Bydood

Tag: gaming

  • Short one…

    The familiar icy roads…
    Feels like Christmas? No… Reminds me that time is flying faster as usual and what do I have to show for it…? A bunch of experience but zero in the personal projects. The year is approaching to an end. However, I feel next year will be the year of inspiration and motivation! Why? Because all this recovery process was not for nothing. For the past month or so, I have been given an incentive… And it is up to me to execute it all. Although life is short, we do what we can.
    So my evening was rather unproductive but I did get to try out Nintendo Land which is kind of nice. Tim has been trying to get me on the Wii U since he got it but I felt motivated to do my projects so I declined for the entire weekend. But last night, I felt like I ran out of energy so I thought I would give it a shot. We played only for a bit though because I felt like I needed to push myself to not be lazy but maybe I should have just let the night flow instead of forcing it…
    So the first game we tried was Pikmin… It was one of those adventure games going from room to room, scene to scene… About 10 minutes in, I was already bored. So we changed to the mini Zelda game packed into the Nintendo Land package. This was a better game. It was addictive as we were coursing through the stages involving teamwork. The person with the game pad is the bow and arrow whilst the others in the team hold the normal Wii-mote are the swordsman. I wasn’t fussed or more importantly, I was drained of energy that I think swiping my sword around was the way for me.
    I got tired after a while so ended up back in my room just trying to force myself to get some stuff done but my eyes told me otherwise. Not long after, I gave up and called it a day…
    Since I had a long night the night before, I just needed to take a bit of a break so I’ll continue this evening and see how it goes.
    Something tells me developing will not go as planned. Lets see how it goes…

  • Inspiration…

    A very lazy morning…
    Yesterday, it was quite a nice day. I just had a really simple one by going out to Westfield with Lyndsey and her boyfriend, Sean. It was pleasant as we were just talking and wondering around Westfield. We did end up in the cinema watching Rise of the Guardians. The film was actually pretty decent. Although it was a childish film, watching it just bought me to one thought: never stop believing! If you have a belief, don’t let anyone bring you down! It’s the one thing that could very much mean a lot to you and letting go of your belief may end up you being in the future with a bunch of ‘what if’ statements filling up your head… They call it regrets…
    Finishing this film, we just headed off home and with a whole load of motivation, I decided to turn to some coding.
    Getting down to it, I transferred my local database into an SQL file and then posted it onto the phpmyadmin interface by simply clicking on the import button and following the steps. With that posted up, I had a slight issue with my config file; it wasn’t connecting to my database properly but then realising many silly mistakes I did, all it came down to was lousy naming conventions that I used in my local database so I changed them and eventually got it to work properly. The data now appears absolutely fine and it came down to how often I wanted the feed to be updated to have fresh information. Having past experience with the host that I was currently using, the connections are limited so I needed to bare that in mind and ended up making a CRON job to update 1 hour per time. So coded in PHP and set up the scheduled task on the easy interface that the host gave me, it was so simple to make. So now, the URL is being executed every hour and I inserted my email for precaution in case the URL does not run for any reason…
    All that was left was writing a documentation for John to read so he can understand how to use it. I only wrote half of it but have not finished. All in all, this is a big step towards our project completion!
    With this being completed, this opens up many other doors regarding to my other projects which I am inspired to put time and dedication towards a few others too.
    Pushing forward, I had a thought indicating whether the server will crash holding too much data so I added another query in the same script that generates the content. 
    DELETE FROM

    WHERE date <  DATE_SUB(CURDATE(), INTERVAL 2 DAY);
    This code basically deletes all data that goes beyond 2 days ago. This is so that the data can hold recent data instead of old historic content.
    With this in mind, it makes me wonder if there should be a pages variable… What to do…..
    A log in thought… So she came into my head again. I’m not so sure what exactly triggers these things. Maybe it could be that I was with her for too long or maybe I am just so attached to her still. Or maybe… JUST MAYBE… She maybe thinking about me too. How can I be so sure about it is my biggest question but I will stand strong. Just let me live… Please… It’s too hard to ignore…
    That comes to an end to my log and an end to my post. 
    Inspire yourself… 

  • Productivity at its lowest peak…

    Look at that… The month of Christmas… The time that should more or less be magical.
    This month starts with a fresh hair cut on such a cold day. This week was not much to speak of as not much happened for me.
    My mind had been motivated for the past few days but the coldness ties me down to laziness…
    I had a meeting with John last night with a lot of inspirational talk in terms of future jobs, and more in depth speak regarding our competition if our project becomes a release.
    We aren’t dealing with much out there as the idea we’ve come up is very unique in its way. However, as the meetings increase, the more complicated matters begin to rise in terms of the back end development, which is what I am dealing with… No big deal though. I’ll just need to find a good algorithm for it…
    Time is expensive as you cannot buy it back so what do you do? Keep each day productive. Don’t let a day pass you unless you’re proud of it.
    So last night, straight after work, I needed to cancel on drinks with my colleagues because Tim bought a Nintendo Wii U and unfortunately since I moved houses very recently, my shopto.net account was still linked to the old address so we travelled to Croydon to collect it. It was freezing cold and we had to wait outside from the depot until it came out! They seriously need to invest in a waiting room for us customers! The security guard was in his little warm cabin and holding his hot water bottle just to rub it in! Jerk! 
    Eventually, our package came out, signed for it and left. The travel home was pretty much simple! 
    Tim decided to make an unboxing video for this and I was just there taking pictures! 

    The black edition of the Nintendo Wii U looked very sleek. As we open the box, each item being taken out was just excitement filling our stomachs.. Looking at the console and the game pad just made me want to purchase one! But it was best if I didn’t. I tend to buy these things and then throw them in the corner after a week. Wow! I can control my temptations now! Awesome!

    I think it’s about time I lifted up my control pad for a bit. I need to play some games… Development has been very slow so must crack on with that… So much to do…

  • Gone all out!

    I just hate being that person who just sits there thinking if something is going to happen for me… I just need to take actions and do it! Why wait? Dreams can only be executed if you make it happen right?
    I haven’t touched my consoles for the entire week… Maybe I am taking life a little more seriously now… Thinking a lot about money. My thoughts are completely focused on what must be done for the future. What’s my goal? Get a project live and receive some income from it… This is why I mainly have a list of projects written down on my reminders list on my Apple Mac Mini. I’ve instigated several however, they are far from complete. As for the rest, they are all either waiting for feedback or just slowly becoming obsolete but the trick is to follow up on them…
    This doesn’t mean I want to remove gaming out of my life altogether as I need to be up to date with the latest releases and their functionalities to better my chances in regards to my career.
    Following dreams are so important. We all have a purpose in this world and if you are doing something you don’t like, then in my opinion, you’re not living right. We have a life span. Do the thing you enjoy most and trust me, you will have an exhilarated feeling from that! It will benefit and you can end up being a person with no complaints or regrets!
    As I stand on this train, I tend to wonder off into deep thoughts… My ex girlfriend, my family and friends, my job, my projects… What is really keeping me going? My projects follow some rays of hope in what I want to create.  My family and friends, they fulfil the hole I once had filled with love and care towards the one person who is still important to me… My ex girlfriend? Well, all I can say is I wait for that one phone call or text to reattach it all again… Even if it is to be friends, I will take it. Finally, my job… It wasn’t what I wanted to do but I was too money driven that I was momentarily blinded. So from reviewing all this, my philosophy was to bite my tongue and continue… What’s my philosophy today? Do precisely the opposite!! Lets put this in perspective, keeping my mouth shut personally and professionally bought me to where I am! Although this will take me time to change since I have got used to how I am currently, nonetheless, writing this blog does give me some courage to push forward!
    So this philosophy is not something written in stone but it is an algorithm that I hope will be executed. 
    I can see things a whole lot clearly. My mind is thinking of programming… Although it tends to forget things easily lately, so long the motivation is there, it’s not the end. I often wonder what lies ahead of me; will I succeed in a successful project or will I find the right girl… All I’ve learnt is to have patience and see… But there are days when I really want to know and probably many think the same… I have so much regrets but I can’t correct them. I just need to live through it. As obvious as that sounds, it is still so hard to let go.
    Will I make it…?

  • Blog – 27/11/12

    Not a great start to the week…

    Although Monday morning was productive, during the day had given me confirmation in what must be done… At first when I came back from holiday, I ignored all the signs but yesterday was the clear cut visual. This just cannot continue this way! I’m DONE!
    Unfortunately, I cannot mention here what exactly it is that brings frustration to me but in due time, I will.

    So moving onto a less depressing subject (to me anyway)…

    Last night, from having a heck of a good meal at Mcdz, I had a small talk with Lyndsey and Sean… It was nonetheless a good night. Talks and a few good laughs… However, I only wanted to come out for a bit and then head off home…

    So finishing up here, Lyndsey and I had a good talk from London Bridge all the way to her house. Wasn’t much but was definitely worth cherishing as we barely do it nowadays…

    Upon successfully taking her to her house, I jumped on the bus and saw a miss call from Kimzii. Called back and had a nice conversation; from Lyndsey’s house all the way to my house. Again, it’s nice to always cherish these little talks. She’s always laughing so that much makes me smile. People who laugh about the randomness is the source to making me smile. It’s one of the things that makes this world still have some good…

    Coming home, I just turned on my computer and continued the conversation through Skype with Kimzii. We spoke a bit and then the rest of the night, she played several songs and giving it her all by singing and dancing. Funny how these people have this energy after a long day of work… I give her credit for that!

    I was clashed with a Skype call with Lyndsey so with that note, I said my bye to Kimzii and switched over to another hyper girl! Geez! How do these girls do it?! There I am all knackered and these two just hyping all day!

    So on the call to lynds, we spoke bits and bobs and was very nice to catch up. We act stupid as always. Nothing changed there :)…

    To top it all off, I finished some code with sorting data when a certain command is inputted into the URL… So that’s all good. Next is probably to put it live and then setup a CRON job. Lets see…

    “Don’t just sit there… Do something about it!”

  • Pure development in all angles!

    Sunday evening to Monday morning… Pure development!
    Throughout the whole of last week, I did not blog at all. Been lazy and putting gaming into priority only because depression clouded my thoughts. Mostly due to the one person who bought me to where I am today…
    Keeping my mind occupied from all the depressing thoughts, I cover it with development, gaming or out with the friends… Being at home only makes me think deeper… Missed the simple life I once lived. Now it’s all so complicated! At first, I thought that being apart was the hardest thing I had to do. But when time passed, it’s fairly simple… Prioritise myself! Saying this, I think I am ready to move on…
    Taking this leap forward, web development has been progressing fairly slow last week. In fact, I’ve only stared at code but no typing. I suppose I needed this time out from coding to reorganise my thoughts.
    So starting PHP coding, I’ve started displaying JSON data onto a page for John. I collected a bunch of RSS feeds and stored it into my database as URLs. From there, all I did was use a while loop to read through the database and generate a feed!

    $rss = simplexml_load_file($url);

    With this piece of code, it was embedded with PHP5 which made things twice as easy to just extract the RSS and store it into my database in its respective attributes!
    There were problems when it came to the dates since each RSS feed had shown a different format for each node which meant that I had to convert the date to be the same as what MySQL accepts for it to be treated as a date and time… And all I did was use:

    strtotime($item->pubDate);

    This basically converts my date string to a series of numbers where it specifies a Linux timestamp. It is the number of seconds since the date January 1st 1970 00:00:00 UTC. Having this timestamp, all needs to be done is:

    $published_on = date(“Y-m-d H:i:s”, strtotime($item->pubDate)); //returns “2012-11-26 23:01:00”

    And voila! We have the time and date ready to be stored into the database!
    Correctly doing this, what I plan to do next is to sort my JSON data by name and date (ascending or descending order). To command it, all John must do is type the URL with a variable at the end… Something like:

    http://localhost/feed/?sortby=date

    That should do the trick!
    As for the update of data, I would like the RSS feed to inject the information into the database every 30 minutes. That way, each client doesn’t piss the database off causing it to crash! I’ll also work on this in parallel to the order on demand URL task…
    When all is done, I can finally throw it on our domain for a test run! Hopefully there will be no problems. I’m guessing the only trouble I will bump into is probably the CRON job. Will I need to pay more for it? Lets see…
    Well, coming to an end on this post, I’ll have to summarise it in a few sentences…
    This post was mainly a log upon what I’ve done for my personal project and less about how I am feeling or what I’ve been doing for a while. What can I say? I’ve been busy trying to do a lot in my life and overflowing with thoughts in regards to my past but like I said in one of my posts before, it will come back to disturb me but I think last week was the killer! I spent the whole of the 7 days just thinking about it… Is it loneliness? Could it be that I am that weak? One thing is for certain, I will try to accomplish what I set off to do in the first place…Just do my projects and be on the lookout for that person…
    Until then… There is always tomorrow… Quoted by Lyndsey (26/11/2012 at 23:49pm)

  • A good day for social…

    A good day for social… Less in gaming… But still played!


    SOCIAL / GAMING

    After work, I headed out to Piccadilly Circus to see Karjun last night to have a night out… I kind of needed this break since I’ve been coding on projects or playing games… Pressing buttons all day long may just make me go crazy!

    Before I met him, I jumped into HMV, to purchase one thing but ended up buying 3 products! So what I supposed to buy was the Die Hard quadrilogy which was only £12! But as I was waiting for Karjun to come, I browsed a bit more and saw the Johnny English set… Both films for £8? Picked it up immediately! Then I shifted to the gaming section and had a look at what was available there. Turns out, John has been raving about a game called Deus Ex and it was going off for £15! I picked it up and rushed to the counter otherwise I’ll be buying the whole store! Earlier at lunch, I also went to Game to buy a mic for PS3 so that I can play Black ops 2 online with a few mates! Bought that for £12.99…

    I started to wonder about in Trocadero bringing back a whole load of memories. This place had changed so much! It was years when this place was once a lively place… Full of people… Now it is always deserted…

    Karj came and we started walking towards Leicester Square and coincidentally, we step into the Twilight Premiere! As usual, full of people and squirming around like worms, we couldn’t get to the restaurant we planned to go to so we settled with a Chinese restaurant in China Town… From there back to Cafe Sol in Greenwich, we spoke about our secondary school naming from friends that we knew to teachers! It’s amazing how we can talk about something that feels like almost a lifetime ago! 
    Remembering barely any names of the teachers and Karjun knowing all the names, we had one drink and went back into the car and spoke more about it, we ended the night with talking about where he works. Long story short, I’m sold!! Sign me up!

    Leaving his car to my house, I immediately fired up my Xbox playing you know what! Played 2 games of multiplayer of team deathmatch! Changing my guns, I managed to play twice as better than yesterday! Now I feel like I want to get home to play more! Addicted much??

    Finishing these two sensational games, I see Lyndsey calling me a muppet on Skype! Geez!

    Since her and I haven’t spoken in a while, I thought I may as well give her a call to see how she is. She seemed rather happy and smiling making me want to be silly to make her smile more! She’s been sad lately and I do hope she feels better… All I want is for my friends to be happy! It’s been a journey her and I have been through but with the silliness and talks we have, all we have remaining is smiles and laughter. Lets maintain this Lyndsey! 🙂

    Ending this call, I jumped into bed falling asleep incredibly fast at a time of 1.30ish!


    TECHNICAL LOG

    This morning, I spent a little more time overlooking and adding more to my database. Turns out, I’ve incremented an extra 2 tables so that the data storage can be healthy. So I will be adding to MySQL tonight but write it out in a notepad first…

    Every time when I say that I will be developing in PHP, it turns out I find a hole in my database design. Maybe I am rushing it but I think I need to sit and plan a little longer before I can start implementing hardcore. 

    My mornings are so productive! I think so clearly the code just comes to me. When I get home from work, I tend to laze about. But when it is piss easy work, I can do it in the evening. Stuff that requires thinking power, I wait until the morning as my mind is focused at that time of the day!


    SUMMARY

    So to summarise, interacting again with the world is a great idea instead of always being immersed with gaming. I follow my passion but keeping a close eye on reality too so don’t get me wrong when I say I’m a gamer… I’m also a social person too… I believe so anyway… Hopefully my friends can vouch for that.

    My technical log seems to be getting smaller only because I use 30 minutes of my day to get as much done as possible… It will get longer when I start developing through PHP. But like I said, I always seem to find a hole in my database design so until that is fine, I can move onto phase 2: hardcore programming!

  • Programming and gaming… What more can you ask for?

    Ah yes! You know what I’m gona talk about…

    So… COD: Black Ops 2! I sat playing this game from 9ish to 12am! Playing a good game with Tim over the mic… This game does follow the predecessor but I guess I never gave it a chance since I was so in love with Battlefield 3… There is a particular reason as to why I choose to play each game separately…

    Battlefield 3 more or less have the same elements but the controls such as running forever and never getting tired or jumping over cars or walls just looks so realistic! Also, the maps are huge and gives you the ability to drive vehicles around to get to your destination quicker is just the icing on the cake!

    With COD games, it consists of areas where the maps are small and tight spacing so the game is fast paced and although you get killed in an instant, all you need to know is a bit of strategic thinking before running into it. At first, I thought the tight spaces were a problem but with the right gun and the right accessories, you’ll be on top of the scoreboard in no time…

    So there are my two differences in the game so I will never throw one game out as both have their particular values…

    As of now, my mood is dead set on COD for now and need to level up!! I’m on level 10 currently! AWESOME!

    I’ve said my bit about gaming… Back to reality…


    TECHNICAL LOG

    I spent this morning working on the database and as it turns out, I was doing everything right but I just forgot to turn on the server because every time I shut down my machine, the XAMPP server turns off unless I manually turn it back on… So I added my tables but had no time to do any PHP coding.

    I also added another two tables meaning altogether I have 8. Maybe I should start normalising it now… Hmmmm…

    I also am thinking about developing my own site gathering my projects and to feed my blog posts through it… Another way to read my posts right??


    SUMMARY

    Keeping these blog posts are pretty nice and it makes me feel good every time I post… It’s surprising that people read it so thanks for the support… 

    I hope you guys enjoy my content…

    But as a summary, these games, my projects and work are the elements where they keep my mind off the main thought I want to avoid…… for now… 

  • Happy Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 day!!

    Happy Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 day!!


    TECHNICAL LOG

    I spent this morning by picking up my pen and pad to draw out my design for the database. 

    Firstly, I had to think of the entities required for the project to know what tables to enter. I have 6 tables.

    With the relations decided, I needed to write up the tuples in each table indicating the type of content to be stored (a data dictionary). Also, if this gets revealed, that just means I can simply link the relationships with each other but mistakes can happen during development so I call this ‘Design One’.

    Since I recently switched over from Windows operating system to a Mac OSX Mount Lion, I had several issues to install the WAMP server onto this operating system so I ended up settling with XAMPP which isn’t much of a difference.
    Being on this platform, I have some troubles connecting to the integrated MySQL database but thinking about it now, instead of connecting over the terminal, I can just establish the connection by just navigating to the XAMPP and double clicking on MySQL file! Lets see… I only spent 30 minutes designing and 5 minutes looking into using XAMPP so I’ll have a deeper look later or tomorrow.


    FILMS

    Last night, I tried to start my database design but couldn’t start as I was wiped out however, I did watch Jackie Chan’s Project A. I cannot watch this film unless it is the original dubbing from the VHS video tapes!
    This is because it brings me back to the first time John and I picked it up at boot sale, the times when we were not earning money, dad giving us £1 to spend so we had to use it VERY wisely. John, as usual, always picked up the Jackie Chan videos and I always looked for the randomness crap!
    The best quote that we use that was bought up in Aussie was:

    Coast Guard 1: ‘Take a look at that chick over there!’
    Coast Guard 2: ‘She has a real crazy figure’
    Coast Guard 1: ‘I’d say she’s a 30…’

    Makes me laugh every time! Never fails!

    This unlocks many memories for me as I have been sharing a room with my brother for many years and I do miss these moments…


    GAMING

    Heading over to have lunch at Westfield, I bought myself the PS3 edition of COD: Black Ops 2 and hopefully when I get home, I should have received the delivered XBox version as well. The reason I’ve bought 2 is because one is simply for online purposes for friends who have PS3… But I will be playing the campaign on XBox since the controller is much better than the PS3 controller!

    Lets see how this game turns out!


    SUMMARY

    Again, gaming and programming but no social stuff happening.

    There have just been too much happening lately and I really want to play this newly released game! I will review tomorrow but right now, all I can say is… GAME ON!

  • Technical log, MiLi Review and Black Ops 2 TOMORROW!

    TECHNICAL LOG

    The plans for today was mainly my thoughts. I spoke to John again over Skype showing visuals of the proposed project. It looked like a very good start for a mock up. Made me think that I should start developing something as well.

    Since I will be doing nothing but backend work, I will need to design the database model keeping it efficient to avoid breaking the server. 

    I’ve spent this Sunday just having the design in my head and whether there are any other tables I need to add before inserting into the database using MySQL. I’ll draw out the design onto paper tonight and see if I am missing anything…

    Unfortunately I could not do any work tonight since I was helping Tim do some Java. I have not touched Java programming since university but it sure felt good to type some on this environment again. Makes me feel like I should open a project on this platform… Lets see…

    That was too technical huh? I will end this blog with a review and a game…

    MiLi Review

    This gorgeous little gadget is a practical charger. It gives the user the ability to carry around this small object so that if ever your phone runs out of battery life, you can charge it with this. It runs on a chargeable battery giving the capability to charge this thing with a USB if the battery dies!


    It supports iPhone, many android phones serving the microUSB, Blackberry and many other devices!

    Paying £25 is the amount that came out from my finance but great investment… 


    Call of Duty: Black Ops 2

    So the game is finally being released tomorrow! I made my order yesterday on http://www.shopto.net! The game should be delivered tomorrow so I will definitely book a gaming evening and write all about it!

    I’ve tried this game in Sydney, Australia at the EB Expo but only the multiplayer experience.
    Although I end up dying in this game due to the tight spaces, I’m sure I’ll do better campaign mode!

    Looking forward to it!! 🙂


    SUMMARY

    There was so much tech, programming and game talk in this post and a expect a bit more tomorrow!

    See you tomorrow! 🙂