I didn't finish hangman because I got too absorbed in the graphics. Maybe tomorrow.



--update I finished it but its only a beta and does not keep score.

It is so weird but comforting to have this home away from everyone. Some this little space on the web exists and it makes me feel happy. I relaly like it now that I can see the userpics under the b:war. I makes it feel like everyone is peeking out when you visit the site.

I can't understand why during the last week of school some of my students are grappling with the most basic features of web design. I can't believe that in Advanced Programming DMA 480, week 14 - I would have to teach anyone how to write basic HTML like a select list for a form. I can't even believe that I had to address such basic stuff at this point in their learning cycles. I would be embarassed to ask such trivial stuf at this point.

Have they not heard of google! Only a small handful of students ever looks anything up. No one buys books, and when they have a problem - such as a form not working - they simply wait a whole week until they see me instead of trying to figure it out.

I never got to any of the really cool stuff about advanced web deisgn because I spent the whole first half of the class dealing with fixing all the fossilized errors they learned in the past. It was the most disspointing teaching experience I ever had after tempreal. They basically came from a copy and paste mentality where they didn't really understand anything they were writing, just how to copy and paste stuff from other places. It led to all kinds of namespace errors and insanity. I still have students that are obsessed with procedural programming - they will never go anywhere with that.

I am glad I am moving on to a new place as I am so sick of living in the land of the remedial. Maybe I am just cranky in my old age but I worked a hell of a lot more as a student and a good half of my students don't try at all.

This one student Elizabeth is so great. So really knew almost nothing when she started and she tries very hard and learns very thoroughly. I think if she keeps practicing that she could really be good at it some day.

I couldn't sleep with the hangman game not being done and the idea of a new cell phone in my head. After finishing the PHP backend, I finished the javascript front end of the game, now I just need to come up with a scoring system and rip a couple thousand words from the journal entries. At least I can now say, (e:hangman) will soon be available for your chat game pleasure.

I think it will be really fun to implement other multiplayer games. I might need the help of (e:shawnr) for this.

Depending on how motivated I feel over the next few days you may have word games. I spent the entire evening progrmaming the backend of a sitewide hangman game which works off the journals.

It is the first game I am building around the surebert API . Basically the game should be in a continuous state of play when you come to the site. People can guess the letters until they kill hangman or fill up the word. I haven't decided how scoring would work but somehow I am thinking about implementing a journal scoring system that counts for other things too. You can gain points by doing things like winning games, posting images, posting journal entries, inlinking, etc.

It gives me a reason to use all the code I had written for my color coordinated grading system now that I am no longer a professor.



Now hangman just needs some fancy graphics.