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Tuesday, January 4, 2011

New Horizons

So I am at my best friends house at 2:55 in the morning and I suddenly decided to blog. I am laying shirtless on a love seat in the living room. While another (taller) friend is sleeping on the actual couch. oOh and I have a confession to make. I have not touched ruby in weeks... But don't worry because there is a new goal now.

I have decided to Give ruby a break (as if I was learning it at all) and go for a Cert. In Web Design!. In the program I will be learning HTML, MySQL, Flash, and Visual Basic! So maybe I'll actually try this time since my money's all tied up in it haha.

Unfortunately I am tired and must adjourn until another time. I will write more and more often.

...Philosophy...

dream not of your dreams. Dream only of your future. -Me (Spencer MacNeilleU

Friday, October 15, 2010

The Sun

Ruby


so i havent done much lately...

Sad I know.

But I planned out a rough direction to take that interactive dragon program! And I will post that soonish!

Music



Lately my bestfriend, cousin and I have all been jamming together. We wrote a pretty sweet song about a teen/college girl's loss of control in a world of sin haha awesome stuff. Me and my cousin (chick by the way) Wrote the lyrics and me and my best friend (to the point of gay jokes)wrote the music even though he helped considerably with the solo. But thats just the way we are. We like to collab.

So maybe theres a future with that. I've been in three bands Ransacked, Destruction, and North of Nowhere. In all three I played guitar and sang (somewhat.. mostly backing or trade offs). In Ransacked it was Me, my cousin (same girl; vocals), best friend (same guy; guitar) and a childhood friend (also chick; bass). yep no drums; couldnt find any. In Destruction it was me, a friend from school (lead guitar), his friend(amazing metal drummer), and my best friend (bass). Oh and it was me and the Bestie on vocals. This band literally met twice maybe three times. but it was awesome. Lastly in North of Nowhere it was me, a different friend from a different school (vocals and sometimes rythm guitar), and the bestie on drums. Later on, my cousin (yes same one) came in on bass. <--- longest lasting band btw. And in all those bands we never performed at one show. Lots of starts but no follow throughs. I made every MySpace page, every Geocities page and every effort into bringing all the members to practice. Maybe I should manage a band. In Ransacked I was acting band manager and handled all band meetings. Things have changed since then. I've lost a lot of my former confidence. Im a shell of my former self. I need to relocate my beautiful clarity. Which is the foundation of my driving force. You cant move forward if you cannot see. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Philosophy

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Sometimes rain falls in sheets and sometimes it only drizzles. but it hardly stops until you are thoroughly soaked and the sun comes out to dry you off and lift your mood once more. Wheres my sun?

Thursday, October 7, 2010

The Toolkit and Blues

Whoops! I missed a day! Luckily the events of the day were literally eventless. :) let us continue.

Ruby!


After much more playing around with and reading up on ruby (mostly out of Why's book online). I had remembered that I had previously wanted to start using ruby visually. So I searched online for a GUI Toolkit to use so that I may start creating dinky little programs that you can see OUTSIDE the command prompt.

I read some forums and some small time articles and found this! A wonderful toolkit called "Shoes" that was recommended by some site. and the funniest thing is that it was created by the same guy that wrote my programming guide! Woah! So I've been goofing around with it lately. I don't quite have the hang of it yet but I'll get there.


Music!


So after playing with Ruby for a couple of hours it started to rain and storm. So I had to turn off my pc. Breaking through the boredom I decided to learn "Blues Traveler"'s "Hook" on guitar (and mybe harmonica later). It took me 30 mins on my phone to finally end up looking up a video on youtube cause there were no good tabs on any of the sites. losers. But the video that worked is here.

I learned it pretty quick and wondered about the Harmonica part and came across this. Which turns out to be the same guy I recently learned alot of harmonica from. So good day of surprises. Maybe this will finally convince me to learn harmonica for sure instead of jst playin around with the idea a bunch and not doing anything.


Future projects.

1. Interactive Dragon program- raise a baby dragon from birth using very simple commands.
2. Create a personal messenger- using "Shoes" it is possible to make a Yahoo Messenger style messenger.
3. Start writing music again with lyrics. work on scales and chords (mostly 2nd and 3rd position).
4. become comfortable with myself again when it comes to my creative side...

Thankies!! see you next time!

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Refreshing on Ruby and some guitar

With Ruby Today


So after the two month lag I finally decided I would try out "Ruby" again. Unfortunately I had forgotten nearly everything I had previously known about the program. What I've always noticed though is that the second time you reacquaint yourself with something it is always clearer and esier thanthe first time; and thats how it has been for me today.

Before work is when it really started. Hell, the night before is the real genesis, but anyways. I went searching online to download "Ruby" and to find the tutorial I had used before cause that seemed to work well two moths ago. Instead I came across this site The "Pragmatic Programmers Guide". and they seemed to help pretty well.

Sadly though it was hard for me to completely grasp all that I was seeing so I continued the search (mind you I still haven't found the original site I used). I finally came across THIS site, "Whys (Poignant) Guide to Ruby". And this site is amazing. It's fun and weird and quirky and strangely understandable. I love the uniqueness of it all.

Back to the point though is I read it like a demon. and in the two hours before work I had written my first program (with help from the Guide of course).

It's called "Diabolical" and the whole point is that you type in an angry messege and it would uppercase it and reverse it. Fun.

print "Type and be diabolical: "
idea_backwards = gets.reverse.upcase
print idea_backwards

And thats the whole code. Crazy huh?

So I'd like to say that "Ruby" is making a come back for me. Now all I need to do is finish that Interactive Dragon Program.

With my Guitar today


I looked up an old favorite fingerpicked song. Which so happens to be one of the main themes of "Final Fantsay X" the video Game called "To Zanarkand".

I went through 3 different tabs and 4 youtube videos till I found a good and correct version ( here btw).

Learned half of it today and plan to learn the rest tomorrow.


On top of everything I mentioned here I also learned html for the first time today. All the links and html usage are a product of such learnage. :)

Thankies for reading! see you tomorrow!

Monday, October 4, 2010

Today I returned to myself.

So I have never programmed anything before. In any kind of language either. So when I decided two months ago to learn "Ruby" I surprised even myself. So (as you might expect) I spent about a week on the thing and never came back to it. After that I realized how inconsistant I am with all aspects of life (at least creatively). For instance:

1. I have learned to play guitar and have been for about 5 years and I couldn't adlib a solo if it killed me. (lets just say I know people who have only just learned guitar and I'd be stuck on rhythm if we were to jam)

Now you might say that oh "maybe guitar isn't for you..." let me just say that, although that is a possibility, that two years ago I learned and could perform "Dust In The Wind" just about perfectly in a night. On to numero dos (sp?):

2. I have brainstormed, listed ideas for, collaborated on and written the beginnings to numerous unaccountable stories for about ten years now. I have even gotten great praise (from family and friends/people I know) about how great the idea was or how cool/entertaining the idea was. BUT I NEVER WENT ANYWHERE WITH ANY OF IT. Ahem. So theres that. Nummer Drei:

3. A friend and I decided two years ago that we wanted to write and create our own Roleplaying Game (as in d&d so what?). It has gone through three revisions since and we have spent a total of 5 days on it this year. Its October. Before you say anything I constantly hang out with the guy to the point of gay jokes and we just haven't done anything with it. No matter how much we planned to.

Those three examples aren't all that I could think of, but those are the most prominent (omitting "Ruby" of course. Oh, and all the other "I wish I dids"). Anyways, on to the point.

I have since decided that I need to work harder at the things I love, or at least just learn to love them more. So I thought if I made myself blog about it everyday I would work on things in preparation of blogging about what I had done. So I hope that you may enjoy this as much as I hope to. This Blog will include programming code, philosophical ideals, musical theory and information regarding game licenses as well as guitar tab and sheet music. thankies!!