Tag Archive for 'projects'

i have a business installing styrofoam nuns.

Published on December 9, 2009 in Hobbies and Media. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Well, here I sit with OmmWriter again. I can certainly grow accustomed to using this program for blogging consistently, though this time I may have to take River’s advice and run it through a spellcheck, heh.

I don’t know if there’s much I have time to say this entry. It’s roughly 3AM. I spent the evening at a dear friend’s house, having fun and watching stuff online and generally keeping her company. Hope she enjoys the season DVDs of How I Met Your Mother that I left her for her viewing pleasure.

I’m not too concerned about the current time, though, for my sake. I am concerned for the girlfriend’s sake… You see, I am DONE with exams. Yeah, just like that. Feels pretty good, knowing that for this short span between now and next semester… I’m free. It’s almost a curse; now I’ve no idea what to do with my time. There’s been this accumulation of hobbies and activities I’ve wanted to undertake for the longest time, and I’ve had no time or energy to squeeze them in. Want to try knitting (gift making is fun), learning the bass guitar more solidly… Learn more photography techniques and basics…

Speaking of photography, I migrated my entire freaking iPhoto library over to Aperture the other day. I may have to legitimately purchase Aperture sometime soon… This is a niiiice program. Took me forever to migrate and get everything squared away, but now all my photos are organized nicely within projects and albums in this professional organization/touch-up software. I feel accomplished. But, even though they are there, I need to touch a few up before I go showing them to the world here. Sorry guys – do keep up though, I’ll have some soon!

While I did mention being done with school, I did get a surprise email from a professor, D. Fox Harrell, Ph.D, informing me and 3 others that he’d like at least one of us to demo our Project 1 (play with it!) for Digital Media Winter Demo Day 2009 – which is traditionally grad students only. Nerve-wracking, but I’ll see if I can make it!

So a few things to tidy up loose ends before I run off and sleep (getting drowsy eyed here…):

First, enjoy this as much as I did:

And next, I gotta say how excited I am looking at Epic Mickey. The game revolves around The Walt Disney Company‘s push to make Mickey less squeaky clean, and the art for this game looks freaking AMAZING. Click this link and have a look – I’ll leave a picture here as a teaser.

Anyway, regarding my last entry – I appreciate all the comments! Wow, I gotta say I did NOT expect that many! Thanks guys!

Bed for me now.

CS2261

Published on April 14, 2008 in Rants. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

I.

Hate.

This.

Class.

Honestly, at this rate this class can DIAF. I’ve learned NOTHING aside from total unpurified hatred for how idiotic people can be in this class, specifically those who are [supposedly, though I've seen no proof of this] teaching the class.

The class is CS2261 – Media Device Architecture. It’s supposed to be about making GameBoy Advance games via a program called Visual HAM. The first day of class, I was informed that Macs cannot run this program, nor are there any equivalents of Visual HAM for the Mac atmosphere. The TA’s (Teaching assistants) flat out told me to pirate Windows for use in Bootcamp or Parallels. That should’ve been the first red flag.

But I kept on. I soon discovered that not only were the TA’s inattentive in lecture (if they showed up at all), but they were incapable of teaching or even basic communication with the class. Labs (which is claimed to be mandatory but the syllabus has no allocation for it to be incorporated to our grade) were and still are a joke, where nothing is taught, the class is too busy (and too loud) trying to teach themselves, and the TA’s have both an inability to convey information (try projecting your voice past a sensual whisper to your laptop, Peter – for that matter, learn the C language at all, really) and no reign of control over the class. Lectures were comprised of two professors – Bill Leahy and Aaron Bobick (I assume that’s his name, but he came to class and taught maybe a total of 3 times this semester – must be nice not having a care in the world about the class you’re co-”teaching”). Bill does a good job teaching, but without communicating with the TA’s, the class is essentially divided. Aaron wastes his time trying to be hip and funny, failing miserable and placing emphasis on “fitting in” with us rather than teaching us.

Not to mention that coding for the GameBoy in C is so proprietary it’s ridiculous. There’s no relaible resources, TONC sucks, but best of all was the “mandatory” C book we HAD to purchase which I haven’t found a use for at all – as it truly is useless. $45 right down the toilet, essentially.

Ah, and the grading scheme. 75% projects, 25% tests. That’s ALL we were told. Final project? Does it have a different weight? No clue! Does attendance in lab (despite claims) count at all? Who knows! As of Drop Day, we had about 6 grades turned in – maybe half were graded for the progress report. It’s now 2 weeks until finals and nothing in the past 6 weeks has been graded. I have no idea what my grades are. GO DO YOUR JOB AND GET OFF FACEBOOK, TAs. CHRIST, YOU’RE BEING PAID FOR THIS SHIT. IF YOU CAN’T COMMIT TO IT, DON’T SIGN UP FOR IT.

Which brings me to the point of the Final Project – make a game. Last semester got 5 weeks and 4 milestones to prepare the final copy. We get 2 milestones and 8 DAYS. 4 for a beta, and now we were JUST told it’s due Thursday. THURSDAY. FUCK YOU. LEARN TO MANAGE TIME. GRADE MY OTHER SHIT FIRST, ASSHOLES.

I would be writing all of this on a class evaluation form, but it looks likely that we won’t even get one of those.

Fuck this class. This is for you:

Fuck CS2261

“Hi CS2261, I’m a Gigantic Idiot.” – Peter Watanabe [Never has a truer statement been made.]