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Current stuff
Apr. 5th, 2011 03:07 amRight now I'm mostly waiting for my paycheck on Thursday so I can pre-order my copy of Portal 2.
The trailers Valve has on their YouTube page are quite impressive.
In unrelated news, I may need to nail down a mousepad to my desk's keyboard drawer.
Apparently, I lean on my mouse a bit on the hard side (not sure quite why just yet), and have rubbed a thin layer off the mouse's non-slip pads.
(yes, that was the layer with the non-slip coating)
Which means that the mouse isn't sliding around very nicely.
Because my keyboard drawer isn't very wide, there's just barely enough room for the keyboard and the mousepad, so it would be best to somehow affix the pad to the drawer itself so it won't slide around.
(I may need to use a larger mouse than what I'm currently using. My hands are a little on the large side)
As I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm in the process of applying for graduation.
I need to scrape up around $85 to pay for a late fee, then they'll actually look at my application.
(what bugs me is there was no indication that there were periods to apply in when applying to avoid incurring fees. It even claimed that there would be no fees for applying. Yes, I'm quite annoyed, in case you didn't notice...)
The next open house for my local campus if near the end of May this year instead of mid March, to allow the latest expansion to be completed in time to be shown off.
Again, I've offered my services to the Computing Science department.
This time I'm going to be showing off an integrated development environment for the iRobot Create.
(the educational version of the Roomba)
It's quite an ambitious project, as I'm essentially writing it from almost scratch in Java to run on multiple platforms, with at least three options for running your code.
(directly on a plug-in brain for the Create called the Command Module, running on the PC controlling the robot via a serial cable, or running in a simulated environment)
Much of the interface code that wraps the actual code written by the users has already been written, I just have to adapt it a little bit for the various other modes of use, while the biggest part is going to be the IDE itself.
I've never written quite this much code in Java without working on a team, but that's never stopped me before.
So far, I've found a library that allows me to provide syntax-highlighting, figured out what in-general needs to be done, but have yet to actually get somewhere useful with it.
(I have less than two months, so time is ticking away as I type this)
If I do manage to pull this off, it'll provide an excellent platform for future instructors to teach programming to first-year students.
(one day, I hope I'll be among them, but for now, I must wait and satisfy myself with finding a decent job, with coding projects like this as a hobby)
The trailers Valve has on their YouTube page are quite impressive.
In unrelated news, I may need to nail down a mousepad to my desk's keyboard drawer.
Apparently, I lean on my mouse a bit on the hard side (not sure quite why just yet), and have rubbed a thin layer off the mouse's non-slip pads.
(yes, that was the layer with the non-slip coating)
Which means that the mouse isn't sliding around very nicely.
Because my keyboard drawer isn't very wide, there's just barely enough room for the keyboard and the mousepad, so it would be best to somehow affix the pad to the drawer itself so it won't slide around.
(I may need to use a larger mouse than what I'm currently using. My hands are a little on the large side)
As I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm in the process of applying for graduation.
I need to scrape up around $85 to pay for a late fee, then they'll actually look at my application.
(what bugs me is there was no indication that there were periods to apply in when applying to avoid incurring fees. It even claimed that there would be no fees for applying. Yes, I'm quite annoyed, in case you didn't notice...)
The next open house for my local campus if near the end of May this year instead of mid March, to allow the latest expansion to be completed in time to be shown off.
Again, I've offered my services to the Computing Science department.
This time I'm going to be showing off an integrated development environment for the iRobot Create.
(the educational version of the Roomba)
It's quite an ambitious project, as I'm essentially writing it from almost scratch in Java to run on multiple platforms, with at least three options for running your code.
(directly on a plug-in brain for the Create called the Command Module, running on the PC controlling the robot via a serial cable, or running in a simulated environment)
Much of the interface code that wraps the actual code written by the users has already been written, I just have to adapt it a little bit for the various other modes of use, while the biggest part is going to be the IDE itself.
I've never written quite this much code in Java without working on a team, but that's never stopped me before.
So far, I've found a library that allows me to provide syntax-highlighting, figured out what in-general needs to be done, but have yet to actually get somewhere useful with it.
(I have less than two months, so time is ticking away as I type this)
If I do manage to pull this off, it'll provide an excellent platform for future instructors to teach programming to first-year students.
(one day, I hope I'll be among them, but for now, I must wait and satisfy myself with finding a decent job, with coding projects like this as a hobby)
