I'm Back


Image credit Hello friends. So it's been a while and I apologise. I haven't stopped though, I have just been busy getting things done. So what's been happening? That was more of a rhetorical question as you are reading and I have hopefully moved on since writing this. I've been working. A lot. University I'm still completing my university degree with one more semester after the current to go. This year, I am studying Algorithms & Complexity which of course is a super interesting subject, though if I'm honest, is being communicated poorly. The lecturer just reads walls of text off a screen and shows working in a limited way which is not helpful to me. I usually just check the current subject he is discussing and use YouTube to learn it. The other subject is the Capstone Project. In this subject, we are given an industry project by the university and told to do it over two semesters to give us experience in the real world. We were given a project requiring us to upgrade a previous years project. This was a board that special education students could interact with ina way that compliments their particular disability. We are in the process of finalising our plans. We decided to upgrade the hardware in the board to make it function independently. We are using a Raspberry Pi, Python and the library PyGame to create something interactive that is capable of switching on and off different output devices. So far, the unit has been quite rewarding and I am absolutely invested in the final product. Game Development So this has been getting a little difficult to squeeze in given the volume of responsibilities I have been investing myself in. But as slow as it may be, I am passionate about these side projects. Since I last posted in here, I completed to mini 'for laughs' project and have moved on to creating something else. I got myself a couple of partners and started a business, AntiType. We are a group of three: an Artist, a Writer and myself (the coder). We were working on an up and coming platformer called For Loot & Glory (based on our writers trilogy). But alas, it was too ambitious. That project is on hold until we get some experience. We are now in the process of fleshing out a new concept game that will be available at the end of the year. We are playing this one pretty close to our chest so watch this space! Band The news on this front is not great. Unfortunately, we all decided to part ways. My reason for doing so was I had simply bitten off more than I could chew. While I hope this is in my future again, for now, I am a former rockstar. Work This blog turned out to be useful for getting work. At the beginning of 2018, I got a job at a company called Colourwise. We specialise in direct marketing and I am responsible for developing automated systems that run regular jobs and building templates for ad hoc work. It's fantastic. So fantastic, that I forgot to post on here for over a year! In my new occupation, I have been getting very familiar with the Python programming language. I have had the privilege of building from scratch a library for interacting with our printing software more efficiently which are giving me an ever-deepening understanding of Python. I find it fascinating and am so grateful for the many opportunities I have been given to do so. Conclusion Sorry this was such a long post. I just wanted to catch up on a few items before getting into the more concise stuff. Next week, I might show some of the things I have been doing over the last year in a bit more detail. Until then, stay classy!

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