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January 09, 2006
Flickr
For xmas, I received a Canon PowerShot SD450. It's a nice compact, fast, quality digital camera that will allow me to take actual pictures instead of fuzzy blurs from my cell phone. I'm quite pleased with the device and hope to capture some visuals of value.
It's been many years (1988?) since I had the responsibility of commiting life to film so my skills are lacking; but it should be a nice journey and fun at that. Naturally, there is more to the camera than just taking pictures, and I've enlisted the help of the rather slick photo sharing site Flickr. Some of the earlier pictures are test photos or pics from other sources, but this is where I'll be depositing some of my work. Now, I just need the weather to cooperate so I can go outside for a few snaps.
Posted at 10:28 AM | Life and Work | Comments (0)
January 05, 2006
Russian Solitaire
Fall 2005 semester I took a computer graphics and gaming class. It was an intro class intended for non-computer science majors, but it was a programming class none-the-less. First we learned about computer graphics in the general and then started building games in Flash.
The graphics stuff was the basic bitmapped versus vector information which I was already familiar with. Bitmaps are pixel-based pictures like a photo. Vector graphics are defined by shapes and lines like a bar graph or line drawing. Obviously there's more complexity to it than that.
The meat of the class, however, was learning ActionScript to write simple games in Flash. This experience was much like cooking a full thanksgiving meal without oven mitts. Sure, you can get a lot done, but damn, it hurts. There is very little error checking. There is very little standards adherance (of any kind). There is a debugger which is only slightly more enjoyable to use than a chainsaw on your own limbs. And there is only so much vitriol I can contain for Flash as a programming platform without needing to curl up under my desk in the fetal position and whimpering softly for an hour.
Having gotten the ugly out of the way, there are a couple of success stories. Each assignment was completed and my final project was actually almost entirely successful! I wrote a version of solitaire (patience) based on what I understand are Russian rules. It's a tough game where one in fifty games won is normal. There are rules on the intro page, so without further ado, here's my implementation of Russian Solitaire in Flash. I highly recommend you maximize your browser window to get a better view of the cards, and yes, I know they're not fancy.
Posted at 03:51 PM | Gaming/Roleplaying | Comments (0)