Starting to Build a Message Board

Posted on 6th March 2011 in Something Daily

It just occurred to me that life is too short to not write about whatever you want on your blog.

I’ve been teaching myself MySQL, PHP, HTML, and CSS over the last handful of days, originally starting with the W3Schools tutorial. That very quickly grew into the seed of an idea for an introductory project which, when it’s complete, should give me a command of the skills I need to have for the hackathon in April. So the idea is that I’m going to put together a message board, with 4chan as a template/inspiration. I want to have nice looking page layouts (not looking for anything horribly fancy, as I’ve never really used CSS in my life), as well as the functionality of viewing/starting/replying to comment threads and attaching images to comments. Eric gave me a subdirectory on his web host, so I’m using that to practice uploading files. It’s going well so far, I’ve figured out how to use a text file to store the information on submitter name, image, and comment content, and to display them in something vaguely resembling a thread format. The next step is to learn how to do that with MySQL databases instead of text files. That shouldn’t be too much of an issue (at least I hope not).

One other thing – this morning I downloaded Odd Future’s demo tape from their website and it’s some of the most evil rap I’ve ever heard, and the rhymes are so good. Also, Tyler the Creator just celebrated his 20th birthday today, and Earl Sweatshirt is 16. Check out OFWGKTA (this video is not safe for work or small children or anyone who doesn’t especially like profanity).

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Preparing for Hackathon 2

Posted on 3rd March 2011 in Something Daily

Something exciting is on my mind since Tuesday: the next HackNY hackathon has been announced. I attended my first in October, but I didn’t know enough about anything that was going on there to really participate at all. I spent about five hours coding Spaceratops there, which I was in fact working on back in October. Side note: this is why I want to be done with that project. It’s taking too long. But anyway, the idea with the hackathons is that a bunch of representatives from startups come and demonstrate what their company’s API can do and then they give you a key and tell you to go nuts for the next twenty hours and hack together some sweet app from the tools that everyone’s given you. In October, this really was my first exposure to PHP, HTML (in recent years) and the idea of using API calls to build apps. So I didn’t join a team, I didn’t really meet anyone, and I didn’t build anything. I did make a lot of progress on Spaceratops that night. The experience of hanging out until all hours coding is extremely appealing to me, though (as is the prospect of free snacks, soda, and burritos all night), so I’m doing everything I can to prepare myself for the upcoming event. Whether I go by myself or with a friend, I’m going to introduce myself to some people, join their team, and help build something awesome. It’ll be awesome.

So to that end I’m going through as much of the W3Schools PHP tutorial as I think is necessary, and then I’m going to make something cool on my own. That’s the only way to learn this stuff: by actually building something. It may very well end up being something that uses Google maps or a calendar API – the choice is all mine. I just got PHP and MySQL running on my local server (for about the fourth time) and I’m tutorialing like crazy. Also Eric gave me subdirectory on his website, so I have some actual hosting. This may allow me to make Spaceratops into an applet that would be playable in a browser…that would be super rad. We’ll see.

And guess what I’m doing this weekend!? That’s right, more homework and coding. If I have my way, I’ll also finally finish Chrono Trigger. I’m at the last battle and it’s so nuts. Let’s do this.

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Eric Sluyter owes me some Dibs

Posted on 4th November 2010 in Something Daily

So around this time last year, my suitemate Eric promised me that if I ever finished Ikaruga, he’d buy me some of these:

For those of you who don’t know, Ikaruga is an arcade-style shooter that was released on Gamecube in 2001, known for its high degree of difficulty and innovative polarity-switching mechanic. People have called it a “bullet hell” game, in that at some points there are so many enemies and projectiles on the screen that it’s extremely difficult to find the safe areas. It’s a cult favorite these days, mainly because of how hard it is to finish. I got it about 2 years ago from a Gamestop (for 40 bucks used, it’s apparently rare), and I’ve been playing it fairly regularly since then trying to get past the especially difficult 4th level. I eventually did that and recently have been working on the fifth.

And I just finished it.

So now I can finally shut up about it on the blog, and to everyone I talk to in person.

So Eric, whenever’s good for you, you know? There’s no rush. Really.

-&-

Here’s another render that I did a few weeks ago with Blender (haha, blender render), this time of one of the iconic blocks that Mario has punched in so many games over the years. A little better with the lighting here.

Mario '?' Block, rendered 10/2/10

I finished my initial foray into PHP today, after learning how it’s used to grab data from MySQL databases, and how it makes HTML really easy. PHP is awesome. Also, I’m going home this weekend! I’ll probably still post, but it’ll be from Pennsylvania! Check it out!

Speaking of Blender, here’s the famous iPad Blend. Yes, it’s what it sounds like.

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