Warren Shea - World of Warren

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Good weekend…

Sunday, March 20th, 2011 at 11:39 pm

Friday’s basketball game was fun, Raptors won and we got free pizza. Score.

Regarding Project Y:
I just finished up after starting today at 7pm. I said I was gonna work on it all weekend but I ended up finishing the bulk of it on Friday in like, 4 hours. It’s mostly done except this paging system that I have to do manually….THAT…should be interesting. Thinking over how to dev it in my head already…my “what to think about as I try to sleep” thinking. Doing that also tends to lead to a dream where I’ve solved the problem in my dream, using completely unrealistic methods that do not apply to real world logic. It’s a nice feeling to wake up and try to remember what dream Warren did or how dream Warren accomplished these goals that still trouble me. It’s a rare feeling when I wake up to those kinda dreams…I kind of relish them.

Anyways, I shoulda spent more time this weekend on Project 3. I’ll need to work late the next few days to catch that up.

My weekend was spent mostly playing Hard Corps: Uprising on the PS3 (already released on the XBOX a while ago). It’s basically Contra. 2D 3rd person side-scrolling shooter with weapon power ups. It’s hard. But not impossible. Takes practice to play well and a lot of practice to beat the regular game. I’m not sure if I have the time to practice and be good enough for that. Also, you need a good partner…which, unfortunately, I don’t have. I can only think of one person off the top of my head who’s good enough at these type of games to play w/ me and he’s out of the country…I tried playing online with someone of equal skill but while it didn’t lag for him (he hosted the game), it lagged for me….caused some unnecessary deaths. Next time, I’ll host the game.

Anyways…I really gotta work my ass off again this week. Sorta looking forward to it though…I’ve really been listening to my music a lot lately….and I’ve really been enjoying it and feeling the words. Like, you can listen to a song a hundred times but you might not get it, you listen to the chorus, the tune…but you only know the words well, not perfect. When you really…understand them all….it’s more interesting. Songs I’ve liked no longer seem to be relevant to my tastes, the opposite is true as well. Also, songs that didn’t really apply to me in my past are more relevant now. Y’know? Just….listening to old stuff but it seems new again. I love it.

Glad to say that my life is finally getting the peace that it had before, months ago. The doctor appointments are less frequent, issues are generally more or less resolved. Some other…life problems seem to be resolved for the moment as well. Everything that was giving me stress, making my blood boil, bothering me….it all seems to be gone. My life is just the way I like it: drama that exists only in my head and created by me. Topic of another post…but I enjoy drama when it’s created by myself and within my control. And I enjoy getting rid of drama that’s out of my control…but I don’t enjoy that kind of drama. Does that make sense? Basically, when my life is going really well, I create my own problems….for fun. And life is going well right now….so I wonder what I’ll come up with :D

I felt like I hadn’t blogged in days and days…but it’s only been 3. I just wanted to write a bit I guess….

Off to bed, need to wake up early tomorrow :(

Posted in All Posts, Daily Randomness, My Life | No Comments »

<in Orcish> Werk Werk!

Friday, March 18th, 2011 at 1:48 am

So the senior developer that works with me has gone on vacation this week so I’m helping out with 3 of his tasks.

And while the timelines are tight (one week) and as of today (Thursday), I’ve only fully completed 1 of them, I gotta say that I’m having more fun working than I have in months. I can’t disclose the nature of the projects for obvious reasons…but 2 of the 3 of them involve learning something new or building something interesting. And the third project, the one that doesn’t involve learning something new…likely won’t get done by the end of this week :D

Anyways, one of them, let’s call it Project X, involves
1. Developing in a better language than I’m used to.
2. Developing on a different browser and platform.
It’s just…different. Challenging but within my reach.
The best part is that I can apply the things I’ve learned in Project X to warrenshea.com. So I may do that in the near future. Again, I can’t tell you what I’m doing yet….be patient, I’ll reveal it in a matter of time.

So on Sunday-Monday, I worked from 2am-6am. That was brutal and pretty much messed up my day. Good thing for Overtime Pay :) Well, technically I slept from 6am-noon so I missed a few hours in the morning. But ah well, I made it up that night (had to do some testing from 5pm-7pm).
Tuesday – Worked from 9:30am-10:30pm on Project X (13 hours)
Wednesday – Worked from 9:30am-Midnight on Project X (15.5 hours)
Thursday – Worked from 9:30am-4:30pm on Project X, went to Richmond Hill to have dinner with my family (parents, niece, nephew, bro, etc.), came back, worked AND FINISHED Project X! WAHOO!
Friday (tomorrow) – Work on Project Y from 9:30am-5pm, go to a basketball game (Raptors VS Wizards), maybe go to a birthday dinner after, and then come home and hopefully work on Project Y
Saturday – Possible Birthday party (another one), possible Toronto Comicon. If I don’t do that, I’ll be working on Project Y.
Sunday – Project Y.

So Project Y involves (from a technical standpoint)
Taking a Querystring from the URL
Loading a server generated XML via a JSP (see next point) but using the Querystring from the URL (thus, using AJAX to generate the XML as it needs to be after page load)
The JSP loads the XML from a cross-domain XML (this must be done so that my page can access the XML and prevent the cross-domain issue)
Anyways, eventually I end up with the XML, unique to the querystring.
I parse it, output the content to the page. I need to create a paging system manually (I’m using only HTML and JavaScript here, no server side languages).
And done!

Well, as I wrote that out, it doesn’t seem hard at all. Time consuming, but fun. Not doing standard HTML/CSS/JavaScript….using AJAX, XML, Querystrings (in JavaScript)…it’s interesting.

Anyways, that’s Project Y. Sounds easy, the (not hardest but) time consuming part will be outputting the XML into the page…I did the same thing here: [Redacted] a couple years ago…that was fun. God, there’s SO MUCH JAVASCRIPT on that page. browserDetection functions because I didn’t know jQuery at the time. JavaScript AJAX calls because I didn’t know jQuery at the time. Multiple XMLs, JSON….I had months to do that thing. Project Y has 3 days. So I’m gonna work my arse off partly because of the responsibility I feel that I need to deliver to the senior developer, but mostly because I simply can’t wait to do this. Not sure how much I’ll learn but it certainly sounds fun. 2 days to do it is pretty tight, especially considering it’s the weekend and I might do other stuff on Saturday….but I’m always up for a developing challenge.

I swear, if I didn’t have to work the next day, I would have pulled all nighters doing what I was doing this week. I loved it so much. Coding all night, just me, my music, my text editor and my focused, enthusiastic, eager mind. It’s not everyday I’m so excited to do work after all…I may as well milk it.

Anyways, off to bed. Based on the amount of sleep I’m gonna get tonight…I predict being very tired for the Raptor game tomorrow. Stupid me. Seriously.

Posted in All Posts, Browsers, CSS, Daily Randomness, Development, Family, JavaScript / Java Frameworks, My Life, New Technologies, Web Developer, Work, XHTML | No Comments »

Singing Contest

Wednesday, March 16th, 2011 at 9:46 pm

I recently tweeted:

No1 at the office means I can sing aloud w/o fear of sounding terrible, which I most certainly do. If the monitors could shatter, they would

I love to sing. But I’m also quite bad at it. Not terribad, but bad.

Anyways, my friends in highschool and I used to have an N’CHYNK group (…like N’SYNC…but chinese). Like, it wasn’t an “official” group, we never officially preformed, but there were 6 or 7 guys who enjoyed singing occasionally.

Anyways, I lived with 3 of them in UWaterloo first or second year. One time, we had our old highschool friends come visit from Toronto and we were kinda bored and trash talking each other, and decided to have a singing contest.

It was best of 3 songs, me VS my friend. I chose a song, he chose a song, and the judges chose a song…I lost 1-2 and while I don’t remember what songs I lost to, the one I won to was:

Don’t Wanna Lose You Now – Backstreet Boys

As I’m singing to myself, quietly, I was just reminded of this moment and thought I’d write about it.

On another note, the song above has always been a favorite of mine. It’s probably my favorite non-single from the good ol’ pop days.

/back to work but might write more tonight and this wasn’t my intended post for today…

Posted in All Posts, Friends, Music, My Life, UWaterloo | 4 Comments »

Accomplishments #5.5 – Mid March 2011 Edition

Tuesday, March 15th, 2011 at 11:59 pm

Shows / Movies
127 Hours – Done
ReBoot (entire series) – In Progress
Clannad (entire series) – In Progress
King’s Speech – To Watch
The Kids Are All Right – To Watch
The Fighter – To Watch
True Grit – To Watch
Winter’s Bone – To Watch

Books & Manga
Wicked (Novel) – To Read
Son of a Watch (Novel) – To Read

warrenshea.com
Finish my Social Network post – To Do

Gaming
Finish Super Mario Bros. (Wii) – Complete!
Finish Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64) – slowly in progress

Web Development and Design
Start ASP.NET (4.0!) book – To Do
Start my HTML5 book maybe? – To Do

Other
Learn my Mac OS – in progress

Notes
Hmmmmmmmmmm………what have I been doing all month other than Mario? I guess I played that from the 5th to the 12th…so that’s 8/15 days.
I played a little DCUOnline, a little WoW (very very casually….like, 3 hours in the last 2 weeks), not much DOTA….I put stickers on Predaking one night…
Well. Honestly. I can’t think of anything. The last 2 weeks have been 1/2 games, 1/2 ????

End of month is looking rough, I think the next 2 weeks are the busiest work weeks I’ve had in like, 6 months. So while I want to say I’ll accomplish a lot, I don’t know if I will. On the plus side, I’m learning some new web things at work. I’m been thinking about my epic site database and how I want to do things…but I don’t know if I’ll start coding in April….even though I said I would…it doesn’t look like I’ll be ready enough.

I got a high contrast ultrasound done today as my original ultrasound and MRI proved inconclusive tests. The doctor poked me with a needle to inject contrast stuff into my blood…but couldn’t get a vein, so he had to take it out. It hurt. And there was a lot of blood. Good times. :S And then he tried again, in the same spot..and it worked….but I still wasn’t happy. I think they figured out, finally, what I have and it looks….non-harmful. Which is good, very good news. I see a specialist in early April so I’ll see what that guy says and confirm. Also, I got my (original) MRI appointment, the one I would have gotten if not for the other, rush, 6 day one. My MRI appointment is June 22, 2011. Sweet, only 4 months later! That really woulda come in handy /sarcasm.

Also, I have a DVD with my MRI on it. It freaks me out. There is no way that the inside of me looks so much like Space, the Final Frontier. Seriously tho, I looked at the MRI for a bit but after a while, I just couldn’t look at it anymore. It’s like looking at myself….if I had X-Ray vision. But not the X-Ray vision that can be used in the perverted way, it’s the X-Ray vision used in the disturbing “I wanna see your insidesssss” way. *shudder*

I thought of a lot of things to do and write about today, while I was working into the night…but alas, my post for the 15th is taken already. And I don’t think I’ll blog right after this as I have more work to do. Q_Q

Posted in Accomplishments (monthly), All Posts | No Comments »

Super Mario Bros. Wii – Review(?)

Sunday, March 13th, 2011 at 12:59 am

I started playing Super Mario Bros. Wii, by myself and seriously, on Saturday March 5. I started from the beginning and went through all the levels, but most importantly, getting all the 3 special coins per level. Some were pretty tricky. Anyways, originally I was only going to play a little by little…but I kept making such good progress, I figure why stagger myself. Rather get it completed and move on to something else (Zelda). Anyways, here’s a run down of what I accomplished each day:

Sunday: Worlds 1 & 2
Monday: World 3
Tuesday: World 4
Wednesday: World 5
Thursday: World 6
Friday: None
Saturday: World 7, 8, and 9

All in all, it’s a pretty easy game. Easier, imo, than Super Mario World (SNES) in terms of getting everything. For example, in Super Mario World, getting everything would be doing all x96 levels. Just the same, in this game, there are 9 worlds that must be completed but to get everything, you need the 3 special coins per level. But the levels are easier. I still think Super Mario World’s Tubular and Super Mario World’s Awesome are still harder almost than every level in Super Mario Bros. Wii….with the possible exception of 9-7, in which I literally spent more than an hour on (for 1 level!!! >:( ). I could have finished World 1 in the time it took me to do 9-7. Even then, to get all 3 special coins, I had to use 2 players to kind of hack the last coin. Oh well, after an hour, I just wanted to get it done (as I was 4-special coins away from having all of them). In terms of actual levels, Mario 3 was probably harder than this….

I can’t say much about Mario 64 or the GameCube Marios (like Mario: Water Gun Fun Time). Though Mario 64 would compare more to Mario Galaxy than Super Mario Bros Wii.

Anyways, this is what the final game looked like.

5 Stars = Everything.
I had accumulated around 99 lives at the beginning of World 3 and never dipped below 90 from that point on. Though to be fair, after I beat World 8 and unlocked World 9 (and could save at any time), if I’d ever lose too many lives, I’d just restart the game w/o saving, restoring me to a good save.

Playing Super Mario Bros. Wii was a lot like the (spectacular!) iPhone game: Cut the Rope, in which….it was easy to pass the level…but to really beat everything, you needed 3 stars to each level. Occasionally with Cut the Rope, I’d skip a level that was hard, only to come back to it. With Mario though, I never went to the next level without getting 3-coins…mostly just for organizational and course familiarity purposes.

Anyways, that game is DONE. I don’t plan on touching it again! It’s nice to complete a game :D In such a short time too.

Now – Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I noticed that they will be releasing a Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the Nintendo 3DS. I may purchase the 3DS for that game…so I can see how it will play with better visuals and possibly better sound/music. Also, it’s quite frustrating playing Zelda: OoT on a Wii Classic controller, knowing that it’s meant for the N64. It’ll be nice to play the game on 3DS and play it on a console/handheld that it was meant to be played on. I’m interested to see how they handle swapping weapons and using them.

But yeah, my goal now is to finish Zelda: OoT on the Wii BEFORE the 3DS version comes out. So now, I’ve given myself a bit of a hard due date. I doubt it’s needed though…I’m playing the Wii a lot lately so it’s not just collecting dust anymore. I just need to keep that up :D

Posted in All Posts, Daily Randomness, Games, Games, My Life, Reviews | No Comments »