Midnight Musings...

You know what? I wonder how many bloggers keep a diary with their intimate thoughts separate from their actual blogs?
I know I do. (Well now anyway, I didn't just a year or so ago)

There are some things that as a person you need to write down but which no-one else needs to see or read, and if they do they had better be ready for the consequences of knowledge. With great insight can come great pain, although also great love and joy.
But the pain is what you have to be worried about.
What is private is so for a reason, it isn't anyone's business to snoop while the person is still alive.

Notice I said still alive. It is my personal belief that the truth is more sacred than most anything else, that knowledge triumphs over secrecy.
That even the most shameful or lustful individual should not be frowned upon for their actions, or more accurately that they should be able to record their thoughts and that shouldn't have to be destroyed because society is too immature to handle them and treats the individual with less respect or even with humiliation. As if society itself is perfect, the perverted thing.

I believe that most people write in their diary because it eases their conscious and relieves their soul, but also because deep down somewhere they want others to know one day. They want to be honest.
I'm going to be overly broad here and claim that no-one really wants to hide their true thoughts or feelings, to lie and be dishonest to the world.
People want to be accepted for who they are and want to be able to act themselves in the real world.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately in some twisted cases, certain things are frowned upon by society and are thereby suppressed.
People commit suicide because of the bullying and oppression they face because of who they are, it is wrong and very uncivilized.
We are not advanced as a society, as a race, not yet.
The way we treat our fellow men is too savage, we are too primal, too sexual and driven by impulse and desire, and we don't rely on logic and reason enough.
Although I will say that ask anyone worth their salt and they will tell you that a truly advanced civilization relies not only on logic, knowledge, and reason, but also on emotions, because emotions are what ties us together as humans and is what gives meaning to so many trivial things such as spending time with your family.
Pure logic would say time spent doing one thing is better spent doing something more valuable, but emotions say that family is the most valuable thing of all and reinforces this concept with the sad knowledge that someday your family will depart from this world and leave you alone.

Our emotions allow empathy, which I believe is a characteristic of a higher society than the one that we now have.
(not to sound snobby or idealistic or to put-down our society, which I am fond of even though I am so critical of it.)
(I am just critical of most things though, as I am an idealist and a perfectionist in some sense of the word, and I thus like to theorize about areas of improvement.)

My personal diary may not be life-destroying material, but the concept I am trying to get across here is that the more personal and secret the information within is, the more unorthodox or counter to the beliefs and experiences and customs of those close to you, the higher the risk of it estranging them from you should they find it.
(or so I would suppose)

I just feel worried that if anyone finds my diary in the future, perhaps after my death I'd say, they would misinterpret what I meant to say in my flustered and awkward confusion, in my terrible attempts to explain what I think, mean, feel, and do.
I am all too well aware that many things I write in my diary come off differently in writing than they do in the context of my recollection and the framework of the environment I am in when I write the entry.
And since I don't write every single day, as I don't have the time, the holes in the telling of my story make it nigh impossible for a reader to ever fully grasp the meaning of what I was trying to get at.
(or to grasp it accurately I should say.)

But the truth is that all I can do is what I am doing.
There is little I can do other than change my writing style, try to write more often, or to explain better or more or go into more detail in my entries.
All of which sounds nice but which are very hard to do.
(Yes adding more details is hard because it is boring and it is hard to know which ones you should include and which you shouldn't. Should I mention every single trivial thing I do each day?
Will that matter in the future when I or someone else reads my diary?
Yes because hong kong is unique, yes because it can take you into the context of my life and what it was like for me, no because it is boring and no-one wants to read that kind of long drawly crap, or no because it is unnecessary and unimportant and does not convey what is important.

As you can see, there is a lot I consider each time I write, and this process of overthinking things should likely have some noticeable impact on my writing style if I acknowledge it, or perhaps even subconsciously.
(writing style in my diary btw)

Anyway, I am losing my train of thought easily now that it is getting to be so late.
Thank you for reading!! ^u^!!
I hope I didn't bore you or make too many typos lol.

I'll update again soon! :P

Sincerely,

~James Dodon
(12.29.12, 12:05 A.M.)

Programming Midterm

Hello There!


It’s been forever hasn’t it?

I’ve been working on a ton of various projects, all of which have been stalled due to midterms and schoolwork @~@

But great news, I have been accepted to college! =D
And I have a 2 week break in two days!! YAYY!! xD
Means studying, blogging, coding, and everything else I have been itching to do

Anyway, now to discuss the various midterms that I have had…

The only one I feel like discussing is Programming, since I worked on it like all day today and yesterday @o@!
It took so long, I almost got a headache! Lol
(and I am a tech-man, so headaches are rare and far-between)

Here it is! =P

It took forever to code! I had to figure out how to animate the sprites for pickachu, how to do messages for buying products, how to do an inventory, and how to do boundaries all on my own!! Which means this was the most fun and challenging project yet!! xD

Here is the shop screen I designed.
As you can see, the prices are beneath the items and they each have a letter associated with them for interacting with the old man and purchasing items.
After you purchase some items they will appear in your inventory:

 

As pictured above!

You will see the amount of money you have left is next to the rupee symbol, and the items you have purchased will be in the upper corner of the screen! =D
Each item has a number below it that tells you how many of it you have purchased and have in your inventory! :D
(Although, each inventory spot is hardcoded to an item, so they don’t move up spaces if you don’t buy a specific item. All the possible items in this script are pictured above)

There is also a hidden screen for the credits
(I have blurred out my personal information on purpose)

 

 

 

Various other photos:

As you can see, I named the store “Dungeons Warehouse” xD
And it is borrow heavily from The Legend of Zelda and other things. (mario)
Speaking of which, I have the desire to play Ocarina of Time, but I am too tired for that kind of focused game-play.

Anyway, that was just a quick update!! :D
I guess I could post snippets of the convoluted code next time, so you can see the horrors and the crazy logic that went into coding this crazy thing! xD
After all that time I spent and all it does is allow you to buy things and has them show up in your inventory, it’s quite shocking really.
Took sooo much coding to get the dialogue and interaction with the old man to work, so that you could talk to him and buy items that way.
It would have been sooo much simpler to have used a mousePressed type of setup, but if I had then it would have not been rpg like. *shrug*

I should make one like those classic text games!! :)
That would be awesome!!
And at certain parts you are able to control a character and then do some task vital to the game, and then you go back to only text.. O_o
Eery, interesting… I like it!! ^u^
(Like text text text… you are in a room in a house and lights flicker and move across the room… eery sounds are playing… you feel chills down your spine… you know you need to move and move fast… you need to get out of this room… before it is too late!!)

OoO!! Fun fun fun!! xD
I might work on an epic text adventure game over the break, who knows?
I probably won’t though, because I’ll be too busy doing other things *shrug*

Oh well, I think I’ve rambled on long enough!!!
That’s enough for now!

I’ll update again soon!! (since I have time now that I have a break XD)

Thanks for reading!! ^o^

Sincerely,

~James Dodon