This evening I was playing Minecraft and feeling that what I was doing was rather dull. I considered looking at open source software for project ideas. For those of you who don’t know, open source software is when a program’s code is free for anyone to look at and add to, usually with a bit of a learning curve. Instead, I realized I have a book to edit, and I should probably get on that. I was going to work on it this summer and barely have. Oops. So here’s a quick blog to get me in the mood.
Of course, I’m still interested in open source stuff. If any of you programmers have interesting suggestions, let me know. Right now I’ve just been plowing through Project Euler, and the problems have been getting rather difficult. I kind of want something else to work on, maybe something that someone might use.
Planes, trains or automobiles? What is your favorite way to travel 500 miles?
Maybe you can travel further with a plane, or go more places with a car. Particularly after being in the UK for a while, though, I must say I like trains best. Comfy seat, scenery passing by slow enough that you can enjoy it, the steady rhythm of the wheels on tracks. In airplanes flights always seem to be full, but on trains they aren’t always. Sometimes you get the seat next to you as well. I really wish there were more train lines in the US. On a train, you can travel practically anywhere in the UK. In my area in the US, you can only go up and down the coast.
Suggestions for projects: I guess that depends what your interests are. I've been working on an abstract strategy game of my own invention and you'd be welcome to take a look at that.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/turtlemelee/
My current focus is trying to make the AI less short-sighted using a neural network and a variation of temporal difference learning.
Also on the to-do list:
– Allowing the human to play as red, not just blue
– Allowing play against other humans (either local or networked)
– Slightly modifying the redraw method to use double-buffering