High School Programming

I recently stumbled across an old flash drive i used during high school. By old I mean a USB 1.1 IBM 64MB flash drive.

Yeah, THAT old.

So anyway, i cruised through the contents. Audacity Portable, GIMP Portable and some random essays.

Then I noticed some programming I did back in the day, so I decided to share it with you. Because, you know -- you should care. duh.

Episode One: Pencil Shop Pro
Pencil shop pro was an attempt at using mouse input (IE positioning, click state) to create something useful. Many people kinda failed at this, at most making something that told you where your cursor was on the page, but being the adventurous bastard I am, I (Along with friends Luke and Paul) decided to take on the big boys with my own image editing app.

We're talking VB 6 here, so no .NET bullcrap to distract from the app itself. And here it is, in all it's Vista capable glory:
There you have it. Unbelievably simplistic, but it works. Every one of those colours works. Even the "Eraser" kinda... works. (It makes things black again...)

Thickness of your "pencil" can vary from 1 pixel through to 100 pixels (This was a rush job, you see - and back in the day, this was nearly fullscreen on those computers, so larger didnt seem necessary)

RGB colours are supported, but there is a bug where typing a value in won't actually do anything, so sliders it is.

As for the RGB sliders, they only go from 1 to 155, so you can't ever get true black.fox2

The "Clear" button and "New" menu option both clear the image back to its former black self.

An interesting feature is that you can resize the window however you wish, and paint as big as you want. Silly, yeah.

As for loading and saving? Well they didn't ever make it in, as PSP had done everything it needed to do for the assignment.

I remember finding the source somewhere once, and trying to convert it into VB .NET ('Cause that's all i had at the time -and still do... ) but the way it works is entirely incompatible with .NET.

Luckily, though, it's compatible with every windows version since '95!

Props to Paul and Luke for letting me do all the work! =P

Episode Two: Über Calculator
Über Calculator was a simple project introducing us to VB .NET the following year. Obviously, the project was just to create a calculator with all the basic functions. Really simple, so i finished it in ten minutes. Maybe even 5. But then set out to pimp the bitch!
All the bling i could think of, however, was to have a section you could open and close with some extra options, including a pulsating transparency effect (Kinda visible here), the ability to toggle always-on-top (For those crazy number crunching activities that required it) and a "Show in taskbar" option -- in case someone thinks you're cheating or something.

It handles Divide-By-Zero flawlessly. I really should just make it implode upon itself, but that'd be no fun.

And hell, it was interesting to code. I did lots of shortcutting and shit there. And worked out timers. All in .NET 1.1 (The original VS .NET)

Episode 3: The pizza Order Form
This came later the same year as the Über Calculator. It was, quite simply, to make a usable interface for ordering pizza. Why anyone would download a full on .NET app to order pizza is beyond me, but I tacked it, and, imho, tacked it well.
There she is. A large image of the currently selected pizza to the left, with a dropdown for selecting your variety. Garlic bread, extra cheese and drinks are all available, as is home delivery. All pretty simple, really, once I used up/down boxes for it. langue

It does calculate the prices correctly, but doesn't compensate for how VB stores stuff. So that's $12.20 there, but i didnt make it pad the numbers -- this thing CAN have huge numbers, so a len() won't work, but if I'd known regex's at the time, I could've used them.

I may add to this later, if i can get Klick 'n Play working.

EDIT: Aha! I found a working version! Now for part 4:

Episode 4: The Simpsons Platformer
With great disregard for copyright law, i present to you one of the first proper games I ever produced; The Simpsons Platformer, for Klick & Play.
Klick & Play was sufficiently awesome for 1995. So why were we using it in 2006? No idea.

Anyway, taking some 256 colour bitmaps, GIFs and some muscle, I managed to create this monstrosity. A four-and-a-half-level platform game with Homer as the protagonist, and Bart watching over you. Oh, joy!

Using a bunch of Homer sprites (Which was all i could find - I WAS after Bart) i crafted a simplistic platformer. Confusing at times, too -- and only four-and-a-half levels.

The level where a Duff truck appears requires you to use your MOUSE to avoid the "Duff Light" six packs, and catch the normal, manly "Duff" six packs. The rest of the gmae is an arrow key platformer.

If you wait long enough, the Bees (The only enemy in the game) will start to bounce off-course. I have NO clue why this is. KnP is just buggy as hell. =P

Suffice to say, posting images is going to just be silly. This game is made to be ENJOYEDlollol. So, here, I present to you the first ever public release of The Simpsons Platformer. Please don't sue me, fox!

[Download .7z from GSh@ii.net] -- Those who don't have Klick n Play (And i'm sure that's... all of you) can get it from LittleDawg's Klick & Play Page - As far as I can tell, the only place on the whole internet with a woeking KnP binary.

NOTICE: The Simpsons names, characters and graphics are used without permission from Twentieth Century Fox or any of its affiliates. The Simpsons is copyright and the property of Twentieth Century Fox.

Pseudo-Administrator

Recently my father purchased a new HP laptop. It's quite nice actually. Core 2 Duo, 4GB of RAM and a reasonably powerful GeForce 9-series powering Windows Vista Home Premium. Bringing it home and, as parents tend to do with new tech, asks me what I recommend doing in terms of firewall and antivirus.

My first instinct, as I'm sure is the case for many others, is to grab the latest version of Firefox and kill off IE. Sure, 7MB Download later and we'll be good to go, right?

Well typically, I'm completely wrong. Up pops a messagebox claiming that I don't have the necessary permissions to install Firefox. Attempting to just use the current account causes the installer to disappear with no warning or error. Attempting to log on as Administrator is a no-go, as blank passwords are not accepted, and HP have supplied no Administrator password with the machine. Okay, I think to myself, I guess this must not be a full administrator account, and so dufitully pop open the Control Panel. User Accounts shows no sign of other accounts, as it usually does. Checking the account type of the main account showed it was in fact an Administrator. Okay, time to move on to the Management Console.

Firing it up I'm greeted with a tree that strikes me as odd. A quick look reveals that "Local users and groups" to which i'm fully accustomed to in 2000, XP Pro and Vista Ultimate, is sadly missing. So, I guess that microsoft have hidden it so that noone will break anything. Fine, I think, bringing up the Add Snap-In window. Locating "Local users and groups" in the list, i click add, select the local computer and click OK. Then I recieve a big surprise. It's still a Home edition, meaning any of the normal administrative features of the NT series have been eradicated in favour of the watered down control panel, so the faithful "Local users and groups" section is locked out to me.

Puzzled, I have a quick look, and even the Built-In help tells me to add it via the add Snap-In window. Good job with getting help done right for all editions, Microsoft. After a quick think I'm at the command line, making use of the good old Net User command, I bring up the user list. Aha! So Administrator DOES exist. A quick google search (Using IE, unfortunately) shows no useful information about this phantom Administrator.

So I spend the next 15 minutes trying more and more elaborate ways of getting Firefox to install. Setting permissions on Program Files does nothing, setting ownership fails similarly. Frustrated with my inability to solve the issue, I right-click the installer, ready to give up - and, what's this? The second listing in the context menu reads "Run as Administrator" - lo and behold, this command immediately runs the installer, no questions asked and with no password prompt.

So, after about half an hour of work, I finally get Firefox on the damned thing.

Frustrated by HPs inability to supply me with an OS that I actually have the required permissions to use, I decide to leave installing an antivirus until another day, and switched computers to engage in some Left 4 Dead.

The morals of the story are always install your own copy of Windows on a name-brand laptop, and don't stress - the answer is probably the second entry in the context menu.