An orange in an apple orchard
Well here I sit, working out my plans for the weekend. After sorting a few things on the spot, and spending some time on what I’ll just call a spurt of stuff to hammer out, so I doubt tonight will be highly productive. It’s the little bit of rest I get before I have to get cracking away on stuff in the morning.
Besides digging into a few thousand pages worth of book, in the chopping block includes:
Also, there’s something I have been meaning to do for awhile, refactoring the common and system modules of Stargella. The idea I’m thinking of, is merging them into a singluar “core”, and numerous other related changes. Mostly in relation to compiler support and hooking in the render module. Two points of research, being to depreciate the FreeBSD/GCC builds with Code::Blocks in favour of a recursive GNU Make, and perhaps also NMake for Microsoft’s compiler. I would also like to experiment with supporting the Portable C Compiler (pcc), which entails either system modifications to FreeBSDs header files, or some redesign work on the games code.
I have multiple compilers available to me, several versions of GNU, the legendary PCC and Watcom compilers, and the express edition of MS Visual C++ 9.0. The only supported compilers for my project, are GCC and MSVC, under unix and windows based systems respectively. When ever possible things should be usable with most (reasonably) standards compliant C compilers. Not that Microsoft’s compiler is one. The main reason I don’t do mingw or watcom builds under Windows, is it’s just easier to go a strict MSVC route, when it comes to handling the dependencies. If it wasn’t for that, I would actually go as far as supporting as many compilers as possible.
One thing that really pisses me off, is even after 40 years or so, stitching together makefiles by hand is still one of the best ways to build stuff o/
I’ve nether yet fallen off the earth, or finally laid down and died; I’ve just been busier then a Japanese beaver doing over time.
… where I’m to restless about getting things done, yet to freaking tired to actually get anything of value done. I’ve already spent most of the day like a humming bird, even while on an RvS break; so it’s starting to get ridiculous lol.
For the past few days, I’ve been pondering ideas and looking at where I would like to be in the next ten years. Of course, getting through this year is a prerequisite 8=). I tend to analyze things systematically, so it’s a problem I engage no differently then any other, it is merely a bigger issue to study. At present Operation Redeemer is proceeding at a terribly slow pace, one that’s being forced upon me o/, and likewise data also suggests this will increase the odds of later being shafted before things conclude. Experience has shown me that families either represents the finest support system ever created, or the exact opposite: matter and anti-matter. Sadly with about the same impact on moving forward, only useful with a warp core and containment field. The principal agenda guiding my short term plans (Redeemer), is focused on brushing away the obstacles that make any larger aims, an utter impossibility. Ever being who I am inside, of course I’ve gotta lay foundation on later plans too. In the end though, only time can tell the future.
At the more immediate moment, I’m just whipped. There’s no shelter from exhaustion at this point, and probably never will be in my life: that’s one reason that I tend to take things one day at a time. I’m so fucking tired, yet hate to watch the hours go by without getting anything practical done. I also know, working on most of the stuff that needs doing, isn’t wise when I feel like passin’ out.
The crappy thing is, if I log off now, either I’ll be wide awake in a couple of hours (and back in the same boat), or by the time dawn rolls around, I’ll feel like slamming my sleep starved head into a wall, o/.
After getting my CP back in January, I’ve finally gotten to put it to good use: in our old churches back parking yard. My mother also has, for lack of being able to spell the Italian word coming to mind, I’ll just describe as having gained injured nerves >_>.
I’ve known the theorem and mechanics of driving since I was like eight or nine, so my focal point is on filling the experience gap. Ma has been driving the same ’93 F.O.R.D. for almost as many years as its been off the assembly line, and knows its handling inside and out; I don’t. Unlike my mother however, I can trivially calculate the distance between the car and what’s around it, stuff like that is a skill I’ve developed over the years, I can both feel it and fill the missing picture in, based on what my mind has already seen. Thus getting to close to the curbing means either I miscalculated the difference between the steering wheel, and the actual wheels current vectors, or it took to long for my foot to shift between pedals: not that I can’t see where I’m going 8=). Towards the beginning, I had to threaten my mother to shut up and stop grabbing at my arm, or I would retaliate either by (intentionally) taking the car over the curb, or make her stand outside and watch. I don’t give a fuck if there’s more racket going on then in a warzone, jabber all you like, but don’t interfere! Geeze I’m not an idiot, I know better to go over the curb; and that stopped as soon as she stopped jacking the wheel towards the curbing, whenever the car got too close. See, don’t bother me, and things get done properly -.-
My mother is insanely short, and to narrow minded to assume others have the same visual problems that induces. What can I say, when I first sat down in the drivers seat I nearly knocked my glasses off, and had my head angled funny, just to avoid cracking it on the ceiling… and I’m vertically challenged myself. Just getting the seat and steering wheel adjusted was a feat, involving suspending myself over the cleaning supplies in back, in order to clear to crap out of the way so the seat would have somewhere to slide back to, and then trying to extricate myself, without castration, broken legs, or a sliced open belly. It felt like hanging myself from the cars interior roof, and applying a spiders agility lol.
The area I had for practice, is just two sets of parking spaces several car lengths long, joined by very tight turns on either end. Small enough to require paying close attention, yet empty enough to only have to worry about one parked car, hehe. Did several dozen laps around the yard over an hours time, including a K-turn to go about the other way. Started out going at the engines idle speed, before studying how she handles under different patterns of acceleration and breaking; I doubt if a claustrophobic amount of practice space in is a good thing for a noob, but I never the less, take it scientifically. For me, it is very important to learn how the vehicle handles, because I’m not going to be responsible for taking it on the road, unless I know it well enough to keep the damn thing under control. I’m crazy, but I’m not suicidal :-P.
Three things that I noticed about the family Ford: the old accelerator has a hair thin trigger, it’s got a fat arse when it comes to rate of angle change in reverse, and exactly like in dreams that I’ve had about driving, the car will move forward even with foot off the accelerator. After 16-17 years of reading the dashboard sticker that says, “To shift from park, depress break pedal” in English and French, I of course remembered to do that without hesitation. I could probably understand the thing in spoken French by now o/.
Unlike my brother many moons ago, I opted to keep things under tight control while practising. Heh, I can still remember when Reese got his learners, and ended up zipping around a large Sports Authority parking lot like a bat out of hell. At least, I was seat belted into the rear drivers side seat, and spent most of his learning sessions being plastered against the rear passenger side window, lol.
Now the big question, is how many months will it take before I get more time to practice o/.
… that I can’t even write more then a few words in my journal without family trying to suck out every positive feeling.
One of the things that has been resting on my mind, is working on my game projects and raven shield admin system. I do believe, that I’ve figured out a way that I can augment my engines capabilities without breaking down portability to much, and still retaining the “C” language factor ;). I’ve also decided that my RvS admin tool, will likely benefit if I complete my games net code, and integrate it in place of the existing networking code it uses.
I’ve three game projects, generic titles being StarFighterGame, TacFPSGame, and MechCombatGame; each chosen for their obvious descriptiveness in place of an iron clad title. StarFighterGame, has been awarded the title of “Stargellas Revenge ©”, and the others are still to be decided. Story wise, Stargellas Revenge is green light, it just needs the game code and assets to catch up with it. I have the general overview for TacFPSGames story and enough design details set, but still can’t figure out a proper title. The ‘mech game, I’m thinking of splitting into two different games: one aimed at a combat simulation, and the other as a Real Time Strategy game, charting the “Bigger picture”.Story wise, things need to develop further, as well as growing a title. On the one side, I’m thinking some what along the lines of an epic war meets small scale tactical warfare, and some hordes of enemies to mow down for the action cravers, hehe.
The code backing my game projects, is engineered to be highly portable, and suitable for producing most any kind of game. My primary focuses, more or less follow the styles of arcade and simulation games, but alas, I prefer flexibility over rewriting crap later on, hehe. I could do so much more if I had more to work with :'(.
I haven’t been getting much rest lately, although a fair bit of sleep. My dreams have been weird, ranging from caring for the best friend I’ve ever had, to struggling with more difficult adversaries. It’s kind of strange, because I generally don’t dream about the dead :-/. The only good thing I can say, is despite a few disturbing things, going to bed ’round 0200 local sure beats 0700, lol.
My minds focused on getting stuff done, and trying to rack up some R&R. Which leads to my new official Quake motto is “Fuck’em all, and let John sort’em out”. With the wifi being a bit more upity lately, I’ve mostly been hanging around Raven Shield the past couple weeks; unlike SWAT 4, in RvS if you lag out in the middle of a gun battle, it tends to increase your survival rate, rather then negate it.
Yet I still have a tendency to lag up and fall off into deep space when playing Quake :-(. Although I must admit, even with my wireless freeze frames every two minutes or so, I’m actually getting quite good at handling them, but there’s only so much you can do when it’s in mid air lol. Last night I got plugged off an arena platform, and died with rocket launcher in hand, because I lagged up and missed the chance to rocket myself onto a nearby jump pad for a last minute save.
Well, I finally reached the point where I couldn’t focus on the code any longer, and just went to sleep hours early lol. Ironically by the time I would’ve likely gone to bed, there was such a huge freaking storm blowing, that I woke up o/. It was so ferocious sounding, that it took me a while to be sure whether or not I was dreaming or waking up, but it woke me up lol. The thunder was so earth shattering loud, I think to get any louder, it would take flying in it.
The downside of going to bed early, is missing a few hours coding, and that I’m awake already :'(
Between projects, duties, and my own odds and ends, I’ve basically have used five or six programming languages this week in order to get stuff done, and have probably read code in a dozen more languages. Sometimes I really wish sticking towards one or two languages across every task would be more practical, but I’m unlikely to see that happen in my life time. I just use whatever gets the job done best.
Ya know, if I could speak human languages as well as I know computer languages, I could order dinner in any civilised country in the world.
Today’s main goals, are to work on finishing my ‘new’ client side admin for Raven Shield, hash out Stargellas networking sub system, and find some time to play a couple rounds. Although of course, if I actually had a worth while choice in the matter, I wouldn’t be spending my day camped in front of a computer, but knowing my family well, it’s unlikely to day is to stick to last weeks schedule. *sigh* at this rate I’m never getting out of this place without a sledge hammer.