Bit Bucket Games

Forget about Snakes 'n Ladders, here's a few board games that my inner geek wishes to try!

First up is c-jump. This game takes players down the slope of a mountain with paths laid out with basic program flow control constructs. The paths each skier takes is determined by rolling the die and plugging the resulting value into the code. First player to the bottom with all of his skiers wins!

Next up is Programmer's Nightmare. I'm not sure exactly how this game works, so I'll just paste what the site has to say about it.

In this game, players take turns laying out program instructions with "ownership bits" on the cards they play, creating a long line of interrelating program instructions that become more complicated as the program builds. Finally, a player will play a RUN card and set the program running. Who will survive the convolutions of the program? That's anyone's guess; each player decides if and how their own program instructions will function!

Sounds interesting to me! I'm sure I could find someone around here to play against.

Finally, we have a game I would really like to try, RoboRally. Here you try to race a robot across the board without being destroyed. I like the big quote off the back of the box.

As one of several supercomputers in a fully automated widget factory, you have it made. You are brilliant. You are powerful. You are sophisticated. You are BORED.

Cue evil laughter, cut and print! That's a wrap! Anyways, this game had Wizards of the Coast involved at some point, so my friends who are into D&D should be happy. It helps if you have some programming skills, No D20's from what I can tell. Sorry guys.

Shiny, Spinning, Metal Discs.... Of Music!

Well, I finally secured my copy of Jeffrey Blersch's CD, Resounding Alleluias. I'm listening to it as I type this and I must say that it is most excellent. One of the tracks, Water Blood and Spirit Crying, is probably just about my favorite of Blersch's work. I am pleased to say that this hymn has made it into the new LCMS hymnal. It will make a very good hymn for Holy Week.

In other CD news, Dr. Kuhn announced to the wind ensemble that the CD has arrived at the production plant and is waiting for the OK on the printed samples that should arrive in the next day or two. That means that physical production of the CDs should start this week with the first shipment of the final goods arriving sometime in the next couple of weeks. The CD will be released to the public at our concert directed by David Holsinger on October 21 at 8pm. For those of you who plan on attending, the concert will be held at the local high school's new auditorium (I think that's what it is) rather than Weller Hall. It should provide a much better sound as well as being more comfortable. It should be a great concert.

GS301 Blurb

Well, last Wednesday was the last class period for the class. This means I get to work on my stuff for the class now without having to do silly activities. I've got a poster I need to post around campus once I make a couple edits. Problem is I need a PDF editor to play around with it. Does anyone know of a free PDF editor I could use? Thanks.

Courthouse Centennial Anniversary

Sorry about the long period of dead air here. But, I'm in the mood to blog tonight and I have a number of topics that have piled up since last time. So with out further ado, here we go.

A week ago last Sunday I accompanied a friend to the town's celebration for the centennial of the county courthouse. He had be hired to videotape the festivities. Once we arrived at the square we found displays of various cars and all sorts of booths. As people milled around bands played, including the high school marching band. It had been a while since I had seen a marching band and although they didn't march they sounded pretty darn good.

The ceremonies began with a bang, literally. They packed a metal cylinder full of explosives and placed an anvil on the top. People cheered, or winced, when the bang went of with enough force to move the anvil off of it's platform. Several government officials from the city level on up to congress gave speeches. After a judge gave a dull and long-winded speech the Free Masons had the stage for most of the rest of the time. I have read and heard that the Free Masons were a little off base and that the were. They did a symbolic cornerstone ceremony for a new cornerstone that was to be installed at a later date. The most amusing part was how they measured if the top and the sides were level, while the stone dangled in the air from a rope.

All in all it was a good afternoon. I never really had much to do with the town as I usually keep to the college. But it was nice to get out a bit and see some local festivities.

Blersch Oregan Concert

Today was the opening concert for the Lincoln Organ Showcase's 2005-2006 season. Ironically, the concert was in Seward rather than Lincoln. The performance was given by Dr. Jeffery Blersch, my school's organ professor. The concert was most excellent as well as energizing. It featured a variety of hymns and variations on them. In a number of the selections the audience was invited to sing the texts of the hymn. One piece, Give Peace, O God by Vincent Persichetti featured a mezzo-soprano solo by a high school friend of one of my cousins. Both my cousin and her friend are students here.

The concert also marked the release of Blersch's first CD, Resounding Alleluias. I wanted to pick up a copy but I didn't have the $15 to pay for it.

On a side note (heh, note), I've been at this school longer than Blersch has which means I got to know some of the music of his predecessor, Dr. Charles Ore. From what I have seen, Ore's topic selections (be it for composing, performing or whatever) seem to be mainly that of hymns of praise. Blersch, however, seems to choose more of a balance between praise and hymns that teach something about the Christian faith. I prefer the latter. Before someone gets mad, please note that this is merely a casual observation and hardly a methodical analysis. Both men, however, have impressed me greatly in their musical talents.

Database Boogie

Well, the proff that is overseeing me for my senior project has pinned down a machine for me to use. It is in a locked room in the science building so I will have to walk across campus to get to it. But hey, at least I have something to run Oracle (translation: a big and memory loving program not to be confused with Windows) on now. They are going to wipe the hard drive on Monday and set me up with some sort of administrative account for the machine. Yay, admin rights on a university machine and on the computer lab side of the network no less! Sorry, geeky moment there. "With great power comes great responsibility," says my shoulder angel. And he's right.

Anyways, in the meantime I'm working through a few hundred pages of my database book to remind me how to go about designing a small database. Three cheers for Boycee-Codd normal form!

Music From Math

In one of my classes this semester we are making heavy use of a program called Mathematica. Mathematica is a huge program that is popular in many scientific and engineering fields. No one knows more about math than Mathmatica.

Well, this week the creators of Mathematica, Wolfram Research, have decided to get, well, creative. They have decided to teach Mathematica how to write music. It can write music in a variety of styles from jazz to classical. The thing is, unlike most computer-composed music, the stuff actually sounds decent. With a little bit of clean up the stuff would sound pretty darn good. That's more than you can say for most of the stuff coming out of the record labels today. As my brother likes to say, "Ooh! Snap!"

Anyways, go try it out and have a little fun.

(Edit: Corrected problems with links)

Nebraska State Fair LLL Service

Yesterday the wind ensemble played for the LLL sponsored worship service at the Nebraska State fair. It was a nice day to have an outdoor service. Our school's president gave the sermon and the whole thing was broadcast on KNGN. Mike Nielson was there to do the radio broadcast stuff as he has been a big contributer to KNGN ever since its creation. (Edit: I guess he's currently the Interim Manager) He is also a family friend and as such I was glad to see him. I walked up behind him and gently placed my had on his shoulder. When he turned to see who it was he exclaimed something along the lines of, "Oh! I forgot about that!" with a surprised look on his face.

His daughter goes to UNL and showed up as well. She spent some time in China this last summer teaching English. Not only that she also was in the same area as Chris Strom and knew of the famed (well, amongst Chris' family and friends) Hello Kitty/Precious Moments door that Chris' land lord won't let him take down.

After the service when we had packed everything back up we had about an hour. I took the time to help move the radio station's equipment back to Nielson's car. He had his daughter take a picture of us and then the three of us explored the fair a bit. I found the 4-H rockets that I had wanted to look at. Some of those youngsters are far better than me at the hobby. On the way back to the bus he bought me some lunch -- expensive state fair food. $10 for two slices of pizza and a bottle of water. Ouch!

All in all it was a great day.

GS301 Rant 1

I warned you it was going to happen. Here it is. The first GS301 rant. Yes sir indeedy. GS301 is a class about "servant leadership" in which students learn about being a servant leader and do their own servant leader project. Let's get started about the amusing tasks from last week's class. I'm sure I will miss something that happened in the class though...

The class started out with a few questions displayed on the projector which we then broke into pairs to discuss. The discussion in my pair quickly turned to the topic that pretty much everyone is called by God to a vocation or task, whether or not they acknowledge his existence. I used Bill Gates as an example that most people wouldn't think about. My partner strongly disagreed with me as he views a calling to a task or vocation by God to mean that one is probably already in the faith.

Later on we stood by letters on the walls as responses to questions posed to us about what would we do if a problem came up in any group we may be in. The problem with this was the responses were rather arbitrary and the question were given little context. Any of us could have given any answer depending on the situation.

We also did a group activity where we were given a short amount of time to try to memorize the contents of a box. We were then given a short amount of time to create lists of what we saw and then to combine the individual lists into our group list. Point of the exercise: a group can often times get more done than an individual and often working in a group is more important than and individual's motives. I would have never ever figured that one out without the help of this class.

We finished by watching about fifteen minutes from the movie Miracle. I'm still trying to figure that one out.

Once again again people amuse me.

Senior Project

Well, this semester I will be doing a senior project. I am to write software to deal with the creation, printing, scanning and data storage for some forms. You know, the type that you fill in the circle or the square such as standardized tests? So far I have been mostly working on getting the tools I need for it. They want the data to eventually be stored in the school's Oracle database. So I spent a few days trying to acquire the Personal Edition from their website. Now that I have the software resting on a CD I need to find a computer to run it on. My little iBook G3 is probably not the best choice. The instructor is looking into finding a spare machine but I might just have to get my Gateway machine from "home" and spend a few pretty pennies repairing it. I was hoping to put off those repairs for another year or so. Oh well.

In other computer related news, I got a 100 piece computer tool kit to help out with any hardware situations I might run into while working on my 60 volunteer hours. One of the first things I did with them was to open up an old hard drive so that you can see the platter. Hard drive platters are real shiny and every computer guy ought to have an open hard drive sitting on their desk for kicks. No, I didn't count this towards my 60 hours.

Gassy

Well, the other night I was in Lincoln and saw that the going gas prices there were $3.19 at the time. I'm sure it's gone further up in recent days with the natural disaster and Labor Day weekend. I'm still not too worried yet, I'm confidant that things will settle down again.