Leveling Up!10.03.16 / Uncategorized / Author: Robbert de Groot / Comments: (0) 
Still playing around with work flow. The inking and, well, everything was sort of quickly done. Should have been done quite some time ago but… The idea was from some innocent discussion with a friend recently. A valentines cartoon is to follow even though it’ll be months late. The battle continues…10.01.26 / General / Author: Robbert de Groot / Comments: (0) Well, I recovered some of my bookmarks. Three so far. I still see at least 3 others still stuck in books. It’s a start. Shifting focus. Moving onto my Manga project that I started last year. Currently I’m ruling out the page templates for all 32 pages of the comic. Kind of tedious but it has to be done and it’s brain dead work. Easy to do while listening to muzak. Next meeting is on Valentines day… I’m not sure I’ll make that but I should at least get something done before then. Like another page. I still have to finish off a few more ‘names’ for the last few pages. ‘Names’ is the technical term for rough storyboards. At least that’s what I’ve been told. They do help though. Planning the bubbles, the pages and all that before you get too far and want or need to redo something. Added the one page I’ve inked to the comics gallery. Not much to say just yet. It’s just inked, not shaded and not bubbled (?). Resolution…10.01.19 / General / Author: Robbert de Groot / Comments: (1) I’m not one to make New Year resolutions. I can’t say I’ve made one for this year either. However I must say, I’m getting a little tired of having unfinished projects, unread books and stuff in my personal life. I think this year, I’m going to finish some things. I have three books at least with book marks in them that I haven’t finished. Time to finish them. I still have a couple stacks of books that I want to get through as well. I don’t think I’ll finish all of them but I hope to put a dent in them. I have a few art projects on the go. A manga for a meetup.org group that I started last year. I should finish that this year. I mean it’s only 36 pages… Shea!… This isn’t considering the two comics that I have managed to get halfway through the second issue on and just stopped… Those I know won’t get done. I’ve plans for them though. I have a few programs on the go. Bloody hell it never ends. Two games that I started but haven’t really finished. I can finish those. One problem I had with them was that I didn’t set a solid goal on them. Meaning, they were a moving target when I was working on them. I should put a hard target and stick to that. Release it and say they’re done. I can always revisit them later if I want. I have two computer applications that I’ve got on the go. A paint program and a ray tracer. Both are still in their infancy though. I won’t finish those off this year. Mainly because they both are huge in scope for just one lonely programmer… Lonely… Snif. Sorry, mind was side tracked there for a second. I hope to at least get them to a certain functional state at least. Now the big thing that keeps me from succeeding. I really got to stop being so damn fussy. Get dirty, make a mess, and just get things done. The planets aren’t aligned.09.12.06 / General / Author: Robbert de Groot / Comments: (3) I’m starting to get annoyed. I’ve been trying to get Visual Studio 2008 installed on my machine and every $(*&#ing time something goes wrong. Repair install option does nothing. The last time I thought it was working but it didn’t install the platform software development kit. The kit that is needed to make windows programs. What the hell? Uninstalling… AGAIN… So very frustrating. This cold/flu I have doesn’t help either. Development woes…09.11.28 / Programming / Author: Robbert de Groot / Comments: (0) This vacation I was hoping to put a dent on a new program I wanted to code. Unfortunately I had a small set back with the computer’s OS died for which I had to reinstall the OS. Which means reinstalling a lot of the programs. That has been done but I am getting the feeling that the OS is just not working exactly right. I’m wondering if I need to reformat the hard drives as well because of certain folders can’t be deleted for some reason. So I might have another few days of computer maintenance in my future. Which makes me sad. The program I wanted to make a dent in is a paint program, like Photoshop, but tailored to tablets and tablet pcs. Which means that the program works well on a single screen with limited or no physical keyboard access and simple pen input. I have tried a few paint programs out there but they all seem leave me with an unsatisfied experience on the tablet pc. So, I am making a paint program. Working title is Z:G.A.P. (Zekaric:GRL Art Program.) Z:GAP will initially be for digital drawing with a focus on helping me with a manga project that I also have on the go. Some time down the road I hope I can get Z:GRay (Ray tracer) in there some how. Hence it being called and Art program instead of some sort of paint program. First few passes on the program will not seem like the program is a paint program at all. It will look more like an image converter and previewer. This is because I have to set up the widgets to draw the image, load and store the images and all that. There is a bit of ground work to be done first. Step 1, getting the main window up and displayed. This is just a window and nothing else. That was easy, using an existing sample program to get started with. Note, I am using my own UI library to UI. Although I did not say it, I might try to make this program cross platform. Windows and OSX. Maybe Linux but there are too many configurations on Linux that it is still too much pain to deal with. Step 2, import PNG, JPEG, TIFF and BMP. These really are the main image formats and I am not really concerned with anything else. By this time I got the idea that I should really make this program multithreaded. Step 3, create a worker thread. The main thread is the ui thread; the worker thread will do the heavy lifting. With a UI and worker thread present there needs to be some communication between the two to get things done. So I rigged up a simple command launcher but noticed that scripting could potentially be useful and this command launcher would be very simple to launch from a script. Not only that but getting scripting in from the start would be a lot easier than to rig scripting in when the program has matured a little. Ok, so side stepping a little, lets hook in GAL (GRL Assembly Language.) It’s not that pretty but it works. But I didn’t like the fact that the language is a bit clumsy and didn’t fit with GPREF (GRL PREFerence, like XML file format.) so I decided to update GAL to use GPREF. Unfortunately my GPREF is simple to parse but not really that nice to look at or manually edit. So side stepping again, I worked on GAF (GRL ASCII Format) which looks more like a bastard child between LISP and C functions. GPREF and GAL files looked a lot nicer with GAF. However this means some GAL execution changes are needed because of the differences between the old GAL script and the new GAF GAL scripts. On top of this is that the underlying data holder for variables in GAL needed to be changed. This was needed anyway if I kept the old GAL script or used GAF GAL scripts. Sigh. In short, I got stalled on updating GAL; but I believe it will be for the better. The beauty of scripting is that you could code something in a script as a prototype to see if it will be useful and then code it properly for speed, if speed is needed, after the fact. And yes, I do not want to use Python, LUA or some other pre-made language out there. Reinventing the wheel means I have more control over what is happening under the hood. I have seen some problems at work when having to deal with existing solutions. Yes third party options can quickly springboard development but they also contain land mines that may not be solvable. Like, UI incompatibility with your program which can cause crashes. Like, abuse of the provided third party options which may be unsafe to use in the context of your program. Like, unforeseen edge cases with thrid party options that cause your program to die unceremoniously causing catastrophic failure and loss of time, data and patience. I would like to stay away from these issues. Besides, reinventing the wheel is sometimes fun and gives me a better understanding of the problem domain that I have to work with. Update: Yes something is still definitely wrong with my computer. Looks like a full re-format and re-install is in order. This makes me sad. Where the hell is that install disk!09.11.23 / General / Author: Robbert de Groot / Comments: (6) I have computer problems… Again. A few weeks ago it was a power supply that died. Now, Windows fails to start the login process and reboots endlessly. Seems to be pointing to a corrupt executable in the OS somewhere. Maybe not too unsurprising considering the number of times I’ve seen the system boot up to the file system check and surface scan before starting windows. Maybe the hard drive is flaking out. Which is not too big an issue, I have it all backed up. I just didn’t want to deal with this just yet. And so to the point… I can’t #@$*^* find my Windows XP disk. The killer is that I used it recently because I added two new PCI cards, which cause Windows XP to throw a hissy in that it doesn’t “recognize” the system anymore and needed to re-register the system. And now I can’t seem to find out where I put that blasted CD! I tried a recovery CD from another XP machine but that CD complains that it’s not in the same computer. Which is true but I’m simply trying to fix the OS not the drivers in this case. But it didn’t work anyway which didn’t help in my happiness. I just hope I didn’t inadvertently throw the disk out; I’ve cleaned up the office not too long ago. I just can remember the order of events anymore. It would suck if I did. Update: Well, looks like a full reinstall of the OS. I can’t seem to figure out how to solve the
Overwriting the existing windows install with a new install just seemed to make things worse. Sigh. Fresh install into a new directory is working but means I have to go through the process of re-installing some software for it to work properly. I think I’ll just do the bare minimum. I plan on upgrading the system sometime in the new year; well… Upgrading may be the wrong term. More like getting a new machine because everything in my current machine is a bit obsolete. What a pain. I also have the same issue I had before with my stupid Creative Labs Audigy card. It’s connected to my speakers using the digital port. Although the driver I got from CL doesn’t show an option to set the card up to output digitally. CL, you suck. It’s not the first time I’ve felt they let me down. Who really needs to buy a sound card anymore. Next computer I get will just be using the on board sound. Most have digital out. Although I probably can’t use my Speaker set. Ugh… Also a CL product. NEVER EVER get products that contain proprietary interfaces! They will only give you grief. E-bay09.11.17 / General / Author: Robbert de Groot / Comments: (3) Finally getting rid of some stuff. Getting rid of some CDs and DVDs mainly. Unfortunately, I still have too much stuff and somewhat running out of room… I think I might have a problem. E-bay can be a bit of a pain to. 22 items up for sale. Over 2 hours to list them all… Ugh. Ah vacation…09.11.16 / General / Author: Robbert de Groot / Comments: (4) It is nice being able to sleep in on a Monday. Taking my remaining two weeks off because of some construction being done at the office. I do not want to be there when they do that. I was thinking of taking two weeks sometime this month or early next month anyway. I have to use days up. Well, I do not have to but I want to. I fancied the idea of going to Tokyo or Hawaii but then, I have recently been buying a lot of comics due to a shop closing up, and some other things from amazon.ca, I think I have spent enough this year. Plus, the stack of books are looking sheepishly at me, begging to be read. Not only that, I was thinking of replacing the shelves some time with something that will more efficiently store the books I have. Currently I have quite a bit of Niklas shelves from IKEA. They are nice and all but they really do not efficiently hold my collection. And I’m running out of room… So I was thinking on designing my own shelves and have them made or piece it together myself with stuff from 8020.net. I am still playing with the ideas so far. The last project, the TV and entertainment stand turned out rather nice and matches the speaker system I have. It was pricy though but it will last a long time. Jabez made one solid piece of furniture out of my rather simple looking Corel Draw drawing. I also want to get going on some personal projects that I keep putting off. I hope these two weeks will get me a good start on one or two of them. Which reminds me, I should really install a bug tracker. Maybe over kill for a one man shop but it is something that has annoyed me for a bit. I have too many pieces of paper lying around the desk making it look cluttered. (Update: bug/issue tracker was rather painless. BlueBug is a simple solution but I am giving it a try to see if it will be good enough. I do not really need anything fancy. I just need something that is accessible from anywhere. The pieces of paper tend to work really well until I need them from somewhere else other than my desk.) Also, thanks Mike! That e-mail Wordpress plugin worked like a charm. E-mail should be functional. |
