UNM Engineering Open House

As part of my scholarship obligations with the Computer Science department, I am required to attend the departments open house where high school students come and get information about our school. This is my second year attending this event. The event is not the most exciting thing in the world, it is nice to meet young students who are interested in math, engineering, and science. Also, there was free food!

One thing that disturbed me was how few students seemed as though they were there of their own accord. Almost every student who I talked with seemed to be prisoner escorts of their parents. The students did not seem very interested in what was going on and their parents seemed to be thrusting it upon them. Of course, not all the students were this way. Perhaps if the "attractions" for the Computer Science department had been more engaging we would have felt more excitement from the future students.

There were two attractions this year. The Art Research and Technology (ARTS) lab and a small presentation by three Ph.D students. The ARTS lab was actually very cool. Joe Kniss showed off his dome. This dome is raised off the ground with rocking seats beneath and six projectors to produce a seamless image that covers your entire range of vision. The image being projected is that of Saturn's asteroid belt. In the very center of the dome is a pad that you can stand on and control your trajectory through the asteroids. Also, a Wii remote is used to "shoot" the asteroids so you don't smash into them and "die". A very cool demo indeed.

Joe Kniss on Daily Planet: http://watch.discoverychannel.ca/daily-planet/september-2011/daily-planet---september-06-2011/#clip527472

Joe Kniss is a great talker and is very good at explaining things in terms that an intelligent high school sophomore can understand. Unfortunately, his demo is quickly forgotten when he tells you that the "real" excitement is around the corner where the Electrical Engineering Senior Design Team is building a robot. Three students stand huddled around an unfinished "junk bot" as they call it. The bot is supposed to be able to calibrate the positions for the project for Joe Kniss' dome. However, the students are unable to adequately engage their audience who quickly becomes bored and awkwardly waits for something exciting to happen. Each time I gave a tour of the ARTS lab I became less and less impressed with the senior design project.

Overall, it was not a bad open house. However, I wish we had a better way to engage students at these things.

I am disappoint

I am disappointed that my CS 341 class has turned into a dud class. I was really excited to take this class because it is all about low level computer architecture. The professor is actually a great lecturer... However, he is way lenient on homework assignments and class pace.

Today, we were assigned our final programming assignment, an optimization assignment. We have to take a program that does some image manipulations and make it faster. This in itself is a really neat assignment. Unfortunately, we finished the section on optimization a few weeks ago and are now learning about how we could potentially write our own shell.

In the past, students have told me they actually had an assignment to write a shell. I really wanted to do this in this class. It's not that I can't do this on my own, it is just disappointing that the class is so slow and for me, quite boring. I was really hoping I would be challenged in this class. Unfortunately, I have been able to finish each assignment the day it was assigned.

Again, the professor is actually a great lecturer... I just wish the class pushed me a little harder.

Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord

Over the past few days I've been playing through an old classic. Wizardry I: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord. This game is actually quite a bit before my time but we owned it for the original NES when I was a kid. It is one of the original RPGs of its time and probably the first First Person Perspective RPG. The game itself is now considered Abandonware and you can pick it up at http://www.abandonia.com/. However, you'll want to install DosBox if you want to play it. This is because of how old this game is, you'll need to slow down DosBox to around 500 clock cycles.

Also, you'll need to get a copy of the manual if you want to have a chance at surviving the Maze. You should be able to pick it up at http://www.replacementdocs.com/. This is because you'll need the manual if you want to cast spells and understand what they do. This game did not come with a built in tutorial like most modern games today. You actually had to read manuals back in the day.

Okay, you now have the game installed and you've read through the 70 pg manual. It is time to venture into the 4 colored world of Wizardry. First you'll want to go to the Edge of Town and create some characters. You have 5 races to choose from: Human, Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, and Hobbit. Each race has advantages and disadvantages. You then have 4 base classes to choose from: Fighter, Mage, Priest, and Thief. If you roll high enough bonus scores you might be able to be some of the advanced characters. As far as I can tell you can only roll high enough to be a Bishop (mage / priest combo) and a Samurai (Fighter / Mage combo). The manual claims there is also a Ninja and a Lord. However, I have yet to find the right combo of skill points to become one of these.

Once you have 6 characters, don't forget to go to the store to buy equipment. You start out naked with a little bit of gold. Also, after you buy your equipment don't forget to actually equip it!

Now that you're clothed, armed, noobs it is time to head down to the proving grounds. Here you have a chance to prove yourself to the paranoid king by hunting down Wernda. Make sure you have a piece of paper and a writing utensil so you can make a map of each of the levels. This was one of the *features* of classic first person RPGs. You will need to be careful not to get lost otherwise you may get slaughtered. In Wizardry... if your whole party dies, they are gone forever. Also, if some of your characters make it back to town, you'll have to pay a large fee at the Temple of Cant for a chance to have your character turn to Ash. If you're lucky you can pay an even larger fee to try and resurrect them from ashes but if that fails your characters are truly gone forever.

You will constantly be fighting to stay alive and running back to town to heal and level up. Make sure you have a priest to cast heal spells on your characters. Otherwise, you will have to pay hefty fees to stay at the inn and heal just a few hit points.

I must admit, this game is pretty epic, extremely challenging, and will keep you hooked for hours. Of course, this game is definitely not for everyone. Those of you who have never played a text adventure game will probably never be able to appreciate a gem like this one. Good luck!

3D Rendering

I just recently started teaching myself how to do some 3D graphic design. When I was in middle school I tried writing some stuff in Quick Basic to render 3D arrays but failed miserably. However, I am quite thrilled with my latest progress. Here are just a few of my renders that I've done since I started.

3D Man:

This was really fun to do and was originally just a bunch of cubes stuck together to create the frame for its body. During this particular render I learned about something called Sub-surfacing. Basically, you take a rather rigid object and add a bunch of faces where the edges would normally touch. This causes a nice smooth look (from a distance). Up close, you can still see all of the polygons.

My 3D Hat:

So, after I made my 3D guy, I learned how to "spin" 3D stuff to create objects. Basically, you draw a single slice of an object on 2 of the spacial co-ordinates then have that particular shape rotated around the 3rd co-ordinate at a specified interval, attaching the vertices along the way. I was going for a safari type of hat. I think it turned out pretty good. Fits the man perfectly!

Textured Hat

Shortly after creating my man / hat I learned how to add a texture to a surface. I feel this color really makes the hat look like tanned leather or something like that. Soft and good for keeping the sun off your neck and out of your eyes.

Mountain:

This is my first attempt at a 3D landscape. I used Fractals to give it a nice feel. It was way smoother before I added the fractal distortion.

The Green Goblet:

I really think this one came out nice for the amount of effort I put into it. This was a simple spun object. I drew the shape I wanted for half of it and then spun it 90 degrees. It ended up really nice!

The Tire:

This is a simple tire. I hope to make the rest of the vehicle to go with it this weekend. It should turn out really nice.

Fido:

This is the first 3D Object I made completely from scratch. All of the others I have been using a Blender guide to help me learn the basic / intermediate stuff. I am really happy with how this dog turned out. Ariel also pushed me to add a tail and ears. I REALLY didn't think I could do it but I think they turned out very nice. Thanks Ariel!

Hopefully, I will keep this up through out the summer. I've been using Blender to create these renders which is really nice because it has a Python API I can use to draw these graphics into a game. Of course, I have to come up with some kind of idea for a game first. Maybe a game where you are a dog chasing a man in a hat up a mountain and you have to dodge 3D wheels.... maybe...

Blah, blah, blah LED Tetris.

This semester, I have taken an interest in my Computer Logic Design course. I spent a few hundred dollars at Radio Shack before I realized how cheap it was to order these things from other countries.  I have purchase a simple bread board, several basic logic gates (and, or, nand, nor, xor, xnor, etc),  a few dozen LEDs, some switches, wires, and various other miscellaneous items.

Originally, my goal was to create a binary clock over Thanksgiving break. This task was easily accomplished in an hour. I've set my goals a little higher now. I ordered ten 8x8 LED matrices and ten LED logic IC's. MAX7219 is the chip I am planning on using. As soon as these items arrive I am going to take a shot at building a Tetris game using 6 of the matrices aligned to build a 16 x 24 grid. The board will be 10x20 and I'll use the extra space to display scores. I will be using the Arduino Uno as my main micro controller. However, I don't think I will have enough I/O switches on a single board so I am planning on getting a second Arduino chip to control the remaining LEDs.

C'mon China chips, get here soon.