I Feel Like I've Been Here Before...ughh...

As you can see, if you scroll down to the bottom right corner of the page, you'll see my Irrlicht-Python integration tutorial. Its not the same as the original version I first posted, because I lost that in a tragic harddrive crash :).

I think its better than the original though, because this one is larger in scope. In the last one, it simply rendered a texture to screen using Python script. In this one, it does all of the following in Python script:

1)Creates a cube scene node.
2)Loads a texture.
3)Applies the texture to the cube.
4)Writes my name at the top-left corner of the screen.

I think it's a job well done. I'd appreciate corrections or improvements of any sort. I plan to do a second part to the tutorial which would cover the integration of classes. If all goes well, that should be ready within the next three days.

Anyway yeah, enough programming talk.

I've been working out a bit lately, but its not enough to produce any results within a reasonable time frame. I need to get intense with it. I'm going to start keeping records of everything I eat and how long I exercise for. I was reading somewhere, and it said that to lose a pound of fat per week, you need a caloric deficit of approximately 3500 calories a week or 500 calories a day.

I intend to reach this by skipping, jogging and weight lifting. I like dancing (despite not being able to do it to save my life), but I don't think I dance enough for it to be a worthwhile contribution to me losing weight.

I need to find the motivation to use this summer wisely. I should be able to lose about 10 or more pounds by the time I get back to school. Wish me luck people.

Tata for now,
Gavin.

Microsoft Word 2007 is a B****

So kids,here's my latest bitching topic. I'm working on my Chemistry project which I got for the holidays. I'm on the second to last topic, so I'm almost finished. Out of force of habit, I press Ctrl+S to quick save on a regular basis(like every 10 minutes or so).

So I press it, and it brings up the huge "Save As" dialog box. I decide to refrain from cursing at that point and just save over the document, which would have the same effect as the quick save. It's located on the base C:\ drive. I click the button. The little green bar on the status bar at the bottom of the screen fills pretty quickly, then it appears again. About 85% of the way through it stops and tells me there is an error in saving chemproj.docx. I curse.

My little brother hears me and laughs.I decide to try it again. Hmph. Same f**king thing. I decide to outsmart Microsoft and copy the entire document to an empty word document and saving it. Didn't make a scrap of difference. I got an error there too. Shit. I do a bit of googling for a solution, since I typed a lot and I don't want to have to retype it.

I see somebody talking about disabling their firewall and antivirus. I'm skeptical, but desperate, so I try it. Nope, no such luck.

I resign to my fate of losing the 3 paragraphs I wrote. I close it, and give up for a few seconds. I decide to open a blank document, type some crap, and see if it will save. It does. I decide to try saving my project again. It doesn't. >_<

I scream, and try the tactic of copying the whole document to a blank file again. I save it to My Documents, and somehow it works.

Its pretty damn weird.

Right now however, I'm just thankful that it worked. I'll figure out the issue later. There is no way I was planning to lose 3966 words of information that was hell to find.

*Sigh*
Oh well. I just had to let it out. I also did a Twitter post about it. For those of you who don't know, besides being an aspiring computer programmer/neurosurgeon, I also want to be a PUA. You can see the Twitter status update on my other blog.

Thats about it still, so I'll write up something some other day. Wish me luck on the project.

The New Year's Nerd

Well, I finally did it.....Sort of.

I've partially purged myself of Microsoft's sin. I've dual booted Ubuntu 8.10 on my computer. I still have XP (since most of the things I use are on Windows), but I have Linux. Gotta keep my options open, y'know?

Ubuntu is damn pretty. It proves that you don't need fancy hardware acceleration and transparent menu bars to have a good looking GUI. I love how Python is so tightly integrated with the Ubuntu shell. In fact, if it weren't for the games I have on Windows, I'd gladly switch to Ubuntu at any time. Now if only I had a credit card so I could donate.

I've grabbed most of the apps I think I'll need(namely Blender, The Ur Quan Masters, Anjuta IDE, plus some plugins). The only problem I've had so far is with the sound and getting a recent version of Flash Player, but its cool, I'll have them fixed WAAAY before the New Year.

Well, I most likely won't be updating tomorrow...so Happy New Year when it comes!!

Later,
Gavin