And it’s keeping my harddrives pretty cool. I got it from best buy for 16$ and it pushes 74CFM. Pretty decent. I could have found a better bargain online but I like instant gratification.
(Click to enlarge)
So I’ve necrotized provingGrounds, and it’s now become my simple testing application for opening documents(specifically XML files) and reading them for information.
Currently the program just opens files and displays their contents, and the skeleton of a manual parsing system is in place. However, I’m going to scrap that soon enough for an existing XML parser already existing in .NET – no use reinventing the wheel. Some screens:
[Edit: The existing XML parsing functionality I spoke of in .NET is the MS XML DOM.]
Ideas I’m throwing around in my head:
I’d like to experiment with plug-ins in C#. That is, plug-ins for the program you’re working on, not C# itself.
Depending on what they do they’d be fairly easy to implement. A skinning or theme plug-in would be easiest to use – just have the program look for files of a specific name to use as colors, images, icons, etc in a /themes directory. You could have an XML file determine what the file names are, and have the plug-in interface to the program look for(and if found) read this file for information abou the plugin. This could also be used for functionality plug-ins, just have the XML file determine the filenames for the plug-in and how or where the program should use them.
I’m considering writing a simple C# app to test these ideas. I’ll post more later if I do so.
All of us over at SlushNet have been working diligently on getting the website working with a decent stylesheet. We also now have a Java webclient(provided by Mibbit).
We’ve also linked a second node to the network, which is currently located next to my desk in my office. It’s address is psy.slushnet.com and is listening on ports 6667-6669 for incoming IRC connection requests.
In addition to this, services is working! You may now register nicks and channels. Yay!
So for about all of July I had been working with Ryan(blog) on a project dubbed Droids – a simple AI experiment. I got the idea for the project after starting to read a book called Prey by Michael Chrichton, which is about nanobots(incredibly small robots) and the powers of collective intelligence. In the book, the nanobots escape and go rogue, of course.
Anyways, the program created objects called Droids which were entities with their own intelligences that would actively search out Food objects on a generated space. C# and the Visual Studio 2008 for C#.NET were the preferred development languages and IDE for the project. We got far enough that the objects were created with their associated data(coordinates, id numbers, etc) and had a method for the droids to move towards the nearest food objects(just no method to find them). After that all we needed to do was graphically represent all of this data to have a functioning program. Future prospects for the program included evaluating the levels of food and droids(some bigger, some worth more, etc) so the droids would plot the best possible(within their scope of knowledge, at least) course of action, and even a scriptable interface to the droid objects(allowing people to script their own intelligences for the droid objects, aiding research into massive agent-based intelligences, and so on).
I would love to get attached to a focused and driven C# or Python project sometime in the near future, if for nothing more than to watch and learn about software development and programming. I’m especially interested in graphics and network programming, though interfaces seem to be my specialty.
We scrapped that a while back out of boredom, and have since moved on to work on developing an IRC network and associated community(link) called SlushNet with Ryan.
