So it might surprise you that I enjoy going to the gym to lift weights. It’s a little “hobby” of mine ever since playing JV Lacrosse in high school. I’m not sure what clicked, but ever since lacrosse I’ve never been the same with my physical fitness. I really enjoyed pushing myself to the limit.
Now I don’t consider myself a complete expert, but I really hate it when I see people doing things with weights that they shouldn’t be doing. So many times I see people using more weight than they can handle and it just bothers me. I want to tell them they’re doing it wrong, but there’s just so many people and I don’t want to rub them the wrong way.
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Cell phones continue to disappoint me. I’ve had my Verizon Wireless cell phone for the past two years. It’s been alright and I was excited to upgrade to something smaller, slimmer, and faster, yet I found myself wanting more. Why do I get so little out of the phone and the phone service?
A few weeks ago I received my new phone the KRZR after doing a bit of research and reading some positive reviews. It looked nice and it was much slimmer than my Motorola E815, but it lacked so many of the features that I had expected. Maybe my term features isn’t the best way to describe it. My biggest disappointment is the user interface and the way I interact with the phone; I consider the interface to be the single most important feature to any phone.
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Each week’s gone by so fast. I’ve done a lot this quarter, but I’d wish it’d slow down. Hopefully I’ll have more time to write some blogs once this quarter ends. Right now I simply don’t have time. I’m playing catchup with classes, work, extracurriculars, and job applications for a summer coop.
Currently I’m looking into Apple, NVIDIA, Vicarious Visions, Microsoft, and Google.
We’ll see how things go.
Orientation was a blast. I had the best and loudest group V-19! It was great to meet everyone and I look forward to hanging out into the future.
RIT’s keeping it real with classes starting on Labor day. I honestly forget holidays when I’m at school because we just don’t celebrate them with days off. My classes are looking good and I know a lot of people in them, so it’s good to see some friendly faces.
I’m back at RIT two weeks before classes start doing orientation training and then orientation week for incoming freshmen. It’s going to be busy, but so far it’s been a lot of fun and I’ve met a lot of new people.
This year should be nice and busy between working, classes, frisbee, and other activities. That’s how RIT always is, never a dull moment.
Hey it’s summer time! I’ve been busy with work and I haven’t had much time to work on my personal projects yet. So everything’s been on hold.
I’ve started going to the gym regularly, playing ultimate, and some Krav Maga (Israeli Self-Defense).
Check out my RIT website at http://www.rit.edu/~pds2352 I should have some new updates in the next few weeks.
Wow, these past few weeks have been flying by. This coming week is week 10 and then I have three finals on Saturday because RIT decided to start finals on Saturday for spring to avoid conflicts the graduation ceremonies. I have two papers to write, one on photon mapping and caustics for computer graphics II and one on DNA profiling for Truth and Consequences. I still have one more programming project to finish to demonstrate photon mapping. This weeks’ going to be real busy and I hope I can finish everything and still have time to get to the gym.
Check out my website with all the awesome pictures at Paul’s RIT website
Wow, it’s already week 2 of spring quarter and I’ve got a heavy load. Here’s a link to my main RIT web page that I updated with current course work. RIT Webpage So far I have links for two of the classes I’m taking with graphical pictures, code, and possibly even some executable files.
Work on the game project is being delayed because of all the course work, and I’m also working on a separate game project for the Game Developers Club, so I’m pulled in a lot of different programming directions.
Ultimate Frisbee starts next week and I’m also working on filling out my application packet for the Student Government GCCIS Senator position, so that could be interesting in the next few weeks.
Here’s the first build using a new design. I’m rewriting most of the game from an object oriented approach to break it into more manageable pieces. The original code base was growing over 1200 lines.
Currently all I’ve implemented here is better mouse interaction with the turret and improved handling of the projectiles as they’re firing from the turret.
Mouse click/drag – rotates turret
Space bar – shoots a projectile
One of the problems I was having was that I had failed to initialize all the variables in the projectile class. It caused a lot of erratic behavior. Always remember to initialize all variables, or you’re going to be stuck with the current value from a previous program in memory.
Here’s the Build1, all the files need to be unzipped to the same location.
Every quarter here at RIT is jam packed with things to do. Thankfully I finished winter quarter with a 4.0.
Cryptography was enjoyable, but hard until I got a grasp on the different algorithms. Going to the theory tutoring center was the only thing that saved me in the class. Thankfully Joe was able to explain the concepts at a basic level.
My second class Spanish was easy. It was still a review from what I learned in high school in addition to the subjunctive tense. I’m going to have to practice during the spring/summer since I won’t be taking the next class in sequence until the fall of next year.
My favorite class was Computer Graphics. I initially started developing a basic graphics library on the Game Boy Advance platform which could draw lines, anti-aliased lines, circles, polygons, filled polygons, clipped polygons, and the Mandelbrot fractal. The second part of the course dove into 2D/3D graphics in OpenGL using GLUT as a window/event handler. (I created a tutorial for setting up GLUT in Eclipse on Windows here)
For the 3D project I created a “turret simulation,” which you can find here: Turret Simulation It’s not perfect by any means, but it gives you basic control over the turret. It allows you to shoot multiple projectiles, record, playback, watch a chase camera view, and play with the lighting, textures, and materials of the scene. I only had a weekend to really put it together, so I’m amazed at what I was able to do under that time crunch.
With that said, for “Spring Break” I’m currently working on taking a lot of the concepts from that simulation and I’m building the “Turret Game.” I’m rewriting everything from an object oriented approach in C++, since the simulation was written procedurally. I should have it finished in the next few days and I’ll be posting again once that is finished.
And now you all think I’m crazy because I’m programming over Spring Break, don’t lose hope. I’ve also started running and lifting again so I’m getting pumped for Ultimate Frisbee this spring!
