Well that was a busy weekend.
I just spent the past three days making a video game, and it turned out better than I was expecting. This past weekend was the Ludum Jam (or Ludum Dare if you follow some different rules), a video game making competition. The rules are pretty simple: you have 72 hours to make a video game based around a theme that they supply. You can work on a team, and pretty much anything goes. My roommate and I are both graduating this semester and we have officially finished classes, so we we figured "what the heck, why not?" and just went for it.
Showing posts with label technical. Show all posts
Showing posts with label technical. Show all posts
Tuesday, 29 April 2014
Monday, 7 October 2013
Grace Hopper Celebration 2013: It's For Men Too
So, this past weekend I was up in Minneapolis, MN attending my very first professional conference: The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing 2013. Yes, yes, I know I'm not a woman. It's the celebration of women in computing, not for women in computing. It's totally ok for men to attend.
Nevertheless, I was definitely in the minority. Being a tall, blond haired, blue eyed, Caucasian male made me stand out from the crowd, that's for sure. And you know what? That's not a bad thing. It made me memorable to everyone else attending. I met several people over the course of the conference that recognized me later and came over to say hello, which was very nice because I didn't know anyone there. I came up from school by myself to present at the poster session as part of a group that had never met before, so I felt a little lonely. Not knowing anyone in a crowd of 4,807 can kind of get you down. So whenever someone that I had met previously saw me again and said hi, it picked my spirits up.
Nevertheless, I was definitely in the minority. Being a tall, blond haired, blue eyed, Caucasian male made me stand out from the crowd, that's for sure. And you know what? That's not a bad thing. It made me memorable to everyone else attending. I met several people over the course of the conference that recognized me later and came over to say hello, which was very nice because I didn't know anyone there. I came up from school by myself to present at the poster session as part of a group that had never met before, so I felt a little lonely. Not knowing anyone in a crowd of 4,807 can kind of get you down. So whenever someone that I had met previously saw me again and said hi, it picked my spirits up.
Sunday, 4 August 2013
Travel Map
Alright, this is just a short little post to let people know about the new page that I've put up. On the right hand side of the screen, there's a new link under the Pages section called "Map of Places Visited." If you click on the link, it'll take you to a static page with... well, a map of the places that I've visited over the years.
This is actually an idea that I've had kicking around for quite a while now. I've wanted to have an interactive map with all of the locations around the world that I've been to marked on it, but making a map yourself is simply impractical. So, I've picked up a Google Maps API key, and I'm using their maps to mark my travels. The map is zoom-able, drag-able, and click-able. Currently it's all done with in-line JavaScript, which I would prefer not to have to use, but using Blogger and its templates makes things a little complicated, so I'm just dealing with it for now.
Right now, all I have marked are the different airports that I've been to. I think it's all of them. I marked an airport whether or not I exited it, so I haven't necessarily been to all of the countries that have a marker in them (although right now, Germany is the only country that I haven't been outside of the airport).
So, expect the page to change greatly over the next few months as I get around to updating it with more information and figure out better ways of inputting and displaying the data. I've got some other ideas for map types, so we'll see if I ever get to them.
On a related note, there's also a new link on the side to my Anime-Planet profile, in case you want to check out what anime series I have watched and what my general opinions of them were. I try to keep it up to date within a few hours of watching a show, so it should have recent data on it all the time. If you want to know exactly how much of my life I've wasted on this pastime, now you can know. Apparently I just passed the 150 series milestone today, so I guess that's an achievement.
I've got a whole list of article ideas kicking around now, so I'll try to put out a couple more before school starts up again and I get too busy to update this as frequently. Check back soon-ish for more.
p.s. 41 posts!
This is actually an idea that I've had kicking around for quite a while now. I've wanted to have an interactive map with all of the locations around the world that I've been to marked on it, but making a map yourself is simply impractical. So, I've picked up a Google Maps API key, and I'm using their maps to mark my travels. The map is zoom-able, drag-able, and click-able. Currently it's all done with in-line JavaScript, which I would prefer not to have to use, but using Blogger and its templates makes things a little complicated, so I'm just dealing with it for now.
Right now, all I have marked are the different airports that I've been to. I think it's all of them. I marked an airport whether or not I exited it, so I haven't necessarily been to all of the countries that have a marker in them (although right now, Germany is the only country that I haven't been outside of the airport).
So, expect the page to change greatly over the next few months as I get around to updating it with more information and figure out better ways of inputting and displaying the data. I've got some other ideas for map types, so we'll see if I ever get to them.
On a related note, there's also a new link on the side to my Anime-Planet profile, in case you want to check out what anime series I have watched and what my general opinions of them were. I try to keep it up to date within a few hours of watching a show, so it should have recent data on it all the time. If you want to know exactly how much of my life I've wasted on this pastime, now you can know. Apparently I just passed the 150 series milestone today, so I guess that's an achievement.
I've got a whole list of article ideas kicking around now, so I'll try to put out a couple more before school starts up again and I get too busy to update this as frequently. Check back soon-ish for more.
p.s. 41 posts!
Monday, 6 August 2012
Colemak
So, for the past year and a half, I've been preforming an experiment on myself. Like all good ideas, this one came from the internet. I was reading some ideas that people had posted about how to be more efficient when using my computer. One such idea was to switch keyboard layouts away from the standard QWERTY layout to the newer, much, much more efficient Colemak layout.
If you don't know, the QWERTY layout is the layout that has been used on all keyboards since forever. It was originally developed for typewriters, but has now been adopted for use with computers as the standard. It's name comes from the first six letters on the top row of the keyboard.
This is what the Colemak layout looks like:
Clearly, it's not the same as the QWERTY layout, but it is very similar.
Because I haven't been using QWERTY in over a year and a half, this has led to the problem of using other people's computers. I can no longer type with any sort of accuracy or speed when I am forced to borrow another computer. However, I've just recently discovered a new program that I can use to take the Colemak layout with me when I travel, so hopefully it will work out. I would just like to say congratulations to Apple for (apparently) adding standard support for Colemak into their OS (as of Lion, I believe).
It's actually not that hard to switch from QWERTY to Colemak, due to their similarities. If you do a lot of typing, I would recommend that you give it a try. It can take a bit of time to get used to the new system (it took me about 2 weeks), but it's well worth the effort in terms of speed and the overall ease of typing.
Plus, if you don't change the physical keys on your keyboard, it can make your computer frustratingly difficult for anyone else to use! Endless hours of amusement right there...
If you don't know, the QWERTY layout is the layout that has been used on all keyboards since forever. It was originally developed for typewriters, but has now been adopted for use with computers as the standard. It's name comes from the first six letters on the top row of the keyboard.
This is what the Colemak layout looks like:
 |
| Image from http://colemak.com/ |
Because I haven't been using QWERTY in over a year and a half, this has led to the problem of using other people's computers. I can no longer type with any sort of accuracy or speed when I am forced to borrow another computer. However, I've just recently discovered a new program that I can use to take the Colemak layout with me when I travel, so hopefully it will work out. I would just like to say congratulations to Apple for (apparently) adding standard support for Colemak into their OS (as of Lion, I believe).
It's actually not that hard to switch from QWERTY to Colemak, due to their similarities. If you do a lot of typing, I would recommend that you give it a try. It can take a bit of time to get used to the new system (it took me about 2 weeks), but it's well worth the effort in terms of speed and the overall ease of typing.
Plus, if you don't change the physical keys on your keyboard, it can make your computer frustratingly difficult for anyone else to use! Endless hours of amusement right there...
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