wow, It's the end of october already

Wow, it's the end of October already. I got all my monthly sweepstakes done today and yesterday I got all the one entries that ended on October 31 done. I never think I will get everything entered at the end of the month, but I get everything done.

I won two prizes this month. I won a coupon for a package of Hersey's bliss from an instant win. I also won Chaplin 15th anniversary edition on DVD. Not a bad month, because I consider one win a moth to be good enough. I hope I will get a win or two next month.

My sega genesis

I'm getting low on posting ideas so I will write about my sega genesis. I got my sega genesis in the early 1990's. The sega genesis came with sonic the hedge hog and one controller. I wanted a super NES, but got a sega genesis instead probably because the store was out of super NES game consoles and I wanted a new console right away so I got a sega.

I had about 10 plus games. Most of the games were sports games mainly basketball and football. Some of the games I can recall that I had were: mike ditka football, NFL 94, NFL 95, sonic the hedge hog. I also had two or three basketball games which I can' t remember the names of. I had I think one baseball game called tommy lasorda baseball.

I also got two more controllers. One was pretty much the standard controller. The other controller I got was fancy and you could program buttons. I am not sure what you could program the buttons to do. The controller had six buttons plus start and pause buttons.

Project Euler, my new favorite site

Well I had trouble coming up with post ideas and then I read my doctor Dobbs newsletter and it had a link to an article on Dr. Dobb's code talk about project Euler so I though why not write about project Euler.

I want to solve the programming problems on project Euler because I need a lot of practice solving problems and project Euler seems like it would help with problem solving and I want to challenge myself.

hide, The IDE for hla

A week or two ago I downloaded hide, the IDE for hla. I have downloaded and installed hide on my computer before, but never got it to work. I don't know why I did not get hide to compile my assembly programs before, probably after I could not get one program to compile I thought I would never get it to work and gave up.

As I said I installed hide on my computer about a week ago and struggled getting it to compile and run programs, but this time I persevered and got hide working. It took me two hours or more to get it to compile and run simple programs, but as I just wrote I got it working.

It's not that hide is hard to use it's that I seem to make easy things hard and always seem to have lots of problems when using a program that I don't have much experience with. But if I keep trying I can usually figure out how to use a program, but it takes me awhile.

I've got nothing today

I've got nothing to write about today so I will write about how impressed I am that I have written 165 posts. I mean when I started blogging in May I never thought I would have made it to the end of October. I am sure I thought I would make it a month an then run out of post ideas.

But I am still here and have come up with more posts than I thought I could have ever come up with. I am sure that most of my posts are not very interesting, but I am proud of myself that I kept posting every day. I set a post a day goal and have met my goal hooray.

I enjoy writing because it makes me feel good. I don't know why writing makes me feel good it just does. One other thing when I started I always got nervous about posting, but now I just decide what to write about and write away, how fun.

Past win sloppy joe T-shirts

I won 2 sloppy Joe T-Shirts in may. One day I was surprised to find two T-shirts in the mail I had no idea I won. I think the T-shirts are very nice, but I have not worn them yet.

I suppose I have not worn them because I think they are so nice and if I use one I will ruin it. Sweepstakes prizes are so nice I never want to ruin them. I need to stop babying my sweepstakes prizes and use them. Well maybe some day anyway.

second win in October, a dvd

Last night I got an email saying I had won chaplin 15th anniversary edition on dvd. Yay another dvd, I have lots of dvd's now. When I entered the sweepstakes for the chaplin dvd I thought chaplin is a move I enjoyed I would love to win it.

I am happy to have a second win in October because I had given up hope of winning again this moth and then the win notice shows up in my email, how wonderful. What a win!!

More NES games, Plus my favorite game

I also had teenage mutant ninja turtles for my NES. The game looked great and was fun to play, but I was not very good at the game. I think I could not get past the first level. That is all I can remember.

The last game I want to talk about was my favorite NES game, Mike tyson's punch out. I enjoyed the game and played it a lot. I think it was a great boxing game because the graphics looked good and I liked the characters you boxed against. I also liked the sound effects.

I did beat mike tyson's punch out once, but I am sure that was just luck because mike tyson could take you down with one punch and he moved fast. I wish I had some cool memories to write about playing the game but I don't, how disappointing.

Mario on NES

Today I want to write about Super Mario. The first super Mario came with my console and I liked the game and I am sure I played it often. I never beat the first super Mario video game though.

I also had super Mario 2 for the NES. I also enjoyed playing this game and beat it many times. On cool thing about the game was after you beat the game you would see a picture of Mario sleeping, I thought that was pretty cool.

I also had super Mario 3 for the NES. I also enjoyed this video game very much, but never ended up beating the game. I wish I could write a better blog post, but I cant remember much about these games other then that they were pretty good.

Contra

I'd say Contra for the NES was my second favorite game for the console. I wouldn't say I was good at the game although I did beat contra, but I had to use the cheat that gave you 30 lives instead of the three you would get without the cheat. Even after I beat contra the first time I continued to have fun playing the game.

My favorite part was the heart you had to beat at the end of the game. It was so exciting to beat that heart. I am not sure what the ending of the game was like after beating the heart, but I am sure it was good.

More NES games

I had one basketball game on my NES, but it was not very good so I won't talk about it. I like the sports games on the new consoles better than the ones I had for the NES or sega genesis.

I liked excite bike, but I was not very good at the game. I would always crash my bike on the jumps and fall way behind the computer. One of the most enjoyable things for me about excite bike was building my own tracks. At least I think you could build your own tracks in the game. I spent a lot of time building tracks and losing to the computer. It was a fun game even thought I wan not good at playing it.

One of my favorite games for the NES was Rad Racer. What a great game rad racer was. It seems to me I spent a lot of time playing the game. It would feel great when I would hit the checkpoints and get more time or was it fuel I don't remember. I did beat the game once, but I used what I think is a cheat, A start, which would give you unlimited chances to beat a level.

Computer made with Legos

Yesterday I read an article from make magazine about a computer made with Legos. I thought the computer was great, I mean making a computer with Lego's what a creative idea. I never would have thought of making a computer with legos. I think it would be a great project to build.

I remember when I was younger playing with legos, but I did not play with legos very much. I don't think I ever built anything with legos, I probably did not have the patience to spend time building things with legos.

I thought Lego mindstorms were great when they first came out and I saw them on T.V., but I've never had a lego mindstorms set. I think lego mindstorms are great because they can be programmed to do different things and if you have been reading this blog you know how much I like programming.

My favorite NES games

Yesterday I read an article by Mike Dodd at dailygame.net that he wrote about his NES. I enjoyed reading the article. I thought after reading the article, well I had an NES so I can do a blog post or two about my NES. So here I go.

I got my Nintendo entertainment system for Christmas in 1988, wow 20 years ago already. This was not my first video game console because we had an ATARI 2600, more on the ATARI in another post. I don't remember, but I probably wanted a Nintendo for awhile.

The NES came with two controllers and two video games, duck hunt and Super Mario. It also game with the gun controller for duck hunt. I don't have that many memories of playing the NES, but I do remember a few games I liked. I probably had at least 15 games for my NES.

First I'll talk about duck hunt. I was terrible at duck hunt so I would put the gun controller almost right up to the T.V screen an shoot away at the ducks. I'm sure putting the controller so it is almost touching the T.V. is cheating, but it was fun anyway although it would have been nice to put the gun controller a few feet back and play the game.

Another NES game I enjoyed was a baseball game that I can't remember the name of but I do remember wanting to play that game all the time. I would play the game for hours and would never get tired of playing.

D++ scripting langauge

D++ is another programming language I have tried. I first heard about D++ from The free country about a year ago. I saw D++ and thought wow I should try this language so I installed the compiler on my computer, but I was missing some files so I could not run the the D++ hello world program I made.

I think the files I was missing were VB runtime files. So I thought that meant I needed to have a version of visual basic and I did not have visual basic on my computer which was to bad. I was very disappointed when I could not run the D++ programs, but I got over it.

I just looked on the D++ website and found the files I need to run D++ programs. I don't know how I missed them when I first downloaded the compiler. Wonderful, now I can get D++ to work on my computer if I want to, cool. How did I miss the files the first time, Oh well I've found them now.

Yes!!, I got Lua to work on my computer

I went to the Lua website yesterday for the first time in a long time and saw a version of Lua that is for windows. The windows version was not a big download so I downloaded it and installed Lua on my computer.

I was worried that Lua wold not work and then I would be disappointed because I could not try Lua, but I did not need to worry because Lua works. I tried a hello world program and looked at the documentation. I also went to a website that has a link to a Lua book that I want to read.

I would like to learn Lua, but I am not sure if I will learn it because I want to start writing useful programs instead of leaning programming languages so I have tried to stick to learning one programming language and I worry that if I start leaning Lua I will be back to the same problem I have had before which was wanting to learn a lot of programming languages and not making any useful programs.

Lua programming language

Another programming language I recently remembered wanting to try is Lua. I downloaded Lua, but I could not figure out how to use it. I looked around the Lua website a little and then gave up never having used lua. Hopefully some day I will learn how to set up Lua so I can try some Lua code. Lua seems like it might be a fun language to programme with.

My favorite cookies

I have eaten a lot of cookies, but now I don't eat them at all. My favorite type of cookies were sugar cookies that I made myself. I think I made them at least once a month, but I might have made the sugar cookies more often I can't remember.

I had to roll the cookie dough out and cut the cookies out with a cookie cutter, I would use a cup or something like that as a cutter to cut the cookies out and then I would put the cut cookies onto a plate and roll out more dough and cut more cookies until I was out of dough. Rolling dough and cutting out sugar cookies was always fun.

After putting the cut dough on a plate I would then transfer about 12 cookies on to a baking sheet and then put the baking sheet into the oven and when the cookies finished cooking I put them on cooling racks to cool off.

Then came the best part of all frosting and eating the sugar cookies. I did not make the frosting myself. I don't know why I did not make the frosting, after all if I could make cookies I could have made frosting. I liked the cookies best when they were cold. I also liked it when the cookies were thick so they would be moist and chewy.

Favorite website ars technia

I saw the name of the website ars technica in a new york times article so I put the name into a search engine and went to the website. So anyway the other day I read an interview ars technica had of Tim Sweeney. I saw the title of the article and could not wait to read it even though I had never heard the name Time Sweeney before.

Reading the article I wished I knew more about graphics and OpenGL so I could understand more of what Tim Sweeney was talking about in the interview. Even thought I did not understand everything in the article it was fun to read and made me think what fun it is to be a computer programmer. I certainly learned a few things from reading the interview.

candy

I don't eat candy anymore, well I eat it once in a while. A few years ago I used to eat candy every day. I am tring to eat healthier for my computer because after all without me my computer would get lonely.

My favorite Candy's were Carmel's or tootsie rolls I would start eating them and I could finish a whole bag in one sitting, I did not do that very often thought. I started eating and I could not stop.

I also liked skittles and I could eat a lot of those in one sitting too. My favorite kind of skittles were tropical, the ones in the blue bag, they were so good. I also liked the skittles in the green bag I don't know what they were called, but they were sure tart. I loved taking a handful and putting it in my mouth and wow that would get me awake.

Besides candy I also liked soda. I got up to drinking 3 cans a day, but I don't drink soda anymore either. My favorite kind of soda was coca cola classic which tasted great, but mostly I would drink the the cheapest soda brands.

Artweaver/graphic software

Last night I was reading Lifehacker in my RSS reader and I saw an article about Artweaver a photo editing program like gimp or photoshop. I got very excited as I was reading the article because Artweaver seemed pretty cool.

I did not have time to look at the Artweaver website last night so I thought maybe I should not get so excited because the program might be to large for me to download, but the program is not a large download so I did not need to worry.

Reading the article made me excited as I said, but it also made me think why am I so excited I only use gimp to crop and scale photographs for this blog and nothing else so I don't need another photo editing program.

What I am tring to say is I have not made any cool graphics for my bog or website with a photo editing program. My problem with photo editors is the same problem I have with programming langauges I have used them for awhile, but I have not created anthing interesting using either a programming language or a photo editing program/graphics programs. So I think I should set some goals for photo editing/grahics software:

1.Do some tutorials instead of only reading the documentation

2.create some cool graphics for my blog and website

3.practice, practice, practice

4.have fun learning

Make magazine's blog, 8080 computer

I enjoy reading Make magazine's blog. Yesterday I was looking at my RSS feeds and make magazine had a link to a website showing an 8080 computer someone made. I thought someone building an 8080 computer how cool.

I have only had one computer and it was already built when I got it, but I have always thought maybe someday I'd like to build a computer. I don't know if I'd buy all the parts separately or get a computer kit to build, but knowing I had put the computer together with my own hands would be a great feeling as well as a learning experience.

I don't know if I would be able to build an 8080 computer like the one on the website because I've never built any electronic gadget and I am not sure I have the Patience to build a project like that or the knowledge.

one of the things I think would be cool about building a computer like the 8080 computer is that after finishing it I could write programs for it using some computer language like C, basic, or assembly or some other programming language. I like old computers and would love to program using one someday.

Past win feburary 2008

The pictures are of a DSRL training kit. The kit was an instant win from Nabisco. The kit contains a headband, shirt, two cups, and a DSRL membership card. The stuff in the kit is almost to nice to wear.

The kit is my second biggest win and my biggest instant win. A wonderful prize.

It's been a year since I started sweeping

It's been over a year since I started sweeping. I can't remember the exact reason why I started sweeping, but I have done better at sweeping than I would have ever imagined because when I first started entering sweepstakes I thought I would never win a prize or would not win very many prizes, but here I am a year later after winning 9 prizes last year and about 30 this year.

My goals for sweeping are:

1. Keep entering sweepstakes every day.


2. Stay positive even when I am not winning very much.


3. Have fun entering.


4. Retire to my own private island after having won millions of dollars in sweepstakes prizes.


5. Have a book published about my sweepstakes exploits and sell the movie rights.

SciTE editor

I leaned of SciTE when I downloaded ruby for the first time. I have used SciTE for a while, but only for writing java and other programming languages source code. I like it for writing souce code because it has line numbers and it highlights keywords.

I have always used notepad to write html, but recently I stated using SciTE to write html. I wish I had stated using SciTE to write xhtml sooner. I like the fact that the xhtml is highlighted and I can open tabs and have many html documents open at the same time. Also with SciTE I can tell if I make a mistake spelling an xhtml element or attribute name.

SciTE came in very handy a few days ago when I was writing xhtml frames. Opening multiple frames allowed me to have the names of the frames right in front of me so I would not make a mistake and write the wrong names in the frame container page.

J programming language

A programming language that I forgot to mention is the j programming language. I downloaded and installed the j compiler on my computer and probably wrote a few lines of code in j and that was it. I have not used the j compiler much at all.

I downloaded the j compiler because I wanted to try APL, and j was the only APL type language I could find on The freecountry for windows. Why did I want to try APL? I liked the name, A programming language. I also wanted to try APL because it has been around for awhile.

past win march 2008, Bedding set

The picture is a princess enchanted bedding set. I would say it is my third biggest win this year. The bedding set came in a big box. I was very excited when I saw the box because I thought it might be a T.V or some electronic gizmo.

When I grabbed the box I thought this is so light this can't be a T.V. I opened up the big box and the first thing I thought was I won a purse, but then I looked and realized it was a bedding set.

The princess enchanted bedding set was second prize in some sweepstakes I entered, but I am not sure which sweepstakes I won this prize from because I don't think the paper inside the box said who sponsored the sweepstakes.

Winning this prize made me feel great since I had not won any prizes in the month of march, but this win made me feel like I had a winning month. what a great win this was. I forgot to mention that this win was a complete surprise when it arrived at my door one day, I had no idea I had won the bedding set.

Goals for my blog

I think I have written about goals for my blog before, but I want to write some more about my blogging goals. I know I have already written that I want to post to this blog every day and I have done that so far although as I wrote yesterday I wonder how long I will be able to come up with ideas for posts.

I think I should write down my goals so I can read them and know if I am working toward my goals. Another goal I have for my blog is to make it interesting so people will want to read it. I do not think I have achieved this goal. I think most of my blog posts are not interesting, but a least I am posting every day.

Anther goal I have for my blog is to get lots of people to read it. I have not achieved this goal either, but I sure would love it if my blog were popular. I want people to say I don't know what I ever did without sillys blog or I have sillys blog as my home page. Silly we love your blog is something I hope people say some day after I am rich and famous.

My bog topic

I have been thinking about my blog topic because I fear I may not be able to make 365+ posts. I am through with all the programming languages I've tried and my sweepstakes wins are only good for 2 to 3 posts a month so I am panicking.

I want to do a blog about computer programming, or technology in general. But I think I do not know enough about the subject although I do love technology. I would have to read a lot more than I do now. Technology meaning computer programming or computer animation is the only blog topic I can come up with. It is the only thing I know something about. I just don't know enough about the subject. Maybe be doing this blog I will learn more, I hope so.

XML

Another thing I want to learn is xml. I have a book called xml by example and I have read most of it, but I think I tried to read it to fast and I also did not practice xml so I don't know much xml. I think if I practice more I will be able to learn xml. It would be great to know xml because it looks like xml can be used with a lot of programming languages although I am not sure. I hope xml is not to hard to lean.

My first sweepstakes win of october

Today I got my first sweepstakes win this month and it's only October 2. It was an instant win from Hershey's, I won a coupon for a Hershey's product worth about four dollars. It's not a huge win, but it does mean I got at least one win in October. My streak continues yes!!!

Let me be the first to congratulate myself

I want to be the first to congratulate myself on writing a blog post every day for 4 months. I thought I would never make it this long. I wanted to write a blog post every day and I have done it for at least 4 months anyway. horray for me.

I hope I can keep blogging, but I am not sure I will be able to come up with anthing to write. I think I need to do some brainstorming and read more so I can come up with some blog post ideas. I am worried that I will not make my year goal, but I might make it, I will try hard to anyway. I hope I make it, I hope I make it.