Monday 15 June 2015

Still transmitting! - What I've been up too

Hello world,


It has been a while since I last updated my blawg! :D

So what's been going on with me lately can be summarised in three words - University, Work and Perl.

As can be seen on my site, in the portfolio section I finished my second module on my part time masters course. My preliminary grade is 65% which is kinda low for what I wanted. But considering I was trying to learn C++, OpenGL and the Oculus Rift SDK all at once, I think I did ok :D I'll just have to focus on my next two modules to make up the mark. This can still work! Just means I need to write more (read ALOT more) c++. I also need to pick up a book and Datastructs and Algo's in C++. I have only recently come to understand the utter importance of data structures and algorithms. Something I wish I picked up on sooner. I always knew they were important in theory, but I always shied away from them and Big O notation. This will need to change soon. Additionally I need to pick up a good book on OpenGL, one that does not use deprecated stuff! Out of date GL stuff screwed me over a few times!

As you can probably tell, our Grimm Journey game project has been on hold for a little while, as most of the team are currently pretty swamped with various other projects that has been sucking all our time away. Hey we gotta eat and pay rent, right? But fear not for the project will continue soon! Personally I am aiming to implement the animations from the demo scene into the game and hook up the narration (yup still working on this) properly at the end of next month when I have the time. After all that C++ and perl, writing some C# should be a treat lol.

For now my main focus has been on refreshing myself with / learning Perl to a proper standard, due to work requirements. And because I learn better by doing than reading and watching I set out to make a little application/script. Making a game in perl would have been ... interesting. However I wanted to use it more in line with what it was designed for really. Covering scalars/arrays and hashes as well as regex and matching/substitution.

As such I made a basic Stock/Share tracker that pulls info from the stock exchange and does some math on it. The tracker doesn't track the value of stocks ion their own, mostly because this info is available all over the Internets. What it does instead is track your specified stocks, based on the mount you paid for them and the quantity you have. Then using that calculates you profits (after stamp tax and commission and things like that). The results update in real time (at the moment every minute).

What this means is I have an easy way to at a glance see where my stocks are at, if I had any. I'll make a follow up posts going into more detail for those interested. I am currently using it with a fake/virtual stock exchange to test. The goal here was to see the accuracy of my script and not make cash...although that would be neat.

Work-wise everything is going neat, should be moving departments at the end of this month and be able to focus on more programming and less testing. I'm looking forward to this. Exciting times.

That's all from me for now, I'll be updating my portfolio with some screenshots of my stock tracker sometime soon so go check it out :)

Seeeeeeeeeee ya!
Rob

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