Golden Anvil

Earlier this year, gauntman (a college friend that I work with) and I realized that we would both have three extra days off between Christmas and New Year's. One of the hobbies we share is designing and developing computer games (not that we've ever actually finished one yet, but that's only because we haven't yet fully fleshed out a concept that we want to run with). So, we decided to take our free time between holidays and work on a new idea for a game.

We sat down and did a decent bit of design work, and actually managed to come up with something that was starting to look somewhat interesting.

...and then gauntman's plans changed, and he decided to spend additional time with family instead...

So, I was forced at the last minute to rethink my plans for this break. At first I was going to work on a screen saver. I'd recently figured out how to create a screen saver that actually integrates with the Windows configuration interface, and I'd been thinking about putting together some kind of simulation with a basic graphical output. But, it just wasn't catching my interests.

It occurred to me that for some time I've been delaying getting back into learning Greek. I'd put my studies on hold for a while because I got busy with some things and wasn't able to do the flash card reviewing that I needed. I actually have physical flash cards, but it was too much trouble to set up a for reviewing old cards, so it was getting to be a little bit of a pain.

I went out and did a little searching for a flash card program that was free, and would have certain other features that I needed. After a bit of poking around without any luck, I concluded that I'd just found my programming project.

So, today I've been working on a program that I'm calling memTrainer. It will allow me to enter in my Greek flash cards. It will use the Leitner System for automatically handling quizzing and review of old cards. In addition, it will track a variety of stats that will hopefully help encourage me to continue studying.

I made decent progress on the program today, figuring out a good portion of the design, and implementing most of the basic interface and card storage system. That kept me busy most of the day except for taking a couple breaks here and there to watch a couple episodes of Mrs. Kheldar's new DVDs (The Cosby Show, Season One). I think that's enough for today, so I'm off to play some computer games, perhaps some City of Heroes or something.