Blog 05082011 - Share

Pendulum- one of my favorite bands - is coming out with a new album. Pendulum is a hard rock/ Drum n Bass band which makes some music that is straight up awesome. Their song "Slam" is popular on YouTube because of the video of a heavy man dancing shirtless to it in public. That song was more when they played DnB, but recently they have moved to playing hard rock with a Drum n Bass beat, or slower techno.

Blog 05082011 - Reflect

This week we worked on having the screen color change using int values for the red, green, and blue parameters. The colors scale all the way up to 250 and then go back down, making a cool looking moodlight. I would have liked to have changed it so that every time it would start with a random RGB and go from there, but I just had them start at certain values and then change from there. XNA is a blast, and I'm going to do my best to stay on top of my work and not fall behind with C# like I did with Java. Douglas and I are also working on a side project which is a shooter. This game will be controlled by an Xbox controller, and already looks cool and has music.

Blog 04242011 - Share

WikiWars is a game where two people go to Wikipedia and hit "random article". They then decide on a page to find only by clicking links inside the articles they navigate to. I bring this up because I just went 2/0 with Douglas Cheong at this game, with the help of my main man Stephen. the first time we were searching for Monarch Butterflies and the second time we were looking for Instant Noodles. This game is really entertaining and you can play this with your friends too.

Here's a link to a website that makes it easy:

http://www.wikihow.com/Play-Wiki-Wars

Blog 04242011 - Reflect

Recently we've changed from Java coding to XNA. XNA is used for Microsoft applications, and in this class we will be using it specifically for Windows Games. At first we just learned how to change the color of the background. This is done by

GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color);

The default color for Windows Game is 'Cornflower Blue'. Intellisense is really cool, It's a feature inside Windows Visual Studio 2010 that completes the code for you, saving a lot of time and helping you in case you forget what you needed to type next.

Reflection: Sort/Search

Sort Search seems more like an exercise in arrays and forLoops. The code is somewhat simple, just knowing how to apply the logic to it is the difficult thing. It seems more and more obvious that programming is not just knowing syntax, but using logic to figure out where to use what to get the computer to achieve your goals.I feel like a lot of the time I will get stumped by the program. I will usually just sit there and stare at the screen until an idea pops into my head and I go "boy, that DOES make sense!". My code is all just my conclusions on which method is best used to solve a problem.

Share: Miike Snow

Miike Snow is my new favorite group. Their song "Animal" is one of my favorites, and their song "Silvia" is also really good. They are an indie-alt band. A lot of their songs have electronic influences and really good lyrics. I recommend anyone who likes electronic or alternative music to look into this band.

Share: 03/06/11

My Spring Break:

I spent a lot of time this spring break doing nothing. Watching TV and eating food for probably 3 days, and then I realized I needed to get on top of my school work. I spent some time learning python, an easier programming language than java. I really enjoy working in python, and I may be better at python than Java.

I also went camping with my family. We spent two days camping 2 hours west of Dallas. I saw a snake and also went hiking a lot, it was a blast. My best friend (who lives in Dallas) also joined me for fishing and relaxing listening to the radio. It was a little hot, but in the end I enjoyed it a lot.