Week 10, Post 2.

Hello dear readers. Normally I would start with a Hello again, but since you probably read from top bottom, that wouldn't make sense. Anyways, on todays docket: mid-terms, programming, and random filler.


Anyways, first things first. Mid-terms. They are tomorrow, and hopefully my parents will read it and not beat the crap out of me (hopefully.) Have about a 88% overall I believe, unless my English mark is a lot lower than expected. Got a 92% in chem, 85% in calculus, which means I need to start doing my homework in that class. I have about 96 in programming, when it should be about a 97-98 but oh well. And no clue in English, hopefully mid-high 70s. Thankfully, since Mac looks at a few marks, this brings my average up, and within 90% overall range. All that requires is a 97-98 final in programming (hopefully Mr. C. reads this and helps me along the way), a 90ish + in chem which i can do, bringing up my calc to 90+ and my English to 80+ (half impossible) Not quite sure how I am going to pull that off, but it will involve many 5$ bills handed in with my essays.

On to other news, had a math contest on Tuesday. Not much to say other than pretty much everyone there got raped on it. It would really help, if you know, they gave us stuff that we know or had the abilities to do. Giving us random questions, ask us to use formulas we don't know and then give us a small time-frame is slightly annoying. Or maybe I am too stupid to do it, but who knows.

On to programming, got a look up assignment today. Basically, the gist of the program is that you input text into two different combo boxes. Then you select the destination that you wish, choose starting location and receive the distance. At first, I thought this would be impossible, seeing as I had a similar error to my listView file. When I selected it, there was no way to get the selected index, but there is a way to get the selected text. This text could then be used to search (using binary or my own method of search, which I'll hopefully implement in my Winamp program) for the position of selected item in the index of the table.

The program was easy, and went down quite fast. Was a slight pain to finish seeing as I hate commenting and I have A.D.D. Got home today to look at the mark and noticed my partner, Mark, got 0 mark on it. Not quite sure why that happened, so I will ask tomorrow.

Anyways, not quite sure what happened in programming last night, since Roy won't pick up, so I guess I will find out tomorrow. On to other news, hit the gym last night. And I have a serious case of weak, weak core. I could work it out every other day, and just get worse and worse each time. My situps just never quite seem to get better, kind of like my English mark. Got a good workout though. And this sort of relates to my next topic, ENGRISH.

Went to a play of Hamlet today. And I was honestly surprised. Although i dun speek engrish gud and all that jazz, and I couldn't really follow the verse in the play, I actually enjoyed it. The play, given it's lack of funding, was still produced quite well, and the actors really seemed to do their job well. Only down side was, since people from other schools are d*********, and seem to enjoy coming an hour late, had to go home early without eating, and getting a drink. This combined with the fact that the person who was forced to sit beside me on the bus took up the entire seat, as well as being annoying about not switching seats with her friend, even though we aren't allowed to switch made the ride fun. Not to mention I had contacts on, so I couldn't sleep on the bus and her not talking , and being too large to let me turn around and chat with my friends made for one miserable bus ride.

The lack of water during the day really hit me hard. Come home and drank about a litre and a half of water, and passed out. When I woke up, I was really dizzy, and pretty weak, which basically means I couldn't work out tonight. Sucks, but ah well, what can you do. Going to play soccer tomorrow, hopefully getting new cleats for cheap in the process, and maybe baseball if my car gets home in time. That's all that interested me today, except for one last video. Please don't lose your respect for me, but I seriously can't get this song out of my head, and if you don't focus on the lyrics, this song is actually quite good, and may be the only good song of Britney Spears (*shudder*)



Goodbye for today dear readers, and see you in another episode of Blake hates people from other schools, annoying people and semicolons.

Week 10, Post 1.

Hello dear readers, and welcome to probably my shorted blog of this entire semester. Not really all that much going on. Quite a bit of chemistry, a little bit of math and mid-term madness. Hopefully, I shall get a good mark in Chem, because God knows I need it. Anyways, on to the meat of this blog, McDonald's style (some meat, mostly rat.)

Today we began searching for input. This relates a bit to sorting in that rather than sorting, you look for a item in a given table. It does not quite make much sense to me, because when we started off, we used bubble sort, which was quite elementary and not quite useful. Then we used shell, exchange and what not and it worked quite a bit better. However, then an issue came up. It was ridiculously simple. Even just looking at it, I could tell that it was a retarded method to do it. So I came up with a theory of using a weird kind of sort. Then the next kind of search was introduced.

Ironically enough (wouldn't it be ironic if we were all made of iron?) it was similar to what I was thinking of doing, just a little bit less efficient. The method I was thinking of was first getting right into the middle of the table, and calculate the measure of difference. (From a list of a-z, looking for a b) I would first give all letters a score, (x-y) and search= (x+y)/2. Depending on search, you would look higher or lower depending on how far it is from your average, and geometrically sort (I think that's the word). The method we were taught was somewhat similar and somewhat different.

We were taught to get a table. IE
1 a
2 b
3 c
4 d
5 e
6 f
7 g
8 h
9 i

Given the table, go to the middle. e. Then if one was looking for b, you would raise your minimum to just above your mid point, and take the middle of that again, And repeat until you find it or determine that said item that does not exist. Different from mine, but what I was thinking of was for a more large scale application that the scope of this course. (My video may use it though, so watch out!)

In other news, gyming today hopefully. Just starting to get into it again, slowly feeling my left hand come back from its brutal state earlier (having fractured it, I lost pretty much all muscle
mass in left hand). Getting it back in shape is painful when one can curl 20 pounds like a joke with your right hand, and about 17.5 with left struggling. Ah well, it will all be better soon hopefully. Only problem is I feel like I have M arms (I think you can figure that out). Quite painful. Also going to have to start training for soccer again. At last weeks practice although I didn't really have to stop, I could really feel my body being out of shape. Plus having no muscle means I am constantly cold. So off I go to save the daaaaaaaaaay. Or not. Later my peoples.

Week 9, Post 2. Arranged numerically.

Hello again dear, readers, and welcome to another post of awesomnes topped with chocolate icing. Or another blog post needing some filler. Anyways, away from that topic, and on to the real meat of this post:







*Ahem*. Don't blame me, I had to. Anyways, the other real meat. Programming. So, in recent news, it's raining. Oh wait, that is SNOWFALL. Snowfall program. L!o!L!o!L!11oneoen (pulling a Mark here.) We recently did a snowfall sorting program. It was really easy at first, since all you had to do was this thing called a pointer sort. Or so I thought. The pointer sort was pretty simple, and here is the concept behind it. When you have large tables of information, switching them around would be quite hard, especially if your switching books on the table just to switch part of what is on the table. This is where pointers come in.

You point at what you want, without changing any information of what you are sorting. This saves processor power and memory, making your program run faster and allowing the end user to have a more enjoyable experience. Sorting arrays, for snowfall. Must be quite fun. Anyways.

The only problem is, this question asked us to display the results on another form. I didn't realize that his sample example didn't have it. So me being me, wanting my 110% (WHICH I DID NOT GET *AHEM*) I spent about 3ish hours perusing the world wild web in search of a non retarded developer. Not to say they are retarded, but they seem to use the most ridiculously indirect methods I have ever seen, or just cheat instead of answering the poor stupid man's question.

Long story short, thanks to a little ingeniousness of my own, I found a method. I created a public void on my second form, and on it's creation, the first form would call it, sending over the grid to the second. It was absolutely beautiful. Then I found out Roy had come on MSN, so I decided to tell him that he should do it, or he will lose marks. And I, being me, was doing to ransom my answer for the cost of McDonald's. Then he sent me Mr. C's program, effectively shutting down my bargaining positioning.

To top it off, I had to completely redo my program at about 11 in the night because I had not used structures, and my program was ridiculously bulky. (Sorts, Quick sort, Shell all in first, and Shell on second form.) Thus did my weekend (more specifically Sunday night) sucked. Ah well, hopefully I shall get that 110% (if not, I hope Mr. C reads this and has a change of heart. Good bye dear readers.

Week 9, Post 1. Recursively posting.

Hello, dear readers, and welcome to another episode of Blake hates broccoli....or strings...or semicolons, or mentally handicapped curly brackets, or all of them at the same time, all being totalled up to my hate for C#'s stupidness.
So, we recently began recursion. More specifically, I began recursion early due to trying to get prepared for the programming competition. And I did, and it worked. Well, I might add. I hoped to do this perfectly in the programming contest, and it did work. Sort of. We had to count shaps in a file similar to below:

...........X........
....XXXXXXXXXXX.....
....X.........X.....
....X..XX..X..X.....
....XXXXX..X..X.....
...........XXXX.....
.........XX.........
........XXX.........
.........X..........
...................X
.............XX.....
..............XXXXXX
....................

Once, you found a shape, you erased it, and kept counting. however, I did not know that if one does not dim an array in a void, but do it in a button, its value does not change if it is changed outside of the button. What does that mean? If i put a edit value statement on my array in a button, no void can change the value, regardless of how it is passed to the method. however, if one dims it in a void, and uses it in a button or another void, it will change and stay changed. Thankfuly, C# is stupid and it's help file sucks, and does not disclose this to the general public. This is basically the reason why we didn't get first place in the programming contest. Because I was done the question in 15 minutes, then spent 60ish minutes in vain making it work. Anyways...

We also had a recursive maze problem. It wasn't all that challenging to edit Mr. C's code, so I thought, hey I am Indian, I can code anything. Which is not true. by any sense of the word. Spent quite a while making a maze that did not work, and when it did, the return path would not work. If it did work, it worked everywhere. Didn't quite get it to work, so I just pulled a Mark and edited his code. Oh well, I am off to the races (gym) to not really run, nor walk. I'll just enjoy the scenery and work out vicariously.
G'day mate.

Week 8, Post 2. Strings are over, huzzah.

So another post, and the strings test has come and gone. And let me just say this, HURRAY. I passed this test. It was not quite as good as possible, since I made a few silly errors that made me lose 10%. Some of which I really shouldn't have lost at all. But on the whole, I still received 90% on the test, so there is something to be happy about when the class average on said test is 65%.

As mentioned earlier, the VIN number problem was no where near as hard as I expected it to be. It was actually manageable to be done in a rather easy manner, since we are not given anything similar to

1

M

8

G

D

M

9

A

N/A

K

P

0

4

2

7

8

8

We are actually given all its numerical values, which are:

1

4

8

7

4

4

9

1

0

2

7

0

4

2

7

8

8

You then multiple each of these values by the digital assignment, calculate your check digit, then substitute the check digit into the actual VIN calculating the new one. Rather easy actually. That also just about sums up the strings test. I studied quite a bit for it, since it seemed rather difficult last year, and I remember bombing it.

As well, also had the programming contest. Which sucked, alot. I spent about 75-90 minutes working on the recursion question. At one point in time, I also had it working, but then it just slipped away from me. Sadly enough. Came in 5th still. Ah well, see ya guys later. Going to go cut my wrists now. Ciao.

Week 8, Post 1. Strings test preparation!

Hello world, and welcome to another week in awesome review. Lots of preparation this week, due to the programming contest coming up. As well as the strings test. We have gone through quite a few programs recently. Some of which, are actually kind of ridiculous. A.K.A. VIN program.

On the test, there are going to be a few problems. Like the VIN number problem, which is ridiculous. Knowing that most people probably won't attempt to look at it, I seriously wonder how Mr. Chiarelli thinks he is going to pull it off. Why is this I say? Because if one was too look at wikipedia, It is a ridiculous question to give to a first time user. This is more like a inclass assignment on the computer, or an assignment, since it is certainly difficult enough.

Why is this? Let us say we have a VIN number of

1

M

8

G

D

M

9

A

N/A

K

P

0

4

2

7

8

8

Each number would retain it's numerical value, each letter is assigned a numerical value. However, to do this, first one must make a table of values, one of the location of the letter in its assigned value, and the value depending on location of each letter. Not to mention , you then multiply these numerical values of letters/numbers into the weighted numerical values depending on their location. Then one gets the check value. If the check value is correct, then it will equal the 9th digit. Really rather putting off, considering it took me about 2 hours to do this on the computer, and it is on a written test where you can't error check simple mistakes in code that make this program so ridiculously difficult. Ah well, at least I am done it for now, and am prepared for the test.

Week 7, Post 2. The continued lack of joy, from strings.

So, another few days, another post, another minute in time. And some more filler. But anyways, hello and welcome to another post in Blake's awesome blog which includes in this episode how much he hates running, hates strings, and loves The Onion. Anyways, first on to the main meat of this program.

I hate running. Trying to condition myself up to 60 minutes of continuous running is going to be impossible I think. Getting to 10 minutes right now is seeming like an impossible task. Talking to some of my friends, it may be doable in a few months, but I am starting to seriously doubt it. Been about 2 weeks now since I've started, and not really all too much improvement. Guess I gotta start taking protein. Ah well.

Onto programming news. We have been doing a lot of brand new programs recently. Some that are actually quite interesting. There are a ton of commands in the C# that make this whole process a whole lot easier than in VB. For example, If one had a string "asdfghjk" and one wanted to take everything past 3, in VB one would need to count all the letters in the string, and then take a section of it, after counting, or making your program count it.

Using substring, find the place of d, or use Indexof('d') and then take a substring including the index of it (randomletters.Substring(randomletters.IndexOf('d'))) would basically take everything including d and past it. There are tons of other cool little things like that , which make using strings in C# bearable, and actually somewhat easy. I am still not looking forward to this test, but at least it isn't looking too grim. Ah well, on to another week . Good bye readers, I leave you with an awesome video:

Week 7, Post 1. The joys of strings, or lack thereof.

Hello World. And welcome to my newest and latest, and probably one of my crappier blogs. Sadly, due to time constraints, I won't be able to blow Hippie Jesus' blogs out of the water. I blame this completely on a certain thing that could not have possible happened in week 7, but time travel is another story entirely.

This week we began strings. Which sucks. Alot. I remember doing strings last year, and the code for it was quite difficult. I also remember doing extremely poorly on the test, and hopefully will do a lot better this time around. Thanks to some work on programming contest questions from earlier, I have a slightly decent grasp on the whole concept of it again, I still dislike it.

Ah well, in other news, soccer is coming up and I have completely stopped training because I am a lazy bum. Not gonna be too much fun when the snow melts and I can't run more than 500 meters without taking a break. Good bye world, see you in next week's blog.

Week 6, Post 2. Hurray for OOPs. Oops. Just kidding. I'm not gonna use the same title twice.

Welcome to another episode of Blake hates many kinds of vegetables. And soccer, and working out. ALOT. To begin with, I attempted working out for the first time in a while. I fractured my wrist a while back, and it still hasn't healed. Not even close. Doing pushups is hurting me after 4, pretty much everything I do hurts my left wrist. I could be laughing at something on T.V. and my wrist would twinge. Not so much fun. On the bright side, soccer training isn't going so bad. Just kidding, it is. Can't run for more than 15 minutes straight yet, whereas before my hiatus from running I could do 20 without hurting. Not the best of beginnings, but it shouldn't be too hard to get back to my old level of stamina.

As well, I just started swimming again. A lot more fun than I remembered, and it isn't hurting my wrists, so I guess I am going to be doing it a lot more often. And with that, target body fat of 9% begins. Time to achieve it, end of summer. Let the pain Olympics begin.

On to programming news. Not much being done recently. Entire work period today dedicated to finding pictures. And my finding pictures, I mean playing doors on Kongregate. That game is nuts. Anyways. We have an assignment due tomorrow, but due to not having school on Friday, and blogs being marked tomorrow morning, I can't really comment on too much. Didn't really do anything worth posting. I have begun my hunt for interesting things to present to the class. And I cannot find a thing. At all. I went through like a list of 200 references that could be added, and I didn't really find anything to good. I probably will just steal someone's work and hope for the best.

Not much else to say. I honestly wanted to compete with Roy for my week 6 blog posts. Sadly, due to massive procrastination as well as the fact that I have a calculus test, not much work to be done on this. So for week 7 and week 8, expect amazing blogs that Will blow Hippie Jesus into the water. His water walking will end with these next 2 weeks. Believe it.

As well, A really cool video I saw on the internet that is worth watching.

Week 6, Post 1. Hurrah, for OOPs! Oops, I meant OOP.

So week 6 rolls around. And I still have no clue what to do with flash. Hours of videos , more like 20 minutes of being lost staring at videos made me realize I have no chance of doing well. So I will learn how to hack with C#, then hack into Mr. C's database and boost my mark. <_<

Anyways, on to the real meat. We began OOP (object oriented programming) today. And let me tell you, my first day was a disaster. Absolutely terrible, worse than most of Hippie Jesus' jokes. Just kidding, it doesn't even touch his jokes. Anyways,I couldn't figure out how to make my stupid program work. I created a class, and attached it to my form, and then tried to move forward with it. To begin with it, let me describe classes. They have 4 sections: Fields (placeholder properties of the class), Constructors (i have no idea why its always empty.), properties (change values of fields) and methods. This is fine and dandy, except my properties would not work. AT ALL. And I have no idea why. Normally this would not be a problem, I would ask Mr. C for help, except no one else has screwed up. No one, not even Mark, or the guy that has shown up about 5 days out of the last 30.

Being somewhat embarrassed, I pretended to follow along and squirm in agony. Thankfully due to some elbow grease and stealing code, I managed to get my program to work. And work it did. Except it was crappy. This was probably due to me spending most of my time working on my English assignment, then spending the next day studying for chemistry. Thankfully, both went through somewhat well, and I haven't snapped yet. Though the strange workload and my ADD is slowly catching up to me. Ah well, not much else to post. I procrastinated the entire March Break (YAY MARCH BREAK) and didn't get any work done but it was fun. Soon, I begin working out again, and I need to start training for soccer. Gotta love it. See ya later guys.

Week 5, Post 2. Hurrah, March Break! Rejoice O ye sinners, your salvation has come at last.

Welcome to the second edition of Blake hates random numbers, semi-colons, curly brackets, retardedly long commands for input boxes, random numbers and broccoli. Just kidding, I like broccoli. IN THE GARBAGE. Anyways, in this new and exciting post, there will be thrills, spill and everything else one would expect in one of my super awesome posts.

To begin with, I just wrote my random selection test. A few hours ago. And my teacher who normally updates marks 10 minutes after receiving all the tests still has not updated them. This makes me nervous. Although I did well enough to believe that I got 110% on the test (yes ladies, I am that awesome. And yes, I am a soon to be single engineer. Soon to be an engineer, I should say.) It was somewhat of a struggle.

I spent quite a bit of time studying, about 1.5 hours on written, maybe 20 minutes in code. I honestly didn't think my teacher would put any really hard questions, which he didn't. The bonus was similar to last years if I remember correctly (never found that damn test) and I got it. Hopefully. Knowing how stupid the random generator is, and the fact that I don't like if statements, I may not get my 110%. Ah well, I still did rather well, and I think most of the class did too.

Every day I thank God for these marks. Because I just downloaded Adobe Flash. The program to create flash programs or something along those lines. And then I realized, I AM LOST. COMPLETELY LOST. LIKE NO CLUE WHERE I AM IN THE MIDDLE OF JAPAN AFTER GOING TO SLEEP IN MARS LOST. I seriously have absolutely no idea where to start. So being the good little cherub that I am, I went to Mr. C's website and checked out his favorite's for flash. Which makes me realize, there are about 600 versions of flash. And actionscript. Then, to top it off, I have absolutely NO IDEA which version we are using. And talking to Hippie Jesus confuses me further. Mainly due to the fact that he can make programs on it so easily. May have to get tutoring, because I can't afford for my mark to drop off due to flash. Tutoring from Hippie Jesus. Just the though hurts me.

As well, all hopes for starting early on my Flash game have completely gone to crap. And as such, preparations for my amazingly amazing with a bit of amazing on the side game will be, you guessed it, amazing. Getting all my animations, code blocks and everything ready to nail that 70...err 110%! Off to the races I go, walking on broccoli the entire way.

Week 5, Post 1. Hurrah for snow.

It's that time again kids. No, I don't mean Easter. It's time for my blog! And boy is it gonna be great. Just kidding, more filler, crap and a little bit of stealing to add to my blog! Not much happened this week, started up random numbers, working on selection. This means that the code is somewhat difficult to follow. For example. we would have to say, get a bag of balls, then calculate the chance of picking up a colored ball x number of times, compared to the others. What makes it more complicated is that when i was attempting this, I tried to do random selection without duplication.

What this means is that I will take a ball out of the bag, then not replace it. Then calculate the chances of getting another ball of similar colour, or whatever the question requires of me. And that reminded me of why I absolutely hate random numbers. Other than the fact that random numbers are random. The way C# does the generating of code is stupid. If i was to find a random number:

RandomNumber = r.Next(1,4) ;

This would give me the numbers 1-3. What the hell? No matter how you look at it, 1,4 it would be 1-4, or 1 up to 4. But if you read the intellisense (sp) then you would see upper bracket (goes to 4) and 1 is lower bracker (lowest of 1). If you ever have attempted this, it is not the case and is severely aggravating me.

Anyways, back to the point. The selection without duplication is somewhat difficult. And if I can find my test from last year, I think there was on it. So off to work I go. One think that i am grateful for is that by using random number generators, I never have to use the monster of a input box, for which my wrist is eternally grateful. Good bye faithful readers, and refreshing my page every day for 3 weeks hoping for an update. Your prayers have been answered.

Week 4. Post 2 (Another one bites the dust.)

Hello fans, no you cannot have my address. Welcome to another post in my superbly awesome blog. Wait? you ask, Does this mean you are in a good mood? No, not really, but I like filler. Anyways, on to the new post. Not much occurred so far this week. I just learned some probability simulations, and am now worried for the new test that is coming up. The last time I had taken the probabilistic simulations test (GR 11) I remember getting the lowest mark in my course, and since I can't quite afford to drop down this close to midterms, going to have to crack the whip and really buckle down and get some work done on it to get it down pat.

So far, we have only learned the method to get a new random number from x to y. R.Next(x,y) is what the code is, and really simplifies the old method of Visual Basic. Couldn't stand using that method, and again C# triumphs over VB. Anyways, other than probability, I finished another question in programming. There was a program that given a random table, format of:
1 2 3 4 5
2 3 4 5 6
3 4 5 6 7
4 5 6 7 8
5 6 7 8 9

One would be given a spot inside the domain of the table, and then "walk" given the parameters to walk (in this case governed by the remainder) where if one would exit the "border" / leave the array, or reach a 0 value, the walk would end and the total of all number blocks one has traveled on would be accumulated. It was actually quite a bit harder than I remembered. This is mainly due to the fact that I like to skip code when I first start writing code, and this really screws with my ability to code well. I am going to have to fix this, because it may have adverse effects later on, but that's for another blog. I have been looking at the recursion problem which seems easy, going to attempt it probably sometime this weekend. Also, preliminaries on what video game concept to create in C# begin now. If you have any idea, post in comments. Goodbye readers, and come back to another episode of Blake Hates Semicolons, Squiggly Lines and Much MORE!


P.S. I have been listening to this song absolutely constantly recently. The lyrics are absolutely awful, but at the same time I cannot stop listening to it. Awesome song overall and without further ado the video. Also, do not mind the video of what it is played to (Avatar: The Last Airbender, an awesome show):

Week 4, Post 1 (and another one bites the dust!)

Hello again, and welcome to Blake hates semicolons. Why is it that I created another I hate semicolons? Because I do. Alot. An incredible amount. More than even broccoli. Why you ask? Because I just wrote my programming test. (well a few days ago, but close enough.) During this test, I had to go over my test at the least 15 times. Not because I made errors, but because I forgot semi colons. To remedy this, I added semi colons to every line. It is at this point that I remembered that you don't put semi colons after squiggly lines ( { } ). Which means I had to go back over my test and take away semi-colons. This happened about 4 times more before I finally finished off. I felt pretty confident as I handed it in.

That only lasted until I recieved it back. I managed to create 2 stupid errors, mainly due to errors. Other than that, the test was pretty good, and I received a 90% on it. Not quite what I wanted, but considering the alternatives, not too bad overall. Was not quite pleased with the last error I made. I had to input data into a 2D array, and I didn't quite know how to. The test said that all arrays had entered in the 3D array section, and not including the 2D array is somewhat strange, but it was only one mark off so it didn't hit me too hard as I still got the guts of the code.

Not much else happened this week of note. I had an assignment to do, which mainly used GCD (greatest common denominators) It wasn't the most interesting thing, but did get you thinking. When you look at the format for getting the GCD, one has to wonder, how in the hell does these Greeks manage to not only not work, but spend lifetimes sitting around playing with numbers. Anyways, to receive the GCD of 2 numbers, one has to do a strange calculation which goes something like this. B/A >remainder > B/remainder > remainder 2 > ... and so forth until the remainder is 0, making your previous dividend your GCD. Quite interesting, not quite sure how it works, but it does. The code for it was simple, the math wasn't too bad. Overall, feel pretty confident about the assignment. And with that, I am going to go crack a few shots at the 3rd programming question ( ascii + binary, God save me). Goodbye dear readers, I shall miss you in the hell that I am going to.

Week 3, Post 2 (partial cheating for much win)

A new day, a new blog entry. And boy howdy, after looking at 3D arrays for the last hour, a much needed break too. Luckily enough I have my programming test from grade 11, which is somewhat similar to what our test is supposed to resemble.

Looking at the 2d array questions, I didn't see too much that could go wrong, and as such didn't quite put much effort into it. Then I talked to Hippie Jesus, who wrote a program and printed it out specifically to aid him in his pre-writing. Absolutely mind blowing how nuts he is, considering the program we are given is almost identical to what our test should be. Anyhoo, after looking at the 2D questions, I peeked at the 3D. It actually looked decent, and I didn't quite have the mental block with it that I did last year.

However, I soon came to a small stumbling block. The bonus question. Needed a decently high mark in this class (*hint*) I'm trying to squeeze out every mark possible. Which basically means I have to come up with a few possibilities of questions that could possibly show up. After looking at the Gr. 11 test, I though up questions along a similar vein, which wasn't too bad. But then, I started getting nightmares. Recursion, problem solving using different slices, weighted marks, and the works. And since it is a bonus question, I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out one after the other, and gave up the moment I got to weighted, or cross products because I doubt anyone would have a chance at them.

As well, I've sort of completed the first programming challenge question. It was to get the word square, or any other word and print it out in a format similar to:

square
q___r (minus the underlines)
u___a
a___u
r___q
erauqs

Had to cheat to complete it (didn't use tabs, but I don't know how. Problem is, I'm not supposed to know how to use strings either, so I guess that excuse doesn't count.) I am probably not doing problem 2, as it looks quite easy. Problem 3, is basically binary, which I do not get at all. May get Eric(Forehead man) to help me out, because I still don't get it. Question 4 seems rather doable, and I really want to attempt it again, but the problem is that I am lacking the data file, and creating 800 dots in a shape is impossible for someone as un-inclined at art as I am.

Ah well, such is life, and if Mr. Chiarelli doesn't seem to have the data file, I guess its back to the drawing board. As well, looking at the Guelph questions, I again need a text file, but I will see how that goes when I get to it. In other news, didn't really learn much this week in programming, which is sort of a bummer and sort of a blessing because due to the lack of homework, I've been doing a lot more of everything else, but since I haven't been doing programming homework, I've been slacking in other areas as well. Anyhoo, going to study for chemistry. Good night blog. Good bye valued readers (and Hippie Jesus.)

Week 3, Post 1

Mood: Apathetic.
Dear Blog,

Hello, and welcome to another episode of SCH(Semi-colon haters.) With that done, may I say that now that I am actually getting used to C#, the semicolons aren't as horrible as they used to be. But a new plague has been brought down. Voids. More specifically, voids being passed variables. It's not quite Microsoft's fault, but in a way it is. They give you errors when you do not have an integer being used, a integer used that is not dimmed, but if a integer is dimmed in a different void, and not specifically called into a secondary void, it will not work. What, the, crap. Truly annoying, instead of just telling the user to add it into the call, it will just tick you off.

With that being said, not much new happening in the class so far this week. Learned a little about 2d arrays and its use from having to complete a 2D array assignment. During the process of creating this program, I honestly think I am the only grade 12 not to steal the code straight from the reference folders and build it up entirely on my own. Kind of strange in a way, but at least I may possibly have a better grasp of it now than I did before.

As well, thanks to some side learning I've skipped a few days, and tried looking at some material during the weekend. Looking at strings, substrings, and other uses of it, it appears quite a bit easier than VB. Thanks to its use, hopefully once this wave of ridiculously large amount of homework passes, I am going to attempt the programming challenges questions. Definitely not looking to the questions from Guelph. Although I did find some useful stuff, looking at some of the questions, Still seems kind of retardedly hard. Ah well, guess it just gets harder from here on out.
Good bye, blog. Sometimes, I think you are the only one who gets me.

Week 2, Post 2(I Love C#)

Hello loyal fans, and welcome to another installment of fabricating blogs, or my 4th programming blog post. In this installment I will cover numerous things such as what I learned, what else I learned and finally, an awesome video made of pure awesome with sprinkling of powdered essence of awesome( seriously, watch it.)

To begin with, pace of my programming class is really picking up. What would have taken about a month in VB is occurring in the span of about 3 days. Although the pace is quite fast, I like it, and I actually feel like I am learning something. I learned quite a lot of new code recently. Namely how to get code from a text file. Also, just by looking at the code of how to rip text from text files into an array, or regular variables, I am in love. The easiness of using C# boggles my mind, and I actually looked at one of my older VB programs, and shuddered at the length of it compared to a regular C# program. One thing Microsoft did right, even if they did screw up with semi colons.

As well, we just learned arrays. And let me say, THANK GOD. Having the ability to use variables is going to make my life quite a bit easier. I say this because I have been attempting to make a side project (a calculator of sorts) just to help brush on my C#, as well get practice I need badly.

Lastly, I just learned how to create a error checking piece of code in C#. And let me say, the pizza program that I was working on and wouldn't work, still doesn't work. But now, it'll never bother me with annoying errors again. Oh the joy of silencing stupid error messages. As well, project 2. Look through all my old VB programming challenge papers, and attempt to recreate them in VB. Giving myself 2 weeks before I give up. As well, just like I promised, the essence of Indian Culture in video form (thieving drunks who have no talent, but are funny at stealing.)



Farewell readers, and come back for another issue of Blake is bitter about semi colons.

Week 2, Post 1 (I love my programming teacher)

Hello my fans. Welcome to another installment of my blog. To begin with this blog, may I say that my programming teacher is awesome and should always follow this pattern of test hints. I say this mainly due to the fact that I wrote a test in a record breaking 15 minutes on the computer, and 20 minutes on the written aspect of it.

How you ask? Why I will tell you. With about 3 hours of hard work on errors that magically fix themselves. Roy(Hippie Jesus) and I spent about 2 hours on MSN working on our pizza question. The question itself wasn't the problem. The code itself made perfect sense, it flowed properly, and no flaw in the logic of the program. The flaw was in that for some reason, a public double, a regular double and anything else would randomly not work, and work the next attempt. Literally, I could press play, it would screw up, and the second time around the program would work. The error would be in that a variable would not exist in "that" context. Except that it was dimmed in the location of the error, with a value assigned to it. Thank God for C#'s incredible error support, which did nothing.

Eventually Roy and I decided to just throw away our work and start again, doing the exact same thing to isolate the difficulty. Which did not show up again. At all. Even though it was a carbon copy of the program that would not work. And Christmas was saved. Not really, but my pizza question was. It was also the work of 5 minutes to create a program similar to patient info, and set it up for the test. Again, may I say that I hate semi colons, and squiggly lines, as well as C#'s error system. (Noticing a trend?) Farewell good sirs, and I hope you join me for the next installment of Blake hates [Insert essential code here]......err i mean Blake's programming blog.

Week1, Post 2 (I hate semicolons cont.)

So, as you may have read already, I hate semi-colons. Let me reiterate, i HATE semi colons. My goal by the end of this semester, is to write a program that runs through my code and adds semicolons after every line. Anyways, on to the new stuff. Learning quite a bit of new code, and its actually quite a bit easier to learn than VB was the first time around (Maybe because I have some programming experience.)

One thing I noticed, dimming variables is handled quite a bit differently. Rather than dim x as y, you just dim the variable straight off, and can set it in the dim statement itself, which I like quite a bit more than what VB used, even if it was hard to get used to at first. As well, many of the tools that were previously quite annoying to use, (anything other than a picture / label/ button) have become extremely easy to configure. To create a menu, or list box, you can add items or different options right in the properties, saving quite a bit of time on coding, which will probably come quite useful during tests.

Another thing that is awesome about VB, other than extremely weird input boxes (C# GTA style), to convert a variable from string to integer, is really easy, and helps an incredible amount in printing out solutions. As well, being able to dim variables in the buttons themselves, public variables across forms without the hassles of modules is really quite awesome, and having programs return code form other forms requires about 4 lines of code, which is why C# is awesome, if one ignores the semicolon. One last time, I also now hate squiggly lines with a passion. I spent the better part of 20 minutes trying to make a get statement work, mainly because I didn't realize it needed squiggly lines. And that about sums up my gripes with C# for week 1. Farewell my loyal fans.

Week 1, post 1 (Semicolons suck)

A new beginning. A painful, painful new beginning. Oh so very painful. The first day of programming. Other than the pain of waking up, my brand new nemesis: C#. It's like Microsoft's version of a bad joke (other than Vista, ME, and most of their video games.) A interface designed for easy use, easy access to users of all level. Except for one, massively humongous huge error. Semi colons. What....where.....they....thinking. "Hey, let's create a program so that it will be easy to use, but not only NOT include semi colons, but force it to be used for every thing written." A multi million dollar operation, but they can't auto include a semi colon when the user forgets it.

On the bright side, other than the fact the coding is extremely strange, it looks rather simple to use, and pressing tab and letting the program write the code for you is pretty awesome. Another issue, why force the user to use so many different type of brackets. Clearly simple is bad. And that is all for this issue of I hate semi colons. Good day to you my fans, and may the semi colon be with you.