it's no fun being back
In the states we consider Spring Break to be a huge monkey wrench in the semester - you're halfway through classes and then...wha... you forget everything over the weeklong break. In Japan there's a similar thing over New Years break - after about three weeks of classes we had a two week break over Christmas and the New Year, then one day of classes followed by a three day weekend... all that makes it very not easy to be back to class today after the three day weekend...
Over the break I was offered half-price on a haircut so I jumped on it. It felt like it was time for a change but I had no idea what I wanted so I went through some magazine while the barber looked over my shoulder and pointed things out. He pointed to a picture of Brad Pitt and my thoughts were 'hell, I can pull that off better' so I told him to get to work right away. At least that's what I tell people. It really was a picture of Brad Pitt but I was somewhat nervous about it but it all turned out well in the end. I even got a little bit of a neck and shoulder massage out of the deal. So how much is a bottom of the price-bracket haircut in the outskirts of Tokyo?... at half-price about $20.
Over the break I realized how little programming I've done in a while. The following paragraph may or may not be boring as all get out. I worked at a web-based programming company shortly before going to Japan so I guess that means I'm not totally rusty but that was like the cheesiest of the cheesy programming jobs. Counting web-based Java experience as programming experience is like counting an American pre-schooler as a fluent English speaker - it's not like a flagrant false statement but it's just not entirely true. I can't say I represent everyone, but the work I did hardly dipped past the subconscious level of coding - not a whole lot of thinking involved. I think once the lead coder asked loudly in the office if static object code would lead to shared local memory within the called code scope, to which I assured him that although the object code is static and thus shared in memory, each instance of a function call will result in another stack frame with its own local temporary memory space and no there will be no collisions of variables. He gave me the 'huh?' look and I told him succinctly - 'no prob bob'. Don't get me wrong - he knew how to code, but coding is interesting when it's about about taking limitations and hacking your way around them or making a cool project, not when you're writing fourth-grader Java code. So I started back up on some OpenGL code but I'm almost literally down to zero. I haven't coded OpenGL in a loooong time and since my lappy crashed, all I have is a PDF from NeHe and a copy of DevShed's C++ compiler, granted the compiler is pretty sweet and comes with an OpenGL template.
So now I'm wondering what kinds of programming projects I can work on - I need a few simple projects to get going and I also need a few things I can demo to companies when I show them my resume. I had some cool ideas a month back or so but I either forgot to type them up or they got lost in the crash. I don't have internet for at least a week more so I'm also down to personal trial and error with things I forgot about in OpenGL :( I'll post a project soon if any come together.
Over the break I was offered half-price on a haircut so I jumped on it. It felt like it was time for a change but I had no idea what I wanted so I went through some magazine while the barber looked over my shoulder and pointed things out. He pointed to a picture of Brad Pitt and my thoughts were 'hell, I can pull that off better' so I told him to get to work right away. At least that's what I tell people. It really was a picture of Brad Pitt but I was somewhat nervous about it but it all turned out well in the end. I even got a little bit of a neck and shoulder massage out of the deal. So how much is a bottom of the price-bracket haircut in the outskirts of Tokyo?... at half-price about $20.
Over the break I realized how little programming I've done in a while. The following paragraph may or may not be boring as all get out. I worked at a web-based programming company shortly before going to Japan so I guess that means I'm not totally rusty but that was like the cheesiest of the cheesy programming jobs. Counting web-based Java experience as programming experience is like counting an American pre-schooler as a fluent English speaker - it's not like a flagrant false statement but it's just not entirely true. I can't say I represent everyone, but the work I did hardly dipped past the subconscious level of coding - not a whole lot of thinking involved. I think once the lead coder asked loudly in the office if static object code would lead to shared local memory within the called code scope, to which I assured him that although the object code is static and thus shared in memory, each instance of a function call will result in another stack frame with its own local temporary memory space and no there will be no collisions of variables. He gave me the 'huh?' look and I told him succinctly - 'no prob bob'. Don't get me wrong - he knew how to code, but coding is interesting when it's about about taking limitations and hacking your way around them or making a cool project, not when you're writing fourth-grader Java code. So I started back up on some OpenGL code but I'm almost literally down to zero. I haven't coded OpenGL in a loooong time and since my lappy crashed, all I have is a PDF from NeHe and a copy of DevShed's C++ compiler, granted the compiler is pretty sweet and comes with an OpenGL template.
So now I'm wondering what kinds of programming projects I can work on - I need a few simple projects to get going and I also need a few things I can demo to companies when I show them my resume. I had some cool ideas a month back or so but I either forgot to type them up or they got lost in the crash. I don't have internet for at least a week more so I'm also down to personal trial and error with things I forgot about in OpenGL :( I'll post a project soon if any come together.