Vent

The thought occurred to me while I was writing some code not to long ago. What will software be like in 50 years time?
It’s anyone’s guess.

Will we still be using some of the computer languages that are popular today? If that is the case (or there are similar derivatives to today’s languages) then how will people view view them? For example, will they be viewed as much lower level languages such as assembly language, with newer, higher level languages taking precedence?

With that in mind what will these newer, higher, high level languages be like? Will writing a program be as easy as writing a story in plain English? Will compilers have some sort of advanced neural software embedded that allows it to see what people meant in these new languages? And if so will this mean that syntax errors and non-descriptive error messages are a thing of the past?

Think about the implications of just about anyone, who can type and speak a natural language such as English, being able to write a program to do exactly what they wanted, with minimal effort and zero frustration. Will most programmers in industry be out of a job? Granted people will always need to understand lower level languages in order to construct higher level ones, but in a computer architecture class of the future, will people be learning C++ or Java type languages (on PCs considered God-like by today’s standards) instead of assembly and venting frustration at the hands of a compiler?

I know it may seem impossible to some that one day we might all be writing essays instead of programs, after all, natural language is very ambiguous. Words in natural languages can have many meanings and the meaning of a whole sentence can change drastically on realising the person’s intent (sarcasm et cetera). But people seem to get past this barrier as it were, and understand each other (most of the time at least). So why not a “smart” computer. And who says we must type in plain old text for our programs too? In the end the instructions are just bits and bytes, why not create a fancy, flexible markup language like:

<game Code>

…

<define>
<dead> When HP equals zero </dead>
<flash> display for one second </flash>
</define>

<object>
<player><hp =”200″/><attackpts =”50″/>…</player>
</object>

<condition> The player is dead </condition>
<action> Flash the screen red </action>

…

I know this is technically plain text, but imagine a browser for this language that could display it, kind of like a web browser for HTML and all of the logic will look rather fancy, rather like syntax high-lighting only on steriods.

Again, why stop with that, why not draw pictures or record your own voice and have that parsed by a compiler, which would attempt to make sense of the data and build a working program? Obviously, some sort of notation will need to be invented, but imagine the implications of it.

Writing programs over the phone or on your mobile, just using your voice (this would probably sound embarrassing if it were code-like, but it doesn’t have to be, if could very well be hard to distinguish from a random conversation)!

Drawing your objects with attributes inside them and linking related objects together with lines, colouring the different types and so on, and then scan in the image and compile it into a working program!

Ah yes, Gamecon. I have heard the name a few times before, supposedly the biggest LAN in Ireland. To be honest though I didn’t know much about really and I have never really considered going, until now.

€30 online booking is a bit steep, even for a LAN (most LANs I’ve gone to have been free). But aparently there are ‘great prizes’. Keep checking the site every once in a while, they actually do update the details.

Anyway, why am I ranting on about it? Well, several irish clans are going to this (more than last year in fact) and as far as I know for definite, one college (DKIT). I haven’t actually been to any of the MiNDs LANs ( stupid accommadation issues ) But I mean if people are supernaturally good then I don’t see why they shouldn’t attend. There are consoles too, so perhaps the Gamesoc would be interested?

This is, aparently where a lot of the best irish gamers go annually, so it’s worth going at least to see how good our fellow irish gamers are.

And, even if you’re not up to scratch, aparently there are quite a few people entering ‘just for the craic’. That’s probably what I’ll be doing if some of the games available aren’t FPSs, I really suck at racing games but heck it’s only a bit of fun, so I’ll enter them anyway.

If anyone reading this is going, you’ll probably find me where-ever the halo2 stuff is.

I have decided to make use of my newly acquired basic knowledge of Java™ to attempt write a simple text based RPG.

Now I know when I mention text based RPG people automatically think of those interactive fiction games where you simply choose an ending or maybe one with a little more effort with a directional system in place (for example typing “east” will take you to a new description of an area) or even maybe a little battle system in place.

Well, let me make it clear, it’s not anything like that. It’s not one of those “rougelike” games either.

The game is called “Hackers”, and despite it’s rather unthoughtful name it does have thought behind it. Basically, the game is an emulation of a dos/unix command prompt, well at least similar style anyway.

Players type commands to get things done in the game. “/email” would ‘check’ their email. “/bank” would ‘connect’ to a bank server. The goal of the game is not to become the biggest h4×012 in town but rather it follows a simple storyline:

” In your early days of computing you were a Cracker (’bad’ hacker to those who aren’t familiar with the term, hacker is commonly associated with the term cracker by the media but this is largely untrue). In previous years you frauded and schemed to subsidise your cash flow problems, others worked with you too…
but those days are long behind you. You were holding a good job down at a respectable software company and you had no need to indulge in your illegal activity once more. Things work out, you have a proper house now, heck a family and darn it even a nice spouse too.

While in the can, the horrible gut feeling inside you multiplies as you realise you had to have been betrayed by one of those ‘friends’ you worked with before you striaghtened yourself out. When you get out, you are forced to sleep rough, no-one wants an ex-con in their firm or as a tenant. But despite all these set backs one last thing is left to motivate you, revenge. All you have is but a library computer as your instrument. In order to pay off your debt you’re going to need some help… but who can you trust? After FTP’ing a couple of programs you begin your quest to get yourself out of debt and more importantly find the person who betrayed you. No one is to be trusted. Any one of your friends, even those appearing to lend you a hand could be the very one who put you away. You must delve into the dark realm of the underground scene once more and use any means nessary to get justice… ”

The game is in the early alpha stages at the moment. The saving system framework is up, as is the command recognition system… but apart from that everything else needs work. Anyone who wants to help out is more than welcome, just contact me and we’ll arrange something. As with any feedback, any comments/suggestions would be great.

And I’ll release the source code when I’m done, releasing it now is a bit pointless as the code is rather untidy/messy and is subject to change. But if you really want to take a look I can send it to you directly.

For the record, in case it wasn’t obvious enough: the game isn’t a ‘hack tool’ or anything of the sort, it doesn’t even connect to the internet. It’s merely giving the impression that it is.

Watch this space for any updates.

I being one of the few people having purchased a 60 Giga byte iPod Photo at the time of its release have surely regret doing so. I mean, it’s not that the iPod Photo sucks. It’s great for showing off photos to your friends and the obvious listening to music bit. It’s also great for an external storage device, the equivalent to tonnes of those little usb memory sticks in your pocket. Even a 1 GB stick would take 60-fold to match my iPod, which rocks. It rocks because I can store any data I want and carry it around. In my case it’s usually to back up some CDs or to transfer large files from computer to computer when not even GMail is large enough.

Anyhow, not to side-track a little, the reason why I’m so ticked off with the iPod photo firmware is that those people designing the firmware were neglectful. You see the iPod Photo does have the physical capacity to play video, (around 30 fps, if I’m right) but the firmware doesn’t have such a feature on it. Aside from this little hack that’s all there is really for us iPod photo people to enjoy. Why was apple so neglectful in implementing a video feature for the iPod photo? Well its probably due to their focus on the iPod colour or the Nano. The new iPods on the block. The folks with iPod photo are left in the dark as apple doesn’t seem to have any plans in the future to integrate video into the photo’s firmware.

Now, I being the obsessive person I am, searched high and low on for a way to play video on my iPod. I even considered the crappy option. Being a little less sad than that I eventually even considered voiding my warranty with iPod Linux. Yes, iPod Linux. Though, due to the different processor types of the Mini and the Photo and other 4G (4th generation) iPods there isn’t a version out yet. Hopefully sometime in the future though, it would be so great to be able to watch videos with a full colour screen and 60 giga bytes of storage and not have to fork out on one of the new ipod models!

It recently dawned on me how much I think about things in general. The content of my thoughts wouldn’t surprise anyone, but the sheer quantity might.

I’ve often wondered since I was a child, “How much energy does it take to make a thought happen?”. Now there are obvious parameters such as the length of the thought, how involved you are in it and so forth. Those aside, it’s quite an interesting question, I mean how many calories would it use up? There’s no denying the fact that the human brain uses over one third of the bodies blood supply. Costly stuff this thought business.

But if you sit back a little and think about the long term benefits of thought, you’ll see that it’s energy consumption (what ever it may be) is well worth the initial effort. Our ability to foresee, reason and make sense of our enviroment has made us the most successful species on this planet (for now). The only main threat to humanity is humanity itself. Not even all the cases of death by dangerous animals in the world can supercede the number of deaths on our roads each year.

Thought does bring with it a side effect though. Our hypo-awareness exposses us to the reality of death, suffering/pain, grief… et cetera. And yet me must expend energy to comprehend this. A waste of energy you might think but even the negative side of our spectrum of thoughts holds key benefits. The realisation of death may cause you to apreciate your life and the pain of childbirth initiates a woman into motherhood example.

Anyway, a great deal of my time is spent merely thinking of things. Granted, our minds are always active (even in sleep) but my mind ceases to ‘calm itself’. It is constantly finding things to argue about, things to inspect, things to apreciate. When most minds are content with one line of thought, I indulge in several. I absorb as many points of view as I can, no matter how absurd they may seem.

My imagination is extremely overactive, I won’t bother to demonstrate. But I always seek to try out new ways of doing the same thing. Some are sublime, some are entirely ridiculous, but regardless of the outcome I will continue to seek new ways, to improve upon and create anew. It’s something of a bad habbit that simply won’t go away. You might even say it’s perfectionism in it’s extreme.

Anyway, to bring me back to the point of origin, just think about thought for a minute (that sounds weird, I know). Say the total amount of thoughts a person has in a day amounts to a 600 watt bulb turned on for an hour. That’s 10 watts a minute (a watt is equivalent to 1/750 horsepower). There are approximately 6 billion people on this planet. So, roughly speaking in one minute 6 million Kilo-watts of electricity are being generated every minute by sheer thought alone. That’s the same energy as 8,000 horsepower per minute! That’s a lot of power. Granted, I didn’t take into account the rising global population and the fact the human brain can comtinue to emit electrical signals months after death.

Just something to consider. I don’t actually know how much energy it would take to ‘think’, but even if it’s extremely small, when you multiply it by 6 billion+ it’s still enough energy to do some realistic and measurable things. Anyway, don’t waste too much energy thinking about this post, it could be better spent. Not that energy can be created or destroyed… bah! enough. Nevermind.

I am a recent sufferer of Halo Obsessive Compulse Insomnia Disorder (or HOCID for short).

Sticking people with sticky grenades and sniping has now become almost a reflex action. Causing much frustration for people I play. Some yell “fluke!” in a futile attempt to stem the flow of simulated madness but after repeated successive annoyances they transform their calls of mere dumb-luck into insults such as “I hate you!”.

I’ll admit the fact that initially I suck at computer games. It takes me a good while before I get used to the controls. When I play a game I behave in the most random inrrational fashion imaginable. I never follow a set pattern and move the character in the most unpredictable way possible. Granted when I’m playing the game people have a hard time hitting me because of this. But at the same time I still suck and have trouble hitting them too. But eventually I’ll die because I really do suck at hitting them (just try to aim properly when your moving in the most insane way you can).

But in time, I begin to “get the hang of” the game. Suddenly I can snipe you in the head while I’m tumbling and twisting off a ledge high up and miles away. I can stick you and dodge your stick at the same time. It is this factor which has me playing online and losing so much sleep. Someday I will record this crap, just so you know it’s not complete BS.

For those of you who are unware of the effects of severe insomnia (aside from the obvious exaustion/tiredness) then watch out (or dose off, whatever saves you). Stay wide awake for more than 24 hours and you’ll experience effects similar to intoxication. Being a so used to experiencing this cheap form of drunkenness by now it’s affects take longer to take hold on me. But I have only recently discovered a newer level of effect as sleep deprivation provails. Allow me to demonstate the level of affects and which order they proceed in. You may find this helpful… eh, I don’t know why…but say you need to spend a few days awake to do an assignment or whatnot, anyway here goes:

General tiredness, drowsiness everyone gets from time to time. Severity: 1/10, annoying for the most part, as one’s attention span dwindles. Moods may also begin to kick in at this stage, as if the person was rowdy on alcohol, not in all cases, only in very few, say if someone withdraws from a solid sleeping pattern to a straight 24 hour work ethic.

The trademark aches and pains begin to take hold. Some people may get headaches at this stage, but with time you ‘get used to it’ and they fade away until a later stage in your sleep deprivation fest. Severity: 3/10, Extremely little attention span, concentration is extremely difficult/hard work. The pain/aches thing kinda sucks too.

This is best known for it’s hallucination. While being in this state I have been known to mistake the taste of foods for instance. I honestly thought my crisps were “fizzy” (not like sparkling water, but more like those stinger/refresher bars/sweets). I thought my cornflakes tasted like poisin/weed killer at one stage so that can give you an idea. The hallucinations aren’t too noticeable to begin with but get progressively worse as time goes by. Severity: 5/10. Friends may think you are a complete whacko/freak (or maybe just moreso than usual). Can get you into serious trouble if you start imagining things and still resist sleeping, though as you’re physically tired it’ll just mean really embarassing things, but even still…

This is the point where your mind goes completely crazy. Caffeine begins to lose it’s perking effect here. I have experienced dellusions and ‘dreams’ and at it’s peak I had memory loss. I couldn’t remember a flight of steps I and a friend took to get to a shopping centre only minutes after being in the shopping centre! So by the looks of things short term memory gets messed up. This is the knew phase I’m talking about and it’s really really bad. I’m a stoner and even I got freaked out by the crap that was happening. Even walking around was an immense challenge, your mind simply doesn’t want to go on, eventually though, at this stage I have no choice but to fall asleep… what lies beyond 196 hours is unknown to poineers of the strange such as me… but you can be sure that it’ll be extremely dangerous (especially combined with all the other effects). Severity: 8/10. I give this an 8 and not a ten because on my scale a 10 would either kill you or be the point where you would without a shadow of a doubt fall asleep.

Don’t try it at home kids!

After reading a couple of reviews of the Doom movie I couldn’t help but comment on it.

The plot seems to be borrowed from resident evil movie, a strain of some deadly virus is let loose on mars. Okay, so resident evil wasn’t on mars, but its the same idea. Despite the script being rewritten more times than windows source code. And with its references to hell being thrown in and later removed as well as the marines jumping in and trying to save the day… the fact of the matter is, most people playing doom don’t really care about minuscule details such as how the choas hoarde got there in the first place. Rather, they follow the simple procedure of shoot the moving sprite, rinse and repeat.

So why is this movie even bothered to be made? I’m sure some of us can remember the painful memories of the Mario Bros. Movie. But let’s face it, FPS’s reel in big chunks of money, look at Halo for instance. So a movie tie-in that is based on a successful FPS is bound to rake in some easy cash, right? Wrong. Games such as FPS’s tend to have hardcore fanbases, that’s why you still see heaps of players playing on Doom servers to this day. These people generally are hard to please, so it seems, or maybe at the very least they won’t accept ex-wrestling stars/poor actors as the main character… who knows?

To end on a positive note, most fans will be pleased to hear that a chunk of the action is shot from a first person perspective, so at the very least they can pretend to be playing the game when they are comatosed by the boring plot. Other than that, I can see no other reason for watching this movie. At least the upcoming Halo movie is rumoured to tie-in with Halo3’s plot, giving gamers a half decent reason to go and watch it.

Okay, so today us freshers have to decide a representative to, major duh, represent us at the student union.

After being haggled by supporters of candidates I find myself with the uncontrollable urge to sit back and complain about it. For starters, I was never asked anything, except in the once of case to establish that I am a first year, which doesn’t really count towards a real question. Basically, I was told stuff, with the only request for my output being that I vote for their candidate. Looks like some people are missing the point here.

Let’s get the facts straight for a second here, the student represents you. They are supposed to fight your corner for you when you are in dire need of a voice, to air your opinions. Right, all sounding quite clear so far? None of the candidates fit that description as, none of them even bothered to ask your average joe-student (at least all the joe-students I bumped into that they talked to, myself included) what they could do for them. Instead, we hear a predefined speech about how they will do this and that for us even though they haven’t even listened to what joe had to say.

Making matters worse, you see ridiculous posters pampered all over the place, don’t get me wrong here, I’m not an old bag, I like posters. What I don’t like is posters with self-complements written on them. I mean, if you are as good as you say you are then why do you need to spell it out? If anyone is to decide that those things are really true then it’s the people themselves.

So, who did I vote for? If you haven’t guessed already, I didn’t vote at all. Save me the ‘your vote matters speech’. In my opinion all candidates were equally poor. A friend felt compelled to write 7 in all the boxes, the thought did actually spring to mind but I say why even waste the energy on a spoiled vote? Anyway, back to why I didn’t vote. There’s no simpler metaphor to desrcibe me reason other than it’s the equivalent to choosing which kind of bullets you would like to load into a revolver before pulling the trigger, they all lead to the same result, in my opinion.

Now, I don’t want to sound overly negative here. It’s not really fair of me to lash into the candidates that went to the bother of running for election when I was content with doing nothing only complaining about it. Some would argue, if you were so appalled by the candidates then why didn’t you run for election? Well the answer is simple. I’m a stoner. That’s right, I’m a stoner. I didn’t even know the election date let alone where to apply for running for election. To be honest, I never even felt bothered to check anything out until I saw all the candidates posters scattered about the place. But, being honest, had I been less of a stoner, I definetly would’ve run for election.

So what compells me to have made the jump and try to for election (despite it being waaay too late)? I suppose it’s other people’s motivations that I disargee with, that motivates me. If that makes any sense to you at all.

So any good schemey politician needs policies, even an imaginary-would-be-deluded-stoner of a politician. Well I would’ve actually listened to potential voters and not my own predefined self-righteous speech, that’s always a good start. As for canvassing, I wouldn’t even bother with it, why should I waste unnesessary paper with complements? If they were true, I wouldn’t need to make known to everyone. Et cetera, et cetra…

Anyway, seeing as I won’t be running this year at least, I’ll let things slide and have a nice ice bath under a waterfall until next year, like a good stoner.

Oh, yeah, and vote for me (next year)!
Alright, alright, I’m sure you’ve heard that enough times already, and I’m just kidding anyway. Vote for whoever you want, even if it is a maniac like me, you have a choice, that’s what real democracy is all about, true choice and all of that. Knowing my stoner stills there probably won’t even be an election next year, but my points still stand regardless.

Okay, I’m abusing italics enough as it is… I think I need to go lie down for a while…

If you are reading this then you have undoubtedly come across my blog! Welcome stranger.

Since this is my first post I might as well tell you a little about myself before I go blabbering on and complain about everything.

I’m a first year CSSE student (namely a college n00b), I’ve been programming for quite a while, since I was 14 in fact. (mainly QB and a bunch of old Dos gaming engine scripting langauges, if you care so much). I love computer games, whether it be PC, console or handheld. I enjoy writing/complaining about things (no bonus points for guessing that I’m afraid). Put all those things together and you have a formula for a Minds’ blog writer, whether it’s a good writer or not is entirely up to you!

Anyhow, that’s enough unnesessary personal details for one day. Until next time.