Hey, I’m not dead. I know that’s heavy stuff. Today I logged in and saw the new dashboard and a new feature I really liked. You can get a chart of the viewing stats for a post (hits for a post). The dashboard is mostly the same except for a new main page. Well thought I’d tell you my thoughts and not give you the notion I’m dead. That’s all for now folks.
Cheers,
gamehawk
I just finished reading Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters. It was a very interesting book. If you have read it, or plan on reading it, it’s like nothing you’ve read before. It tells the stories of dead citizens of Spoon River, Illinois. It tells the story through poetry, a short story/poem, and a play. It’s very well done. It’s classic literature, and the best way to get a feel for it is read it. I won’t go in more depth than that.
Cheers,
gamehawk
Hey my prediction on Google’s stock seems to be right. It has been falling pretty steadily for the last few days. Here’s some graphs via Bloomberg.com:
As you can see the stock for Google has had a pretty significant decline. It was skyrocketing before and that could be argued for either viewpoints. Some say it would have had to have gone down eventually or that YouTube caused this stock decrease. Let us have a closer look.
This sharp change in value is alerting, but who knows it could pop right back up. I think it’s your call. Is it going to go through a temporary slow streak and surge back up, go back up soon, keep declining? It’s your call. I think it’s going to keep declining for at least a fair amount of time. The stock has dropped a point a day since YouTube was acquired when averaged but the significant changes have been recent. The following days and weeks should be a good indicator as to whether or not Google will go into a slump.
Cheers,
gamehawk
YouTube has been acquired by Google. What does this mean? Well, I’m thinking a few things. Let’s get the wheel going here.
I’m not so sure about how good this whole thing is. Everyone is just going to have to wait and see how it goes.
Cheers,
gamehawk
It’s been a little while since I’ve blogged. There’s not a lot to talk about, but I’ll give you a few reviews and such.
Site:
Instructables: step-by-step collaboration- Instructables is a site with some cool projects. You can sign up and contribute yours. Be careful though, some of the projects could be a little dangerous.
Book:
Carrie by Steven King- Carrie is Steven King’s first novel, and it is a pretty enjoyable book.
Movie:
The Sixth Sense- The Sixth Sense is an awesome movie about a boy that can see dead people. You must watch this movie!
Well, that’s all I’m going to talk about for now. See you later.
Cheers,
gamehawk
The new Google Reader still has some little bugs to work out. For example, this morning I was reading one of my feeds when about twenty or thirty blogs down I had found another of my feeds had mixed with it. Hopefully Google Reader will fix this, but my new feed browsing experience is getting more enjoyable as I get more accustomed to the program. This was just a quick little update on the program, nothing more to read here.
Cheers,
gamehawk
Google Reader, Google’s venture into an online feed aggregator got a facelift. I kind of liked the old interface, but this one is better organized. Once I get used to it I should be fine. I love Google Reader, and if you don’t know what it is or what it does check out a previous blog of mine here. I logged in a few hours before the change and logged back in to find to find Google Reader in its new state. Most likely I was one of the first to know about it. The reason I didn’t blog about it is because I didn’t feel like it. Well, thought I’d keep you updated. This is pretty general and shouldn’t be dragged out so see you later.
Cheers,
gamhawk
I’ve recently had my interest in artificial intelligence re-sparked. I also realized the downfall in conventional AI (which is basically now known as machine learning). The problem with this approach (as opposed to computational intelligence) is that it isn’t very intelligent. It’s basically a method of querying a database and showing you very nicely formatted set of results. Or in the case of creative AI is generating random sequences of data based on pre-programmed rules or rules based on previously generated data. Now I’m not saying the programs produced in these ways are bad, or inefficient, it just isn’t very intelligent. I myself find it amusing to create a chatbot and give it so-called “emotions”, but this isn’t intelligence. This is like I said, querying a database for nicely formatted responses. There’s a huge difference. I hope to continued my research on the mind and maybe create some true intelligence. What will I do? Who knows. I’m not promising anything either, but this field is definitley of interest to me.
Cheers,
gamehawk
Today I made Stickly, it’s a fun little game in my opinion. Check out the new Creations page, it has the link to Stickly in it.
Here’s a screenshot:
That’s the first time I’ve ever used an image in a blog. Anyways, Stickly has a cool interface. It’s awesome. It looks like this:
Sweet isn’t it? Anyways, the game is a little aracade one with tiny graphics. You have to collect the coins and dodge bullets. You can roll, bounce, jump, and duck to avoid them. It’s addicting. I hope you enjoy the game, it’s well polished even though it took only a few hours to make. Check out the Creations page and you should be able to find a download. A new idea of mine is to create a gadget creation program that uses the same sort of interface as Stickly. Stay tuned on that one folks.
Cheers,
gamehawk
People are going crazy over gas prices, talking about how low it can go. I’m wondering about how low it can go. Sure it’s looking great right now, but you have to wonde how long those of folks at OPEC will let it keep dropping. The reason I would suggest this is because of the great hugs and kisses the U.S. gave out to Venezuela and Iran at the General Assembly. Chavez didn’t sound too happy when he called Bush “the Devil”, and I don’t think Iran was too pleased with the talks directed at them over their uranium enrichment program. These are two of the world’s biggest oil producers, and will they want to keep exporting barells of crude oil for the “cheap” price it is right now? Probably not. Of course, you also have the extremist liberals talking about how the falling gas prices are some sort of conspiracy started by our so loved GOP. It’s an election year and it looks great for them, but are they in on a conspiracy? Doubt it. They might have tried to keep the gas cheaper through ethical means of some sort, but that’s a given for any party. I don’t think they’ll want to keep the oil cheap for long. There’s one other factor though that I’d like to address.
The second factor is demand, the demand went down so the price went down. Being Americans we’re all thinking: “Whooe! Cheap gas, can you spell party! Let’s go on a big vacation!”
That’s not a good way to think, the main reason it got so cheap in the first place was there wasn’ a lot of demand once summer vacation ended and people stopped taking time off to drive long distances. If we start going crazy by driving long distances and everyone starts going as many places as they can and going back for more cheap gas, the demand will go up. You know what that means, higher prices for importing crude oil!
Conclusion, this “cheap gas fad” won’t last for long. Get it while it’s fresh from the oven, er’ barrel. Have fun with your new gasoline, but don’t get crazy with it. On a side-note, one day I’m ranting about crazy, extremist Republicans, and the next talking about those crazy, extremist Democrats. My philosophy is that you shouldn’t vote based on the party, but based on the person and how well you think they’d do. If people really asked themselves that, we could have many better people in office. I’ll close on that.
Cheers,
gamehawk
Check out this campaign ad this is way extreme. One question I have to ask those extremist Republicans who aired this ad:
What the heck were you thinking?
I have a few major problems with this piece of total propaganda. The first I’ll name here is that what good does it do. It makes racist, extremist comments about Democrats and it would only be a turn-off to potential voters, both Democrats and Republicans. Wouldn’t you want to sway the people towards you not downright insult the potential audience. Secondly, even though Maryland has the highest black population of a non-southern state 71% of the citizens are white. I’m sure it’s appealing to these people to be insulted in such a way. Christians were in the KKK, and they had a lot more to do with it than Democrats and they aren’t blaming Christians. Thirdly, there’d be public outrage if a group of Caucasian Democrats accused the Republicans of starting a group of African-Americans racist against whites. Yet, there will be no outcry about this. It’s the way life is. Am I being to harsh? I don’t think so. I’m not racist, I’m white, I’m Christian, so don’t take offense. If you consider the facts I think you’ll agree with me on this one. By the way, I’ll be trying to delve more into politics in my future blogs.
Cheers,
gamehawk
Login to your WordPress, for novelty if nothing else. I’m blogging about it. The editor now has an HMTL tab instead of that pop-up window. The HTML tab has more functions than the regular tab and makes HTML editing easier. If you need to add some more stuff it’s right there. I do believe some of the things should be on the regular Compose side as well. Thanks to the guys at WordPress for adding this feature!
Cheers,
gamehawk
I was pondering something about programming today, and realized it could apply to all of life. My thought is this, what if, in the future we run out of original ideas. I mean someone will always be able to vary something in one way or another, but will we start “running low” on originality. Honestly folks think about it, a lot of times I have an idea or a name for something and I search the idea to see if it’s been done. A lot of times, it has. I’m not saying we will run out of original ideas (although we could), but they might be in short supply at some point in the future. This is something to consider. Feel free to disagree with me, this is pretty much just general chatter. Everybody enjoys writing a little rant every once and a while.
Cheers,
gamehawk
Remember my blog entry I made about Google Blog Search well I made a big mistake. Yes, it came out on September 14th, but in 2005! Major whoops. Thought I’d correct myself before someone else did. Sorry about that.
Cheers,
gamehawk
It seems this blog is getting pretty popular. I’m averaging over fifteen hits a day, which used to be rare. I have some referrals from other bloggers such as lightcontrast from my last blog. People comment on my stuff. I’m just surprised. For a while I had faith this might get off the ground, but it never really did. Hopefully this phase won’t pass.
Cheers,
gamehawk
Thank you to lightcontrast for putting me on her Interesting Pages section of her site. Glad you liked my latest blog. I subscribed to your feed. You don’t have a link for it, which you might want, even buttons to subscripe to feeds (see further down on the page on the right side). This could boost your number of readers. Thanks for the link to my blog.
Cheers,
gamehawk
Wow, that’s what my reaction was. I had been wondering just a few moments ago after posting that blog if there was a Google Blog Search, and it turns out one was revealed today. It isn’t even on the Google Labs page yet. Turns out Google can make products with a snap of the fingers and make what I want. Not really, but I hadn’t noticed the other blogs talking about this. I’m also happy to find out that I’m on it. That’s plenty cool with me. I searched Google Blog Search and found this, then noticed it wasn’t on labs. Thinking no one else had found it I was excited, but found out that I’d had been beat to the punch by quite a few people. I must not have gotten, or have not read
http://blogsearch.google.com/
Cheers,
gamehawk
This is cool, a chance to read my classic literature little bits at a time! Neat. I will have to get some of my Arthur Conan Doyle dosage, and add a feature like this to my secret project. Anyways here’s the link: DailyLit.
Cheers,
gamehawk
I clicked this theme hoping for a preview, but instead it changed it. I like the look and I’m going to keep it for a while. The theme is Pressrow if you want to use it in your blog.
Cheers,
gamehawk
I thought I’d fill you in on my latest ideas and projects using a quick little list:
Now if you repeated the scream enough times the noise of a car would trigger the scream from whatever it is we’re simulating (let’s say a child) and he would scream whenever he hears a car. You could also repeat enough actions for an object to change the habit for that particular sound or visual. This is just a concept maybe I’ll work on it later.
That’s all folks! By the way I received forty-one hits yesterday, an all-time high for me. That’s a good thing. Plus I am receiving a lot of comments. I think this blog is gaining popularity.
Cheers,
gamehawk
Two posts in one day, wow. I had to show you guys this article. I always thought building a rich textbox would be hard and I’d heard of WYSIWYG editors, but never knew what they were. I linked the two via the WordPress help button which I clicked for no apparent reason. Then I searched Google on how to build a WYSIWYG editor in the HTML/Javascript combo (no I didn’t use those exact words). What I found was this:
Building a WYSIWYG HTML Editor Part 1/2
Cheers,
gamehawk
P.S.: WordPress keeps deleting most this blog when I am trying to save it. Annoying. Glad I have copy and paste on. If you see this it means I got it working.
P. S.S: I had to create a new entry and re-blog this.
P. S.S.S: Whoa, it’s September 28th (2006) and I realizedthe link wasn’t there as a result of it somehow being screwed up (I thought I had inserted it). Well, I’ve edited it in now. If you have come across this article then enjoy.
I’ve been doing a lot PHP coding recently, and still have a ton to do. I need to code a comment system and that could take me a little while. Besides, I don’t feel up to it. That means I’m not going to do it today. My post on 9/11 (see previous entry) had a few comments here and I’m glad people liked it. Despite what it’s about I am proud of it. On another site I also received some feedback on that. Some of those people are less politically driven though. I’ll reveal my secret project now, it’s a book system. It’s going to allow people to upload books, write books, allow downloading in different formats, and I have more plans. As for Bush’s speech, I wasn’t very happy with what I watched of it. It was driven politically and he used it to make public his points. He repeated a lot of the same ideas. Being an independent person (who leans more towards the liberal side of things) I had a little hope for our President’s speech. He disappointed me by using it to broadcast his views instead of respecting the people who were killed. Most of the ideas were the same repetitive ones, and there wasn’t a lot of original wording. Not so well done in my opinion. That’s all for today.
Cheers,
gamehawk
Today is the fifth anniversary of an event that shocked the world. An event so horrible that this date will be remembered for the rest of history. Five years ago today nineteen men set out to a destroy a nation, a nation that had allowed them into the borders, allowed them to rent houses, cars, and apartments, and allowed these nineteen men to take courses on driving planes. Many of these nineteen men were known terrorists, but that didn’t make a difference. We taught them the art of war, we taught it in a subtle manner, but in the end it lead to horrible event. Almost 3,000 men, women, and children were killed. These were not drones, these were people. People who had their own lives, loved ones, and friends. The horrible deeds of others put an abrupt end to many lives, lives that left family, friends, and goals uncompleted. Any of those people could have changed the world, but weren’t given a fair chance. The father, the mother, the husband, the wife, the son, the daughter, the uncle, the aunt, the nephew, the neice, the cousin, oh we could go on and on. All fell under the cruel hands of others who we ourselves had taught. Yet in the evil and destruction, we joined hands, lit candles, and sung hymns with others that we’re so different, but tied together by the horrible event.
The firefighters and police officers, the rescuers, and the brave individuals who tried to make a difference. Many of them we’re killed trying to bring others back. In our darkest hour, when the coldest wind was blowing we stood strong. We held our heads high, and waited, waiting for the calls that never came, waiting for the nightmare to be over, waiting for the sun to gleam high in the sky and things to be like they used to. Facts couldn’t be changed, but yet we gripped harder, and showed a love that had been hidden all this time, hidden deep somewhere waiting for a chance to shine. Who had known it would take something so hideous to bring out something so pure and wholesome. Our downfall was our uprising. As the darkness and the wind shook us harder we held our loved ones close, and prayed for the ones we couldn’t. Now we have changed things, worked to improve our government, stopped teaching others to hurt us, improved securities, and learned to love. There is hope for this nation, great hope, but nothing will ever be the same. Some of debris may be clear, but not on our hearts. The pain is as real and as heavy as ever. The pain will never be lifted, the debris on our hearts never swept, but maybe if we strive for peace, maybe we can prevent the rock of pain from shattering on a new generation of hope. So please remember those who have perished on this day, the people who were killed trying to escape, and the ones who died coming back to help the others. Please remember September 11, 2001. Whatever your religion, race, or views, please pray for peace in a world where the fighting just doesn’t seem to stop.
Thank you,
gamehawk
I was looking at my feeds, when I got something new. I recieved it from my Discovery News feed. I’m going to be expressing my views a little, but you can read the full article here. Anyways, I got this link from my Discovery News feed, which I already mentioned. I don’t get a ton of feeds from them, and I don’t read too many, but this one sparked my interest. I suggest you read it, then if you have here are my views. It’s about an artificial heart device called AbioCor created by Abiomed Inc. I think this is a great idea, considering that the device is going to give patients who would die in less than a month, a longer lifespan. One man lived up to seventeen months, other than the one month. My only two concerns are that some insurance plans might not be able to cover it so some people might not be able to afford it. My other concern is that the strokes will occur too often. The third factor that some people are interpreting as a product risk is the number of deaths while inserting the heart. I don’t take these as a fault of the product, because heart surgeries are risky enough as it is. I am glad that some people will be able to have a longer lifespan, even if it only is a few months (every second in life counts). My hope is that this product will not only be successfull, but improve in the years to come. This is a great strive forward in the health industry. Today I have a closing message for you:
“Life is very short and there’s no time…”-We Can Work It Out, The Beatles.
Thank you for listening. Remember that life can take turns all too quickly and you need to enjoy the good times while they last.
Cheers,
gamehawk
My site’s been gaining a little popularity recently, and I’ve been consistently getting at least fifteen hits on blogging days (usually redirection from my 64digits blog though), but still. Well, I’ve reached over five hundred hits, and that’s an accomplishment (small, but an accomplishment). So, I thought I’d let you know that this blog is keeping a slight popularity. That’s all folks!
Cheers,
gamehawk
Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of casual web surfing (giving feedback on my script, watching the forums I go to), and a little gaming. Not too much else. I also received a Personal Message (PM) from a guy that thought one of my old adventure games was cool. You can check that game out here. Well it sparked my interest, but I didn’t want to continue working on it. Instead I decided I want to make an adventure game creation program. That would be cool. It will be something like Adventure Game Studio (AGS), but a little easier, and probably for now a little more limited. What I want though, is for the developers I’m primarily showing to (Game Maker users or those at the Game Maker Community), to be able to use GML (Game Maker Language) as a basic syntax for extending the normal possibilities. This will take the learning curve out of the program for at least some of the people, and add more functionality to the program. Ideas are brewing, and I will probably get to work soon. That’s all for now.
Cheers,
gamehawk
Want to read or download books? I recommend Project Gutenberg which has been around for a while and has about 19,000 free ebooks on its site. It also has audio books, and some motion pictures. Well, Google Books is getting in on the game by allowing people to download full books. To do so click the Full view books radio button, enter your search keywords, and click Search Books to find a book. You can download the books as PDF’s (Download PDF Reader), or view them in your browser. My only complaint is that they store all the scanned books pages as images instead of converting them to text using Optical Character Recognition (OCR), meaning bigger loading times and file sizes. Anyways I was thinking about creating my own Web 2.0 site that allowed uploading books, viewing them in a nice page-by-page format like Google, and allowing downloads in multiple formats. That would be cool. Anyways my scripts are finally getting recognized, but you can’t download them now because my host 64digits seems to be down and I don’t feel like uploading a copy right now. Sorry. They should be back up soon. That’s all folks! I categorized this as link, because there are a lot of links!
Cheers,
gamehawk
I need to blog more, I’ve been in a bit of slump. Mostly again due to lack of inspiration. Don’t worry though, I have an idea. My idea is an online e-zine focusing on Internet culture, computers, and hot topics. That would be cool, and I’d like to get a few other bloggers to write some articles. It would be posted on the web at WordPress, probably a seperate blog though. Many bloggers are into those sort of topics so it shouldn’t be hard getting writers or readers. Well, I won’t bore you with any other possible details.
Cheers,
gamehawk
Yesterday I recieved the most hits I’ve ever had in one day for a blog. Thirty-six. I know, it might not sound like much, but it’s a start. I also watched “The Green Mile” movie starring Tom Hanks yesterday. It as a great movie, and for a movie based on a book, it was definitley top-notch. There’s been quite a few cheesy flicks based on good books, and they should honestly put more time into making them. I’m not very willing to pursue the subject anymore than that though. As for the movie I’d say 4.5 out of 5 stars. Everything was great, but he didn’t solve the murderers of the Detterick twins, instead John Coffey put “the image” into his head. I liked it better when he solved it, and that’s why the rating was brought down. Other than that, an excellent film. A little old, but very good. You can find my review of the book “The Green Mile” here.
Cheers,
gamehawk
Oh, I love OpenOffice.org 2.0 (Commonly know by the acronym OOo), an open source Office Suite based off StarOffice by Sun Microsystems who helps develop the program. I love this program, it has ease of use, great functionality, and cool features. Microsoft should watch out, because if given a chance by consumers, this freeware solution which is already being used by many coders, could in fact compete with Microsoft’s Office Microsoft Office suite. In fact OpenOffice.org is better than the MS Office Suite, minus the set of scanning utilities that I really like. The abilities to import and export from different formats make this a must have for any developer. This is definitley my choice for an office suite, and who knows maybe I’ll look at the source code at some point too.
On a side note, WordPress is annoying me, I had to re-type this article except for the first word and last three words. I don’t know what’s up. I think you might have to press View Site directly afterwards, but it’s just a hunch. Oh well, the article is better now anyways.
Cheers,
gamehawk
“The Green Mile” is a great book by Steven King, and a must read in my opinion. Here’s why:
Storyline 5/5: The story line is original, and full of twists and turns to keep you going. The main character in this book is Paul Edgecomb, a prison guard for E Block, also know as death row. In this book he investigates the mysterious John Coffey who was arrested for the rape and murder of two young girls.
Originality 5/5: This book is very original, containing a mix of genres, twists and turns, and a setting that has never before been concieved in a book.
Perspective 5/5: The narrative in this book is great, informative, and switches backand forth between underlying storylines.
Overall 5/5: This is a great read that shows us many things about life, the conflicts of race, and prison life. It has a enchanting story that will compell even those who aren’t horror fans. The book is not the same style like most of King’s other books, instead of horror their is mystery and adventure. An adventure which you should really go on.
Cheers,
gamehawk
Yes, another I’m back blog. This one is short and just a quick little note. After a long week without blogging I’m back. I’ll post a review on “The Green Mile” soon, but I don’t feel like it right now. Just thought I’d tel you I’m back.
Cheers,
gamehawk
The bugs in my game are really getting annoying, and aside from an occasional update I probably will drop the project. I might offer up the graphics, but they’re not so good. I don’t think you would want them. I promised a screenie, but my game isn’t good enough or have enough for the screenshot to be worth anythng. The game’s movement is ridden with bugs, and I don’t have the energy or motivation to do a lot of development on the game. That’s all for now folks. See you later, actually a lot later. I won’t be blogging for a week, because I have some stuff I need to do. Thanks for reading!
Cheers,
gamehawk
I’ve been awfully lazy, haven’t even worked on the comic. That’s what I mean by lazy, not getting a lot done. Well, for the last hour or two I’ve been working on a new game. Nothing revolutionary, pretty simple stuff. I made a nice graphic (nice by my standards) and chose to put in a game. It’s a retro platformer, kind of in the style of Commander Keen. You should download it, it’s fun. I don’t have it anymore on this computer, never beat it, but I was hooked when I did play it. I probably won’t download again, but only because I don’t feel the urge. I definitely recommend it though. I don’t know how far I’ll get on it, but I like it. As for the comic, with me, it could be a while before I chose to work on it. Don’t expect it soon. What you should expect is a screenshot from my upcoming little project. Hopefully I’ll have my storyline worked out soon, I’m trying to make it less cheesy than your average platformer storyline. We’ll see how that works out. Until next time comment, drop me an email (gamehawkcpp@hotmail.com), or do whatever. Keep reading!
Cheers,
gamehawk
I’ve been thinking about, and probably will make a web comic. Probably not daily, but a few times a week. It would have commentary and news on the web, computer industry, and anything else I feel like adding. It wouldn’t mean I would write less in my blogs, no compensation here. I would be adding this, and keeping the original writing style you all love (wink, wink). I actually might have more to write about as the comic would have me pursuing ideas. Anyways, I got my inspiration from this. It’s way cool. You can thank 43Folders for having me find this, of course they developed this so… Thanks for reading. Spread my blog if you are willing, and thanks in advance.
Cheers,
gamehawk
I just played some Crazy Tennis by VIPGAMESZONE, and I got a highschore of 379. That’s not too shabby. I think I might get some more audio games, and might consider developing some of my own. Yes, I’ve been a bit of a fanatic recently, but I’ve been itching (okay scratching) for something new. I want to develop a game really bad, and ideas are swelling up in my head like a hot wound. My problem, lack of inspiration, a lot of time on my hands, and no motivation to work. I like to blog, and this is the end of my first month doing so. After this month it will be the end of a full month. By the way pass my blog on, and share this blog with people. I could use the advertising, so spread. My blog hits are low. They started low, surged, went down, went way down, went up, went down, went way up, now their low again. I’d like to hear from you, and I’d love it if you spread the word. Later.
Cheers,
gamehawk
I just today saw how much you can do with VBScript. It’s pretty sweet! Check this site out. The scripting for Vista that I saw a while ago looks pretty cool, and so does Google’s gadget interface for personalized home pages, desktops, and heck everything. I’m going to have to learn me some of this stuff, especially Vista’s. It looks sweet, with great interface capabilities. It also seems pretty easy to learn, because the two gadget “scripting languages” (Vista’s and Google’s) are XML-based, and have extra features (I know Vista’s does, I’m sure Google’s does too). I also downloaded an audio game called Crazy Tennis. It seemed hard at first, but you get the hang of it. Basically the ball comes towards you getting louder and louder, and you have to pan the sound between your left and right speakers and hit the ball (it can be hit whenever, but the loudness tells you how close the ball is to being missed), if you lose the ball ten times it’s game over. If somebody like me can play it, anybody can. If your visually impaired, or just looking for something new, check out Crazy Tennis or other audio games via AudioGames. If you read my blog, comment, I’d love to hear from you. It seems I’ve lost some of my audience so let me know you’re still reading!
Cheers,
gamehawk
Audio games, these things are pretty interesting. They are games that anybody can play. Originally built by blind gamers, a lot of research is going on and the field of popularity is expanding. I might want to program one of these! I’ll need to download a Speech SDK, but it’s way huge. Maybe a litttle later. Check out http://audiogames.net/ for some AudioGames. I’m also feeling retro and learning DirectX. Sorry for the short blog, but I wanted to keep you updated, wanted to blog, but not too much. Thanks for reading!
Cheers,
gamehawk
This is a copy and paste of a post I made on the Middle East conflict between Lebanon and Israel. I think I should post it, and I’d like to hear opinions on this horrible controversy. I hope you will pray for those involved in conflicts around the world, whatever your religion. If you want to see the full topic on my message board, you can read it
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Ah, the “we hate Bush” topics. Got a love ‘em. On a more serious note, yes it’s really sad. It’s a shame what those people have to go through, it must be a living hell. Family members, crazy rumors, the dead, children crying, and the state of the communities. I can’t even begin to imagine what that’s like. Not knowing if you’ll be alive the next day, where your family is, having your child die. Lebanon really screwed up here. What were they thinking? Israel’s army is one with a steel backbone, while Lebanon’s is mainly insurgents. The government’s “army” is made of rubber in comparison. I’m not trying to be offensive to anyone who might be affected on the either side, but honestly, people need to think. Why start a war when you will surely get wiped out. I’m actually agreeing with Bush on this one, glad to see his not going on his usual antics and trying to get America totally involved. Of course though, there is a good reason for that. The reason is this, Lebanon is allies with Syria, Syria produces and ships a lot of oil, along with being in a sort of invisible alliance with the other oil producing, terrorist supporting countries that seem to infest the Middle East like a parasite. You fight Lebanon, you piss off Syria, you piss off Syria, you cut your connections to some major oil producing countries, you don’t end up with as much oil. That’s why Bush doesn’t seem to be expressing his usual “let’s go fight some people” antics. That’s why the U.S. Army isn’t getting involved (at least on a major extent). I also have a problem with Israel. Yes they have the right to attack, they do. I would too, but they need to be a little more careful. The civilian death toll in Lebanon is increasing at a staggering rate. This isn’t good. Their are innocent people in Lebanon. Them dying won’t help anything.
Again, my heart goes out to all those in Israel, Lebanon, or anywhere in the world who is suffering in some way. I know it probably won’t happen, people can’t resist the temptation to fight, but still I’m praying. Praying that this world will come to its senses. Come to its senses and realize that Christian, Jew, or Muslim, white, black, or red, south, north, or east, woman or man, straight or gay, they will learn to love their neighbor. Learn that being different is something special, a gift, not a curse. What would it be like if everyone was the same? You wouldn’t like it, I can tell you that. Thank you.
Cheers,
gamehawk
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Thanks for your time.
Cheers,
gamehawk
Edit: Whoops, said Syria instead of Israel. What am I thinking? Oh well, it was only wrong in that first sentence of the blog.
When I first started my blog, I wasn’t sure if anyone would read it. I’m glad to know I was wrong. I have about 20 subscribers right now, and it isn’t a lot, but it’s a start. A lot of people have found my blog through searching, probably on Technorati. I’ve found out my secret to blog trafficking. Type about a variety of subjects, it might seem kind of obvious, but include information on everything and anything. A few weird searches have turned people to my blog in the last few days. So that’s cool with me! I say keep the traffic coming. On another note, I kind of feel like doing some PHP programming though I doubt I’ll get around to it. Maybe I will. Who knows, I just need to figure out what I want to do with my site. I also might start a new secret project soon. It’s an interactive novel, maybe a new type of genre. You can read the novel straight through, or play in interactive mode, a mode where you not only read the text, but see movies, pictures, and play levels based on the story. I’ll be toying with this for a while I’m sure. It’s an original idea and an original genre. My old project wasn’t progressing much, and I had lost interest. It was pretty original, compared to other freeware games of today, but I haven’t worked on it in forever. Unless you count a quickie little fix up on a graphic and level design yesterday. Well that’s all I have to talk about.
Cheers,
gamehawk
I was quite surprised today when I opened up my trusty RSS Reader, and found out that Google, the company you can’t stop hearing about, has a real problem when it comes to their Google Talk. I’m not into really any instant messaging, but it astounds me that this marketing giant hasn’t leaped more in terms of their messenger. Take a look here at Techcrunch. With holding only 1% of the market in instant messengers, they are allowing an extra advantage to those companies who Google must try to overthrow in their evil scheme.
One recent thing that I’ve liked at Google, other than their RSS reader, is their 3D Modeling software. Google SketchUp is a great program, that allows 3D modeling of buildings and landscapes with ease. I was even able to make some objects. It’s really easy to learn, and has an interactive tutorial. Just dragging and dropping. That was the old version, and I’m betting there is some cool stuff they’ve added since. I haven’t used it in a while since they force you download the update, but I’m downloading it now. You should too. It’s a great program, that could compete with AutoCad, and is compaitable with Google Earth. You can import your models into Google Earth, create them for fun, upload to Google’s model browser type thing, and maybe even do a little landscaping business where you rent yourself out to model an idea. Show people what their home might look like afterwards. If this program keeps improving, it could be a contender to compete with AutoCAD or any of the CAD programs. That’s all for today! Check back soon!
Cheers,
gamehawk
Microsoft has a problem, Google. What’s going wrong? Microsoft is losing its grip on things. It tries to stay up-to-date, and it might in terms of technology, but not in turns of popularity. Coders are going towards open source, and the only ones that are staying offline are those hard-core Microsoft junkies. Microsoft is being way too overprotective. Back in the old days, in the generation off early home computing when Apple and Microsoft were making their own entrances, Apple made a giant mistake. They didn’t educate people on how to make software for their system, and were overprotective of their development kits (or making documents and spreading SDKs). They left it up too the coders to figure it out. Microsoft was very unprotective (by old computing standards), and shared how to make programs. Now though, you can’t just share how to make programs. You need to to do a Google, be open source, free, reliable, and techie friendly, plus you can’t just look like another frowned upon Yahoo!. You have to appeal to the coders, not the home users. Why? The coders are the people who will make changes and strives that end up driving home users in the good directions. So you have to beef things up for the coders, or else you’ll end up losing. Losing in this battle of the computer companies Google will win, and Microsoft annd other big time companies need to shape up- or ship out.
In other news, I decided not to use the MORE tag. A lot of RSS Readers don’t know the full article isn’t always in what they got. Sometimes the more tag won’t show. People in their browsers even miss it sometimes, besides I know how much I love being able to read in my RSS reader and don’t always like having to expand the article. So, I’m being nice (not to mention going with my own preference). Another complaint is this, it’s horribly annoying and its happened twice. I hit
Cheers,
gamehawk
I like to blog, everybody likes to blog. I don’t have a lot to blog about and I was thinking, I want to write a blog. Even when I don’t have a lot to write about I have an urge to blog. For some, this can be a problem, and the urge to keep writing and keep their users satisfied. Unfortunately, the resulting blog usually isn’t very satisfying. The “I’m so bored…eating dinner…pizza…kinda’ good. Don’t have anything beter to do.” blogs suck. I didn’t have a lot to write about, so I thought a little, and now I’m writing something that’s worthwhile. If only other people could do the same thing. The world would be a much better place. So next time your tempted to write a trashy, space filling blog…DON’T.
Cheers,
gamehawk
DirectX 9.0 is sweet looking, I have it and the Platform SDK, and it’s all installed properly. My book for DirectX 8.1 threw up an error with this piece of code:
hconsole=CreateFile(”CONOUT$”,GENERIC_WRITE | GENERIC_READ,
FILE_SHARE_READ | FILE_SHARE_WRITE,
0L, OPEN_EXISTING, FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL, 0L);
Don’t ask me why, because I have no clue. I found out the problem lies in the name, and the error thrown up talks about not being able to convert to LPCWSTR, which is the commands first paramerter.
Anyways if you have a clue let me know. In other news I’m back, and I had to “read” 266 RSS feeds, and I only read one or two. Joy. I also thinking about adding the read more option so it doesn’t all clog up the front page. The problem with that is newbies to their RSS reader might only get the preview and then not read my whole article. What do you think about people using the more tag. It just really depends. Right now, I’m not going to add it. Expect me to add it soon though. There’s not too much else going on right now so see you later.
Cheers,
gamehawk
I’m going to be away for about three or four days, so I thought it’d be good to let you know. People tend to leave blogs if they don’t get the action fast, and I’m telling you to keep coming back. For your techie needs read Robert’s Blog. It’s good, and if you didn’t read one of his previous entries check out this video. New to blogging? Learn about and use RSS and get a feed reader. I use Google Reader, it’s easy, free, and viewed right from the web. Plus it’s popular, and I can click Add to Google three or for times in the amount of time it would take me to copy and paste into an RSS feed, but use what’s right for you. Use something from someone you can trust not track, keylog, or steal info about your from what you read or comment. See you in a few.
Cheers,
gamehawk
Edit: My feed is HERE or check further down the page on the sidebar to see if your blogging service can add my feed through subscription services.
I have a problem with Apple, I just had to say it. They got so many issues, and they’re total control freaks. I mean think, if Steve Jobs had shared how to code with developers, developed some SDK’s, or told them exactly how to do it, they’d be on top of the world. They’re such a small portion of the market, and come on if it wasn’t for the iPod who would care? No one. Quite frankly iPods are a total rip, they make you convert to their format, run the .app on their hardware, make you buy from their online store (a few other places can sell but most people get their goods from iTunes store), and use their program (iTunes). It’s a total rip. If I want to put MP3’s on an iPod let me do it (not that I own an iPod). Sure they have a community the size of cruise ship, and a homebrew scene, but who said you couldn’t do that with other MP3 players? Just because no one has found a way to do it doesn’t mean you can’t, their are less people trying to exploit specific MP3 players anyhow. Get something robust, that doesn’t make you take hours to convert a few hundred songs. Who wants to spend a ton of money (buying) or a ton of time (converting) songs? Might as well get something that you have more control of, there’s great alternatives to iPods, and if you have a ton of MP3s hanging around you won’t want to convert. Back to Macs, they have a sexy interface, some cool built in apps, and are cool for multimedia. Now the downsides, there isn’t a ton of software, you can’t code for it very easily, it’s not good for a gamer, and you could buy a Windows PC with professional grade multimedia software for the price you spend on the Mac. To me, the only way to go is Windows or Linux. With all the customization, software, and ability to do more with your desktop (look at the market, and Linux supports much of the same things Window’s does), there’s no better choice.
For those who didn’t want to read all of it: GET WINDOWS, GET LINUX, BUT PLEASE, NO MACS.
Cheers,
gamehawk
The five corners of the Iinternet? What is this guy talking about. Well, to me the Internet comes with five groups of people. I hate to sterotype, I really do, but it seems like on the Internet everybody is part of a group. In fact these aren’t really groups. It’s the good and bad about the intelligence of the ‘Net. Here’s What I have to say about the “candidates”:
Overview: MOST of these users are new on the Internet scene and use the ‘Net for games, casual email, and talking to their buddies.
The Good: The good part is they don’t really do any harm or cause trouble.
The Bad: They can get really annoying, but if they do something to you I’m sure we can find a way to trick them.
Internet Intelligence Level: 1/5
Overview: These are the guys who know the basic function of the Internet, and want to learn more about computers. Unfortunately the way most of them go about it is spamming, wanting easy answers, and typing: “k m3 c00l wit dat”.
The Good: When you help them, they’ll bug off, you feel good, and that’s one less idiot (usually) to spam the board.
The Bad: They are more annoying than your average home user, because they go to places they shouldn’t acting like fools or worse, pretending to know everything.
Internet Intelligence Level: 2.5/5
My Advice: Get a book, read rules, use Google, and use this thing called a site’s SEARCH BUTTON.
Overview: These guys are one step up from newbies, but in a way, one step worse. They hack without really knowing how the stuff works, and if they code they don’t do it very well.
The Good: The good they flood themselves with viruses/trojans because they download things they think will “help” them hack. Sometimes they even get caught by the big agencies like the FBI, NSA, CIA, or other government organization. The only problem is they get played as “big time” hackers, and achieve loads of publicity that they probably wanted in the first place. A big plus is that someday they might go on to be good coders.
The Bad: These guys are attention seeking newbies, who cause a load of destruction and act really snobby. Avoid them if you can.
Internet Intelligence Level: 3/5
My Advice: Learn to code and stop hacking people.
Overview: A lot of these guys are good with games and good with the Internet.
The Good: They know a lot of stuff about the Internet and use it well, plus they don’t spam.
The Bad: They can act like newbies during in-game sessions. They tend to use a lot of leetspeak. That can get really annoying. The only way to be “leet” is to act like your knowledgable.
Internet Intelligence Level: 4/5
Overview: Most of these guys want to learn.
The Good: They write cool programs, enjoy learning, share creations, and don’t cause too much trouble. If they do write malicious software they’ll usually get busted eventually.
The Bad: They can act like newbies when learning, think their leet, write malicious software to help themselves or script kiddies. They can be mean to other users.
Internet Intelligence Level: 5/5
Find where you fit in, and don’t flame. If you don’t agree something, don’t act like a newbie, post a respectable comment. Am I sterotyping, I don’t really think so. It’s more of the good and bad of the ‘Net, test your Internet intelligence, and find out what you’re trying to become and where to go to next. That’s all for today and stay tuned.
Cheers,
gamehawk
I just joined the union err.. WordPress blogging! It’s so much better than blogger. I can upload files and no doubt I will. What’s this blog going to be about, everything I feel like writing, that mostly means tech stuff. What do I like to do? I like to code, make games, write, read, and even *get active*. It’s getting scary that geeks are now playing sports and working out isn’t it? Not really. I’m just letting you know so I don’t get stereotyped, which is something I hate. Well, re-visit the site regularly. I won’t hold you up- this time.
Cheers,
gamehawk
