DigiPen: Round 2

Well, the first week of school is over and I have some great news; I have survived! This semester is looking to be quite a bit harder than the last was but thankfully I believe I will be able to handle it.

Overall classes look pretty tough but let me give a quick breakdown of what I think of each class so far.

CS170: C++, yep just learning C++ and doing a bunch of assignments to make sure I understand C++. Just like in C the first function we use is also one of the more complex functions. Other than that this is my meat and potatoes class so this will probably get my most attention.

CS230: Using C++ to make games. This class is focused on showing us different ways of using our coding knowledge to make a video game. The class’ grade is based off four projects due throughout the semester. We will learn things like making a state machine and platformer physics (i.e. collision, gravity.)

MAT150: Calculus. This is just an intro to calculus class and will probably be a breeze for me. I took a more advanced class back in high school but that was years ago so I am not getting this waved. It’s an easy A so I might as well take it, that and I love calculus. But I do love how the book we are using is from 1988. Gotta' love how math doesn’t change.

A few of us decided to stack our math books next to each other.

SOS150: This is a sociology class titled, “Technology and Society.” We will learn about how technology affects society, if you couldn’t deduce it from the title. So far the class seems interesting. The professor knows what he’s talking about and is very enthusiastic which helps. 

COM150: Learn how to talk to people. I have taken tons of communications classes before and this one doesn’t seem too difficult. It is all about public speaking and whatnot, seeing as how I love public speaking this class will be fun for me. Of course I can’t wait to see a bunch of the socially awkward DigiPen nerds stumble, bwhahahaha.

GAM150: This semester’s project class. We have a build a game from the ground up. We are given a few basic functions to work with but nothing too exciting. My team and I already have plans for our game which I will detail a bit more in a later post. 

So that’s how my semester looks so far. Just like last it is going to be a ton of work but I actually enjoy it in an odd way. Hopefully I don’t have to eat my words later in the semester. 

It's Over

Just finished up my last final today. 

Going to enjoy my break and then get back to school. Next semester I actually have a posting plan set up to track the progress of my semester game. 

Victory

Another week down, god knows how many more to go, but I like to not think about how much is left.

Just like everybody was saying at orientation the workload will suddenly ramp up and ramp up it has. After this week’s pant shitting math test and CS120 lab I think a lot more people are starting to understand the intensity of DigiPen, myself included.

This weekend is going to be filled with me hunched over my desk doing math homework and as a fun break I will hunch over my keyboard to mess around with some C. Pretty much I am stuffing myself in a giant while loop that looks like this.

1. int knowledge = 0, perfect = 50000, freetime = 0;
2. while (knowledge < perfect)
3. {
4. wakinghours = study;
5. freetime = 0;
6. knowledge++;
7. }

In other news my friend and I have secured our positions as RTIS Freshmen Student Association Representatives! There were three openings for our degree program but only he and I were elected to the positions. Sure there was only three people running and there was no way to lose but here is the kicker the third dude dropped out. Now I would like to say that this happened because my friend and I were so awesome that we scared him off but that’s not the truth. He told me that he didn’t think he would have the time to commit to SA, an honorable reason in my eyes.

Now of course what political campaign is complete without posters, and man did we have posters. 

Click to embiggen!

Of course the posted version has all the "vote for us" hoopla but I wanted a clean version to put on the internet. This wasn’t made by us but rather one of our BFA friends and man does she kick ass at Photoshop.

These posters gained a lot of momentum really quick and people started noticing us in the halls, which I have to say is pretty freakin’ awesome. People would come up to me and say hello or when I would meet somebody new they already knew my name and they always said it was because of these posters.

I asked almost all of the new people I met this week if it was good or bad that they knew me before I knew them, somebody retorted back with, “Hey if you have to ask you know it’s bad.” I just think they are jelly.

Unfortunately now is the time to be responsible and stop using this post as a procrastination tool and get my ass back to studying. 

Hakuna Matata

Week 3 has finally come to an end and what an amazing end it is.

This week was awesome. I started to see the side of DigiPen that involves staying well after class to get work done and I have to say I actually enjoy it. Sure we sit around talking about vectors and funny things Duba (CS100 Professor) does but we also get our work done. All that malarkey we heard at orientation about study groups turned out to not be malarkey. Go figure.

Outside of normal class shenanigans we had our first quiz this week in CS120 and I have to say it went better than expected. After finishing it, talking to other people about it, and face palming so hard I broke my forehead bone I think I did pretty well. Any points I miss on the quiz though will be made up through submission extra credit on this week’s assignment so I am not too worried.

So on to the awesome front. I got my nick name.

Most badass lion ever pretty much.

Soak it in ladies and gentlemen. I. Am. Mufasa.

Now I could sit here and make up this grand tale of how I am seen as a wise sage like peer of unmatchable kindness and love whom everybody looks up to, even the giraffe, but alas that is not how it happened.

Instead today in CS120 Lab one of my friends yelled out, “Mufasa!” and I turned to look. He gave me a dumb smile and said, “That’s it! That’s your nickname!” Next thing I know people are calling me Mufasa and I am even introducing myself as, “Hey my name is Samir, but you can just call me Mufasa!”

In other news I and my new super-awesome-happy-fun-time friend have decided to run for Student Association together. Our degree program is going to have 3 representatives for this year and we totally want to be two of those three.

To be placed in the running we had to get ten endorsements from our fellow students so in glorious Spinal Tap style that clearly wasn’t enough for us so our endorsements went up to eleven.

"Yeah we are so rockin' we just had to turn it up to eleven."

We are currently in the process of finishing up our ad campaign posters (which technically have to be two separate posters but we found a clever way around this problem) and once it is done I shall unleash it on the interwebs. Many tears of joy shall be shed because of its beauty.

So as I roll into the weekend I am going face first into a pile of studying and self-inflicted homework. Yeah it will be busy and dry but hey I can finally say something I never thought I would ever say, looking forward to class on Monday. 

Welcome to the Digi-Jungle

Hooray! The semester has finally started (two weeks ago) and I am fully settled in, I am now officially a relocated Californian. School has been going well (so far) and I am actually really enjoying the material which will probably help with the retention of said material.

There are a ton of things to write about but I am going to skip over a lot of them because if I didn’t this post would be just long enough for people to not want to read it. So I just want to touch on a few topics; my hopeful posting habits for the semester, my professors, and my first program.

So since the start of the semester at DigiPen I have been feeling out what my schedule will end up being like for the next few months. I can say with the utmost confidence that free time will be a precious commodity but this will hopefully not influence my planned posting habits. I want to be able to write one or two entries a week and they will range. I will probably end up talking about school a lot but I will sneak in the occasional post that somebody will actually want to read.

As far as talking about my classmates go I will only refer to them by their nicknames to ensure some level of privacy. Sure other DigiPen students will know who I am talking about but then again we are a small school and everybody (should) know everybody.  

Moving onto my next topic my professors, all I can say is holy crap. I will be honest I came to DigiPen with semi-low expectations for my professors, and I can gladly say that they completely obliterated my mental image of them. I have had two weeks of classes now and I have not had a single lecture that was boring, dry, or confusing. All the material has been presented to me in an organized fashion by a person who knows what they are doing.

On top of having intelligent professors they are also human. They actually give a crap about the students and will go above and beyond to help. The best part about my professors though is that all of them understand one important concept a lot of educators just seem to not pay very much attention to; they know the best way to teach us, is to entertain us.

All of the professors are like clowns!

Through the guidance of my super-awesome professors today I was able to do something I never thought I would ever do. Write and run a program from nothing in C and have it work. Now I know this doesn’t sound amazing but to me it is. I am a person who knows next to nothing about computer programming and how things work on the software level, so to be able to see my work in command prompt was an amazing feeling.

The program itself was not anything amazing it just ate some numbers and spat out a table but doing this simple exercise taught me so much. I was able to better understand a basic command like “printf” and “scanf.” Not to mention that getting things to align properly can be a pain in the ass. Along with that I also realized just how important it is to keep your code organized while working on it. Sure it was only eighteen lines long but I saw some people writing well over 30 lines of code to accomplish the same thing.

It does math... I think.

I would post a picture of my actual code but this assignment is still not due and I don’t want to go around posting the answers to school work all over the interwebs.

The weekend is finally here and I am happy to report I am going into it with a huge sense of accomplishment. I will probably end up spending a lot of it with my C programming book and my math notes instead of playing video games and having awesome parties (note: I don’t have awesome parties.)