The continuing adventures of Shawn Hartnell and the pirate ship, WikiComplete.
Wiki Thumbnails
Gabrys has added a new feature to wikidot proper : Wiki Thumbnails.
No word yet when this will be available here, most likely soon-ish.
Gurus Unite!
A new wiki for gurus has been set up. If you are a guru or have very high karma, you are welcome to join.
The Last Dial Up User
The last known dial up user has moved to broadband. Everyone rejoices.
I'm Back
I'm back.
Virginia
I'll be gone until a few days after I reach Virginia.
New Wiki Complete Features
- Galactic Arachnids, covered with killer venom attachments.
- Gamma Rays, able to bake brains.
- Hollow points with anonymous tips.
- Sneakers & Night-Freekers
- More Ninjas!!
And people say they can't tell when I'm joking. :)
I may or may not have been joking about said ninjas.
Guru is Reprapper
Reprapper makes our 5th guru.
Hell of a Birthday 2
Heh. I went to the Game Maker Wiki, found a bait thread : Does the Universe Exist? and then found this :
Hell of a birthday. :)
Hell of a Birthday
Hell of a birthday. I'm now 32 and engaged after a hell of a night. One hell of a night. Woooo! :)
The Robot Slave
Ah, The Robot Slave. Good Times, great memories.
It includes a recipe for Cannibal Gumbo, a chapter titled Losin' Yer Balls, and another titled Don't Shoot Mom.
And it's a conceptual introduction to programming. A bit of a 'mind primer'.
Hey, only on GDN. :)
I've added the two 'lost chapters'. Enjoy.
OMFG! PORN!
Heh. I read it for the articles.
The second issue of Play Game come soon. In the meantime, you can read the first issue.
Geek
This is a nod to my old friend Mary, who I recently talked to again after losing touch for two years. I have missed you much. :)
Game Maker Wiki 600,000
The Game Maker Wiki has hit 600,000 pv. Thanks to everyone who has helped make the Game Maker wiki the #1 Game Maker wiki on the internet.
Quote of the Right Now
In the meantime , IMA FIRIN MAH LAZOR! - 
Pokol DaErran
Guru is Kake
kake_fisk made guru today.
He makes our fourth member to reach guru status with the other gurus being 
hartnell, 
u9, and 
tehraptor.
Good job Kake!
Birth of the Super-Bug Killer
Today is Gabrys' birthday. It is a blessed day. For without Gabrys, WikiComplete would have never gotten off the ground and would have crashed in flames back in February. :)
Happy Birthday Gabrys.
Noobs
Noobs are awesome.
Every single one of them.
Noobs are dreamers who can do anything because no one has told them it can't be done.
I have to thank my sis for making me remember this.
Thanks again, sis.
What It's All About
I wrote this sometime back in Nov 2006 about the 'Qmmunity'. It applies here. Enjoy.
Stepping Onto The Shaky Noob Ladder
I write about noobs. As I write this, about 90% of of the articles I'm working on has something to do with noobs. How to help noobs, the profile of the noob, a list of common mistakes for noobs to avoid. I could be spending my time working on my dream game, a Street Bike Fury-esque game, but I choose to take alot of time out for noobs. You'd think that I was stuck in noobdom. And here, in this article, I will confess I am a noob.
I've been programming off and on for close to thirty years. I began typing away on a now ancient Vic-20 and moved up to a Tandy 1000. Eventually, I got a solid handle on core programming and easily program a 2d game provided a good library. Most of you might think "Well, that's not quite noob programming."
But it is. My math skills are still not up to par. When it comes to trigonometry, I'm utterly lost. I couldn't program 3d to save my life. The math used in my favorite game (SBF) completely mystifies me. Like all noobs, my dream game is currently unreachable because of my lack of skill and knoweldge.
While I consider that, I have to consider how I got where I am today. I once was a complete noob. People who had a better grasp on programming were kind enough to show me the basics, give me strong hints, and point me in the right direction. In turn, I can only express my gratitude by doing the same thing for the complete noobs I happen across.
I've gone up the ladder, but, in fact, I've gone nowhere. SBF is still competely out of my reach. As I learn what I need to know to reach my higher mark I will have to depend on the help from people on a higher rung of the ladder. When I finally step up, I fully expect to look below and see people like I used to be. There will still be people above who have the skills and knowlege I want to learn.
This is the Noob Ladder, and it is eternal. Noobs don't just come in the "complete noob" variety. There's several stages, and we are all eternal noobs. If we already knew what we needed to know to make the best game we could ever make, most of us would just quit. It's not the end product that we produce that makes programming fun for us —- it's climbing the Noob Ladder for new, better, and more interesting things to learn.
This is the precise reason I write about noobs so much. You may have not noticed, but every programming community is full of eternal noobs. When I write about noobs, I write for noobs of all levels (mostly.)
The FreeBASIC Noob Ladder is just now forming. As I noted in my previous article, we're still doing a poor job helping people reach that first critical rung in the ladder. The first rung is where most of the new members to the community will come from. By helping people onto the ladder, we increase the size and scope of the FreeBASIC qmmunity. The next relsoft or Cha0s is waiting at the bottom, looking up at us, and wondering where to put his foot on the first rung.
One thing keeping alot of us from helping him is that FreeBASIC is not at a stable first version and will change over time. This is true, but it doesn't effect the first rung of the ladder. If FreeBASIC changes the way it supports more advanced programming, For-Next and If-Then will continue to work the way they do now. The FreeBASIC team isn't going to remove support for strings or integers either. We won't wake up to find that the basic string data type has been replaced by a C-like char array.
The first rung is stable, so lets mark it with a large sign that says "Step Here."
-hartnell
Today Again, really use your imagination this time.
This bit of "art' has appeared on the Game Maker Wiki, having been attributed to "not u9".
. ________ ________
/ \ / \
| \/ |
| ( o ) /\ ( o ) |
\________/ \________/ - not u9
u9 protests, saying he was incorrectly quoted, heh, I quote :
...don't quote me with those boobs!
It's one of those things that make you go "hmm…"
Today, sometime, somewhere —- use your imagination.
Hi.
06 Mar 2008
Something has been wrong with my life for about, oh, four or so years. And today, I'm admitting to myself exactly what it was — I've sold out. Yes my fellow wiki-whackers and Couch Scholars, I have sold out. Completely. For a long time I have pursued the dream of those other people. That dream, of course, being wiki for world domination.
Ok, fine. It's an admiral goal. But let's face it — it's an empty one if all you are trying to do is conquer the world. Many people committed to this goal never consider the second question that should arise in anyone who stops a minute and thinks about it.
Conquer the world and what?
Go to Dizneyland? Please.
I originally got into wiki to learn, and to share what I learn. And I have to ask myself — in the rush to dominate the net — where did this go? How did the sheer piss-in-your-pants joy of wiki become bleary eyed nights? I've secretly hated myself for this for a long time now. It ends here.
From now on, we're the 'effin Couch Scholars. We're going to continue with the original mission. We're still going to conquer the world. But this time we're going to do it the right way.
Enjoy.
