It's a great piece of software – very minimalist user interface (I love command line programs). You'll need .NET Framework 3.5 (grab it here if you don't have it installed) installed on your computer to run it.

Download it here (Mediafire) 129kb

Have fun playing with it! I've hidden a command in it (it's real easy to find, trust me – so you don't have to worry about spending hours trying to decipher a crazy puzzle – that's for next year).

A few things you should know before trying it out:

If you've got a Lua script that's purely Lua and nothing else, it should run perfectly using the dofile command (I've made sure it works.)

I believe the program shouldn't crash just because you're typing gibberish into it. It may be rudimentary – but it should have pretty OK error handling.

To exit the program, type ‘exit' or ‘quit' and the command prompt and the program will close itself. It doesn't leave behind any log files and the error messages are generally unhelpful – although that's probably something I'll work on.

If you find any bugs in this very early alpha version, report it!

Update - I made a small mistake during compiling which may cause problems for some people. Not sure if it'll fix anything, but I've updated the EXE anyway. I've called the new version 0.02 although it's only a hotfix.

There is are quite a few reasons why I bought this particular model, and I am quite sure many people, even Canon users can come up with them too.

1. Access to more lenses – the D90 comes with the AF motor needed to drive many older design lenses – using them could save you a fair bit of money over the equivalent newer ones. If you buy plenty of lenses, this pays for itself bloody fast.

2. Wireless flash system – the D90 comes with the ability to use wireless slave flashes – no need to lug around an extra flash like on the D60 to do the same commanding. (the extra flash can now be a wireless slave too!)

3. The ability to keep ADR on Auto at all times – this might not matter to most people, but this is a lifesaver on many occasions for a newbie like me. The overhead of ADR on the D60 is just way too high to bother.

4. Live view – no need to go blind when taking those high angle shots – you can now see what you're doing.

5. More buttons – the nikon D90 has plenty of buttons so you can change just about about setting that matters to you. No more weighing pros and cons of assigning the Fn button – instead you'll be busy looking for something to assign to the Fn button instead.

6. The screen – the 3 inch screen gives dSLRs what would probably be the biggest gripe of upgraders from p+s a big kick out the door. The screen is brilliant, sharp and shows you so much more. It's less a matter size than it is resolution.

7. Faster autofocus – it ain't the D300, but the AF system is faster than the D60, it is however more confusing to use. Coupled with a fast focusing lens – the camera feels crazy fast compared to the D60′s occasional hiccup. (Of course, while it is indeed more confusing – it's faster – and actually means you can just point and shoot  - less recomposing required. )

8. Movie mode – not really a reason for me, but it does mean i don't have to bring a p+s around to take the occasional video – i can just go all over the place with merely my D90 and 18-200 VR.

9. Better battery life – unlike the D60, the D90 does have an official battery grip for it, in addition to having a longer battery life to begin with.

10. Sensor – the sensor is ISO 200 to 3200, more sensitive than the D60. This essentially means better lowlight performance, not to mention this sensor should be highly similar to the D300 – giving us plenty of bang for our buck.

I went through quite a few cameras in the past half year, all of which you'd agree are progressive upgrades – and the surprising stories behind them.

The first upgrade occured when my Sony CyberShot DSC-S40 point-and-shoot camera just died on me. It didn't actually die of course, just a series of malfunctions that renders the camera difficult to use – the lens cover started having mechanical problems, although nothing a little ingenuity couldn't fix. Soon after, the LCD just failed to operate altogether. I did have a viewfinder, and I could indeed use the camera viewfinder style, but having no way to set flash settings or anything, I set about looking for a new camera.

Now, at the time, I had the misconception that dSLRs were difficult to use and that I wouldn't get my money's worth spending the several hundred extra dollars on an dSLR – I wasn't much of a photographer and I didn't spend all that much time taking photographs. Why buy a complex dSLR that would cost me over double and do less and cover less zoom range? I did a lot of research – running all over the place, considering most of the superzooms (with the exception of the Canon Powershot S5 IS, which has since been superceded by the Canon Powershot SX10 IS – which is a superzoom.)  - since they gave a lot of control over the how the camera worked, and were both smaller and cheaper than dSLRs.

I ended up settling with a Panasonic DMC-FZ18 for a short while. It was great – 18x zoom and a 28mm wide end for the less gave a lot of leeway for getting stuff done – and the close focusing for macro was great. I took several hundred shots with this camera. There was something wrong with it though: it was a great camera, but like many point and shoots (no matter how glorified and how big) – taking photos in low light just sucked. Still – it was the first camera I had with image stabilisation: and I was amazed at how well it worked for those crazy shots at 18x (504mm).

The next upgrade was much a surprise – someone had put up a Nikon D60 + twin VR lens kit up for sale for cheap. I quickly snapped it up (egged on by chewxy), whether for the opportunity to sell it for profit or just for use myself was a matter for another day. It took a while to get used to using a viewfinder again (I used to use my dad's film SLR.) after so many years of using an LCD to compose and shoot. Of course, now I love using a viewfinder so much that even when I picked up my FZ18 again, I looked through the viewfinder to compose. What was I surprised by? The camera was actually easier to use than a point and shoot. Sure, you have to hold the camera to your eye, and yes, you no longer have a 100% viewfinder to compose with – but guess what, the camera actually makes it difficult for you to screw up. Photos are rarely too dark or too bright, the camera knows when to fill flash (so you don't have to),  that's not even mentioning there is quite a gain in sharpness and detail from the mere camera change. And of course, I finally found the feature I was looking for all along – great high ISO performance. Life was good. Well, for a while.

Forking out the extra money on the D60 was indeed a problem:  this actually threw a spanner into my plans to eventually acquire a Nikon D90 sometime in 2009 or 2010. This caused me to accelerate my plans. I quickly sold my D60 and my FZ18 (and several other odds and ends). Amazingly enough – this raised me just enough cash to buy a Nikon D90. The jump from the D60 to the D90 may not seem like much. The D90 has 2 more megapixels, an AF motor, live view, movie mode, slightly better viewfinder, better AF system and so on. That's of course, all in the specifications. Stuff you don't see in the specifications? On the D60 – you had to consider whether or not to turn on ADR – on the D90, it's a no brainer – just turn it on. The D90 is so much faster at processing photos, even slower shutter speeds actually seem faster. It's also a lot more aggressive at keeping the LCD off – no wonder it no longer has an eye sensor.

Nikon D90 with AF-S 50mm f/1.4G attached

Now that I'm back on my original plan – I don't think I'll be changing cameras for the next few years. Heh.

If you haven't already noticed – I've gotten plenty of control over depth of field recently – and my photos have somehow gotten sharper. The flash has somehow become more diffused than it used to be.

Yep – that's right, I went through a few cameras – and now I'm finally settling with a DSLR – just a year after my 3-year-old Cybershot point-and-shoot decided to leave this world for a better place. I've gone through two cameras – and soon, I'll have the camera I have been planning to buy ever since it was announced. Which one? I'll wait until I can get a good shot of it with a friend's dSLR.

What might surprise you? I'm in the Nikon camp! Aha – that might give you a great clue as to what it is!

It's just another new hobby, together with speedcubing.

A flower from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne, Australia.

Taken with an 18-55mm DX VR at 22mm, f/4 with a shutter speed of 1/250

I have a long way to go before good photos do show up. Heh.

My goals:

1. Implement a working collision detection engine, either by using an existing one or writing my own.

2. Work on loading screens, menus, narration, message boxes, inventory screens and so on.

3. Obviously, implement some text file parser into the engine for maps, scripts, AI behaviour and savegames.

4. Implement a savegame system. (This will probably more of a between areas kind of thing since I intend for Sword Fantasy to be linear in fashion. I'm not fond of backtracking through a game.) This aims to eventually have a flag system so that if you want to backtrack, you can, although the game will have a mission selector.

5. Implement a physics engine. This is the tricky one. I know there are good ones out there – I am currently looking at Box2D and Chipmunk. I think I lack the skill to implement one – and since it's unimportant or more of a luxury, I'll probably skip this goal if it means I'll actually finish the engine. I know that having one of these will eventually afford me fun puzzles, great graphics and awesome tools with which to build fun levels. However, if it will cost me too much time and effort to implement one, I'll stick with lame math.

6. Make a rudimentary game. Obviously, making the engine doesn't equal making a game – and since I don't have the confidence to pull Sword Fantasy off yet, I'll be making a simpler similar game to test and demo my final completed merged engine.

As for development timeline:

End of September 2008: Swords + Sticks with rudimentary menu, loading process and exactly one level.

End of December 2008: Swords + Sticks with menus and options (hopefully with gamepad support – since it is meant for gamepads, although the control scheme will work well with keyboards – mice support will come eventually and hopefully the game will scale well to more than one resolution, so some rudimentary error prone option will be around I guess) that save OR inventory, save game system and (hopefully) a repertoire of five levels

I don't expect to finish anything.

The Energizer USB battery charger. It's no secret I'm a big fan of Energizer USB rechargable batteries, I have over 16 of them littered all over my apartment in many many devices. It's a nifty little device that charges battery via USB, and it even works with those USB adapters you may have laying about. While to most people this may not be a big deal, to me it is – when I travel, carrying one USB AC adapter and several USB cables saves a lot of space. (I chose the green coloured one simply because that felt like the most “Energizer Rechargable” brand oriented.)

The cable coils nicely around the device and the USB plug tucks in neatly into a slot built into the charger. Some of you may not value this simple aesthetic yet functional design, but I do.

Fully uncoiled, it looks like this:

Like other Energizer chargers, it supports charging AA and AAA batteries (it actually comes with two 900mAh AAA batteries.

The AAA batteries charge using the familiar fold down piece.

Curious about what it looks like inside underneath the batteries?

This charger can charge just one battery. (Handy for those who use rechargeable in mice like the VX Revolution  that only use one battery.)

Once you've loaded the batteries, and closed the cover:

Then, download their software, plug it into the computer and:

(The timer did correct itself to 4 hours after a while. Not sure why it went down all the way to 9 hours 14 minutes.)

I'm not going to lie, it was an impulse buy, and serves little purpose to me now. That being said, if I need to charge only two batteries, this is a lot more convenient than the slightly bulkier travel charger I bring around. It serves its purpose, and like most Energizer chargers, the batteries don't get as hot as some other chargers do – and if you like having a small USB device that can charge batteries lying somewhere in your room near your computer – don't hesistate to pick one of these up.

– There is a reason why the keyboard came before the mouse. This is among them. There are plenty of shortcuts involving the keyboard. The main reason they are called shortcuts is because it saves you the trouble of moving the mouse to access them. There are things at which the mouse is better, but in many cases, mastery of the keyboard will lead to a most comfortable computing experience.

2. Have the emergency key shortcuts at your disposal.

– All operating systems usually have a shortcut to save the operating system from crashing completely in the case of some awful program or some terrrible execution somewhere. In Windows, this is usually the ever popular Control+Alt+Delete. In Mac OS X, it's usually Command(Apple)+Option+Esc. In Linux, I think most desktops use Control+Escape.

3. Computers can fail, and probably eventually will.

– Computers have a lifespan of about 5 years before becoming impossibly obsolete to some people. I myself have survived with a computer for a number far surpassing that, and I have no intention to ever let it happen again. That computer didn't fail during my active usage, but it soon did after about a year or two after I finally got an up-to-date computer.

4. Since computers will fail, backup often.

– The part with the longest warranty after RAM is probably either your processor or your hard drive. Chances are however that your hard drive will fail eventually after the warranty period. I have not seen a hard drive last more than 10 years in my home, and many have failed within the warranty period itself. I carry out a pretty thorough backup regime, although it has become patchy with the advent of more reliable hard drives. There is now about three copies of each of my university work and notes which are stored electronically, all up-to-date. It will not be long before I make a fourth into a piece of significantly more reliable storage media.

5. The essentials of computing: monitor, keyboard, mouse, Internet.

– Every basic computer should have a monitor, keyboard and a mouse. Internet access isn't vital yet, but without it, your computer's potential is wasted. Heck, even my PSP can get Internet access. It is not vital, but if you have it, the whole world is there.

This are the people whose academic results are like an age above mine. You've probably seen this post before somewhere when I was reflecting upon the difference. I think since I'm a little more mature now, I see it in a clearer light, so to speak.

These people are quite the talented people. They are gifted with what I would call the will to achieve. They have ambitions and aspirations and they hunt them down. While I should envy this will, this is what makes them them and this difference will make me to be me. Hence, I couldn't care less.

I'm a lot more aimless. I didn't know that I would go to HELP Institute for my studies. I didn't quite grasp that actuarial science was probably what I wanted to do. I took up programming because I thought it was fun. (It still is.) I loved mathematics because I thought it was one of the few things that seemed to challenge me in the right way. (Complex yet simple, amusing when you realise how careless you were.)

In the few months I gathered more knowledge about this field, the more I liked it. We were talking about a field with need for strong maths (check), probability (even better still), and some programming knowledge (you've got to be kidding right?). Am I taking this subject because I thought it would be fun? No. I took it because I liked the field – and I like the challenge too.

I believe firmly in doing what you like for a living. I rarely considered programming as a career because I probably would be sleeping through most of the course. That was certainly not something I wanted to study, although it was not entirely nonviable as a career. I like programming a lot, but not enough to tread through what I already knew like the back of my hand (honestly speaking, I probably know programming better than the back of my hand. I mean, how many of you count the number of hairs on the back of your hand?).

It was probably between business and computer science for me. I never did truly like the pure sciences (biology, chemistry, and physics) although some readers of this blog might remember me for my insane chemistry marks. I probably could do medicine, but I probably wouldn't make a good doctor, and it doesn't make much sense to me to do what I essentially didn't like.

It never occured to me I would be doing some form of applied maths (which is probably some kind of pure science). The goal didn't come until I learned of it. I was essentially aimless for a while, and settled into this. I've received a hell of a lot of warnings about my maths needing to be strong and so on and so forth. What a lot of people don't realise is that programming isn't for everyone.

I believe programming can be quite abstract for some people, and for some people, it just plain clicks perfectly. You can see immediately in class who are the ones who are struggling and the ones who are breezing along. What is the level of difference? It's probably some kind of level of thinking, some kind of madness which never made it through correctly.

Everyone has a certain pathway of thinking. I would think the best among the human race have already identified what they want to do, and will do anything in their power to get it. Some of us know what we want to do, but cannot tell that it is not what we really want. As for the rest of us? We just follow the flow. Sometimes, this flow will lead us to greatness. Other times, it will lead us into a steady line. At worst, a descent into oblivion.

We are who we are for a reason, and we all serve a purpose in this world of chaos. There will always be levels of difference, glass ceilings and floors. However, we should never forget, the levels are not necessarily above each other.

May you find… umm… your destiny. Maybe. LOL.

There are actually a few more things to do.

1. If there are any constants in your program, declare them as such. This will make your life easier when you want to alter it slightly to produce different output.

2. If you can put together an operation on one line, chances are that you should. A single line operation is usually easier to debug also, since you don't have to go hunting for what does what in the long chain of operations.

3. If you can't seem to find a way to do what you want to do, it means your algorithm isn't simple enough.