What's everyone up to?

threefingeredguy · Post by **threefingeredguy** » Fri 27 Jul, 2007 1:32 am

Been playing Silkroad Online a lot.
My chinese character (several months old):

My European character (a couple days old, they just started Europe a couple days ago):

CoBB · Post by **CoBB** » Fri 27 Jul, 2007 5:16 am

coelurus wrote:Cobb: What are you doing with the robots? Playing with AI?

I ported Hume to them, since my ‘research’ is related to functional programming. I haven’t made any interesting applications yet (only test runs), but we’re only aiming at some simple tasks anyway. In fact, there might be some AI techniques involved, since these would be autonomous robots.

Post by **kv83** » Fri 27 Jul, 2007 6:12 am

Gah, CoBB, you have the new Lego Mindstorm set? Man, I want that too

I'm busy with lots of things. Well first off I work of course (36 hours a week), my gf wants some attention aswell now and then. On the other hand i'm working on CuteGod (see other post on the forum. to lazy to link it) or playing World of Warcraft (yay. only 4 levels to go to 70). I am also starting to work out again, to get my fat belly flat again

Doing Squash and Fitness.

Oh yeah, now that I got my bachelor degree (got it two weeks ago) I might have some extra free time around my hands. Yay

Delnar_Ersike · Post by **Delnar_Ersike** » Fri 27 Jul, 2007 10:18 am

Same here, I want the NXT bad. I already have the RIS 1.5, though the software doesn't work on XP (I need some help with that, if anyone can tell me how it can work and/or give a link to a free download of the newer software).

CoBB, have you tried creating a helicopter robot? Well, not exactly a robot, but a helicopter nonetheless. The CPU of the NXT (I don't know what it's called) could reside in a separate remote control and could connect to the motors via very long cables. For the main rotor, you could create a separate gear house that would tightly fit into a slot in the top of the helicopter.
I have already finished mine with RIS 1.5 at home (in Cupertino), though I can't test it because of the software issues. I am also afraid the gears in the gear box I made might melt because the gear ratio between the 9v motor and the rotor is 16:625 (a 2:5 gear ratio 4 times, so 2^4:5^4).

coelurus · Post by **coelurus** » Fri 27 Jul, 2007 10:48 am

Delnar_Ersike: Get NQC (optionally with Bricx) or BrickOS. NQC is very fast compared to the standard coding ways, dunno about BrickOS. (There are java alternatives, but I don't condone that stuff

).

I hope my university has upgraded from RCXs to NXTs for the autonomous agents course in spring

King Harold · Post by **King Harold** » Fri 27 Jul, 2007 12:41 pm

I only have a RCX

CoBB · Post by **CoBB** » Fri 27 Jul, 2007 1:58 pm

Delnar_Ersike wrote:CoBB, have you tried creating a helicopter robot? Well, not exactly a robot, but a helicopter nonetheless.

I don't think the motors are fast or strong enough to get anything meaningful out of it, but who knows. I'm rather concentrating on creating a useful software platform anyway, and actual robots can come later.

Delnar_Ersike wrote:The CPU of the NXT (I don't know what it's called)

It's an ARM.

coelurus wrote:(There are java alternatives, but I don't condone that stuff ).

I can only be grateful for the leJOS folk, since I'm building on their platform code, and it's lightyears ahead of the mess that comes with the brick.

If you want an easy way to use C on the brick, it's absolutely the best choice.

coelurus · Post by **coelurus** » Fri 27 Jul, 2007 4:32 pm

An old friend of mine made a helicopter out of Lego, so it works apparent. I never tried it myself, I'm more into the "elegant" stuff rather than the "overkill".

CoBB, what more than LeJOS have you tried?

CoBB · Post by **CoBB** » Fri 27 Jul, 2007 6:48 pm

coelurus wrote:CoBB, what more than LeJOS have you tried?

Well, first I tried using the peripheral drivers from the original firmware, which was also ported to gcc. But it is a weird mess, everything in macros and only capable of working in a clumsy cooperative multitasking setup. In contrast, leJOS handles everything with interrupts, so you don’t need to worry about anything. Additionally, it is in active development, so if there’s something missing, I can expect it to be added in the future. And it’s easy to figure out—the structure is simple, the JVM is easy to remove and it’s clear how the Java layer uses the available C API.

As for the rest of the alternatives, RobotC is proprietary, pbLua has apparently no public source (though I think it builds on the factory firmware anyway), and NBC seems to be written in... Pascal.

DigiTan · Post by **DigiTan** » Fri 27 Jul, 2007 11:02 pm

benryves, I know exactly what you're talking about. We've been pretty slow at UTI as well. It seems this is that time of the break were everyone's trying to squeeze as much "summer" as they can before that miserable return to school.

Like kv83, I have summer classes to blame for most of my inactivity. After the real estate mess, I moved off campus. I'm thinking of starting some kind of campus information brokerage. Sort of a Craigslist for "insider" school info: getting software licenses, access to special labs, even how to dispute traffic fines. Only problem is it would take a small team of students to help run it, and I don't know who would be motivated. But its an idea.

I'm still into Texas Parkour. My knee healed enough for long outdoor runs again and basic vaults. I'll start doing flips next week. It's been an usually cool and rainy summer. Minus the mosquitoes it's good for doing anything outdoors. My friend also wants recreate Rocket Board.

I've been spending more time at the movies. Between Spiderman 3, Silver Surfer, Ocean's 13, Rush Hour 3, Transformers, Die Hard, and the Simpsons Movie today, it's impossible to be bored for very long. Plus, with Dark Knight, Ironman, and The Brazilian Job lined up for 2008 I'm just as stoked to see the previews. What more could you ask for?

Programming is slow but still going. Sonic has its physics engine, several TI-82 reviews are coming, and there are few more surprises coming soon. I'm getting into VB 2005 and Unix for my own reasons, and might be getting my first-ever Linux distro in a few weeks. Finally, I'm building components for a home alarm system at my apartment (CCTV, Motion Detection, Phone Alerts), though it's going about as slow as my calc projects. That's where I've been.

Super Speler · Post by **Super Speler** » Sat 28 Jul, 2007 3:29 am

I'm searching for my missing calculator which has all (or most) of my unfinished projects on it. Other then that, I'm struggling to form a prog band, reading, watching a lot of movies, and reading sluggy freelance obsessively as well as completing several minor side projects.

Halifax · Post by **Halifax** » Thu 02 Aug, 2007 11:40 am

CoBB: Wow what you are doing seems awesome!

I am mainly just working on a crapload of C programming this summer. Learning parse trees, Abstract Syntax Trees, all the different methods of parsings/grammars. Mainly a whole lot of crap to do with lexing and parsing and optimization.

I have also tried getting a hand on 3D programming with OpenGL with C and DirectX with C, but that hasn't exactly gone very well because I don't know what is wrong with me. I really want to do some 3D programming, but just can't. Thirdly I have been trying to learn C++ and all the classes crap so I can start using wxWidgets mainly because Win32 programming sucks and it is hard to get a grasp of.

So basically my whole summer has revolved around programming and I like it!

Post by **benryves** » Thu 02 Aug, 2007 1:12 pm

Halifax wrote:I have also tried getting a hand on 3D programming with OpenGL with C and DirectX with C, but that hasn't exactly gone very well because I don't know what is wrong with me. I really want to do some 3D programming, but just can't.

DirectX is generally an object-orientated API (COM), which makes its use with C sound a bit odd to me.

I'd strongly recommend XNA GSE if you want to learn a 3D API quickly.

driesguldolf · Post by **driesguldolf** » Thu 02 Aug, 2007 3:48 pm

Yeah I've noticed the activity drop too,

My vacation hasn't been exactly as I wanted it... But I can't really complain:

First 2 weeks I went to South France with my parents (and bro and sis) wich was real fun! We met some people last year in Italy and we they've asked us to share those 2 weeks in France (they have 2 beautiful daughters ).
The next days I've tried to motivate myself to get working on Puzzle Action again (wich didn't really worked) instead I went to the movies and saw Shrek 3 and Ocean's 13... During that week (3rd of the vacation) my cousin came for a couple of days YAY (I barely see him (+-2 times/year )) He has a laptop and trough our wireless internet connection we played (almost all the time ) games like Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, Counter-Strike: Source and Zombie Master (a hl2 mod) and thus I couldn't work on Puzzle Action.
The rest of the time he showed my a very good place to 'illegal' downloading videos (not sure if I'm allowed to share the site )
In the last week of July I tried again to motivate myself (tough without success ) to work on my game but instead I've read the latest Harry Potter in 2 days hehe, that night I was reading 'till 5:00AM when I finally decided that it 'might' be time to catch some sleep and since then I have a problem with getting in and out bed on time (like staying up 'till 2:00AM and have 'breakfast' around lunch.
Oh yeah I've also bougth PokÃƒÂ©mon Diamond and Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin for the NDS (what do you think I do when I'm supposed to sleep )
Now August has started and I'm taking theory car driving lessons (I've an exam next monday) and I've finally started working on Puzzle Action again .

For the future: trying to get my car driving license as fast as possible (I feel like I've waited too long to get 'into' driving) and I can't wait 'till Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (NDS) and Half-Life 2: Episode 2 (PC) come out. Also I really want to get my hands on Avatar book 3 (TV series).
Now I think of it I still need to see Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End! (altough I've heard that it wasn't that good...)

By the way: Is it becuase no one saw it or because the not so much activity but I've posted some progress at my Puzzle Action topic but no one seems to have seen it/ reacted on it? Or because I've got the "how to make a topic 'bout a game you're making and how to post progress" all wrong?

Anyway this is the best thread I've seen so far

(what's the difference between thread and topic anyway?)

Halifax · Post by **Halifax** » Fri 03 Aug, 2007 2:44 am

@benryves: Really? All the tutorials I look at give the examples through C and I thought DirectX was made to work good with the Win32 API.