Saturday 30 August 2008

Lalala...

Yesterday was the Hari Penghayatan Hari Kemerdekaan in SMKTS. I quitted the marching team because I was too lazy to learn a new formation. Due to unforeseen circumstances, the old formation had to be scrapped. But, I was amazed at the success of the team in learning a new formation in just like, 1 day!! Unfortunately, scouts didn't win because of that PBSM. Sigh...

Anyway, I'm replaying Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories (the "remake" version for PS2) in Proud mode, ie, the hardest mode, I think. I know, I know, I shouldn't be playing since the 2nd trial is coming, but then, I don't wanna leave my disc to collect dust in the shelf. I just got back my disc after about 10-12 months of separation. I love Kingdom Hearts. I missed it so much when my sister lent my disc to her friend.

I shall now go back to studying. Must finish sejarah this week!!!

Wednesday 27 August 2008

Ray tracing defined

For some of you guys who still don't quite get the concept of ray-tracing, it's basically a rendering technique, ie, a way to draw stuff onto your screen.

The good thing about ray-tracing is that it produces photo-realistic images, but requires a lot of computation. So, it's not suitable for games, since it'll lower down the frame rate, thus causing jerky video. However, there are some people out there that are willing to tackle this problem, for example, the OpenRT project. Even so, the computer nowadays aren't quite fast enough to do real-time ray tracing.

But what is ray-tracing, really? Is it some kind of hard-to-understand rocket science? No. Actually, it's all mathematics. Before you actually get started with ray-tracing, you should know what are:
  • Vectors
  • the 3D Cartesian Plane
  • Linear, Quadratic and higher degree equations
  • your basic operations, +, -, x, /, and all those stuff
Actually, you need to know a couple more than those listed above. you got to know how to program as well. If not, how are you supposed to program a ray-tracer? But don't let the list of requirements intimidate you. If you want to learn about ray-tracing as well, you should get started by now. I've been programming for 3 years already, so I could say I'm more of an intermediate programmer now. Even so, I still need to refer to tutorials. It has already became a passion, so it's easy for me to follow. And for the maths? Well, I've been learning quite "advanced" maths since standard 5, and I've got experience with Vectors and Algebra already, so it shouldn't be much of a problem. Well, I'm not trying to brag or anything.

I've also got exposed to Vectors when learning how to make 3D games. But anyway, if you wanna start learning about ray tracing and programming, it's never too late.

So, let's get back to the main topic, what's ray tracing actually? Ray tracing, as the name implies, is tracing the light rays that enters our eyes, in this case, the camera that is viewing the virtual world. In the real world, we see things because light reflects off the objects around us and enters our eyes.

In ray tracing, normally, we trace the light rays backwards, ie, from the camera, back to the light source. And since light can be refracted and reflected, ray tracing is a good way to create stunning effects by using the properties of light that we all know. Now, how does this work?

Imagine there is a viewpoint (the camera, or the eye) at one side, and a screen in front of it. The resulting image will be projected onto that screen. First, a ray is fired from the viewpoint to one of the pixels on the screen. This ray will keep going straight until it intersects with an object in the virtual world. The colour at the point of intersection is then returned and placed at that pixel. For more complicated ray tracing, if reflection and refraction is incorporated, then more rays are fired from the point of intersection to other parts of the virtual world. The colour of the pixel of the screen that has the ray fired through it will then be calculated. After all that, it'll move on to the next pixel, and so on, and so on. I know it sounds complicated, so it's best describe with pictures. Unfortunately, I'm not a good artist, so you've got to google it up.

And that's about ray tracing.
-----------------------------------------
Now, let's get on to what happened today. Today, I went marching. It's actually for Hari Kemerdekaan. I know, I'm not really a marcher, but then, I just wanna at least participate in something for scouts, since I rarely do so. I actually find it a little fun. Odd, right? But then, I got to work on my arm swing. It seems that my arm is a little bent while swinging. So, that's it!!

Monday 25 August 2008

Unsuccessul Ray tracer

Yeah, so I tried programming a ray tracer. Even after trying my best to understand all the complicated mathematics and the concept of ray tracing, it didn't turn up too well. But, but, at least I got something.
Actually, the blue shading is quite smooth. It's just that, when I saved it onto the computer, it's like that, with the visible "seams". I kinda like it. I thought of rewriting the whole program. I wanna at least make something useful.

Sunday 24 August 2008

Change of interest....

What I'm interested always changes after a few days. Now, I feel kinda lazy to continue with Mr Ball In Space and decided to leave it there for the time being. This is not the first time this is happening. A lot of times I got to persuade myself to finish up a project before I find something else interesting. Now that I've looked into computer graphics again, I wanna play with ray tracing.

What's ray tracing? Well, according to Wikipedia:
In computer graphics, ray tracing is a technique for generating an image by tracing the path of light through pixels in an image plane. The technique is capable of producing a very high degree of photorealism; usually higher than that of typical scanline rendering methods, but at a greater computational cost.
It's so interesting that it made me wanna try it out. So, yeah, I totally forgotten about my game now, after creating 1+MB of game data already. Sigh...

Here's an example of a picture generated from a ray tracer:


(Images from Wikipedia)

It looks incredibly real right? That's the beauty of ray tracing. The thing is, ray tracing is all about maths. 3D mathematics is incredibly confusing. It's not like your usual 2D Cartesian Plane where you use to plot points and draw a graph. It has 3 axes, namely, x, y and z axis. The addition of a new axis makes it hard to draw it out on paper, since a paper is 2D. So, I'll have to rely on my imagination and visualization. I'll get into the maths later, right now my TV Show Notifier says I got Hannah Montana on tele!! Bye!

Back from my cousin's house!!

I went to sleepover in my cousin's house, like what I've always done whenever there's a long holiday, 3 days ago. I just only came back. My usual "agenda" everyday at his house is:

Wake up at 7am
Turn on the computer
Play games
Sleep at 11pm

I'm at the computer for 1 whole day. The reason I woke up so early in the morning is so that I got more time to have fun. Yeah, my cousin and I were the 2nd ones to be awake. The first being the maid.

Yeah, so what we did the past 3 days? I installed counter strike for my cousin. Since this is the first time I'm playing counter strike, I kinda suck at it. I always die whenever there's an enemy in front of me. Lol!! Then I found out, I have a talent at using sniper rifles!! The sniper rifles were cool, and my favourite type of gun!! A lot of time I out-scored my cousin, who knows how to play CS, just because of that gun!!

Anyway, CS was fun, and I loved it! Later today, I'm going to Yippee Cup in SS2, wherever that is. I've never been there. According to mt friend, it's situated at the same row as the hanging duck. Hmm...

I'm going there to attend a meeting. What meeting? COH and PLC meeting. Yeah, so that's all.

===============================

About my game, remember what I said in the last post? I said that I want to imitate Tales of the Abyss' Indignation Hi-ougi, but unfortunately, it's very dumb-looking. To me, the magical glyphs looked okay, but the OMG-SO-CACAT lightning is ruining the whole thing. The best magical attack in the game got its charm ruined because of a very ugly looking lightning. I wanted to draw the lightning, but it's too much work!

Here's the demo:




Oh, oh, Rhythmic Gymnastics is on now!! I'm gonna go watch!! See ya

Wednesday 20 August 2008

Yesh!! Finished first level!!

I've finally finished the first level of Mr Ball In Space. I know, the name of the game is a little weird but what can I do? That's the first thing that popped out in my mind. I've also finished all those HP, MP blah stuff. I'm planning to make a super-power attack for Mr Ball. And I also thought of incorporating Indignation from Tales of the Abyss into the game. The thing is, I've got to draw all the lightning and all the magical glyphs. Here's the Tales of The Abyss' Indignation Hi-Ougi!!



But, that won't be the only super, special attack that Mr Ball will have. I'm thinking of more stuff. And for the enemies? I thought of an enemy which throws everyday objects at you. Hmm... well, anyway, I should start making Indignation. It's so freaking cool!!!

Monday 18 August 2008

Ooh, a sequel??

Okay, before I go on to the subject of this post, just wanna say a little bit about what happened last Saturday.

I went to the Curve with Shannen, Nicole and Janie. First, we went there to have lunch at Kenny Rodgers. Learnt a lesson. What lesson? You should not order too much for yourself. I ate 1 plate of Tangy Chicken Spaghetti, 1 bowl of Country-Style Soup (or commonly known as Mushroom soup) and drank 1 cup of Iced Blended Chocolate. That's quite a lot for me. I didn't expect it to be that much. It looked smaller in size in the menu. Lol!!

After that, we went to look around the place. Mostly it's all girls stuff and erm... there's vegetable pens!! Anyway, we walked all the way to the other side, and back. When Nicole and Janie were busy browsing for a T-shirt, Shannen and I went to Starbucks to drink some coffee. Aah, coffee. I drank a cup of Latte and Shannen drank her Caramel Frappucino. Well, I think that's how you spell it. Man, Shannen's drink is very sweet! Eww!! Sorry, Shannen, I just hat incredibly sweet coffees!!

So, after that, we all went to watch The Mummy: Tomb of the.... (can't remember the title). I kinda enjoyed it while the others laughed during the supposed-to-be-sad scenes. Kinda amusing.

-----------------------
Now, back to what I'm supposed to post. I have planned to make a sequel for Mr Ball Arena long time ago, but then the trials came and laziness made me scrapped it. But now, I'm making the sequel for BeeCatzArena, but taking off the Cat and placing in Mr Ball. It's gonna be fun. I've thought about it and decided to name it Mr Ball In Space for no apparent reason. I guess, maybe, I thought of putting Mr Ball into space. Hmm... ball in space... that sounds so wrong in so many ways.

Well anyway, if you are wondering what's BeeCatzArena, here's the video I posted up last month:

Friday 15 August 2008

TV Show Notifier done!!

Yay!! I finally finished coding my very own TV Show Notifier, which will alert me whenever my favourite tv programs are shown on TV. Well, I think there are about one or two bugs in the program which I haven't really found out yet. Even so, it works like a charm. Here's some screen shot.This is the screen where you edit the list of TV Shows that you love to watch. As you can see, for the show that airs everyday, I've got to place it in the list 7 times. I'm gonna go over my code later and make it better at managing TV show times.

This is the "alert box". Whenever the show starts, it'll show this blue box!!

Alright, enough of my program, now, let's focus on something more serious:

Oops! I farted again!! No, I didn't really fart. It's just a parody of Britney Spears Oops I did it again!! It's so freaking amusing!!

I still remember I used to like this song last time, then few days ago, I searched it up in youtube and got this:



Oh oh, and here's the lyrics:
Oh no
Ah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

I think I farted again, I made people leave,
Offended my fans.
Oh baby, I just gave it a push,
I didnt know it was that serious,
I could knock down wild horses,
That smell's so fragrant to me.

Oh baby, baby
Oops, Im breaking some wind,
I ripped a big fart, I feel so ashamed,
Oh baby, baby,
Please dont think Im a hog, I swear its the dog,
I've got that flatulence.

"Britney- before you go on stage there's somthing I want you to have"
"Oh... Its beautiful! But wait a minute, isnt this...?"
"Yes. Yes it is. Gas-x-n-vino. (?) I went to the pharmacy to get it for you."
"Oh, you shouldnt have!"
"I had no choice, baby!"

Oops I farted again, my cheeks ripped apart,
There's no-one to blame, oh baby,
Oops, there's a sulpherious gas escaping my ass,
I've got that flatulence.
(Loud farting noise)
Oops..

Thursday 14 August 2008

The trial is over!!!

As you can see, I'm really happy. The trial is over. Dang!! What a stressful trial!! Okay, let's talk about what I'm doing now.

Before that, I shall introduce some KH terminologies.

Pengenalpastian Masalah
My sister sometimes forgets about House on AXN every Monday, 10pm. And she sometimes asks me to remind her about that show, since she likes that show. And for me, I just don't wanna forget about MythBusters on Discovery every Thursday 10pm.

Pencetusan Idea
I have no idea how my idea of a TV Show Notifier came out. Anyway...

Blah, Blah, Blah... Pembinaan Projek
Yeah, so after planning out my project, which I didn't, hence the "Blah, Blah, Blah", I started developing this TV Show Notifier. I made it once last time, but then wanna make something better. It's coded entirely in C#. It probably won't be very very user-friendly, but as long as I can use it, it'll be okay

Blah some more
Actually, my project doesn't really follow the carta aliran for reka bentuk. So I'm skipping everything!! Haha

I think I can finish my project by tonight, since it's actually quite simple. It works like this:

-You provide it with all your favourite TV shows an the time they show up on the tele.
-Then, every second, the program compares the current time on your computer with the specified time of the TV Shows. If any of the TV show falls on that time, it'll alert you.

So, the drawback is, if your computer's clock isn't accurate, then the whole program won't be accurate as well. Another drawback is probably lagging, but it won't be that serious. Why lag? Because, let's say you have a thousand TV Shows in the list, every second, the program got to compare your computer's time to 1000 TV show times. Everytime it compares, it had to compare the hours, minutes and seconds. Three things to compare, so thats like comparing 3000 times. It'll probably be worse if there are like a lot of TV Shows, but maybe like 10 to 100, it won't be that noticable.

Oh, I've got MythBusters now. See ya!!

Monday 11 August 2008

BM is finally over

BM is actually easier than I expected. All that panicking is for nothing!! The teachers found out that the questions have been leaked, so they changed the questions, and I answered all of them!!! Woohoo!!! I just hope none of my essays aren't terpesong.

After the test, I got too much free time, so I simply wrote a crappy poem, which goes like this:

Wajah guru sangat manis,
Tiba-tiba dapat barah;
Karangan panjang sudah ditulis,
Tangan kanan sudah patah.

Tangan kanan sudah patah,
Patah juga kaki kaku;
Nanti dilanda banjir darah,
Darah siapa? Darah aku.

Oh, another poem, written after Sejarah Test:

A bundle of papers,
"You're gonna fail," it says
Sitting there on my desk
taunting at my face

Looking at the papers,
"Oh my!" was what I thought,
Shaded the red ovals,
with the pencil I brought.

I finished the paper
with so much time to spare
so to let time pass by,
build a castle in the air.

I'm running and jumping
along the sandy shore,
a rock stood before me
and down I go to the floor.

"The test wasn't so bad,"
to myself I said,
Paper 2 would be harder
the paper that I hate.

The bell finally sang
it's annoying little song,
The paper's finally gone
after a wait so long.

But it wasn't over
according to the list,
There are still somemore,
waiting to exist



Now, like a lot of the literature we've studied in school, it comes out in the test papers right? So, i'm just gonna make up some dumb questions about the two poems.

The first poem:

1) Karangan apa yang dikaitkan dalam pantun tersebut?

2) Pada pendapat anda, apakah yang menyebabkan banjir darah?

And the second poem:

1) The persona was taunted by who?

2) What do the red oval refer to?

3) Why did the persona built a castle in the air?

4) Explain scientifically how can air provide support to the castle?

5) Did you answer question 4? I certainly hope not. By the way, skip this question. It's not even a question at all.

6) What happened in the persona's daydream?

The bell finally sang
it's annoying little song
7) How can electromagnetism relate to these lines?

So, answer these questions, if you dare!!

If you get to answer everything correctly, I might give you something. Just joking

Sunday 10 August 2008

Oh no!! BM tomorrow!!

I'm freaking scared of BM. I've never been so terrified by BM. I think this fear started since last year, after I got a D for it. Well, the teacher sympathized me and gave me a C. I cried, eventhough it wasn't a failure. It's just that I was scared to tell my parents. I just don't want to be scolded. In the end, it wasn't as I expected. They just say "Try harder next time, Bee". Then in my heart, I was like "That's it? You're not gonna lecture me? Yay!!". But even so, I'm actually still quite sad. Never in my life I got a D, then changed to C.

I'm not only scared of Bahagian B for BM 2 now, Bahagian D is even worse. Why? First of all, it might be:
  1. Perbandingan antara novel
  2. Pengajaran
  3. Teknik Plot
For (1), I'm not very prepared. For (2), err... i think i can say okay lah. I'm really focused on (3) since so many people say it's likely to come out. Even one of my friends from Sri Permata says that. This is driving me nuts.

Okay, to calm myself down, I listened to erm... Transcendental Etude No.4 (Mazeppa), and Mary Poppins - Feed the Bird. I posted a video of a guy playing Mazeppa before. Scroll down. Feed the bird is so beautiful, I almost shed my tears. Hear it!! It's very nice:



Awh...

Saturday 9 August 2008

Windows 2000!!

Hmm... okay, what's with Windows 2000? Well, actually, nothing. It's just for fun. Alright, alright. Here:

My desktop is actually incredibly unstable. Most of the time, I suspect my hardware is failing. Now, after the clean install of Windows XP, the graphics driver didn't really crash that much. Well, the last time I remember it crashing was before I started fixing my desktop. However, even after the clean install, with fresh new drivers, the stupid file, win32k.sys always dies and displays the Blue Screen of Death. Most of the time, the bug check code was 0x0000008E, or KERNEL_MODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED. The first parameter after that code was 0xC0000005, which is STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION. What does this all mean leh? According to the microsoft website. This means there was a memory access violation. More googling tells me that me RAM may be faulty. But, I can't really do anything about it right now. Sorry for dumping all the technical jargon at you. You see, whenever I see anything new regarding my desktop, I always try to dive deeper into my desktop to investigate. It's kinda fun at first, but incredibly frustrating.

Now, since I suspect my RAM is faulty, and couldn't do anything about it right now, the of guilt points to Windows XP. Windows XP requires at least 128MB of RAM, which is basically 1/2 of what I have. I thought "hey, that's kinda a lot". And since I have my Windows 2000 disc with me, I re-installed my Windows 2000. Why re-install? I destroyed my previous installation of Windows 2000. And I've learnt a very important lesson: You should never mess with drivers. What I did was, I used the audio driver that is for Windows XP in my Windows 2000. Incompatibility caused my Windows 2000 to die.

So, in the end, my desktop is working better than before. I hope nothing bad will happen after saying that. Lol!

Alright, onto even more serious stuff!!

Percubaan Setara PMR!!

It's just 2 more days!! I'm panicking for BM (like what I said 2 posts earlier). Sigh...

Beijing Olympics 2008 Opening Ceremony was OMG!!

It was so freaking cool!! I loved it!! Especially the torch lighting ceremony. Very original. Instead of just running towards the big cauldron to light it like the past Olympics opening ceremony that I saw, this one includes running, and flying!! OMG!! So cool!! And the big torch has a humongous fuse!! Lol!!

My favourite part of the opening ceremony is err.... Hold on ah, I can tell you my favourite part of the ceremony, if I know how to tell you, that is. Because I don't know what you call those things that move up and down in the middle of the stage. Some rectangular blocks. Anyway, that happened during the long chanting of some Chinese ...err... wait, scrolls? I just don't know what to call this whole thing. So, I'm sorry for providing such a vague explanation.

Apart from that, the fireworks were magnificent. Haha.

Thursday 7 August 2008

Oh shit!! Ujian Setara PMR!!

Alright, it's time to study!! Get yourself off the computer!!

Have you ever face that problem before? You just can't stop playing computer. Yeah, I'm hainv that problem now. So, to make myself study, I study while my computer is loading. Or maybe during the time when I'm installing something or downloading something. Might as well open a book and read while waiting.

I'm just kinda scared for BM, just like in the Mid-Terms. Especially the Bahagian B of Kertas 2. You are given 1 question and you are supposed to write an essay regarding that question. Easy? What is there to be scared of? You see, the Bahagian B is not like Bahagian C, where you are given 5 choices of questions to choose. In Bahagian C, you can pick whichever one that is easy. But for Bahagian B, you are just given 1 question. No matter how hard it is, you've got to write about it. The thing is, I'm just scared I'll go blank for that.

I got 2-4 more chapters to study for Sejarah, and for Geography, still got Form 3 to study. Planning to finish Form 2 by tomorrow. Just 2 more chapters for form 2!!

I'm supposed to finish Sejarah by Monday wan, but then I got too lazy for Sejarah, so I started Geo. I studied the last 2 chapters of Form 3 History yesterday, but I think I got to restudy the last chapter again because there are so many different political parities. I don't really get the story.

What else?? Ah yes, I got a freaking sore throat!! It's so uncomfortable!! Leaving that matter aside, let's talk about the most interesting thing that happened today in school!!

Actually, this whole thing started yesterday, while David, Bryan and I were walking together at the terrace. We were like making up names for Political Parties for 3 Dahlia. It's kinda amusing. So, today, I written down all the parties that we made up, along with Shannen. Then we simply blabbed out some manifestos for those parties. I'm planning to have a "General Election" in the 3 Dahlia class, through the blog lah. Yeah, I know. I just got too much free time!!

Now, to end my post,


My favourite piece from Franz Liszt. Actually, I think this is my #1 favourite piano music so far. I wanna learn how to play it, but, for a noob like me, it's incredibly hard.

Tuesday 5 August 2008

Survived a very hard test!!

Just came back from school. It's 3.30pm now. "Billy, why did you come back so late? Did you get lost on the way back? Do you need a map?" you ask. No, I didn't get lost, fortunately. So, I don't need a map for now. But, the main reason I reached back home late was because I was sitting for the.... you ready for this??:
The University of New South Wales English Test!!

or, as written on the front page of the paper, ICAS, International Competitions and Assessments for Schools. Looks can be deceiving. The pages are printed with beautiful colours. It's really nice. But, obviously, really nice doesn't mean it's really easy. Well, to me, it's incredibly hard, since my vocab is very bad. So, I had to tembak a lot of questions. I just barely finished the paper today. It's a 1-hour paper. I took quite a long time to answer some of the questions, causing me to rush for the last 10 questions. But, I got to say, it was a great experience. At least now I know how it feels like to take a "high-class" type of exam. God, it was freaking hard!!

I'm not a bookworm. I don't even like to read story books. I just don't have that interest. That explains why my vocabulary is so cacated. Sigh... 60 questions.

Monday 4 August 2008

Lat Pau!!

Okay, I know the title sounds very odd. What's Lat Pau?? According to the wonderful, and probably one of my most hated books, the Sejarah Book, Lat Pau is just a good ol' Chinese Newspaper. I don't know why, but saying Lat Pau makes me laugh.

Anyway, the PMR Trial is just next week!! OMG!!! Quite worried about BM. Just like the mid-terms, I'm having a lot of doubts about my BM. Blah!! I must be confident!!!

Ah, yes, I will be sitting for the University of New South Wales English Test tomorrow. Ooh!! Sounds interesting, no? I having a bad feeling about that. My vocab is gonna bring me down leh!!!! Die lorr!!! Billy!! Pull yourself together!!!