Mobile Solution, and (Re?)inventing the Wheel

I've settled on an IDE called tIDE. It doesn't seem to be very popular, but I find it to be amazingly quick when set up on a flash drive, it's remarkably small, and it works quite well for everything I need. It's not Netbeans in terms of some convenience features, but it's actually survivable to use it for programming on the go. Compiling and running take a little bit of time, but that's because I'm running the JDK and JRE off of the same flash drive, which is not an inherently quick method for it.

Overall I'm quite pleased with the result, but I'll keep you posted if something happens to change my mind.

Now, I know, I was almost done, right? But no, I've decided to go back and play with the Matcode Interpeter I've nearly finished. In terms of hard stuff, I'm not doing too much. I've decided, however, to use a Material class rather than a string for the Matcode it edits. What's this mean? Well, a number of things:

• Editing a single character in the MatCode is a bit easier and mostly more accessible, as the method is stored within the Material class.
• The eventual creation of Materials will be easily managed through just the MatCode Interpreter (/editor), as the new Material object will be made and then uploaded to the database.
• The graphic panel displaying a material's stats will be accessible by any and all objects that need to reference it, quite easily.
• By moving all the buttons and panels I've been making to within the Material class, any panel throughout the entire simulation that needs to view or modify a Material can easily access all the tools that can be used for it.

In all, it's a more thorough form of isolation and encapsulation. It's also the general strategy I'll be following for all of the objects in the game from this point forth. In hindsight, it's blaringly obvious, but, well, hindsight's always 20/20.

Mobility and Programming (also: New Assignment)

Two major things today.

First, I'm working on getting a programming thumb-drive set up. Until I have a netbook, or, better yet in terms of performance, a laptop for my programming endeavors, I need some solution for mobility. My desktop and the PS3 are both set up on the same screen, which makes developing tough while my girlfriend slogs her way through Final Fantasy XIII, Tom Clancy, or whatever else she happens to be playing. I've tried a wide range of solutions to this but none have worked out. I haven't been able to get remote desktop working reliably, my first attempt at a thumb drive failed horribly (my second attempt is currently copying over), and I can't really think of much else.

When it comes to using my girlfriend's laptop, I could certainly install my tools on it and just worry about having the code on the thumb drive. But when I'm in school or anywhere else, that doesn't work so well. I'm now trying combinations of installing the IDE I normally use (Netbeans 6.8) on the flash drive as well as the JDK necessary for coding, installing just a text editor with some programming features (like highlighting code and suggesting auto-completion), and everything in between.

So, that said, I've also got a new MATLAB assignment. It's basically along the lines of the last one, accepting user input values for an aircraft and its flight, and working out things like cruising thrust and drag coefficients. No plotting this time but a few more complicated output values. We've got two weeks at this point, but given next week being a full-time (9-5 Monday through Friday) intensive CAD week, he's agreed to probably push the deadline back. Seeing as Easter holidays start the day after the current date, that would mean we have at least an extra three weeks.

I'll be getting started on it by the end of this weekend. I'd rather not take my chances. Besides, I like this stuff.