Time Travel

Published by Robert on March 18, 2024

As some of you may know, I’ve been spending time learning Unity and C#. You see, I found myself to be an old dog, with nothing but a bag of old tricks. Those old tricks, it seems, no longer impressed anyone. I could have chosen many things, but this was what I chose.

But that’s not what this story is about…

I ended up settling on, what is now, and older version of the GameDevHQ program. I was making pretty good progress, when suddenly I hit a snag. I hit the “Final Project” for the first part of the program, and they stopped giving me assets. Now, because I had stalled out a couple times already, I thought, maybe I missed a memo. So, I scoured around looking for the missing assets. Eventually, I discovered the needed assets were deliberately not provided. It was up to me to come up with something.

But that’s not what this story is about…

In the process of searching, I found a bunch of blog sites created by other students of the same, or newer program. It became quickly obvious as part of the later versions of this program, the students were encouraged to blog about their journey through the GameDevHQ program.

This was genius I thought. Genius like monkey even! First and foremost, the student gets the benefit of going back through the lesson and explaining it in their own words. Education has been making students do this for centuries (or at least since I started school). Secondly, the student gets the benefit of having their own reference manual to remind themselves how to do the things they learned. Oh yea, and GameDevHQ gets lots of free marketing! Genius…

The blogs I saw presented themselves very well. They had images and text, screenshots and code as well as animated GIFs showing the action. I really liked the animated GIFs. I liked them better than embedded videos because you didn’t have to hit play.

Of course, I didn’t know how to do these animated GIFs, but that’s not what this story is about…

It was the idea of blogging my adventure that lodged in my head. But I was nearly done with this first part of the program. How could I do it? All that original code was gone, replaced by the steps that followed. Or was it?

Queue Delorean…

Well, queue Git actually. Fairly early (but not at the beginning) I decided to start using Git to version and save my code. It also allowed me to easily switch between workstations when I needed and of course, kept my code nice and safe when I decided to upgrade, overhaul and reimage my laptop. But this is also not what this story is about…

What this story IS about, is to warn you all that I am about to do some Time Travelling, with the help of Git, and spend some time walking through my GameDevHQ journey. It will be good for me to review my code and catch myself back up to where I was as I re-engage and move forward.

Hopefully, I’ll not make any inadvertent changes to the future while I’m gone. If you feel yourself fading, please leave me a note somewhere you know I’ll find it…

Obsess much…?

Published by Robert on February 21, 2024

I have been told I am incapable of maintaining even a bad habit. The implication being the outlook for GOOD habits is more than just a bit bleak.

That being said, Project Euler (https://projecteuler.net/) has my attention!

Birds flying high…

Published by Robert on January 15, 2024

The other day I was driving around when a bald eagle flew over me. Not way up high in the sky, but right down in the trees where I could see him. Not only did he cross my path once, but twice; as if making sure I took note of his presence. He left the tree he was in, flew across my path, then turned back to his perch. So, you know what that means.

Babelfish…

Published by Robert on May 13, 2023

What to do, what to do, oh what to do… sigh… I want to get back into programming, ideally professionally. But I’ve been out of hard core programming long enough I have taken on the appearance of an old dog learning new tricks. Even so, an If statement is still an if statement and a while loop is still a while loop. Thus, I’m not particularly worried about jumping back in. In fact, if I didn’t want to get paid for doing what I love, it would be easy. It’s that getting paid part that is tripping me up.

A History of Budgeting

Published by Robert on December 11, 2022

Or at least my part in it…

So in my previous post, I set the stage for my lifelong indebtedness, my desire to get out of it, and my general incompetence in doing so. Today we track a short history of my attempt to understand money.

Robbing Peter to Pay Paul

Published by Robert on December 10, 2022

By which I mean, it’s time to take another wack at budgeting…

Once, long ago, I set off for college. Before I went, my mother took me down to the bank and opened a checking account for me. Through this, I would learn to take care of my own finances as well as provide an easy conduit for my parents to funnel money to me as needed. One thing extra she did though was include what was then called “Overdraft Protection.” It was not a line of credit per se, nor was it a credit card. It was just a small amount ($500) intended to cover those moments when the bank decided to clear the checks I wrote, before the checks I deposited. For some reason, banks always prefer to do things in this order and I guess my mom knew full well who she was putting in charge of this account.

Mysterious Movements chapter 0

Published by Robert on June 27, 2021

Prologue

Once upon a time there lived a young codeslinger. From the technological backwater of Tucson, he dreamed of coding challenges that would test his wits and determination. Coding challenges that make most coders cower in fear. Coding challenges that would make him a legend.

Tucson was not devoid of technology, but it was mostly technology that once was. The big gangs had pulled out long ago. The others were mostly lone codesligners; IDEs for hire. The important thing though, was none of them had time for a young upstart.

So, he packed his meager belongings and headed further West, the golden hills of California singing a siren song of wealth and challenges for anyone brave enough. He didn’t even bring his IDE (Integrated Development Environment), choosing instead to leave it behind for whomever should take up residence here next. Yes, he’d buy himself a set of shiny new IDEs when he arrived in San Francisco, the .COM capital of the world.

Truth be told…

Published by Robert on May 29, 2021

How often do you have to hear something before you decide it must be true? As I recall from my High School English class, you need to back up any claim with at least three credible sources. Ideally, these three sources should have different pedigrees for their research. Their conclusions should derive from different sources. In other words, they should not all just be repeating the same rumor. In today’s world, that means three re-tweets do not make a truth. Neither does three Facebook shares or re-posts.

Paradise Lost

Published by Robert on April 23, 2021

I am sure if we looked hard enough, we would find someone, somewhere who has not been “affected” by the COVID-19 pandemic. For the purpose of discussion however, let’s just go with “everyone.”

Unfortunately, we are not yet to the point we can talk about what effects the pandemic had on everyone because we are still having them. The whole thing has been going on long enough even the ripples are making news. Even the most pessimistic of doom-sayers are scratching their heads wondering just how much longer this will go on. When, everyone is wondering, will we return to normal? When will we finally get a break and be able to heave that much needed sigh of relief?

TeX-Talk

Published by Robert on April 13, 2021

That’s “Tex” as in “blecch,” not “Tex” as in “Mex” or so the TeX User Group site says.

I have long been interested in Dr. Knuth’s TeX typesetting system. The idea of being able to do my Math homework electronically has intrigued me ever since I got a home work problem wrong because I added 2 and -2 and got 4. You see, I had erased that part of the problem several times and on the final work through, I did not see the negative sign.

Musings and Meanderings of Robert Kuropkat Posts

Prologue