ARTICLES

Southern California Beaches

Sat, 09/23/2017 - 22:07
sunset in carlsbad ca

The temperature in Redlands was predicted to be in the 110's over labor day weekend so, I decided to spend the holiday at the beach. There was a tropical storm off the coast but the surf was still just over chest on occasion. It was pretty powerful though. I got tossed around more than a few times and by the end of the weekend I was pretty beat up. But VERY satisfied. The water wasn't too cold, even without a wet suit. It never ceases to amaze me how in California the waves line up...break relatively evenly, and come in sets.

Python Hello World

Sat, 09/23/2017 - 21:07

Decided to start experimenting with Python. I see plenty of jobs available using the language and I am interested so why not.

As usual when learning a new language I start by following the documentation learning how to print, concatenate,...do a little math. Then I see how I might port some of the basic things I might normally do. 

 

Doom Style Simple 3D in Javascript

Tue, 09/12/2017 - 17:04

A LOOOooong time ago...well 2001-2002'ish (I think). I was playing around a lot with Game Maker by Mark Overmars. There was developer named Brent who went by the handle Freegadgets who made a 3D engine Gadget 3D. It was really quite impressive. He started off by simply remaking a simple version of Doom. Over time he expanded it and eventually it used actual 3D polygons. It was loads of fun to build games with it and very easy. It was also a great learning tool. (As with MANY of my old projects I lost most of the games and models I built during this period).

Fun 404 Pages

Wed, 08/16/2017 - 20:14

Zip candleFor fun on occasion I will build a simple animation for the 404 "document not found" page of a website I am building. Over the last few years working for Geographics I built a few. There is an office cat named Zip who is often my muse and is the subject of all of these animations. Unfortunately I do these on my spare time and I tended to quit before they were finished.

Optimizing Wes Mantooth

Fri, 08/04/2017 - 22:13

The whole idea behind this project has never been to create games. It was really an exercise to optimize my Javascript abilities. Generally at work if I write Javascript it's using jQuery and due to time constraints it can often be quite ugly and not very efficient. 

So I built a list of tools I felt would be necessary for a game engine and currently they aren't exactly efficient or easy to use.

For example the multi-canvas example currently can run about 60 objects on screen before it starts to slow down. .. That's terrible.

Hobby Projects and Ideas

Sun, 07/30/2017 - 14:16

On my "down-time" as a hobby I write code. I know, that's a hell of a thing, but you have to remember that I started getting paid to do my hobby. But, my hobby is still my hobby. Part of the problem I have always had with my hobby versus my professional work is that I start a project...Then I will get bored with it and move on to something else OR I will get interested in some caveat of the current project which will derail me from the current project.

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