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Creating a Character Tree for Steven from Earth X

17-Feb-16

I’m working on a screenplay about how a new technology is accidentally activated on Earth. I’ve been writing an introduction to the script over the weekend but today I ran into a video on how to build a character using Character Trees. This is my first attempt at a Character Tree but I know finishing one for the main character, Steven, will create a better plot, believable dialog and better underlining story.

So below is a table I put together for Steven. It contains 7 fields that each make up a part of the character.

 CROWN

  • Just a guy who has always been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
  • If he didn’t drop out of school, get caught up in drama and could keep a job he might be able to pull out alright.

 LEFT CHEEK

  • Will fight to ensure his own safety (mental or physical)
  • Doesn’t let people talk bad about him

 RIGHT CHEEK

  • Always tries to do the right thing in his mind but never seems to work out for him

 THROAT

  • Slouches due to lack of confidence
  • Only has a few decent looking clothes
  • Speaks in broken slagged english most of the time

 HEART

  • Take a life more seriously
  • Better friends/girlfriend
  • A full time job

 GROIN

  • Smokes when Stressed
  • Needs to make money to get by
  • Wishes he could start life all over

 FEET

  • Average height
  • Average looking

This was actually a really good exercise because I knew I wanted Steven to be a burn out but I didn’t really mold a character yet. I think the most helpful was the Right Cheek (the Ethics and Soul) and the Crown (Who are they). I’ll probably revise this again but here’s the first attempt at a Character Tree.

If this interests you and you’d like to create your own Character Tree, here’s the example I used as a guideline. Thanks RocketJump for creating the Film School and providing these resources.

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WRC, Screenplay & Earth X

17-Feb-16

ONE day I’ll take part in a WRC race. It’ll be with a 2004 WRX, Subaru, White and Mint Green paint Job with #272727 color wheels. This dream is on hold… but because of that I started writing a Screenplay. A screenplay about a kid who learns to drive rally though Gran Turismo simulation (sounds familiar). This led me down a rabbit hole of the lovely world of film.

In high school I had two things on me at all times, something to draw with and a camera. I have skits going back to 2007 still floating around Youtube that remind me of a time I relied on creativity to get through the day. At some point in my last year of high school I threw that all away. Maybe it was due to failing Algebra 2 or because I THOUGHT in the real world, creativity was not accepted. If I was going to get a decent job and survive in the world I needed to buckle down. So instead I learned how to program iPhone apps and lead myself to where I am today… Sitting in a cube wishing I could be building something creative and entertaining.

So to fill in that gap in my life, I’m going to pick up creating short films and screenplays for a hobby. I’ve already bought a Black Magic Pocket Cinema Camera to start. I’ve been researching all aspects of film creation, from lighting, color grading, lenses to Jabs. I thought WRC would be expensive but the tools the film industry have are crazy…

In any case, I’ve decided to put my first screenplay off to the side and start a new one. One about a man who sees the world change before his eyes and doesn’t have the chance to experience it, Earth X. They say your first film, screenplay, etc, etc, etc will most likely suck… Which shouldn’t matter because it’s all about the learning process and what you gain from it. So I want to put a hold on the WRC script for a while before I attack it. I think I might record my progress more often so look out for that. Wish me luck and future self don’t let anyone take that creative spark you have.

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LuaPlayer for OSX/Linux (LUA Development for PSP)

20-Sep-15

Don’t struggle any longer as a developer wanting to programming PSP games/apps on Linux or OSX. I spent the last 2 days trying to compile and find a working version on LuaPlayer for OS X and finally found a solution. EMULATION

I downloaded the PPSSPP, a PSP emulator, and within minutes had LuaPlayer (actually Euphoria V7) working on my Mac. Here’s proof:

Loading up LuaPlayer Euphoria V7:

Screen Shot 2015-09-20 at 7.06.00 PM Screen Shot 2015-09-20 at 7.28.36 PM

 

Now you don’t have to go back and forth on your PSP or worry about programming your games on a computer. Now if you are running windows or can use wine on Linux I recommend using the native LuaPlayer for windows, there seems to be weird work arounds to get LuaPlayer emulated with PPSSPP

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Programming “The Public Radio” Tutorial

13-May-15

Congrats you got (or backed) The Public Radio and have the developer kit! For most cases following the official documentation on programming the radio works but if you ran into any issues, this tutorial might be able to help. Also I only tested this with Linux and OSX.

TOOLS: I am using this AVR programmer (Pocket AVR Programmer by SparkFun (ATtiny2313 USBtiny))

  1. Plug in the USB attached to the AVR programmer first and wait until the red LED is on.
  2. Put fresh new batteries into the device. !IMPORTANT Turn off the powering option on the AVR programming
  3. Connect the AVR programmer to the Radio with the POWER OFF 
  4. If running OSX/Linux and programming via the GUI. Enter in the radio station and other options and press the “Flash My Radio” button and within 30 seconds the radio should be programmed*
* I did get a timeout error for some reason sometimes when programming, but the radio was programmed to the station regardless.
Hopefully this helps. If you still are running into issues contact the team at the Public Radio. I had to contact them and they were extremely helpful and stayed in contact until my radio was fully working.
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I bought a Macintosh SE

11-Jun-14
Macintosh SE

Macintosh SE

I never really thought much about it and maybe cause I grew up with most of it, but I collect a lot of old things. For example I own about 7 Gameboy originals (half are modded), 4 Gameboy Pockets (all modded), old keyboards (synths), old video games, the list goes on.

Recently I got back into the love of Apple. I seem to do this every once in a while and this time I landed on the Original Macintosh. After doing a load of research I finally decided to buy a Macintosh SE (and I have an SE/30 coming in the mail). I don’t know what my ultimate goal is with own these, but from passed experience I like to take vintage things and repurpose them.

I’m a programmer by trade, I’ve been developing iOS applications since I graduated high school and the idea of programming Macintosh’s just seems really cool. I don’t have BASIC understanding but luckily I live in an age that allows documentation to be accessible relatively easily. Especially in technology and programming.

What I’d love to do is create a simple 4 voice tracker (chiptune) program on my macintosh and maybe play these songs live one day. I’m already due for a Gameboy LSDJ concert towards the middle of the month. Lets see where this old technology takes my imagination.

If you are interested in keeping up with my modding, music creation or life you can find me at both Twitter and Instagram at @jdriselvato

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Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire Predictions

08-May-14

For those of you from my generation you’ll know the huge demand and hope for a Ruby and Sapphire remake. Yesterday, May 7th, 2014 (which also happens to be my cousins birthday, Happy Birthday Alex), Nintendo/Pokemon release a short trailer (above) with the good news, thanks Lord Helix. For now we do know that November 2014 the game will be out in North America!

Ruby has been my favorite Pokemon game since the first day I played it. Originally my friend in middle school, Connor, had the first generation Gameboy Advance. I was still stuck on the Gameboy Color days because my parents always wanted us to save up our money. Connor came to school one day showing off his new Pokemon game, Pokemon Sapphire, and I was in loved. The updated graphics, the new mechanics, and Pokemon just wounded me in an adventure I wanted to take part of.

Connor was my best friend at the time so luckily he let me borrow his translucent purple advance along side Pokemon Sapphire and right away I knew I had to get it too. I remember sitting in a car repair shop with my father sitting there glued to the world of Pokemon. I don’t know how I exactly ever got my hands on my own version of Pokemon Ruby or Sapphire but I remember I caught all 386 pokemon one holiday break at my cousins. Then some how I got my hands on Ruby and lost Sapphire bringing me to like the Ruby version better through childish reasoning.

Now that we got my history of Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire out of the way I want to get the main focus of this post, creating a prediction and wish list.

So here are my Pokemon Omega Ruby And Alpha Sapphire Predictions:

  • Personally I love wonder trade. I think for Nintendo to kill such a feature wouldn’t make sense.
  • Mega-evolutions
    • I’ve seen some speculation about a NPC that studied a mysterious stone actually turning out to be megastones. that would be cool forshadowing
    • Hitmon set mega-evolutions would be killer
    • As the cover of the new games look Kyogre and Groudon look different which also insinuates mega-evolutions
    • Also since the starting Pokemon are different each of these should have their own Mega-evolution
Pokemon Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire Predictions

Treecko, Torchic and Mudkip, all expected starters.

  • 3D graphics like X & Y
    • I’m really interested in the art style that comes with this generation. I hope our main characters look the same from the original series but obviously to todays standards
    • Also Pokemon Trainer May and announcing in the month of May? Oh Gamefreak/Nintendo
  • Full 3D compatible gameplay
    •  This might be a lost cause because I think the strain on kids eyes is to much, so Pokemon limits the 3D modes because they already know long hours of gameplay awaits
  • PokeBank compatibility
    • For some reason fans are worried PokeBank will not connect with these new games.
    • I’m pretty sure Nintendo is making some bank off PokeBank with it’s subscription payments. It would be foolish for them to drop it.
    • With this said, I’m going to also suggest Black and White to Ruby and Sapphire is a possibility
  • External Accessory
    • I missed the Gold and Silver Remake Accessory due to not having a DS at the time (really I bought my 3DS only for X and Y but Bravely Default has been a top class game)
    • I don’t know exactly what kind of Accessory but It would be a nice added feature
  • Secret Bases!
    • I don’t know how i forgot about this feature but I loved in these games building my own Secret Base.
    • Now with wifi, streetpass and all the wireless features the 3DS beings, it would make Secret bases so cool.
    • I’ll have to find my copy of Ruby and post a screenie of my secret base. I know it’s filled with a bunch of glitter and slider touch pads.

As more come to me I’ll add them here. I know I’ll probably be getting both Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire and maybe a second copy of Omega Ruby. Just because it seems every Pokemon game retains it’s worth after a few years.

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Flappys Pipe – can you survive the birds?

24-Feb-14

So I never had a chance to download Flappy Bird and get on the craze of the pointless game. What I am able to do though is create my own pointless game with birds and pipes. So I did, and it’s called Flappys Pipe.

Flappys Pipe
Flappys Pipe

DOWNLOAD FROM APPLE APP STORE HERE

How does the Game work?

Enjoy running into the pipes while playing flappy bird? Neither did the pipe. So now it’s your turn to fight back by keeping alive. How do you do this? with one finger, or two, or a whole house hold of fingers to knock off the attacking flappy birds! Simple as a tap!

DOWNLOAD LINK

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The future of iOS Programming is… not code block evaluation assignment

08-Jan-14

EDIT: 2024, 10 years later I actually like using this with Swift. Especially when creating instance variables. I think the point I was trying to make here is Objective-c is a bulky language so code blocks look messy.

Come on, it’s 2014! Why isn’t code block evaluation assignment being used yet, as trends show it’s the future!

UIButton* button = ({
//initialize button with frame
UIButton* button = [[UIButton alloc] initWithFrame:({
CGRect frame = CGRectMake(10.0, 10.0, 200.0, 75.0);
frame;
})];
//set button background color
[button setBackgroundColor:({
UIColor* color = [UIColor colorWithRed:1.0 green:1.0 blue:0.0 alpha:1.0];
color;
})];
//set button title for state
[button setTitle:({
NSString* string = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"title words"];
string;
}) forState:({
UIControlState state = UIControlStateNormal;
state;
})];
//set selector
[button addTarget:self action:({
SEL select = @selector(method:);
select;
}) forControlEvents:({
UIControlEvents event = UIControlEventTouchUpInside;
event;
})];
//return button
button;
});
[self.view addSubview:button];

whoa! whoa!

Or the exact results can be accomplished as such:


UIButton* button = [[UIButton alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(10.0, 10.0, 200.0, 75.0)];
[button setBackgroundColor:[UIColor colorWithRed:1.0 green:1.0 blue:0.0 alpha:1.0]];
[button setTitle:@"title words" forState:UIControlStateNormal];
[button addTarget:self action:@selector(method:) forControlEvents:UIControlEventTouchUpInside];
[self.view addSubview:button];

Now ask yourself, are trends really good to follow?

If you found this amusing, follow me on twitter @jdriselvato or up-vote this on stackOverflow

and yes, I did take this to the extreme.. a good clean example of doing this can be seen here.

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My take on the iOS App Store

05-Dec-13

I was discussing the App Store with a user on Stackoverflow and this was what I came up with. I was asked the question, How many downloads did your free apps get in the first days? I responded with,

Um, So my experience.. I created a personal app and put it up for .99 for the first two days. I only got 9 downloads in total. Then nothing the 3rd day. On the 4th day, I changed the price to free, and got 600 downloads (again this was 3 days after the initial release). Then from there it slowly died in about 2 weeks to 5-10 a day. But on my first update, I added in iAds and free download, which again shot up with about 500 downloads, and I made about 15$ from iAds click in about a month.

Then, Do you guys have any experience of sale-numbers with apps you put in for free at the first day? > Personally, it\’s always better to put the game out for free the first few days. The reason being is because if it\’s an awesome app, a lot of people will download it and share it because it\’s free. This means you\’re app will climb the charts much quicker. Once it\’s on the top 100, that\’s when it\’s time time switch to a $0.99 app (because at that point it\’s being publicly seen). No matter how awesome my app is, (if I don\’t have in app purchases), I\’m going to put my app out for free with ad) then with the ability for 1.99 or 0.99 to purchase the ability to turn off ads.

Then the person commented questioning if they should do a drop price trick to get more users, I responded with: > I didn\’t understand the market at the time. I thought if i put my app out for 0.99 i\’ll make a million dollars. I made 7 dollars in 2 days and then zero dollars the 3rd day. That felts extremely disappointing considering the first few days and app is out, is usually the peak of revenue. When I drop it to free, i was doing that because I wasn\’t making money and I really wanted people to play with my app. So I did and alot of people downloaded it. But now, a year later, I get maybe about 10 downloads a week on a FREE app. Which sucks. I don\’t recommend, doing the set a price drop trick to get more users. Mine was a trial and error thing, not a way of doing things. but do what you want, like i said it\’s a recommendation. A price drop might work for you. but nothing pisses a user off then see yesterday the app was $1.00 and today it\’s free, and they just wasted a dollar away.

and > I always suggest the free app with iAPs or iAds. Always.

The person then stated, The reason on wanted to put a pricetag on it is to get more users… > and if you\’re audience limited, then why limit it more with a price tag. a pricetag 9 times out 10, will drive most people away.

Well this was just my take on the App Store situation. I\’m not sure if everyone agrees but this is the information I\’ve formulated over my 3 years of experience developing iOS apps for companies and personally.

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A small memory of my Gameboy and TLOZ Link’s awakening

10-Sep-13

I was listening to this:

and the gameplay showed link swimming, and I started thinking to myself, link swims? Then black and white gameplay started showing up in my head and the connections in my brain put together something I forgotten and lost so long ago. One of the first Gameboy games I owned as a six year old child was “The Legend of Zelda Link’s awakening”! This is amazing to me. As I sit writing this on my bed, I remember something really cool about this game. I used to play it non-stop, and to the point that the battery save feature stopped working (or this could have been because I washed plenty of gameboy games in my jeans). In any case, I remember telling my mom that this happened and we contacted nintendo (Based off the number that was on the easy to lose battery cover) and they let us send it in and they returned a new one one to me. (Now the more I think about this though, I remember sending off Zelda, but I remember receiving Pokemon Blue. My mind is remember a small folder with blue inside for some reason, regardless I remember Zelda wasn’t saving correctly and we sent it off).

One thing I would regret as an old man, is forgetting the amazing memories I had with my gameboy and my childhood. And since this is my blog, I am going to continue and explain how I bought a purple (see through) gameboy color at the age of six with my own money. When I was a kid, I was in the cub scouts. For whatever reason, my family (my mother especially) pushed me really hard one year to sell a lot of pop-corn as cub scouts do. Well it turned out I sold a record amount of pop-corn which in return I received a scholarship (that I have no clue how to get now that I’m in college) and personal spending money. Around the same time, Pokemon and the new Gameboy Color just came out and I remember going to this mall in pittsburgh pennsylvania to buy Pokemon Blue and the really cool looking purple see-through gameboy (thus Pokemon Blue was my first game, even though the same moment I bought Gex 3 – Deep Pocket Gecko). I remember the details of the stores outside and the location in the right back corner where Pokemon Blue was located and exactly where I grabbed it off the shelf. I was so excited to get own gameboy! At the time I didn’t understand money but I did pay for it with that money I earned, which looking back is pretty cool. Unfortunately, I have no clue where my Pokemon blue went to but I still have my beautiful original gameboy color. I play it everyone once in a while but mainly keep it for the memories.

As a quick side note, I used play so many hours of Pokemon with my friend Brian. Brian was really awesome to play with because he has a gameshark and spawned Mews for us. A few years after getting the Gameboy Color, I moved to North Carolina and lost touch with him. It’s been over 10 years since we’ve talked. If somehow you run into me on the internet, please hit me up! I would love to see how you are doing and catch up. I still have a photo of us I’ve kept 🙂 along side my original Gameboy Color

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