Desktop

Short update today. Lots of pictures.
Finally finished my augmented reality project. What a mission that was. Big thanks to my team that wasted the best part of this week working on it.

Rainmeter is awesome. I've had this for a little while now. Makes my desktop look nice yeah. See below.

There are so many different things you can do with this program. Here's another couple of peoples desktops that have been enhanced with Rainmeter.

It's really really easy to set up and it's so so flexible. You simply find a skin you like, download and install. Done.

I'm using:
Encoded for the squares on the top left and the date and time on the top right
DarkEve for the clock on the left
Winamp Circles for the Winamp thingy at the bottom
Sinister for the date down the left
illustro for the boxes on the right (no link because that's included with Rainmeter)

The thing measuring RAM and CPU usage is a Windows gadget (not applicable)

These skins all come with a lot of other little thingys as well so check them out.

You can do some other pretty flash things like use a video as your background, animations on window displays, lots and lots. Check the guy below if you aren't convinced this is awesome.

Link me to yours in the comments. Keen for more ideas to spice mine up.

Cheers,
Milk

I'm Sick

So guys guess what. I found out I have kidney stones in my right kidney. Spent a few days in and out of hospital over the last few weeks for this. Worst pain I have ever felt in my life. Morphine and all the good stuff was administered. Basically, it is what it sounds like. I have formed rocks in my kidneys. My guess is that it was the 2+ Mothers a day I was drinking.



They are like V / Monster / Red Bull / Demon, (I don't know what other countries have), but they have the maximum legal limit of caffeine and all that good shit. Limit one 500 mL can per day. Felt great. Kept me going well.

Needless to say I had a range side-effects from the green including: chest pains, eye and arm twitching, and greenish coloured urine... I have since stopped having energy drinks...

Here is a picture of some kidney stones.



Not fun. Mine is 6mm, which means it's on the line of too big to pee out, so they are going to blast it with ultrasound to break it up so that I can pee it out. Beautiful. In the meantime they have put a stent in me.



So it has one curly end in my kidney and another curly end in my bladder. This was inserted through 'existing entry points'. That is to say, men, you do not ever want to have to get one of these... Luckily I was under general anaesthesia, or I would have died from fear.



Ultrasound blasting thing is 5th May and then getting the stent removed sometime after that. I'll keep you posted.

It's been 4 days since the stent was inserted and normal bodily function has resumed.

I have a whole bunch of boring university work going on at the moment as well so I'll have to wait until something exciting comes up before I have another decent software related post. Will probably put up one of the personas our group made for one of our projects later on. It looked pretty cool.

Oh and Portal 2 anyone???

Comes out in New Zealand TODAY on Xbox 360. Does anyone know if you can play split-screen local co-op on the Xbox? PLEASE let me know.
Cheers,
Milk

Long Time No Nothing

Wow long time. So I've been a little busy with the random happenings that is life. All in all nothing exciting or worth mentioning. Uni is a bit of a bore. Little to no software development makes it very boring. And means I have no content for you guys. [Sadface]

miTanks is on hold again while uni is busy. Been playing a lot of age of empires 3 on my downtime. Good game.

Anyway, here are a couple random pictures I've saved onto the work computer.

Will post something tomorrow or the next day about M-Theory, String theory, as I have been watching heaps of videos about it at work. Some interesting concepts there.

Internet Game / General Update

So I've started back at University this week. It's pretty boring so far. Seems that a lot of the code writing stuff is going to happen later on. Which is gay. It means no exciting content for this blog for a wee while.

Also I have recently moved house, which means I can only get online at University, and so haven't been on the blog or anything exciting for a while. Should have internets by next week though.

Supposed to be learning about networking this semester so hopefully, I should have a nice network game to stick on here for you all. That would be awesome.

Something fun:
Has anyone tried to play QWOP? You are Qwop, our small nation's sole representative at the Olympic Games. Ideally you will run 100m but our training program was under-funded. Remember, it's not about whether you win or lose.

Basically you have four buttons, Q, W, O, and P, with which you control the runners thighs and calves to make him run 100m. Sounds easy right? Shit no!

Woo! Straight away instead of running, I decide to do a backflip... Not good. After a decent amount of gameplay my record is 5.5m. Good job Qwop.

Magic The Gathering

So I used to play Magic The Gathering when I was around 14. I have since found all out that a couple of my friends (including Foo) play. Sweet. It seems to be the case that each edition has better cards then the last. The newest set came out around 7 years ago... I think. So my cards are pretty average.

My play style: I have no bloody idea. Play shit and hope something awesome happens.

I'm quite good at puzzles and problem solving so strategy games seem to come naturally to me. Back in the day I made an adequate Myr deck. So what better thing to do then continue with the theme.

I'm not spending a lot of money on this. I'm a tight ass. So I found a couple stupid people on TradeMe, New Zealand's equivalent of eBay, that are selling ridiculous amounts of cards at $1 reserve. Managed to pick up 177 mostly white (not racist) cards in newish condition for $7.50. Not a bad deal. And a couple other decent deals.

Made a decent red/artifact deck that relies on the shit load of Myrs I have. Problem is that it takes a bit of mana to get going. Solution? Level-up creatures. I haven't got any of these yet...

Here's my current deck:

Lands 24
20x Mountain
4x Great Furnace (Note artifact)

Red Creatures 5
1x Dragon Mage Flying (He is awesome)
1x Goblin Machinist
2x Atog Sacrifice Artifact...
1x Megatog Sacrifice Artifact...

Red Spells 8
1x Shrapnel Blast Sacrifice Artifact...
2x Forge Armor (This card makes the deck)
2x Carbonize
1x Dragon Breath
1x Molten Rain
1x Erratic Explosion

Artifacts 4
1x Darksteel Pendant
1x Banshee's Blade Equipment
1x Myr Reservoir
1x Myr Matrix

Artifact Creatures 19
1x Myr Moonvessel Gives mana on death
2x Myr Enforcer Affinity for Artifacts
3x Iron Myr Gives mana on tap
2x Frogmite Affinity for Artifacts
1x Lodestone Myr
2x Cathodion Gives mana on death
2x Arcbound Crusher Modular
3x Myr Retriever
1x Myr Propagator
1x Yotian Soldier
1x Oxidda Golem Affinity for Mountains

Any comments?

Sorry this isn't software again... I'm posting at work again and haven't had time to update the blog at home.

Cake!

So it was my birthday a while ago. Yay me! I'm now 20. Sorry I haven't had any software-ish updates for a while. Still on break from, well, everything. Haha.

My mum is very good at making cakes. She made my cake. It was awesome. She recently won Twitters Hottest Home Baker. You can see some of her work here, on her website. She is also a computer person.

Here is a picture of my cake.



It's nice. And no, the cake is not a lie. It is in fact a real cake.

It's my birthday soon! Small update and a little bit about myself.

Going to be 20. Woo! That should be fun. Not really doing anything too exciting. Oh! I am going to Fiji for my girlfriends 21st in February. That should be fun too. Unless I die from the heat...

Sorry I haven't done any work on Tanks since the first release. I will get back to it at some point as I actually want it on my phone. Would be nice when going to job interviews. "Well you can see some of the work I have done here." That would be awesome.

I've run out of decent previous projects to put up here too so everything should be new content. Except there is another game I half made, (actually it's at about the same point as the tanks game is now) where you have to get to the door. There are some glitches I haven't fixed and alot of people don't like the unique control system. I'll put some shots and maybe the executable online for that one aswell. It is about as complicated as Tanks so you might not see any code for it. Simply due to the amount of code.

What else? University is starting in the end of February, so expect alot of content about that. Looking for a house, which means I will be poor. But that should be fun. I do like a challenge. Been going for runs, which is always a good thing. But the weather hasn't helped. See this here.

And a picture for my brother:
[spoiler]

[/spoiler]


That's about it.
Cheers,

What do you want?

This blog is supposed to be a random set of my personal programming experiences.
But, you guys are important too.
If anyone needs any advice, help with a program, or a simple program written for them; let me know here.

Also tips or tricks are greatly appreciated.
I'm in no way amazing at programming.
Having a goal to work towards is the best incentive to get things done.
I'm very confident with Java and Python, and have experience with Bash, C, MatLab and Visual Basic.
No idea about networking at the moment though; that's a plan in progress.

I'll be sure to give credit when credit is due as well.

Cheers,

About Me

So this should probably be in here some where.

My names Michael, or Milk. I'm 19. Studying at the University of Auckland, for an Engineering Degree specialising in software. My spelling isn't great. I have a beautiful daughter, and lovely girlfriend.

Don't really do to much. Like playing Halo alot. That's always good fun. /b/ is also another of my weaknesses. So is not finishing my own projects. Once I have a semi-working prototype I'm usually happy to stop. Most of the time there is no point to my project except to prove to myself that I can do it.

Have a part time job working for Guardian Storage Ltd. It's a job. And yeah.

That's all I can think of at the moment.

Cheers,

First Post

Yeah so many people have told me I should start a blog. OK well that's a lie. Lectures have said I should have a logbook, and I've always thought I should have a blog. So here it is.

Not sure what's going up here or how long this is going to last. Hopefully this will give me some motivation to finish some of my projects I have going, and the spell correctly.