Hayden's Blog » Projects

A Minor Oversight…

sloik2004 — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 05:20:43 +0000

This is going to bug me for days on end. Electricutioner came in to my Tribes 2 server today and informed me of a “minor oversight” he discovered in my mod. He proceeded to give me a series of hints, and respond to my incorrect guesses. A very, very shortened chat log follows:

{NOS}Electricutioner: Hah..

[Kr]_Sloik: ?

{NOS}Electricutioner: Oh… nothing.

{NOS}Electricutioner: At least.. nothing… major.

{NOS}Electricutioner: But none the less… amusing… I think.

[Kr]_Sloik: What are you referring to?

{NOS}Electricutioner: Just an… um… oversight… a laughable one.

[Kr]_Sloik: Could you give me a good hint?

{NOS}Electricutioner: No, but I’ll see how long it takes you to figure out.

{NOS}Electricutioner: And I’ll tell you when you fix the oversight.

{NOS}Electricutioner: Well, if it makes you feel better, I had a equally stupid oversight in ECM for about 4 years until Turkey told me.

[Kr]_Sloik: OK… code or construction error?

{NOS}Electricutioner: Code.

{NOS}Electricutioner: If you don’t get it in like 2 weeks… I’ll tell you.

{NOS}Electricutioner: Yeah… it’s so minor, you’re going to laugh and cry when you figure it out.

{NOS}Electricutioner: Oh, and I’ll give you a hint. It has been around for about… three weeks or so.

He speaks in riddles…

Sophomore Year, Krypton Construct, Sailing, etc.

sloik2004 — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 05:17:14 +0000

Boy, a lot has happened since my last personal post here.

First of all, I joined the sailing team (somewhat inadvertantly, however). It’s probably a good decision in the long run, however. It gives me something to do, and my parents say it should help me get into colleges who aren’t just looking for someone who hangs out at his computer all day(/night). I’ve only done one regatta so far, which was kind of a bust due to no wind, but I hope to participate in more relatively soon.

Another recent event is a Tribes 2 mod that I’ve started, which I’m calling Krypton Construct. Krypton Construct began as a co-development project with another Tribes 2 player I met, named Netherdark. We named our lovely little Quantium Modification “Xenon Construct”. Netherdark and I had some conflicts, though. He wanted to strip everybody’s credits out of the mod, and I did not. So I broke off, took some stuff from Xenon mod, and started from scratch, using Construction 0.70a as a base for my mod. I named it Krypton Construct, and so far it’s going pretty well. Some features that set it apart from other mods are Permission Spheres, an advanced F2 menu with player preferences and an integrated save system, and Theorem, my lovely little bot who helps me administrate the server. Krypton has climbed the ranks of Construction Mods (if I do say so myself), and is up at the top with ACCM, ECM, and Metallic. I plan to make many more advances, and hopefully help it to become the best construction mod out there, but that is going to take quite a bit of work.

On another note, the Tribes 2 master servers are going to be shut down on November the 1st. That’s no good. Electricutioner, a coding mastermind, is developing a replacement for these vital servers that he says should be running well before November 1st. Once this occurs, we should have full community support, and free accounts for Tribes 2. This means that I can hand out copies of Tribes 2, free of charge, that people can play with no hassle. The popularity of Tribes 2 just might go up as a change… which would be great, because I never want that game to die. Hopefully this plan doesn’t backfire, but I have a high amount of confidence in Electricutioner, I think he can get this done quickly and intelligently.

I’m a Sophomore now. It’s no different than being a Freshman, except for the fact that I’m no longer hanging out in the basement for most of the day. I’m also taking Driver’s Ed this year, and I should be able to get my license right before the start of the Summer. Driving is pretty awesome, and easier than I thought it would be. I’m a bit ahead of the game, as I’m already driving on highways and such (even though we’re not at that point yet in the class room). The only problem I’m foreseeing is that once I get my license, I’ll be without a vehicle. I was considering purchasing a cheapo American-made car, but after talking to some family members and friends, I’ve decided that that’s not a good idea. Instead, I’m planning on getting a car of slightly higher quality. Now, my dad told me about his plans to eventually sell his BMW X5 and buy another newer X5… and a thought occured. If I earned enough money by the time he decides to sell his X5, maybe he’d sell the car to me. That would be the most awesome thing in the world, but based on my research, I’d have to get a pretty darn decent amount of money before he’d sell it to me. Like, at least $10,000. That will take awhile. I’ll need quite a decent job to make that happen. Hopefully I can find a decent opportunity over the summer… but as of now, this idea is somewhat of a dream. Maybe I can do some freelance coding or some such….

In terms of school, things are a bit… weird. The Krypton Construction mod I’ve mentioned above is what my main focus is while I’m at home. My main focus probably should be homework, but it isn’t, so my grades are… OK. They’re satisfactory for me, but apparently not my parents. I had a painful discussion with my Mom tonight after she saw my grades, which were all As, a couple Bs, and one B- in World Civ 2. She asked me if I needed to drop this class, which I took as an insult to my intelligence. This wasn’t even an honors course, and she was wondering if I could handle it. I’m still in rage over that whole argument, but I told her that the reason I was getting the poor grade in World Civ is because I hated history, which is the truth. I have always hated history. I think that in most cases it is a completely useless subject. What we ought to be learning instead is “modern politics” or some such. Something that will help kids actually understand the world’s current problems (of which is has plenty of). Doesn’t that sound like a better way to build our future contributers to society? Anywho, hopefully I can shift my focus a little bit more to my homework, because it’s kind of slipping, albiet only in World Civ.

Well, now, that was a long post. That felt good.

Long Time No Post

sloik2004 — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 02:46:07 +0000

It’s been way too long since I’ve posted here. I need to do like a weekly posting or something….
So anyway, I’ve started High School. It’s not as different as I thought it would be, but it’s different in aspects I wouldn’t have expected. One thing that’s cool is that we get let out of PE pretty early, which is neat. Usually, we’re assigned a route of some sort (biking, running, etc), and once we complete it, we’re dismissed from class. My PE class is in the afternoon, so I can usually go back to the lunch room, buy some water, cool down, then head off to Biology. So that’s pretty neat. One difference that I did expect is the size of the place, and the amount of people there. I’ve found that it’s easier to adjust to a smaller amount of people than to adjust to a larger amount of people. In fact, I don’t think I’m completely adjusted yet, but I’ll get there. What’s good is that I like all of my teachers. None of them are mean, or too serious, in fact they’re all really good. I’m just glad I didn’t get that “one really mean teacher”.
Homework is definitely a big thing now. I’ve got lots, putting it simply. Usually I can just expect homework for every subject. So far it hasn’t been overwhelming, but sometimes my mind tricks me into thinking it is. It’s weird, I’ll just get really stressed out about how much homework I have, but then get it all done and feel fine. I guess it’s good that the feeling is fake, but I really can’t let that feeling become real. I need to get a system down. I’m just not good at putting aside time for homework. I’d like to get a nicer desk in my room, a good set of speakers, and just have a kind of “study time” where I can get everything done. My parents really encourage me to go to the library to get everything done, but the truth is that I like to get homework done privately, which is why study halls aren’t as effective as they could be. It’s not that they’re bad, it’s just that I like getting things done solo.
I’m holding A minuses in pretty much every subject now, so hopefully I can keep that up. I think that’s a good grade range, a good mix between fun and school. I really don’t want to spend all day doing school work, like I’ve heard stories about. That would suck. Free time is precious to me, which is why I avoid activities as much as possible. I need room to plan out my days as I live them. Perhaps it’s not a good system, but it’s how I work.

So last Saturday my dad and I purchased a PC that will be working as a LAN/WAN server. I’m so excited for this, I’ve been wanting a dedicated network machine for awhile now, and this one is perfect for the job. Once the thing gets here, I’ll probably throw Linux on it, get VNC running, configure Samba, NFS, FTP, and HTTP servers, and let it go. I’m planning to set up a system where my family can access their files from the internet, it just needs to be secure. Our gigabit network also ensures good speeds back and forth from the box. It will mostly serve as a place for videos, music, photos, disk images, and pretty much anything that we want to put on the central HD.
What’s also neat is that this PC has a decent amount of processing power and RAM. This means that not only will I be able to run file servers on it, but I could run game servers as well. I’m probably going to throw up a dedicated Tribes 2 server, because it seems like the Tribes 2 community could use a reliable one, plus Tribes 2 servers generally don’t use up too much CPU.

Sailing, etc.

sloik2004 — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 00:41:51 +0000

So I started sailing today. It was pretty fun, much like last year. Today there wasn’t much wind, so we did some steering excersizes with the motor boat tugging along the sail boat. Before that we went over rigging and de-rigging, and toward the end of the day we just took the motor boat out and went swimming far out in the lake.
When I got home I nearly fell asleep on the couch watching 24. I’m exhausted. I think I might go to bed in a little bit, even though it’s only 7:40. Hopefully it’s not like this every night, or I’ll become very, very tired!
I finished an image uploading engine titled ImageAssassin for a site called Mancelita. It works pretty well, and I’m proud of it considering I threw it together in only a day or two. It runs off of SQL, and runs all of its images through a PHP file, giving it a level of security…. I also got a custom ringtone loaded on to my smartphone today, despite not being able to set up a bluetooth connection to my Pocket PC. Now I’ve got a much less annoying ringtone than the one that came with the thing.

So yup, that’s pretty much what’s going on.

Spiderman 3, etc.

sloik2004 — Sun, 20 May 2007 05:35:28 +0000

Well I went and saw Spiderman 3 today, and I have to say it was pretty good. Not like “best movie in the world” good, but good. It made me think… mostly about ethics. It was interesting.

Anyway, my dog re-gained his constant ear-infection, and so that’s pretty annoying. I feel so bad for him, he’s walking everywhere scratching his ear, shaking it like mad, drooling, etc. We’re taking him to the vet soon, but it’s 12 AM right now.

I added Google Analytics to WiredforWar, so the statistics should prove interesting. I haven’t checked my Google Adsense account for ages, I wonder how much I’ve earned. It’s fun running that site, it gives me some sort of sense of pride. Dunno…

I really, really, really want to start SServ from the ground up. It’s ugly, not fully functional, and not popular right now. Analytics tells me it only gets like 3-6 hits a day, some of them being me. I put so much work into it, so it’s kind of disappointing to me that nobody uses it… I even sort of advertised it at school. So maybe I’ll get that done eventually… I most likely won’t get into it until Summer break begins.

Today I started dragging all of the old PCs out of the basement and sticking a dual-boot of Windows and Kubuntu on them. It’s nice to just have functional PCs around, better yet having one for every person in the family to use. I didn’t finish today, because we went to see Spiderman, but hopefully I’ll finish later. I want to figure out how to get network logins so people’s accounts are synced on every computer in the house, but that’s been hard. I’ll probably just give everybody a small directory on a Samba server to work with.

Last night I went to a disaster drill at my Dad’s hospital until 1 AM. It was kind of boring, but interesting. They apparently got some students from some University or something for “patients” that they would practice evacuating. The alarm code was “code triage”, which was pretty interesting when I looked it up on the Wikipedia earlier today. They have this whole system for rationing medical supplies/staff for people who need it most/have the best chance. Veerrry interesting.

Hopefully I’ll have time to finish up installing OSes on some more machines tomorrow, and hopefully even add Analytics to my blog. Google rocks. I need to sleep.

Kubuntu

sloik2004 — Tue, 15 May 2007 03:05:14 +0000

Ahhh Linux. The only operating system that’s decently good.
I recently installed Kubuntu on a few of my systems because of a recommendation I got from my friend, and I have to say it rocks. The package manager is simply awesome, I was able to get the Nvidia drivers installed within minutes (took much longer in past experiences). The software repository is huge, and contains lots of what you’ll ever need for a good operating environment. The theme is cool, it seems that they’ve modified KDE to look nicer. Buttons now fade smoothly in and out, and the control panel is neatly organized kind of like OS X style. Wireless and wires networking is made easy, it’s just a little icon in your task bar. When you click on it, it lets you choose from a list of networks or just a wired connection.
The only real complaint I have about this system is the super user workings. It just runs off of the current user’s password (if they’re set under the right group), so basically, there is no root user. Sure, I bet you could enable it, but I just think this behavior is a bit annoying for a multi-user system. Other than that, though, it’s the Linux system I’ll be using for most of my PCs from now on.

Stuff, Stuff, And More Stuff.

sloik2004 — Thu, 10 May 2007 03:16:25 +0000

Well, yet another post.

I’m trying to catch up with all my homework, and I have just discovered a wonderful thing in the process. This discovery is that if you have a decent amount of late work, that will bump up all of your current work. So, unless you put in a higher amount of time completing both the late work and the new work, you will always have late work. It sucks. So I’ve changed my routine… I’ve finally realized that my PC is a huge distraction, and that avoiding it lets me concentrate more on school work. Right when I get home, I go into the basement, sit on the couch, turn on some music, and drill through my homework for the night. Tonight it kind of sucked, though, because I forgot a text book at school, so I’ll have to go in early tomorrow which I absolutely hate.

I’ve been using Google Docs and Spreadsheets for a bit now, and I have to say it’s quite nice. It saves like every sentence you type, so it’s near impossible to lose things. It allows me to access my docs from both school and home (yes, I know there are many ways of doing it, but this is so convenient). You can upload Openoffice and Word documents and edit them right in your browser, which is cool with computers that don’t have Openoffice or MS Office installed on them. One of the neatest features, however, is that you can add collaborators, who can edit (or just view) your document and you can track who did what to it. It’s neato bandito, and I use it more than Word at school now. Google rocks.

So SwishMax is pretty cool. I know that just Flash is much better, but I just couldn’t get into it. I’ve finally gotten into SwishMax scripting, which has expanded the possibilities of what I can do with it by an enormous amount. The scripting is a ton different from what I’ve learned in the past (basic, HTML, PHP), especially the variables. But it’s still pretty functional, even though it’s highly limiting. When I get this down, though, I’ll actually start trying to implement flash into some of my sites, just ’cause sites with flash are ever so cool.

Well, it’s been nice writing this, but now I must go to bed so I can go into school early tomorrow (yuck).

Web-Design Class is Already There! Doh!

sloik2004 — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 00:30:51 +0000

Alllrighty then.

Starting to post more often because I’ve got this extension for Firefox that reminds me whenever I look at it…

About that one web-design thing I talked about in my last post….
For the third trimester, I got into a class called “computer communication” or something. But we’re learning HTML (at least the other students are. I know it.) So I mention PHP to the teacher, he says he’s never tried it. I show him some examples of account systems, file storage, SQL databases, and he seemed interested. So maybe I can either teach part of the class, or talk to the teacher about PHP, and maybe get him to teach it.

Anyway, we’re going to be making websites, and competing in teams (like The Apprentice). So most of the class wants me on their team… I wonder what’s going to happen there…

WiredForWar.org is going well… The newsletter team, however small it is, has been assembled, and we’re working on the newsletter. Someone made a comic strip for it, which I think is pretty cool. Hopefully once the first one is sent out, we’ll get some more people on the Newsletter team.

SServ is dying. I think I might move on now unless somebody actually starts using it (or suggests more things to add)… It’s boring because there’s nothing my work on SServ is going for any more.

Heya Guys!

sloik2004 — Mon, 25 Dec 2006 23:21:27 +0000

Hey hey heyyyy! Merry Christmakwanzikah!

I got lots of stuff… most noteworthy a big PayPal deposit from my kind Parents… it’s probably the most money I’ve ever gotten for Christmas ever. Hopefully I can find the self-discipline to save it until I can gather enough money for a laptop…

My brother got a Nintendo DS, which found it’s way into my hands after awhile. I have to say, it’s really really fun. All I played were the Mario mini-games, but they were pretty awesome. All taking advantage of the touch-screen, and doing a very good job of it if I do say so myself. All of the games were very addicting, my brother eventually yanked it out of my hands and hid it somewhere…

Anyway, my current projects… Right now I’m working on resurrecting a Student Server project that I actually created about a year ago. It allows students to upload files and access them anywhere where there’s an internet connection. Pretty simple stuff. I’ve found a pretty cool web-based javascript file manager that the students will be able to use… it’s pretty simple-looking, and has a lot of functionality. I’ve put together the account system and the file manager. I just need to think of some creative features to add that students may be attracted to… a few just popped into my head. Anyway, I’m hoping to get that done soon before the end of break.

Welp, hope anyone who’s reading this had a Happy Holiday.

G’bye.