Jack's Blog

Soon to arrive: Jack

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 11:21:52 GMT

Well, my college semester is coming to a close, and the summer break is on it's way. Due to lack of funds, I won't really be going anywhere for summer this time. So, I will be back on BYOND for that time being. I have to catch up on all the changes and make more progress on two projects. The first being my near-exact remake of Final Fantasy Tactics, and the other being a massive RPG I've been working on for years in C++.

I'll make attempts to get back into the community, help out new developers, etc. The good ol' stuff I used to do. I just have one little question. What's the 'popular' chat program that's used now? Not long ago I remember there being 15+ different chat programs.

I'll write more when I get a chance, more college work to do.
~Jack Weldon

Programming Job Offer?

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 10:32:41 GMT

Just today I was offered a programming job that would last until the end of next semester. It would be data-mining for an organization here in WV. I would have to learn Java though. The pay is around $9/h and would be working approximately 10 hours a week. I already have 20 hours a week for classes, though, which might be reducing my current 5 hours of sleep to "sleeping whenever I get a chance". However, I wouldn't mind actually having a source of income for a change...

Interesting, but not.

Sat, 22 Sep 2007 23:53:50 GMT

Well, it was finally time to start picking the watermelons, when I came across 4 of the most awesome watermelons I've yet to grow.

Yes... they're the size of oranges, heh. Pretty awesome, eh? The rest came out normal, about the size of a basketball.

I stumped Tiberath , Audeuro, and Mobius Evalon with a puzzle, which is in Tiberath's Game-in-a-Day entry. It's the 5th puzzle, currently the last one. Good luck. Hopefully I'll get to add more to the little puzzle game later. :D

Speaking of puzzles... why is there no BYOND Puzzles guild? I think we need one, and more puzzle games. Aaiko recently started on a very unique puzzle game, which will hopefully be out in public testing soon. It's a little confusing, but it's quite nifty.

Once I get time to add Texas Hold'em to the Iccusino, I plan on making Mahjong Solitaire with BYOND 4.0 as a fun little puzzle game, so keep your eye out for that. I'll try to make it very professional, but I don't have any artist to make a nice UI, unless Aaiko wants to help me on this non-Iccusion project, heh.

-Jack

Stressed Out!

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 08:45:47 GMT

Today in Phsychology we were talking about stress, managing it, and other pish-posh. The instructor actually brought in a Galvanic Skin-Response meter. The ideal reading is between 7 and 15, however no one in our 90-person class had that. Afterall, we're college students. A fair deal of the people were between 15 and 20, a fairly larger chunk was 20 to 30. Three people had 30 to 35. What did I have? 54. After a moment of relaxing, I was able to drop it to 47. There is some consolation for this high number though. Even though I was just in front of a group of 7 people at the time, I get extreme anxiety attacks when put in the spotlight. If I had the meter myself and measured it during my own free time, it would probably only be around 18 to 23.

Another thing is a 'Stress Vulnerability' thing she handed out. It's 20 questions that you rate 1 to 5, add it up, subtract 20. If you scored 30+ you're vulnerable. 50 to 75 is seriously vulnerable, and 75+ is extremely vulnerable. What did I score? 94, haha.

And finally, a 'How You Deal With Stress' thing, which you rate 1 to 4. It's another 20 questions you add up. 20 to 29 = Deals with stress well. 30 to 50 = Moderate. 51+ = Poorly, and at risk of heart disease. What did I score? No, I actually got a good score of 31.

So, What's New?

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 07:26:32 GMT

Ok, here's another one of those "progress reports".

College Life
I was recently bombarded with 4 tests, which hindered progress on pretty much everything. The World Literature test was possibly the hardest, as I had to associate given passages of text with their author and what book it was from. We've been reading religious texts, including "The Old Testament" [Genesis], Ovid's "Metamorphoses" [book 1], Ahkenaten's "Hymn to the Sun", "Popul Vuh" [books 1-4], and John Milton's "Paradise Lost" [books 4-12]. I'm pretty sure it was a disaster, heh. Psychology, Physics, and Programming [The 3 P's] were easy stuff.

Final Fantasy Tactics [BYOND Remake]
As I mentioned above, I'm in college and was just bombarded with tests. However, I'm still in the extremely long and painstaking process of ripping the landscape art. Once I finally have the first battle field ready, I'll be able to do the easy stuff -- programming in the pseudo-3D engine. I also still need to rip character sprites. Basically, I have a lot of art to rip because I can start adding structure.

Iccusino
Yup, Aaiko brought back the Iccusino. I am adding Texas Hold'em to it, fixing up some odd bug that -just- recently showed up *cough*Aaiko-messing-with-my-code*cough*, and "rigging" Keno to make someone win the Jackpot 'eventually'. I'm thinking after the Jackpot reaches 20k, the odds that it'll "cheat" to make someone win will be significantly low, but exponentially grow with every 1k tokens over 20k. Last I heard, it was just over 96k.

Contests
Tiberath recently linked me to a C/C++ programming contest that simply wants you make a console app. Calculator. Pretty simple little program to do, so I figured I might as well participate.

Other News
Ry4n is Mr. Awesome. 'Nuff said. Also, I only have $32 to last me 2 weeks, heh. I guess that means no movie night or parties. :( Hooray for being a full-time student with no source of income. :/

Forgive me BYOND, for I have sinned...

Sun, 16 Sep 2007 05:23:52 GMT

... and due to peer pressure [don't quote me there Mikau!] I have cracked and made a MySpace account.

So, fellow sinners, if you also contribute to the random BYOND website downtimes, then add me to your friends list! Be sure to leave me a message of who you are though. I probably won't recognize you, and therefore not accept the request.

What happens when Dialup drinks 5-Hour Energy...

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 15:44:12 GMT

This is what happens when I poured 5-Hour energy onto my dialup modem...

Yes, my dialup which normally downloads at rates between 1.0 and 3.5 kb/s is downloading at MUCH faster speeds. It's absolutely insane.

WARNING: DO NOT pour any liquids onto modems or other electrical devices! I was trying to be creative in bringing about this interesting situation.

Mmm, Vacation.

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 10:44:43 GMT

I recently got back from my trip to visit my brother. I didn't make a new 4th of July package this year. Maybe next time. I just didn't have money to waste, nor my camera.

I finally got all the stuff sorted out with the university, too. So, I will be attending this fall semester. [That means I'll have high-speed internet again, woot!] My schedule is pretty simple.
Classes on M/W/F are 10AM to 2PM
Classes on T/H are 8AM to 11AM and at 4PM to 5PM
[That's 20 credit hours]
That leaves my afternoons pretty much free to work and exercise.

Yeah, I forgot to mention that... I'm working on getting a life outside of the computer. Exercising vigorously every day and trying to break out of my introversion to meet people. That'll work better when I'm up at the university though. Big gym and thousands of people.

As for the Final Fantasy Tactics remake... I'm still working on it. It's just taking a VERY long time, since I can't get any useful/reliable help.

- Jack

Vacation...?

Thu, 28 Jun 2007 14:49:50 GMT

Huzzah? I'll be up in Ferndale, Maryland with my brother and his girlfriend for a while. Probably until the second week of July. They're not too sure if they have internet access up there, hence why I'm leaving this message. ;)

Final Fantasy Tactics - This is going fine. Still very busy ripping the landscape art. It's a very long and boring process.

Anywho, Happy 4th of July.

(I might make another little 4th of July package. >=D)

... and another year passes.

Mon, 28 May 2007 05:27:26 GMT

Yesterday was my 19th birthday. It was quite depressing, really. If you've paid any attention to my blog or to Chatty, you'd know that I've been working on remaking Final Fantasy Tactics for BYOND. In fact, I've been working nonstop for the past week on it. About 4 people have promised me that they would rip sprites so I could get progress done faster. As of yesterday, those 4 people have completed absolutely nothing, which sickens me. I've poured out over 130 hours so far, and they've done absolutely nothing... NOTHING.

Goes to show, you can never really trust others to do work for you, friends or not.

This is starting to become a ritual. My past 7 birthdays have been really crappy. At least when I turn 21 I can start gambling. That'll be a good birthday.

Ohh well. Life goes on. Back to work I go...
- Jack