Monday, December 29, 2008

Merry Christmas To Me

Ok it's Christmas time again.

I had a good one. I received some computer software that I wanted. Campaign Cartographer. Yea gaming stuff and i got a new hinge for my C300. Who knew they break in half.

Well it happened. How I dealt with it? I called Acer and bought the part from ebay. When it arrives I'll be installing it and posting photos.

My blog for next year?? I will attempt to post at least 3 entries to all my blogs per month. I just want to be regular and keep it going. Wish me luck. Maybe it'll get my iLazy ass moving.

Sunday, November 9, 2008

I can use my PC with no pay software.

I've been meaning to write a piece on the software I want on every PC I use. I'm getting lazy in my old age and I find I have more then one PC for the stuff that I need to do in my life. I have one laptop for my photography/role playing and a personal battle wagon for just about everything add in the work laptop and we're talking about 3 machines I can find my self using.

The first thing I need to do is synchronize my list of favorites and edit it so that it's work safe. I have found my self surfing on all these machines at different time. The web just sucks with out your handy dandy list of favorites and remembering URLs only goes so far.

  1. Notepad++ because basic notepad doesn't flow like I like to flow. I need the tabs because I go for idea to idea.I also like the language selections in there.
  2. Picasa this google program organizes my photos. Not standard on work packages but you can edit an image pretty quick and simply.
  3. ISORecorder some times you need to handle ISO and with in the OS is the best way.. handy little burning tool.
  4. InfraRecorder this OS alternative is handy and doesn't get steeped on when your service pack 2 dies.
  5. 7-zip I like this for more robust zipping.
  6. OpenOffice Sometimes I don't need word but I have to open word documents often.

I think I could live with those 6 things on every pc.. and my favorites.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Correct Assumptions : More OOP With cards in games

I wrote the last post with out checking out what Micro Soft had to offer. I found that there is a card game starter kit. I downloaded it and began playing with it. I was shocked to see that what I was thinking would actually work for the handling of cards in a game.

The starter kit builds a blackjack game that you should be able to edit and expand. So i began poking around to see what was there that can be used and modded for my needs. I went to the Card Game Framework to see what was there. I found 3 classes (Card,Deck and Hand). These fit my assumptions with minor changes.

Card is built the way I assumed it would be. It encapsulates the values of the suit,faceValue, and isfaceup. This object is just for the play of this card in other collections. The values are set to private readonly fields or public get properties. That's actually good programing as it stops the programmer from attempting to change cards on the fly.

Deck unlike my deck has only one collection. It also has methods for shuffleing that collection.
Also it has a method for drawing a card. I think since black jack doesn't need a discard deck or to shuffle that deck back in those methods are missing. I can use this as an excellent start for my card based game. I can shuffle anything that looks like a deck. These can even be room tiles from games like house on hunted hill or other games with tiles.

Hand is a collection of cards and cantains a number of cards property. It's inherited by blackjack hand and hit has the rules for black jack in that. all this is wrapped by theanother class.

I know I'm on the write path to writing my game. I'm really excited by this and I can add the silverlight bits.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

A deck of cards in OO Development.

I've been thinking about this for some time. I wanted to write a web based game that uses cards. Kind of think Monoploy or Poker or Solitare. My train of thinking is how do you treat cards.

A card is simple. It's just an object with some properties. In a poker deck a Jack of clubs has a graphic. You know the picture of the jack. It has a Value a J. Now in the deck you know there is only one Jack of Clubs. So my first problem is how do I track the cards that arent in the deck.

I simply started by thinking 2 Collections. A Deck Collection with all the cards and a discard stack. So if one card is pulled from the top of the deck that card has to be placed in to the discard stack. So with this bit of design i can pull a card off the top of a unshuffled deck and place it in a discard pile.

To shuffle I can create a random number generator. And then just delete from where it's pointed from the deck collection. This will then add on top of the discard pile. Now this allows us to pick the top card of a shuffled deck and place it ontop of a discard file.

Next I want to give the cards to players. Again with the 2 Collections one for the deck and one for the discard. The program needs to track where the card is. So all the player obects have collections for cards in there hand. Also a limiting INT to limit hand size. Cards are drawn with random number from the first collection and either placed in discard or hand of a player. then the player can be quiered for there hands.

Ok that's an over view of how to deal a poker hand. Then we can add testing and how to pull the cards and game play options like betting net. I'll post some code so I can test that.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Part time Jobber

Ok I'm a part time jobber now. I'm doing coldfusion on the side. tonight I'm downloading the code and getting ready to start doing projects for them.

Saturday, August 9, 2008

I got my CodePlex and my Popfly.

Ok today I registered for Codeplex and I have my Popfly. So I'm all Microsoft moneypieced up and I'm going to break my nephew in right with Visual basic 2008.

Thursday, July 31, 2008

Cool tools for version control.

I started using version control on my personal projects about a year ago now. I had a hard drive crash and I lost some project that I was working on. I cried, bought a new hard drive, reimaged and started again with the cadveat I'd do better.

So I started doing better my way. I loved subversion since I had to use it at Catalyst. It never messed up a project and it was nice and easy to use. I downloaded Tortiose and found a site to host it for free.

I thought My Version Control was a god send. I was able to tell my client he was important enough to warrent off site back up. I was able to give several other ppl working on the project with me access. they could read the wiki. Yea.. that was a move in the right direction.

At work I have a VSS system to do the source control and it's all nice inside the IDE. I never really liked it but I deal with it. and go and find who has the file locked and IMing them to get out of the file that I need. I remember the senior devs wanted a plugin into the IDE so they can "live in the IDE". I always joke about it not having a roof. Well I went to code camp (Generic name for Philly.net meeting). It was a hands on camp and dude had all kinds of amazing toys. I wanted his toys his Subversion was inside his VS his nunit test thing was inside his VS and I discovered Resharper.

The Anhk Project is that plug in. I added it tonight and I think it's really cool. I coded a bit on my project and it's sweet just what I need right there where I need it. I also added test driven.net and it works well to running unit tests with in vs.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

The Specs of the travelmate or ....

Hell I ran out of shit to do to it.

Currently I'm sitting here typing on a 200 dollar laptop with a little over 200 dollars in parts added in and 200 dollars of basic stuff from Acer and I'm as pleased as a pea in a pod. Yea I spent 600 bucks on it. But I think I'm much less then a grand and I have a tablet PC that does what I want. Here is what I have

  • Acer Travelmate 300 .... 200 bucks.
  • 2 Ac Adaptors and 2 Pens 2 100 bucks
  • Factory Restore CD Roms 100 bucks
  • 2 1Gig Memory Sticks ... a little over a 100 bucks ... I'm saying 100 bucks because it's fun.
  • 250 GB hard drive 100 bucks... it was 135 OK I'm saying 150 bucks to make up for the mem sticks.

OK so after some tasteful correcting and the pens and ac adaptors cost less then 100 bucks the expensive thing was the overnight shipping which I saved on the restore CD Roms. And I have a respectable machine. I can't think of anything new to do with this PC except to change the CPU.,,, No I don't think so I'm pretty happy now.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Lions and Tigers and Unmountable Boot Device ooh my

Yea this is a boot error that is pretty hard to fix in the time of OS partians on the hard drive. And disc images on CD. I mean how do you get to the recovery window when this happens. Don't you need a copy of the OS to fix it.

Answer is yeppers. I'm lucky I'm a smart monkey and always make sure I buy a DVD of the microsoft product I'm going to use. That also usually mean being behind the times. In this day in age when everyone is doing vista I'm still doing Windows XP. Simply so I have the disc with the os burnt on it.

The fix is simple. Insert the Windows XP DVD. Boot the PC and select the repair option. Run chkdsk /p. If it returns one or more errors run chkdsk /r. This should repair the errors. If you can't fix the errors your hard drive has gone to the great beyond.

I bought a secondary 350 GB hard drive for my avetatec. So I'll be cooking with crisco and I was able to burn off dvd's of data.

Sunday, June 29, 2008

Board Games to SilverLight.

I've been playing with silverlight and I've come up with the idea that I can make a board game a web game with Silverlight and C#.NET

I love to play games and the new crop of board games out there seem like they may be really cool to do. I wonder if I can pull this off.

Acer TravelMate C300 update

I've done a little bit of mods to this humble machine. It had a purpose when I bought it. This is the gaming machine and the photography view machine. This is the lugabout when I wanted something that wasn't my 17 inch dual core laptop.

I'm into roleplaying games and wargames and I have alot of pdf's Orginally I thought well a double-sided Dvd full of PDF's is like 10 GIGs of stuff(roughly). A tablet is a good thing to read this on. I can lay it flat and search it faster then a book. I can flip it around and show ppl the pretty pics from the books or maps from adventures. Then I saw it an advertisement from micro center. The hard drive was dirt cheap less then 100 bucks for 250GB. Guess what memory transplant. Removed the old hard drive reloaded my OS with the factory restore discs added my software and I'm off. CC2 for giggles and bang.

Ok ok it's also surpose to carry my photos when I'm out shooting a model or something. Lighter then my 17 inch laptop. Fits well in most camera bags. After using CC2 on it with the tablet I feel in love and I may even add another blog for gaming stuff(that's another story). Memory upgrade to 2GIGs hit. Went to Geeks.com and got my chips they came I seated them. Ooh what did this have to do with using CC2. I added all my canon and freeware image stuff to it and now I got GIMPshop and stuff running there so I can manipulate photos on the tablet. Sweet.

So that's what I did to the thing.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

I'm Thought Brave because I'm too afraid to run away

Yea.. I am I bought a laptop on ebay with the not that it will POST. This was a scary thought. What if something was wrong. I couldn't stop a Tablet PC for 200 bucks who could. I mean it's like it Posts so the System board is good. There isn't bloody much in there. It's system board and LCD screen. really. That's how laptops are built small. They put everything on one IC Board.

So I think about it. Hard Drives are cheap. WIFI cards Cheap Pricwatch. I call up Acer. I mean the laptop is an ACER and I find I need the restore CD's and PENS and AC cord. I find .. no support with out a serial number. Shit this thing had to come before I got any support. That's Jacked.

Ok the day it came the I placed the order for bits.. and they where Cheap. so Cheap I ordered 2 of everything. It was amazing they had batteries and Cpu's and every part like Christmas to a kid in a candy store. I loved it. Over nighted.

I plugged it in and Wham it worked. everything lit up like japanese xmas. I loaded my OS and it worked. my pens worked and the screen was neat.

Monday, May 26, 2008

Introduction

I'm now a believer in posting what a blog is should be about and give ppl warning before they start reading. I believe this will form a kind of anchor to my writing and will keep me on topic.

This blog is about my computer programing and hardware hacks and other cool tech stuff that I need to jot down. I will not be talking too much about work projects or techinology here. but since work does guide my learning path. I will talk about the stuff I learn and how that's coming along.

Currently I write software in C# and I use the .NET Framework to create web pages and windows applications. I also know about CSS and HTML which can be a rare thing in a windows developer.

I have 3 hardware certifcations. I can do laptop and desktop repairs. so this blog is for me.