Coffee Shop XXXIX-9/21/2013

[GarryCBQ]

Good afternoon.
Jeff ... That's a spooky RPO
Dale ..... Enjoy construction of the new layout.

 

[jeffrey-wimberly]

Well I finally finished programming in the motel. What a workout! I am wiped. What happened to the days when programming was a lot easier? Oh yeah. I could see better then. Well after today's programming marathon I pulled up another program I wrote many years ago called 'Hell House'. It's about a character who's searching for a particularly valuable bond and he has to go through many perils to do it. It's so complex with so many things that have to be collected and so many perils to dodge that it's nearly unwinnable. I've only won it twice and I wrote the thing. Despite it's complexity it was written in very simple code, similar to what I'm using for Native Fury.

Here's a couple of sample shots of parts of the program listing. It was written to run in 80-columns but I'm showing it listed in 40-columns so it's easier to see. The program is so large it's stored on the diskette in seven segments, the largest being seventy diskette sectors. It was written on an AMI-ONE, a 48k Apple II+ clone.

This first one is from the segment concerning a Civil War era silver mine.

This second one is part of the listing from the ancient manor house.

 

[jeffrey-wimberly]

Had a busy day today. Programmed thirteen or fourteen blocks into Native Fury. That was the motel by itself, not including the tie-ins with the forest and dunes modules. Tomorrow I'll be programming the park behind the motel. That's another nine to eleven blocks. Almost a full day counting breaks and I'm taking my time on this. When I wrote 'Hell House' back in 97-98 I was programming almost thirty blocks a day. After ten hours of that kind of fast typing your eyes feel like biscuits that were left in the oven too long and there's so much code running through your head your dreams even come up looking like Fortran, C and C++. In my younger days I could almost speak assembly language. Taking apart a program and rearranging it with a sector editor or a nibbler was child's play. Now it's difficult because I haven't done it much since 1990. It's true what they say about use it or lose it. What I'm doing with Native Fury is nothing. I'm playing with it. An eight year old could do it if you gave him/her the proper instruction in the use of Basic code, C++ and VBasic. Kids used to learn this stuff in the third grade. I gave both my nieces and my nephew their first two semesters of computer instruction. Didn't take with my nephew. He's a gear head. Give him a computer and he's lost. But give him a car or truck engine and he can tear it down and rebuild it in his sleep, under water and blindfolded. My two nieces, they're a different story. The one that lives here, she's always having to show her husband how to program the phones and troubleshoot problems on any of their computers. The niece in Virginia already has her six year old son checked out on Visual Basic and he can already do more things with Windows than I thought was possible. I'd love to see that kids IQ score. I wouldn't be surprised if it's higher than mine.

Well enough with the program talk and techno babble. It's time for me to call it a night. See y'all tomorrow.

 

[IronBeltKen]

Uh-oh....where is Bill T this morning? Hope he's ok.

Looks like the Gov'mint will finally reopen today. Good thing - I work for a govt contractor and they would have had to start furloughing people in December if this thing wasn't resolved.

I've been taking a temporary break from MR due to a temporary shortage of "discretionary" funds. Guess I ought to continue with building the FastTracks turnouts, I still have enough material to make 4 more of them. I've identified at least three places on the main layout in need of a new #6 code 83 turnout. As for my steel mill, it unfortunately still has its original code 100 track. Sure there are adapter segments available, but I'd need a large number of those if I were to replace every single #6 t/o in the mill. I'll have to postpone the steel mill improvements for several more months.

 

[tootnkumin]

I would imagine the trackwork serving a steel mill would be heavily caked in ash etc, so that the ties would be buried, just increase the depth of "dirt" and no-one will notice it's code 100.

 

[railfan]

Wow! I will soon be sleeping for a few hours until the mail comes around 11am today. That's when the package arrives containing the first of two previously owned kato C44-9w union pacific locomotives......which I "obtained" so far this week. Two of them......yikes!


I love this photo of a slightly crumpled old battle worn specimen.

 

[kbkchooch]

Uh-oh....where is Bill T this morning? Hope he's ok.

Ditto here!

Guess I ought to continue with building the FastTracks turnouts, .

Hey Ken, if ya get bored, I will need about 25 of those for my pike!! Plus some tighter ones of the yards, and some #10 curved

 

[jeffrey-wimberly]

Good morning. It's 61° with 100% humidity. The high will be 75

in the morning becoming

in the afternoon.

So far the only plan today is to get the park programmed into Native Fury then set up the subroutine that will record the variables set during the game (items picked up, etc) so they can be read by the next segment of the game.

 

[GarryCBQ]

Good morning, everybody.

Railfan.... UP 9819 looks rough, but should be fixable.

Ken .... Perhaps, Jeff can hack into the system to allow you to change the user name without affecting the post count.

Jeff ... you are reminding me of my days of computer programming. I did COBOL and BASIC way back when. When the first version of LOTUS 123 was released, I immediately used it to build a corporate financial planning model.

Here is a pair of GN GP7's. GN operated its GEEPS long end forward.

 

[IronBeltKen]

Toot - thanx for the idea but alot of my steel mill code 100 track is buried already. I'm not worried so much about how it looks as I am about achieving derailment-free operation. My FT jig only lets me build code 83 and I don't want to spend another $150 USD on a code 100 jig.

Garry - Love that photo of the GN geeps, it brings back the memory of the very first HO scale geep I ever owned, when I was 13yrs of age: An Athearn blue-box GP "9" (as they labeled it) in Great Northern colors, similar to yours. I remember my dad driving me to Corr's Hobby Shop in downtown Washington DC after I had saved up a few weeks' worth of allowance to get it. It didn't stay GN very long though - I slopped-on a coat of dark blue paint and some B&O decals. I'm not sure whatever became of it, the last time I saw it was in the attic of my father's house sometime before I enlisted in the Navy...

 

[rzw0wr]

Afternoon all.
I started my layout yesterday.
Since I will not sit on the floor or bend over to build this thing I had to set up some way to get 1/2 of the layout to sit on saw horses.
Most of my time was spend on making what I thought was the job easier.
I should have just built it on the floor in the first place.
After I got done screwing 2x4s to the saw horses and finding a way to keep the layout in place on them I would have been done with the layout bench work.
Now I need to go back to the lumber yard for more lumber.
I still need to build legs and a few leg supports yet.

Oh well, life goes on.

I will have a train layout..... I will have a train layout..... I will have a train layout.

 

[jeffrey-wimberly]

Dale: that sounds like a good start.

*

Well I finished with the park and lake front and the tie-ins with the motel and the dunes. I added a back door and a porch to the motel lobby so the character can enter/exit there. I also made it possible to enter one of the rooms on the back side of the motel via a window. But beware, in the room there could be a nasty surprise! Some little touches in the park are a nasty little troll and an overly friendly pigeon. If he character looks in the right place he'll find a note with a clue to the artifacts location. It ain't in part one. To wrap it up I programmed in the variable handling subroutine that'll record all the item variables into a text file that can be read by a read subroutine at the beginning of part two. That's the end of the trail for part one. I'll get started on part two after I work out a tentative flow chart for it. The final size of forest (file name for part one) is seventy-seven diskette sectors. At that size it takes about twenty seconds for the file to load.

 

[Cjcrescent]

Toot - thanx for the idea but alot of my steel mill code 100 track is buried already. I'm not worried so much about how it looks as I am about achieving derailment-free operation. My FT jig only lets me build code 83 and I don't want to spend another $150 USD on a code 100 jig.

...

Ken, I would try some Atlas transition joiners. They allow code 100 rail to attach to 83 without having to solder. The joiners are bent to hold the running surfaces together. Although, I would still solder for strength, they do the job they're supposed to do.

 

[tootnkumin]

Afternoon all.
I started my layout yesterday.
Since I will not sit on the floor or bend over to build this thing I had to set up some way to get 1/2 of the layout to sit on saw horses.
Most of my time was spend on making what I thought was the job easier.
I should have just built it on the floor in the first place.
After I got done screwing 2x4s to the saw horses and finding a way to keep the layout in place on them I would have been done with the layout bench work.
Now I need to go back to the lumber yard for more lumber.
I still need to build legs and a few leg supports yet.

Oh well, life goes on.

I will have a train layout..... I will have a train layout..... I will have a train layout.

This is the old "6 paces back for every 1 forward routine". Try fixing something on your car, you'll find that's par for the course. You will though be thankful that you put in the extra effort in this case as there's nothing worse than crouching and kneeling on the floor.

 

[rzw0wr]

Made some good progress today.
1/2 of the frame is done.
This is just a 1 level, flat layout to start with.
The other 1/2 is about to get legs attached.

May be done for the evening then.

 

[jeffrey-wimberly]

I got started on part two of Native Fury this afternoon. It starts right in front of what roughly resembles my parents home in 1972. The house is still is still there today but it's much different. Someone who knew how it looked then would have some trouble recognizing it now were it not for the color and the windows in the older part.

I programmed the opening to describe the house then after the character has looked at something else the description changes and just says the house is there and mentions a few other things instead. Well, see for yourself in the photos below.

Opening screen:

standard screen:

The 'PRESS RETURN' has since been changed to 'WHICH WAY'. The program was in debug mode when I took the photos.

 

[jeffrey-wimberly]

I've been working on part two of Native Fury. So far I programmed most of a generalization of my parents home (house, yard, outbuildings) more or less as it existed in 1972. I did change some things. Things such as the direction the house faces, locations of some rooms, etc. I also put one of the artifacts the character is seeking in the house. I'm not saying what it is or where it is or how many have to be found. I'm having a lot of fun with this. Since I'm forced to be an armchair model railroader it's a fun way to pass the time until I can get more projects to work on.

Well it's time for me to call it a night. See y'all tomorrow.

Forest is the file name for part one of Native Fury. Note the size in relation to the disk space remaining.

 

[railfan]

Well the USPS tracking said my Kato C44-9W was going to arrive thursday 10-17-13.........but I spoke with the local post office clerk when it failed to show. I interpreted what she told me to mean.......the tracking site is just an electronic toy that looks nice but should not be taken seriously...hee hee! She's a nice lady.

 

[railfan]

Since it's low traffic time here in the early AM........I wanted to try to clear up an old controversy. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it......does it make a noise? This has never been the kind of deep conundrum some made out of it. The tree falling by itself still makes the vibrations that are heard as sound by humans or animals. There are usually animals in the forest even if not humans at that moment. If sound consists of both vibration and a human present to hear it.....then the answer is NO. If sound is only the vibration itself......then the answer is YES. Done.

 

[tootnkumin]

If while falling it hits you on the head, then you most likely didn't hear it falling and as it has now flattened you, who, among the rest of us will know why you were out in the forest in the early AM?

Actually I am reading this at 4:49PM on Friday arvo having received this message at 4:29PM because I am bored and ther's no other traffic on the site.