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Maths and “the theoretical” is generally the part I...

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 23:41:00 -0600

Maths and “the theoretical” is generally the part I hate about computer science. This stuff is something that I spend a lot of time on last year, but still got a crap TOC mark anyway. If I can’t picture what I’m doing, I don’t understand concepts well at all, but I think the worst part is that even from where I’m standing, the applications are still too far away.

So Formal Methods… I’m just taking this class because I have to. I can’t see myself being good enough to use any of this in real software development (I’ll be slower and it’ll probably be just as buggy). Right now, it’s so low on my priority list that I left the 12.5% grade homework until the very last minute, handing in something embarrassingly unfinished — you can tell - I didn’t even use a pathing tool for my arrows.

Something [lecturer] said about her dream being that software engineering would become a real engineering field has stuck with me: programs all being verified and bug free… real standards for coding… EULAs that didn’t absolve all responsibility… I get that, but I don’t think it’ll happen any time soon. Numericals, probabilities and “good enough” (ie, the 3x safety margin) work fine for those other engineering fields… and this shit is really hard.

I don’t like Marauders. Conceptually, it doesn’t...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 14:29:00 -0600

I don’t like Marauders. Conceptually, it doesn’t make sense to me how Terran were suddenly able to outfit armour which was twice as strong and just as mobile as regular Marine armour. It means there’s no reason why they couldn’t strap Hellfire missiles to the same chassis to make an insane anti-air infantry. Concussive Shells make them really obnoxious to go up against — I don’t like how risky it makes poking. Remember when it used to slow down Archons… those hovering, spell-resistant embodiments of pure rage? That’s basically why I thought they were dumb.

Maybe if it was an active spell (perhaps single use?) that worked more like an actual anti-gravity grenade and dragged units together/backwards? I like the idea that it would only be effective in the hands of skilled/attentive Terrans, even if the snare effect was worse, or it destroyed Force Fields.

My favourite unit, by contrast, is the Immortal. If fulfills the anti-Roach role in the same way, but the idea of the old Dragoons being outfitted with better AI, a heavy weapon and extra shields, and having Stalkers act as a lighter skirmisher just seems more plausible to me.

I know that lore should always take second place to gameplay, but that’s just how I feel about them. In-game, they’re both just dull units that you mix in response to Armored units. I probably overmake both regardless, especially after the realisation that Immortals are as cheap as two Stalkers. (That and the range buff.)

Muoy.

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 23:00:19 -0600

Muoy.

And while the top five university cities to find love...

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 19:59:00 -0600

And while the top five university cities to find love are:

Oxford (35%)
York (29%)
Durham (25%)
Liverpool (23%)
Manchester (21%)

I don’t know if that’s counteracted by computer science being the least likely to lead to love. Tried to find the actual source or numbers which meant anything, but gave up after about 10 minutes. I’d make a shit journalist.

The heap allocation exercise is essentially what I love about...

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 08:11:31 -0600

The heap allocation exercise is essentially what I love about computer science here. Essentially, it’s a contest to see who can build the best allocator in terms of speed and memory efficiency. On committing code, the server runs your allocator on a set of test programs and your results go up on the homepage for everyone to see. It’s a big effort for the instructor and TAs to maintain, but goddamn, it really pays off.

This is the kind of thing that I’d love to see at York. I guess it works better with the American system - being graded on a curve and the general informalness of assessments - but I can’t see why more classes don’t incorporate some form of competition. I think competition is one of the only things that drives me, but I guess it might have the opposite effect on anyone that’s not on top of things. I can’t agree that it’s unfair in any way, though.

I don’t really want to go into the peculiarities of memory management, especially since my allocator is really slow and not that efficient, (but I bet it’d perform better in a real life situations because of the way it’s suited for ephemeral garbage collection, though). I probably could’ve cheated and designed my program to just demolish the benchmarks, or just copied the libc implementation, but that goes against my principles (but evidently not my peers).

I’m pretty stubborn as a programmer. I think I probably could’ve won this thing if instead of trying to tweak variables all night, I’d just sat down and rewritten it to use segregated sizes or whatever. Recently, I handed in some code with a really awkward array implementation that is probably going to be hell to debug later. Lazy… that’s what it is.

I told her I thought it was important that you could get lost in...

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 04:13:00 -0600

I told her I thought it was important that you could get lost in conversation
Chatting shit, sitting in oblivion with that person who’s your special one

*algenpfleger: A while back, when I started doing art, not...

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 13:07:00 -0600

*algenpfleger:

A while back, when I started doing art, not only were my skills really bad, but also my ability to see the world. Practice not only changes what you can put into reality, but also what you can get out of it. Everyone of you who knows something about painting will know what I’m talking about - after a while you learn to see. And that alone is worth the time you put in, you’ll be rewarded twice - not only with growing skill, but also with a gift that’s worth maybe even more - the ability to see beauty in everything, to take in and understand the world, and also to see through bullshit, haha. This is what people who paint over photos don’t get - yes there’s actually people to whom it’s blatantly obvious. All it takes is to know things about painting to understand what makes a painting look like a painting, and what makes a photo look like a photo.

But you guys…

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 19:00:00 -0600

But you guys…

Christine or Christina. Kirsten.

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:49:00 -0600

~~Christine or Christina~~. Kirsten.

I went 6-6 today (7-6 if you include a disconnect). It’s...

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:33:00 -0600

I went 6-6 today (7-6 if you include a disconnect). It’s been over two weeks since I last played, and overall, I just feel very sluggish… balling all my units in one command group without bothering to focus fire or Blink at all… mashing hotkeys at 180 gas waiting for it to fill up… mistiming Warp Prism drops and forgetting to warp-in, etc. It comes off the back of playing some Age of Empires III, less a problem with that game’s mechanics, but more the fact that we were simply comp stomping.

PvP is starting to work for me. I missed a Force Field, but won the other games (usually just because the opponent expanded). I’m getting a much better idea of when to start making Colossus… endgame is pretty straightforward as long as I remember to use Templars, Observers and Warp Prisms once in a while.

My PvT Stalker rushes were almost minutes late, and probably independently, everyone had fast Concussive Shells anyway. Annoyingly, I’m seeing a lot of Ravens and Missile Turrets, and though it’s usually where I’d be using Blink Stalkers or a Mothership, I felt lazy today, so lost games playing too passively.

I beat two Zergs with a very straightforward double Robotics Facility response to Roaches. I guess that’s all I need to do until I go against Mutalisks again.

Bumped into someone on the ladder that I hope isn’t who I think it is.

I fucked up. It was a very simple assignment, so I bashed...

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 01:11:00 -0600

I fucked up. It was a very simple assignment, so I bashed something that basically works in a couple of hours and just left it like that, intentionally leaving testing for corner cases for the free afternoon I had today. I’d always meant to go back to it, but never did. Taking this class… I feel bad calling these it beneath me when I’m probably not even going to get an A+ … but I can’t be bothered with it.

But I dunno, I’ve been programming in C for like five years and I still hate char* manipulation and the string.h library.

I played the pre-order preview for Cinders, a beautiful visual...

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 23:46:20 -0600

I played the pre-order preview for Cinders, a beautiful visual novel based on the Cinderella fairytale. It’s a well refined game, distinctly built on a unique engine rather than the standard Ren’Py engine, but it’s the quality of the writing, with a huge number of delayed choice consequences and heavy content pruning, that really makes it for me.

My problem… is that I’ll probably prefer this demo to the real game. I probably won’t find all of its hidden gems, and on future plays I might even just start to see it as a tree traversal exercise than the compelling story it tells. And also, my expectations are really damn high right now.

I could neither recommend it, nor avoid talking about it at this point.

I’d be happy with this if it wasn’t 12:40am right...

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 00:40:00 -0600

I’d be happy with this if it wasn’t 12:40am right now.

I complain about colour reproduction on this laptop, but I guess...

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 16:30:00 -0600

I complain about colour reproduction on this laptop, but I guess that’s not really why I wasn’t perfect.

What comes first, being able to enjoy stuff like these guys do,...

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 14:00:05 -0600

What comes first, being able to enjoy stuff like these guys do, or having people to discuss it with? I found their picks fascinating reading, and I wish I had the creativity and style to be able to produce this sort of journalistic prose.

My lifestyle’s in a real mess at the moment. I’m...

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 11:16:00 -0600

My lifestyle’s in a real mess at the moment. I’m being totally irresponsible… not getting enough sleep and being the annoying roommate that stays up late with the light on, still yet to pick the courses I want to do, in desperate need of a clothes wash, still overdue an appointment to the opticians, out of Extra Thin Ice, missing meals and not eating enough fruit, skipping lectures because they’re recorded anyway, stupid-stupidly unfit through lack of motivation, shirking on emails because I don’t want the reply on my plate…

I guess I’m just so used to having someone nagging me that I’ve forgotten where to even start with these things. This is just… not me… I’m meant to be the one that’s always on top of things.

Fortuneless at New Year’s again.

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 20:59:37 -0600

Fortuneless at New Year’s again.

I’ve missed putting off everything just to draw instead.

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 05:17:00 -0600

I’ve missed putting off everything just to draw instead.

My Christmas present was a gaming headset. I was a bit worried...

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 17:05:00 -0600

My Christmas present was a gaming headset. I was a bit worried when I’d heard about it — I’ve always preferred the idea of a separate microphone and headphones, and at the very least the white model looks way better. Having it in front of me has changed my opinion, though — they still look spectacular and the integrated design keeps with my minimalist nature.

It sounds decent (I still don’t know what “good” sounds like — they’re a less shrill than my a-Jays, but I don’t have any real comparison) and I actually can type while talking now which should help with productivity. I love its understated, utility-focussed design but honestly, I haven’t found them comfortable at all.

The reason I’m pleased at the moment is the X-Fi Go! Pro sound card I picked up (another VAIO S flaw). Man, I dig audio processing so much, even if it sounds gross to everyone else. SRS was one of the reasons I really loved my iRiver Clix2 so much… and goddamn, Creative’s THX technology just makes stuff sounds better.

I’m surprised I win as many games as I do. In general, I...

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 02:36:00 -0600

I’m surprised I win as many games as I do. In general, I tend to peak at about 160 psi and then progress really slowly from there, very rarely picking up a fourth base. In a lot of games, it’s Blink Stalkers, Warp Prisms and Dark Templars that give me the edge back (pictured: winning in that way). This probably explains why my PvP is so bad.

I struggle with the FFE (Nexus wall) on Arid Plateau, Xel’Naga Caverns and ~~Metalopolis~~, but it’s something that I want to be able to get right. It’s when I don’t try that disappoints me the most, especially when I’ve lost a couple of PvZ games to some really basic Zergling attacks just by missing Force Fields. Maybe I should put those other maps back in my roster.