G+ really seems to be kicking off

http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/07/22/7143310-kickoff-of-google-stomps-facebook-twitter

G+ really seems to be kicking off. Although lets face it, Google is basically a modern day Midas. Given Apple might be doing better in the phone market, but that really is their forte.. And they have the trust of the people.. from selling them overpriced over secure crap.

Over security is nice when it comes to phones, keeps people from being able to make free phone calls and doing things that would otherwise make them happy. Which is a no-no in the world of electronics. Look at Microsoft they hate their Customers.. Loathe them. Don't trust them to be able to look at their own system files among other things.. But that's how they get ahead in this world. Hide everything behind the scenes, tell you it's good for you and charge you for it.

I sometimes wonder if video games were designed for Linux, and it wasn't so scary for the non-computer literate to start up, whether we'd have a larger trend of people walking away from the corporate giants that hold all the strings..  Well one step at a time.

Anyway it's cool to see google+ doing so well. The circles are kind of awesome so i'm looking forward to it getting more popular. No sketches as of yet but i'm going to work on it.. At some point i'm going to have to get better if i want to design games.

So it Begins

Going to try my hand at making a sketchy blog thingy.. I hear all of the cool kids are doing it.. Plus it'll give me an excuse to sketch more which i think i might end up getting some use out of in the future so it's important to keep those skills up.

Nothing to show at the moment, i don't really feel like trudging along to the printer and i haven't drawn anything yet. i'll try to do something at-least once a week though.

Java Calculator and Cannon Attack

Wow it's been 20 days since my last update. Okely Dokely. I've begun my Conceptual Physics class which won't help my coding at all. Because it's conceptual.. Little to no math involved. I really want to make a side scroller and i have a feeling physics will help in it. but some of the principles seem pretty simple. Like gravity has a downward force of 22mph/s and Acceleration is Force divided by mass. I believe even that should be enough to put some interesting effects to use.

Of course i haven't made much headway as of yet. I'm currently working on a sort of Space Invaders Clone i named it cannon attack. Probably going to have one ship. I'd put up an example but sadly at the moment i'm having trouble exporting a jar file and getting it to work. I keep getting an error because i believe the jar is having trouble finding the images. So i exported my calculator i made in java instead. I'll keep trying to figure out what's wrong with Cannon Attack though. It's kind of pointless to make a game if no one can play it.
Java Calculator. I'd suggest checking the source code out if your into java. it's not that complex but i thought it was somewhat clever..

Etch and Sketch

Made an Etch and Sketch while i was trying to learn Java. It is a start.. i've made something with my own hands instead of recreating other peoples code. This is the beginning of a journey of a million miles, or however they said it in Kung Fu.

This thing actually turned out kind of crappy, but i don't think it's really worth the effort to fix any of the bugs.. It works, but i could make it better if i wanted to. I just don't think anyone would enjoy it enough to bother.

Replacing Tables with Div's

Good news and bad news. Good news is that i replaced a bunch of tables with div's which are more lightweight, sleeker, faster, better looking. They load faster and take up less space on the server while looking exactly the same as the tables did.. well where they're being replaced anyway. The bad news is i have a lot more tables to get rid of and it's not really "fun" going through the code to replace them. On the other hand it makes my website look more professional and of course that's a good thing.

Killing time on break, hope to find a job and get some projects done while waiting for the next semester to start. And of course i have to work on Calculus for the second class. (I got a B in Calc 1!) I think i might make Tic Tac Toe, and put up a couple of old game projects in a game section.. i know tic tac toe isn't very impressive but we all gotta start somewhere. Currently reading a Java game design book, but it seems to have been written for beginners so it teaches about the language java which i don't really have a problem with. It's fine though, i have a lot to learn about java Graphics and Game design, and the table of contents is intriguing.. Apparently it gets into multiplayer games which as i understand it is a bit of a nightmare, so it's cool to have a book that gets into it.

Finals Coming up

Once again i have made alterations to the website.. i started out by adding padding to all tables.. and then getting rid of a bunch of tables in log and archive. you can't tell the difference by looking at it but it's a lot of extra weight shedded.. didn't realize i could make it look EXACTLY THE SAME. was worried about that but we live and learn :)

Finals coming up.. fun.. Actually i've already taken care of all of my classes except for one already. Calculus my arch-nemesis. I might walk away with a B in it if i do well on the final. It's perfectly feasible. And since the class is 5 units i'd really rather have a B in it then a C. But of course that will take a lot of studying over the coming week. And since i'm missing the first week of Calc 2 once the semester is over it's not like i get to stop studying calculus lol. I have something worked out with my Calc 2 teacher but it requires me to study Calculus over the summer. So yeah.. for better or worse i'm going to get better at calculus. Of course on the bright side i'll be better at calculus so i can't really complain in the grand scheme of things.

Well killing off all the tables in my archive page has dropped the size of the file as well, which i'm happy about. i hope to change most of my tables into div's at some point. I also talked to someone about contrasting and colors and hues.. which sounds like a big headache but i may be changing some of the color scheme soon. After finals of course.

Finals coming up

Fixed the website up slightly, didn't manage to do anything to it last week so i wanted to get something done this week. Got finals coming up though so i might neglect it for a little while. Just added something to the D&D page when you go to it and tweaked the archive. The border of the big table was a color in IE but not in Firefox.. i don't really care for that kind of incompatibility. That and i don't like IE so i don't feel like altering my website to do something cool in an explorer i don't use. And according to recent statistics you probably don't use it either.

Luckily i'd say it looks good enough not to be embarrasing though. Once i get through the list of things to update i might read up on javascript and some other things instead of doing a weekly update. Javascript seems popular these days. Might as well figure out what the big hub bub is about right? Plus i'd kind of like to have multiple backgrounds i think that's a CSS kind of thing so i need to learn more there too.

I haven't done much in the way of Java for the last couple of weeks. I'm helping my dad work on an old project he did in a class a long time ago. but i'm thinking of suggesting to him that we just work from the ground up. The code is a bit complicated and i don't think it would be that hard to start a new using his old code as a base for how to write it up again. Anyway.. just things to think about on the side. I need to concentrate on the things at hand. Calculus might not be as fun but it's gotta get done.