Hi everybody, I'm James. (I don't do the whole "alias" thing)
I'm a young programmer, starting three years ago (13 and a half, year 8). I never had a program experience before that, and little did I realise how much that tiny little (and expensive) calculator would change my life. The problem back then was that the TI-83plus booklet was a pathetic little guide to programming, so I had to learn most of the commands I know via the trial and error method. And then I somehow stumbled accross this website when I was really bored and had google in front of me.
This site is truely fantastic, and to think that all the information on this website was basicaly worked out through trial and error is phenomenal, especially considering how little information TI gives us. You must be very proud burr!
So yes, now I'm 16 and a half, year 11, and still a relatively young programmer in terms of age, but apparantly most of us are. I've made many programs over the years:
- ORDER; A program which orders the numbers I enter in order. I did this because I had a whole stupid chapter in maths in which I had to do this. I would do it and realise I left one number out and need to do it again. So now I just had to type in the numbers and presto! I could just copy them down! I would usually feel that that is cheating; however, it was a stupid and pointless exercise.
- BINARY; Converts Base 2 binary numbers into Base 10 decimal numbers. Mainly to see that I could do it, but I have given it to friends who do that sort of thing in their maths class. I tell them to do it themselves then use my program to check the answers but I'm sure they will just cheat instead.
- CONVERT; A program which converts between the Metric and Imperial system: Weight, Height (in feet & inches, and both), and Length.
- SURDFACT; A program which finds all of the factors of a number, and also simplifies surds to their simplest form.
- QUADFORM; A program which is just the quadratic formula. That is to say, it asks you for A, B & C and then tells you whether there is no possible answer or it just tells you the answer (whether there is one answer or two). This program also uses the same formula from my SURDFACT program to simplify the discriminant (surd part) of the quadratic formula.
- TIMER; Self explanatory. Since the TI-83plus doesn't have an in-built clock feature (I am well aware the TI-84 does) I made a timer.
- CALCMSN; Basically a program which links with other calculators and you can talk to other people just like you would on MSN. This was really a "test" or "learning" program where I was experimenting the calculator communication feature, as it is pretty dumb to talk to the person next to you in such a way! But I discovered a somewhat "revolutionary" way as to how I can link calculators flawlessly with the flawed method of calculator communication.
- COMCHAT; a game I made. It is short for "Computer Chat" and it is basically an artificially intelligent computer. In other words, you talk to it like it is your friend, and it asks you questions and remembers things about you (in that one session though. When you quit, I programmed it to reset everything in case (and probably) some body else starts the program.) like your name, age, sex and mood. This is one of my most successful programs (a lot of people who have heard about it, or seen it, want it), as the database is large enough to be of a simple intelligence
- TREASURE; AKA, "Find The Hidden Treasure". *Sigh* Was very much like a maze game where you move a person around to "Find The Hidden Treasure". There were switches and secret "brakeble walls" which would manipulate the maze and in some cases "reveal the treasure". It was a fantastic game of 16 levels. I only made and designed 5 levels and told my friends to draw designs on paper for me to make. The reason I sigh is because my calculator ran out of batteries and the backup on my friends calculator would have been great if his calculator didn't get stolen. But very recently, I had an epiphany of a great way of remaking it to make a much faster version (and ironically, a smaller sized version) of it. I have just remade it, however, the maps took up WAY too much memory, and I used certain ideas from this wiki to compress the maps (at a wonderful ratio of 72.66%). The only problem now is that it takes too long to load each map, so I thought I'd entertain the user with a percentage as to how much it is completed.
- BUNNYGOTCHI; Inspired by my Tamagotchi, I made a "Bunny Gotchi"! This is also one of my most successful programs (like I said before, a lot of people who have heard about it, or seen it, want it). It needs food, water, exercise and needs to be kept hygienic. Other wise it dies. It has problems such as being underweight or overweight (for its age) which risk it dying (just as starvation or disease from being un-hygienic). It also has wonderful feature of connecting with other bunnys via the link cable (using my previously mentioned "revolutionary" idea. It isn't really a revolution, but just a milestone for me). Oh, and it needs sleep. It doesn't evolve, however, that would make the program take up too much memory to even run the program. A secret feature of it is that when it grows up (which is hard to do because you need to REALLY take care of it) it tells you that it is all grown up now and doesn't need you to take care of it. So it feeds itself and cleans itself automatically. There are some pretty cool animation effects too! Oh, I programmed a secret cheat into it too!
What really sucks is that my calculator-computer cord somehow exploded, and for me to do things I need to send my programs to a friend, who goes home and uploads them to the computer, e-mails them to me, and then I can do things on computer. I have been horrible reduced to manualy typing my programs on the computer by reading the calculator line by line. It sucks because I really want to load my programs onto the internet for people to try out, and critic. But such is life…
Anyway, I just got bored and felt like talking about me.
Cheers ~ James Kanjo
