To sum things up, I've recently begun to program using Microsoft Visual C++. It is AMAZING. It was difficult to use at first, but I feel more like a professional software developer now that I have a full-blown debugger, automatic code completion, and several other things (like Static Linking!!! Say bye-bye to those blasted DLL's...). 

Also, I was working on FORTRAN 77 again, and I wrote several physics functions such as every possible combination of the Kinematics Equations. I might talk about it on here later, I don't know if I'll have time before I go to college.

So anyways, I had a crazy idea. I wanted to write a battery monitoring program that would be (mostly) invisible to the user, and that idea was really hard. I finally got it working, and its current version is 0.999. I'm scared to make it 1.00 yet.

I kept adding features to it, and the biggest feature I wanted to have was to be able to monitor the brightness of the LCD Backlight. After LOADS of searching on the internet, I found a few ways this could be done, but the documentation wasn't clear or it was just way over my head. I don't like Windows API stuff because of all of the funny data types like DWORD, UCHAR, and WCHAR arrays. By the way, wide characters suck. Dealing with them is such a pain. I wish everything could just be ANSI compliant and you didn't have to use char arrays. I'd prefer to just do everything in strings, because they're so easy to use. But that's off-topic.

So I did a lot of searching, and I finally found an example that wasn't working completely yet to get the available brightness levels. I had to play with this for a long while, but I finally got it. I made it into my own GetBrightness() function that returns an integer that is a percent.

Here's some simplified code that will do the job and make it easy if you need it:

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So yeah, it's kinda complex, but it should work. You don't always need to know *how* it works, you just need to know that it *does* work.

I kinda get the idea behind it, but making it work in the syntax is the hardest part. I probably should have started in easier languages like Visual Basic or C#, because I found several useful things in just about every language besides C++.

I mainly wanted to post this code so other people might be able to use it to do whatever they want with it. I know it would have been helpful to have when I was looking to make it work. Hopefully it helps someone. 

Edit: I realize that it works on my HP Pavilion (dv6), and may not work on ALL laptops. But at least it's a start if you can't get it to work.

In the next few days, I hope to release v1.00 of my Battery and System Monitor. Keep an eye out if I do...

First up is a simple resistance and capacitance calculator. It supports both parallel and series combinations. And yes, I know it only does a single parallel circuit, not nested circuits and most definitely not series-parallel combinations. That'd be tough to pull off. Maybe I'll do that in the future.

But for now, it works pretty decently. Play around with the input to find some interesting results. (Try letters, just don't stare too close to the screen.)

Seeing how useful my Vector Calculator that added up vectors was, I decided I'd make some functions that would take vectors and break them down into components, and vice versa. It didn't take long at all, and now it's ready to port to Allegro if I ever have the need for it.

It's pretty simple, but very useful. I can support both degrees and radians for the angle.

Download Vector Components.

Finally, and probably the most impressive thing I did over this weekend is figuring out Mouse support in Allegro. It wasn't too hard, but it was pretty rewarding.

Upon learning this new feat, I came up with a system of using the mouse for on-screen buttons to modify variables in my code. It was a tad confusing, but I think it'll be pretty useful in the future.

In the picture below, left-clicking on the red box increases X by one, and right-clicking decreases it by one.

Left-clicking the large green box turns the "Clicked!" message on, whereas right clicking on it turns it off.

So yeah, that pretty much does it. My next hope is to begin writing a demonstration of Snell's Law with allegro and my newly learned Mouse Abilities.

Hopefully I'll get to work on that soon.

Downloads for all are here.

Happy Coding!

4-17-10

--Drew

Okay, so it's been a while since I've uploaded anything. Lately, I've restarted on writing programs in Allegro, and I finally figured out how to get button input done correctly. Also, it doesn't randomly crash anymore.

So, since I finally got a stable dev-environment, I decided to start over with visual programming. So now, I'm releasing two programs that I've been working on for several weeks now.

First up is the inspiration to start over: A simple polygon screen saver.

Basically, I had the idea to draw a rectangle and have the corners bounce around the screen (al a Lua Balls, Wii Balls, or Pong without paddles).

So I started with that idea, and that idea turned into fixing my Allegro environment, and I finally got somewhere on it. I was very pleased. 

Then the rectangle idea turned into using a really neat (and useful) function in the Allegro library: polygon(). 

It draws a polygon based on the verticies you give it, which you put in an array (Verticies are like corners, for those of you who don't know geometry).

So, that led me to find a way to recognize odd and even numbered things in the array to figure out which was the X coordinate or Y coordinate. It was kind of a fun--yet pretty simple--challenge.

It allows up to 28 verticies (And that looks pretty trippy). The color changes too, I randomized a whole bunch of stuff involving that and the speed of corners when they collide with the "walls" of the screen.

Sometimes, if you're lucky and patient (and you have 5 verticies), you'll wind up with a star like this (for a split second):

It can support almost any resolution, widescreen (16:9) or 4:3. It defaults to an 800x600 window, but you can change all of that by using the command line (or a batch file):

Polygon <screenwidth> <screenheight> <Fullscreen?>     // Fullscreen is optional, 1 for on, 0 for windowed

Polygon.exe 1024 768 1 // This would be 1024x768, Fullscreen

Polygon.exe 640 480      // This would be 640x480, windowed

The best setting to watch it is in fullscreen, and I included a batch file that will set it up for 1024x768 fullscreen. Just double click on "fullscreen.cmd".

For example, if you put in the first binomial as...

(2x+3y)

...and the 2nd one as...

(3x+4y)

...your foiled output would be...

6xx + 8xy + 9yx + 12yy

..which is pretty crude, but it's the best I could do for now.

The answer really should be 6x^2 + 17xy + 12 y^2, but I'm not willing to try to add support for adding like terms and simplification.

I'm not sure I want to add anything else, because how difficult it is to play with strings and prepare for every possible method of input. I'm just not that good at messing with strings.

Anyways, it works only when you follow the syntax:

1. You must have an opening parenthesis "(" at the beginning of each binomial

2. You must use only single letter variables, like x and y. Other letters work too.

3. All constants/coefficients must be positive integers. No decimals, no negatives or zeros.

4. Variables cannot be raised to a power.

And I think that's all. If you don't follow the syntax, you will get interesting results. And your answer will more than likely be completely wrong.

Don't blame me if it's wrong, it's not supposed to be 110% perfect anyways. There are a lot of bugs in it.

So, I think that does it. If you have questions, comments, concerns, ideas, hate mail, just let me know by hitting up my e-mail on the left side of the page.

Download is here on the Apps Page, under the C++ folder as Foil.

Well, that just about does it. If you want to try it out, just head to the apps page by clicking on the "Apps" link at the left of the page. It's under the "C++" folder. It's Delta_t.zip.

And yes, I'm a physics geek for calling it "Delta_t". Physics FTW!

--Drew, 12-6-09

Hope you like it!

Download is on this page, under Lua (PSP): Apps

It pretty much does what its name implies: it converts units. When you start the program, it'll ask you what kind of stuff you want to convert, like mass, speed, time, length, etc. After that, you can choose which units you are converting to and from. It's pretty simple, just follow the on-screen instructions and you should be fine. If you want to add any more units, please let me know via any means. My e-mail address is on the left of the page, under the "Navigation" pane. Also let me know if you find any bugs, errors, have any suggestions for future versions, inconsistencies in what a unit should be, etc.

I plan on updating this again at some point, so don't expect this to be finished forever. I hope to add argument support, so you can just type... 

convert 450 paperclips to grams

...on the command-line and have it return the correct answer. (Which is about 207 grams, BTW)

Other than that, I'm working on a simple 2-player pong game for the Wii, with support for both Wiimotes and GC controllers. If you have ideas for that too, let me know.

I'm also still looking for people who would like to help me with writing code that will determine the prime numbers of a given number. I've had a little bit of luck, but I've run into several problems. Any help would be appreciated. 

Sorry for such a long post, but hey, I haven't been on here for a while.

later

9-13-09

Edit: Damn tyops...

out.

You can download it in the Apps file cabinet here.

I'll leave all of the details in the Readme, but I'll outline a few things here: