First apologies in the delay of my update. My Spring classes just started and I've been busy with them,But enough excuses no to the review. Now for those of you who haven't deciphered the title this review is on computer programing.What...wait...were are you going? Listen I know this seems like some thing that only complete nerds do and that is certainly what I thought as well and that maybe true for a lot of people. However, I decided to jump in and try my hand at this.
The first thing you will have to deal with when earning to program is what language to program in. You see different languages have different capabilities. I can't describe them all but a good rule of thumb is the more complex a result you want the harder the language will be. Don't be discouraged though there are a lot of books out there that can teach you the basics of the more common languages like C++,Java,C#,Applescript and others in about a day.
I decided to go with the most common C++.First thing first I need a program that will let me write and compile programs. A simple Google search will help you find free software fast. Personally I recommend DEV-C++. It's free and works well without too many functions to distract or intimidate the novice programmer.
I relied on text book and internet help forums to learn what I did an for the most part it was simple at first. In the beginning I recommend having a sheet of paper next to you as you're programing with a list of basic commands, what they do and how to use them. At first I found myself constantly looking back to this page to remember the key commands.Here's a quick example of a basic program
#include<iostream>
using namespace std;
int main(){
cout<<"Hello World"<<endl;
return 0;
};
And now the description. The first line is the header which shows what types of functions you use. the part in the brackets is the main function which is what your program does, in this case it sends out the message Hello World. This may look hard to remember but there are less than a dozen commands that once you learn you can start doing some impressive stuff. All it takes is some practice to remember the functions.
In the beginning this review was a chore. A lot of work to do some stupid stuff like say hello, but now that I've got the language down i find my self writing programs for fun just to see if I could. This last program I've worked on for more than 20 hours and all of it was fun.( In case you are wondering the program is D&D character creator of the essentials line. ) All in all this review was fun for me but programming is not for everyone so I have to take that into account.
Programming gets
Noob score
(5/10) With all the reading and memorization needed it is hard to get excited when starting out. However, if you stick with it it become as easy as writing.
Overall score
(3/10) Like I said for me this is fun but aside from making weird little applications for your computer that only you will use there is little enjoyment to be found for the normal person.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Monday, December 27, 2010
Writing a Novel
This week I will be learning how to write a novel. Compared to my first entry most of this subject was done in a somewhat random fashion. I tried to read articles go to lectures and such to learn how to write but in the end I found that for me Structure is not a good thing when writing.
The first thing I can say for sure though is you need to understand what you want to write. Pick a genre and age group. For me i decided on a sci-fi/psychological story for late teens. Make sure that you like and understand what you are writing about. I can't tell you how many times I've read sci-fi stories written by someone who thinks light years is a unit of time. Many people may over look this but when writing in a specific genre you have to assume that your audience have a good understanding of the material and mistakes like that take them out of the world you are trying to create.
After you have your area figured out read...a lot. Don't just read stories with similar ideas as your own. Observing different styles will help you find your own. If you can read some short stories as well as novels. The more exposure to literature the better.
Now start writing. Try short stories at first these will help you get the hang of developing a basic plot and some minor dialogue. Give your stories to people to read. Don't feel bad about any criticism they give you, many times I asked people for more to better help my skills progress.
After a while you should begin to see where you talent lies, whether you can describe scenes with beautiful detail, provide realistic and flowing dialouge or convey character emotions will have a large impact on the stories you can write.
Now that the foundation is set build yourself an outline for the story you want to tell. Include major plot points and any particular scenes you really want in your final novel. Using the out line you can now begin writing you first novel.
While writing use the outline as a guide but never think that you can't deviate from it. If you have a sudden ideal put it in. Don't dwell on any one part to long, just get everything down. Again give your story out and listen to opinions. Next go back over your story and improve it, adding more detail or removing excessive amounts of details as necessary. The best advice I can give you is don't over use exposition. It can be tempting to just tell the reader the whole story and how they should feel, but good stories let the world expose itself to the reader. For example instead of saying that two characters are in love with one another in the first paragraph let their actions show it over several. Repeat these steps as many times as needed.
The last step is to try and get it published. Now I've never had anything published so take everything in the next bit with a grain of salt. There are a lot of publishing houses out there, many of them have certain areas they cater to genre,age group ect. so do some research and then start sending you drafts in. Just as with giving it out to friends listen to any problems the publisher gives you.
This article by no stretch of the imagination is a guarantee of getting publish and you may have to write several novels before one if any get published, but keep with it. If nothing else you will have fun creating your own world.
Noob rating
(5/10) It's a lot of work but most people have some experience with stories that will help them.
Total rating
(7/10) Sitting down each night to work on my own story was a blast. I found myself looking forward to it as much as reading a new chapter of the books I read.
The first thing I can say for sure though is you need to understand what you want to write. Pick a genre and age group. For me i decided on a sci-fi/psychological story for late teens. Make sure that you like and understand what you are writing about. I can't tell you how many times I've read sci-fi stories written by someone who thinks light years is a unit of time. Many people may over look this but when writing in a specific genre you have to assume that your audience have a good understanding of the material and mistakes like that take them out of the world you are trying to create.
After you have your area figured out read...a lot. Don't just read stories with similar ideas as your own. Observing different styles will help you find your own. If you can read some short stories as well as novels. The more exposure to literature the better.
Now start writing. Try short stories at first these will help you get the hang of developing a basic plot and some minor dialogue. Give your stories to people to read. Don't feel bad about any criticism they give you, many times I asked people for more to better help my skills progress.
After a while you should begin to see where you talent lies, whether you can describe scenes with beautiful detail, provide realistic and flowing dialouge or convey character emotions will have a large impact on the stories you can write.
Now that the foundation is set build yourself an outline for the story you want to tell. Include major plot points and any particular scenes you really want in your final novel. Using the out line you can now begin writing you first novel.
While writing use the outline as a guide but never think that you can't deviate from it. If you have a sudden ideal put it in. Don't dwell on any one part to long, just get everything down. Again give your story out and listen to opinions. Next go back over your story and improve it, adding more detail or removing excessive amounts of details as necessary. The best advice I can give you is don't over use exposition. It can be tempting to just tell the reader the whole story and how they should feel, but good stories let the world expose itself to the reader. For example instead of saying that two characters are in love with one another in the first paragraph let their actions show it over several. Repeat these steps as many times as needed.
The last step is to try and get it published. Now I've never had anything published so take everything in the next bit with a grain of salt. There are a lot of publishing houses out there, many of them have certain areas they cater to genre,age group ect. so do some research and then start sending you drafts in. Just as with giving it out to friends listen to any problems the publisher gives you.
This article by no stretch of the imagination is a guarantee of getting publish and you may have to write several novels before one if any get published, but keep with it. If nothing else you will have fun creating your own world.
Noob rating
(5/10) It's a lot of work but most people have some experience with stories that will help them.
Total rating
(7/10) Sitting down each night to work on my own story was a blast. I found myself looking forward to it as much as reading a new chapter of the books I read.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
D&D Unraveled
This is my first real review for A Noob's Guide and I wanted it to be something that seems very daunting to most people, Dungeons and Dragons. Now it is very important that I specify that I'm reviewing D&D essentials line which is Wizards attempt to introduce new players to D&D 4th edition.
I've had no experience with D&D aside from the stereotypical views that most of us grew up. D&D is only for hardcore geeks, it's too complicated, you need libraries of books to play and everyone role-plays like their at the Renaissance festival. Most of these view were completely smashed as soon as I began my research.
The first thing I did was go to a near by game shop and ask the people working there what I needed to buy to get started. Now you can go out and buy the books and dice and anything else you need separately but if you really want to learn buy the Red Box. This box has everything you need to get started. Before you look at the cards or the game pieces and get freaked out I'll tell you this, I had no idea what to do with the cards or anything else, and there are a lot of cards.
After the initial shell shock of the amount of stuff I settled down and began reading the players guide, and I have to say Wizards of the coast know how to speak to noobs. Instead of the standard rule book that most board games give you this thing is a choose your own adventure booklet, much like the ones that used to be everywhere.
For those of you to young to remember choose your own adventure books where simple books that told a story and every so often you were given a choice. One choice made you turn to a page and the other lead to another page. There history lesson done.
The guide walks you through choices that slowly build your character. A choice like healing you fallen comrade made you a cleric or if you choose to hit a goblin with a heavy object that made you a fighter. The following choices determined the rest of your details filling in you characters back-story as well as their stats, all the while teaching you how to fight and move in D&D.
By the end of the booklet I had a full-fledged D&D thief ready to go. Another thing that the Red Box does is those cards i mentioned earlier. Relax there is no card game like component to D&D, these card simply describe actions that your character can do and how often they can do them. I makes it so easy for me as a noob to keep track of my options by laying out the cards in front of me while i play as a quick reference. When you use a power simply flip it over until you can use it again.
The box also comes with a game mat, tokens that represent characters and monsters as well as a Dungeon Master's staring guide with several adventures. So if you ever have friends over and they are interested you can pull this box out and in ten minutes you can be playing D&D.
I personally couldn't get enough people together to try this with me so i began my second part of my review, finding a group to play with. This was as easy as buying the box, because the same game store that sold it had weekly D&D games for free. All I did was show up and introduce myself. I told everyone playing at my table that this would be my first time playing and the response was completely positive. Unlike online games where noobs are constantly being ridiculed D&D players are more than happy to share their knowledge and help you learn as you play. The main factor that allows this is that D&D is very much a team based game with everyone going against the DM. As we played I noticed that unlike what I originally thought role-playing was not very important. We played like most people play a board game after a while you just start acting like your character without forcing it. Just like when you play Monopoly after a while you act like big shot buying property and building hotels. Some of the most fun was actually trying to go around a town robbing every one I could while one of the other character, who enforced the laws of the town, tried to stop me.
All in all learning D&D was a fun and easy experience and for $20 I have had well over 10 hours of entertainment, which beats most video games I've purchased. If you have the time I recommend trying it out by yourself or with a couple friends, its worth your time.
Noob rating
(8/10) Pick up and learn it in less than an afternoon
Total rating
(7.5/10) Games are fun but after your first character it is a bit of a pain to try and build more unique ones.
I've had no experience with D&D aside from the stereotypical views that most of us grew up. D&D is only for hardcore geeks, it's too complicated, you need libraries of books to play and everyone role-plays like their at the Renaissance festival. Most of these view were completely smashed as soon as I began my research.
The first thing I did was go to a near by game shop and ask the people working there what I needed to buy to get started. Now you can go out and buy the books and dice and anything else you need separately but if you really want to learn buy the Red Box. This box has everything you need to get started. Before you look at the cards or the game pieces and get freaked out I'll tell you this, I had no idea what to do with the cards or anything else, and there are a lot of cards.
After the initial shell shock of the amount of stuff I settled down and began reading the players guide, and I have to say Wizards of the coast know how to speak to noobs. Instead of the standard rule book that most board games give you this thing is a choose your own adventure booklet, much like the ones that used to be everywhere.
For those of you to young to remember choose your own adventure books where simple books that told a story and every so often you were given a choice. One choice made you turn to a page and the other lead to another page. There history lesson done.
The guide walks you through choices that slowly build your character. A choice like healing you fallen comrade made you a cleric or if you choose to hit a goblin with a heavy object that made you a fighter. The following choices determined the rest of your details filling in you characters back-story as well as their stats, all the while teaching you how to fight and move in D&D.
By the end of the booklet I had a full-fledged D&D thief ready to go. Another thing that the Red Box does is those cards i mentioned earlier. Relax there is no card game like component to D&D, these card simply describe actions that your character can do and how often they can do them. I makes it so easy for me as a noob to keep track of my options by laying out the cards in front of me while i play as a quick reference. When you use a power simply flip it over until you can use it again.
The box also comes with a game mat, tokens that represent characters and monsters as well as a Dungeon Master's staring guide with several adventures. So if you ever have friends over and they are interested you can pull this box out and in ten minutes you can be playing D&D.
I personally couldn't get enough people together to try this with me so i began my second part of my review, finding a group to play with. This was as easy as buying the box, because the same game store that sold it had weekly D&D games for free. All I did was show up and introduce myself. I told everyone playing at my table that this would be my first time playing and the response was completely positive. Unlike online games where noobs are constantly being ridiculed D&D players are more than happy to share their knowledge and help you learn as you play. The main factor that allows this is that D&D is very much a team based game with everyone going against the DM. As we played I noticed that unlike what I originally thought role-playing was not very important. We played like most people play a board game after a while you just start acting like your character without forcing it. Just like when you play Monopoly after a while you act like big shot buying property and building hotels. Some of the most fun was actually trying to go around a town robbing every one I could while one of the other character, who enforced the laws of the town, tried to stop me.
All in all learning D&D was a fun and easy experience and for $20 I have had well over 10 hours of entertainment, which beats most video games I've purchased. If you have the time I recommend trying it out by yourself or with a couple friends, its worth your time.
Noob rating
(8/10) Pick up and learn it in less than an afternoon
Total rating
(7.5/10) Games are fun but after your first character it is a bit of a pain to try and build more unique ones.
Introduction to the Guide
I'm starting this guide with little hope of getting anything more than a few random visitors but looking on the internet I see a lot of reviewers but all of them seem to focus on people with experience in whatever they are reviewing. I've only recently embraced my nerd persona and have found few reviews for people like me. Every week I will try a new activity and explain the experience to you. There will be two rating the first will rate how accessible the topic is to noobs and the second will be the overall enjoyment. If you find this blog at all helpful please follow it and recommend it to your friends.
-TLO
-TLO
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