- Tuesday, November 25, 2003
I found a couple of really good games recently. One called Chopper (7.4MB) has you flying around rescuing civilians from invading terrorists. The other is Descent 2 for OS X! (7.4MB) This is the best version of Descent I have ever played, including Descent 3. The graphics are amazing, and I can still control the spaceship with my keyboard, not just with a mouse (which I don't really like using). I think I'll get the retail version of Descent 2 (this just has the demo files, but can use the retail version). It sure is nice having high-speed internet so I can download these things.
Speaking of games, I have been working on mine more lately, and it is coming along, although it is still not nearly ready for public consumption.
- Sunday, November 23, 2003
I had two exams last Thursday, one in math and one in physics, and I think I did well on both of them. On the physics test there was one problem that I really was having trouble with, and I didn't come up with a solution, but I made an educated guess that I think (based on the solutions which were posted later) might be right. On the math test, I forgot how to do polynomial division, so I spent half an hour trying to figure out why my answer wasn't right (I knew it wasn't), and I figured out what I was doing wrong 5 minutes before the end, so I was able to get that part of the question, but not the next part, which depended on it.
I will be heading back to Chicago early Thursday morning for the Thanksgiving break. Amtrak really jacked the prices up for this trip, but I got my Christmas break tickets at the regular price. Traveling on an Amtrak train is alot like flying in an airplane: the seats are pretty much the same, except without seatbelts, and the overhead luggage racks are about the same, too. The main difference is that it takes alot longer by train. The trip from Ann Arbor to Chicago is about 5 hours.
- Monday, November 17, 2003
The plumbing got messed up here over the weekend, so the shower wasn't draining and the toilet was leaking. Well, the fixit service only has M-F hours, so we were going to call them this morning. But around 3:00 AM, I heard a campus security officer woke us up and told us that they were going to be working on the plumbing (apparently this was not just us having a problem) and we could move to other rooms (on Central Campus, of course) for the night if we wanted. I don't know why the plumbers had to wait till 3 in the morning to come work on this, but we just stayed in our rooms and got back to sleep after all the banging finally stopped.
- Wednesday, November 12, 2003
I had an interesting morning: during my physics lab I picked up both ends of a high-voltage circuit (low current, though), and shocked myself thoroughly and repeatedly before I belatedly realized what was going. I think I scared the other people about as much as myself though with my cry of startlement. It's kind of funny: last year I took a physics lab about electricity and magnetism, used equipment that was potentially much more dangerous and painful, and didn't get hurt once. Here, in the mechanics lab, I have shocked myself several times, although before I always knew the power was on and quickly dropped the electrified puck, whereas this time I didn't realize I had accidentally stepped on the pedal to activate the voltage, so I had no idea why I was getting shocked. Hehehe. At least it didn't really hurt much, it was mostly just alarming. My fingers are still a little sore, though.
- Tuesday, November 4, 2003
Okay, here are the pictures of chaos: xn+1 = xne-r(1-xn), xn+1 = rcos(xn), xn+1 = rxn - xn3, Tent Map. I would explain these, but my explanation would probably be barely understandable at best, so I won't bother. You can ask me if you want, though.
- Monday, November 3, 2003
My math homework this time has been hard, but interesting. It's mostly about chaos, so I have had to make several plots (I'll add pictures here soon) of chaotic functions. My aerospace class has also been interesting. The first half of the semester was about air flight, now its about space flight. I learned some equations that I can use in my game to make orbits more realistic. Currently when the player wants to orbit a planet, the spaceship always orbits in the same direction, no matter what direction the player is currently headed. This equation should fix that.
On a note only somewhat related to school work (I discovered this while doing some homework), I found that Google has a built-in calculator. For example, if you want to find how many inches are in a kilometer, just type "1 kilometer in inches" and it will tell you that "1 kilometer = 39,370.0787 inches". It seems to have conversions for just about everything; and it can do math equations. They're just always up to something at Google.
