Chapter 1 - 01: The Year is 3031

The year is 3031. This year is of no significance in history. It is of no significance to any normal person, any average person. Nothing has happened and nothing is going to happen this year that will concern the normal citizen on any of the Terran colonized planets. But for a few people, it will be the first day of a step in the direction of a new life. However, only one of them will cause the shift of events that will alter destinies and fates forever. This one, at this point in time, cannot remember his name. He is among those who have chosen or been chosen to have their memories wiped.

All he will remember when he awakens will be the room he woke up in. This room will be a simple room in a space vessel known as the Medical Vessel Number 2904. It is currently travelling through Dekaten System to Remote Station 29.

***

The room is unfamiliar to him. He remembered seeing this room before. It was darker before. His eyes blinked a few times to adjust. "Where am I?", he thought. He saw a green light flashing at the door. He got up and walked to the door. He knew it was supposed to open, but it didn't. Seconds later, it opened. He knew it wasn't him who activated the door.

On the other side, there was another man. "I see that you are awake. Come with me, we have much to talk about." In his hand was a large file. It was labelled "Subject 3002 - Kanya Methodius". "Oh yeah, and by the way, I'm Harrison. I see you've already taken interest in this file I'm holding. Yes, your name is Kanya."

Harrison led Kanya down a long series of doors. As he looked back, he could no longer tell which was the room he was in. He had forgotten to take note of his room number. They finally came to a door which led to another hall of doors. Harrison just went into the closest unoccupied room. Kanya had no idea how he knew, but he knew the configuration of lights above the door meant it was unoccupied.

Convert into Algorithm

How do you convert a simple looking formula and turn it into an algorithm? It's simple. Break stuff down into steps. That's what you're always told. 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.

Wordpress 2.02 Installed

I've just installed WP 2.02. Some of you might have seen the accident caused by my useless FTP client. I'm still fixing it. Be patient. Report any errors you see in the shoutbox, and I will get down to it ASAP. I haven't blogged much because I've been planning out changing the main character for my story, so expect a new Story post soon! :D

If you haven't noticed already, http://cfgt.net/v1 has been removed. I've found it to not do what I wanted it to do, and I wasn't doing enough to keep it around. I'll put it on hold until I find what I want to do with the main domain of cfgt.net. :D

The Story's Back Story

As you should've figured out by now, the story has a relatively simple back story. While it might've been better to fit in this back story in a later part of the story, I thought it would be better for you to know of the central 7 of the Arltian Alliance, the 29 Gifted of the Terrans, the two major corporations and the central Terran system known of the Terran Meganet. I think this will allow me to immediately push into the main storyline without much ado. You can also expect numerous references to the 29th Gifted, since this person is the last, youngest, and also currently the most powerful. Do note that I have not named any of the central 7 colonies, meaning that they will play important roles along the lines of the story later on.

Of course, you can expect elaboration of the back story as we go. I have yet to generate the main character, and I'm not entirely sure how I will go about it. I have decided that the main character would have to be a mercenary to tell my story in its entirety, but I'm not entirely sure where the story should start.

How to Look at Things from the Programmer's Point of View

To do programming, you often have to think out of the box. Most people don't describe it as much out of the box. People say it's simple, it's this and it's that. I'll give you the grain of truth. It involves making an extension outside your ordinary box. People don't think of much when their computer just runs. They see this box pop up, they click it. They see that, click it. Programmers look at it differently. When you see that Welcome screen for Windows XP, what do you think?

You will think that you just have to move your mouse, click on it, type in your username and password, and all is fine and dandy. What would a programmer have to do before you can do that?

First, the programmers have to load up all the nice images. Then, they will have to render the screen with all this nice images. After that, they will have to render your accounts' names on the screen. Following that, it is a simple matter of drawing your mouse cursor on the screen. Then, they have to make sure that when you click this button on a name/picture, it will do something. I could go on like this forever, but I think you've gotten the point.

The premise is to break down the steps into smaller, easier, simpler steps. The tricky part is that you have to break them down small enough so that you can express it in the programming language of your choice. A computer doesn't know how to understand 2x². You have to break it down: 2 * x ^ 2.

It is easy to underestimate the difficulty of getting the computer to return the third decimal place in 2.704932. Sure, our human minds immediately point out the 4. In some programming languages, treating it as a string like our minds do (that is counting 3 characters after the dot) will do it. Imagine doing it with merely mathematics. It's extremely difficult to break it down with our brains because we can do it so easily, but in truth, it might be difficult to get a computer to do it.

Imagine what you'd have to do? Even programming students might take a minute or two to figure it out. The concept can be so far out because you have to take this even smaller box and think within it. How is this out of the box? You have to know how to abuse the effect of the smaller box. (to be continued later)