shouldn't one do his best to change something about it?

Generelly I'd oppose such a intrusion, (though isn't the dancing a intrusion into our relationship itself?) it's unfair and cuting down a hobby that one is doing since 1 year is something one can't handle that simply, but do the circumstances above change it? They for sure change something, I'm not sure what.

For reference sake, no I would not mind it myself. I trust people and if my partner would cheat on me, then either I am absolutly not worth them or they are not worth me (I shouldn't be writing it down, but I would excuse if something like that would happen, if it would happen "accidently" or cause of "drinking slightly too much"), which makes the case simple.

Generelly, I have no idea, I still have this slight hope that it would sort itself out in some way over the next 3 weeks, where no dancing will be involved anway, because of some (un)related event, but eventually I will have to choise.

What probaly upsets me most, was to hear this. I did not expect this, especially not after 1 year of dancing, such things should be cleared up early and being riped out with flesh. It's ironic that my dancing partner was laughing, when telling me last time we danced (same evening), that her previous patner thought, there would be somethign between them just because they are dancing. I wonder if she ever had something for me. No friggin idea, she viewed me as some uninteresting kid and raged over the fact that I didnt recognize her irl. There is some irony involved in the fact that "We" had our talk at the same time, I had my dancing talk with her. I really hope I won't have to choise in the end. But if I'll have to, I know I'll choise what is worth more for me... But, I dont want things on either of our lists... And im not even sure if my is so empty...

Does the fact that she did make it a valid reason to ditch her, if you have a partner. I'm not sure, maybe it indeed does. I can imagine that the touching can't be exactly a very comforting idea (even if its a bit silly on at the same time. The only thing I touch, except for her right hand and back are her shoes, basicaly because i dance like a baboon and step on them :x), so this argument is as valid as it is invalid.

The other argument is the doormat thing. Well this is something, im not so sure about myself. On the one hand, yes the whole time changing and irresponsible approach was not nice. Even considering the fact that im not exactly respo.. responz.. well you know what i mean, myself. However, most of the time this happens with more or less good explanations (her work does end 1 hour before the dancing and overtime is the german definition of dessert at work). I'm not sure if agreeing to all this changing makes me a doormat. Should it make her go >.<? I actually think it shouldn't. But I'm glad it does. At least makes me feel sorta understood and cared about and alsog ives the whole issue a more realistic approach.

On the other hand, wouldn't canceling the whole dancing, just make me a huge doormat myself. And also a bad person, since she will also lose her dancing club partner? And even if I find soemone, how will it look like if I'll appear with another partner (hf finding one at a informatics university) after ditching her and she'll be there too, I guess it's a either-or thign here, there is no third choise... The whole "sorry, we won't be talking anymore" (unrelated) on skype yesterday, was allready not exactly comfortable, even if the reasoning here is more then understandable, so I'll just be quiet about it. The funny (?) part was her teling me on skype, before I ignored her, that ironicaly just yesterday she thought, if she would ignore everyone, if her serbian BF would rage and asked her that and that she came to the conclusion it wouldn't be the person for her if he'd act like that...

Well, while I sorta understand her, even the request of ditching a lot more, then a skype contact and a hobby won't make me abandon her. I wonder if I'm blind or stupid? Sleepy for sure.

Why isnt there a simple solution for such a seemingly trivial issue? And why is such a seemingly trivival case, upset so much. Relationships shouldnt be feeling like cardhouses. I know im not a perfect boyfriend. For the sake of pony, I never been a too good one. But are the failures I do, really that big? Ain't I doing anythign right, that such a small issue would bring the whole balance to crash. It really makes my heart ache, to hear her thinking that I care less or that she (nearly?) has to beg for attention. I really should take care of all the other small things first I guess.

Sadly it is true, that I forgot or didnt get to do a lot of things I should have done (and i dont mean finishign the thesis reading) and that I'm better in real life (mainly because I sometimes need a poke and remind myself all the time this way) at doing such things... Should I ditch something I really like, to make her feel better? It feel like hiting the -50% XP button for -100% hunger and +50 spirit energy in MOTB, in other words, failing, going back in a relationship, losing maximum hitpoints and recieving negative a negative level debuff... wait.

I wish I could hug her, hold her and dance with her now instead, I miss her so much... It would make everything so easy and obvious, such issues wouldn't be existing and I'm, sure she'd be less upset and me more concentrated (heh).  I hope You are ok right now, feel better and hopefully sleep peacefully, despite the presense of cpt.retarded-baboon. (hug)





I think I should include those little things I failed so far things into the plans from now on . Don't think it counts as cheating, it's just a reminder otherwise I'll get carried away by games or programming work.

Anyhow, I should write the plan for tommorow (today...) and go sleep

Anyhow Mr. (Miss?) Diary,

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

26.10.11

 OK, it seems like exact timing did help quite a bit (i won the LoL ranked games, so how could it be bad, right?). As for the actual day, apart fromt he (sorta failish) hair cuting issue, one is usualy not comfortable talking about to well known friends after multipple drinks of beer it wasn't too bad.

I manage to get through another chapter of C# programming, read 15 pages of the cryptic thesis, that is making me wonder if it's written by google translator... and to schedule a dentist session, sorta.

Will have to make another run to the gym though, to find out some data.
It looks like I'll be paying 20€/month for 1 year (set in stone time) for a more or less limitless access to the gym (showers included, whoo!). Fair trade if you ask em and it definitly wont hurt me (or maybe it will exactly hurt me). Only the question of "can i pull it through remains".

As for the rest, managed to Ding 85 in WoW (the cool kids amongst us, know what this game is) and get multipple "wow amazing nidalee" comments in lol.
PS: buying bewitching Nidalee skin was so worth it, for the sake of the comment "Suck my broom" o.o

Anyhow, the plans for tommorow:

8.45 -- Wake up
9.00 -- Wake up (for real)
9.15 -- Go to gym and univeristy
10.00 - Programing time
13.00 - Gaming time
15.00 - Thesis again
19.00 - Prorgraming/Gaming
24.00 - Go sleep in time (dammit)

Monday, October 24, 2011

25.10.11

OK, apparently im not good at planing. I guess I'll give it another try.

Basicaly I have quite some stuff to attend to.

I guess I should wake up at 9am.

Since im sorta msot productive between 8 and 12.00am I will use the time for programing purposes.

Then I'll go inform myself about the working out options at the nearby gym again, since those changed since Ireland and will probably also visit the Dentist, since my tooth has no respect for timeplaning and is geting in the way (if you cant fight em join involve em)

Asuming I wont be wasting time (unlikely) and be done by 13.00 (unlikely), the time will be spend for my playing reasearch on WoW and LoL.

Latest at 16.00 I sould prcoeed with the Bachelor reading. With A time window planed for Misc stuff noone cares about (like food) at 18.00-19.00

Starting with 20.00 I'll be using my buffer time that will basicaly cover whatever I didnt get to yet.

Hopefuly I'll maange to go sleep at midnight (prolly not)

24.10.2011 - Plans

Fine, so uh, first post here I go? (OT: I'm used to foruming, not to blogging, so it feels like im spaming a single thread...)

So ye: today's remaining timeline (i seriously have to fix the time on my account, tis for sure not 7AM as google claims...):

1) Start reading the dissertation on uh... stuff relevant for my bachelor thesis (I should seriously find out what exactly I'm doing again, I sorta forgot this part :x)
2) Read through another chapter of C# (Switching C++ ==> C#)
3) Jog a round (preferably before it's completely dark...) )
4) Spend the remaining time by talking to Her and/or win a round of League of Legends to farm up my last quintessense.
5) Go to sleep in time o.o

I seriously have to think and consider a way to split the time-line from the actual blog, since if i'll be able to keep bloging, I'll prolly just confuse myself.

(Lack of) Purpose

This blog, was allways aiming at targeting very specific audience (more like a single person). Still, asuming that due to whatever circumstances, you - improbable, yet theoretically possible and unknown to me reader found this site, here are the" highlights" of this strange place.

1) Time planing purposes. I'm just going to blog down whatever plans and progress on my plans I have, since I'm otherwise not exactly capable of making a prioritized timeline... probably still wont be.

2) Casual selfdiscussions on various topics, involving long range relationships, friendship, silence and selfcensoring and other topics, you usually avoid reading about.

3) Progress of a mediocre programmer on a project most people would call a chanceless timewaste...

4) A bit of  typical comments on (online) gaming, movies and books.

5) Gibberish and typos en mass