That's a Wrap

So thats it! O_O
The end of three months holidays!
Melbourne Uni students start back again tomorrow (Monday Feb 28) so no more getting up at 12 (or later O_O) and going to bed at 4am (or later O_O). No more day-long programming sessions for me. Now I'm back at uni studying Software Engineering, the amount of time I am programming will be severely limited!

Seriously, really looking forward to going back. This year I have two programming subs (instead of one) and no physics, or electric circuits, so I am basically planning to enjoy the whole lot. I'm also really looking forward to seeing all my dear friends every day. I've been missing the insane games of Go Fish!

But it's also sad that my great work is, at this stage unfinished. These holidays, which I will always remember as "The Summer of Anatomy," I've been spending most of my time writing a tremendous 30-file MC++ character graphics library. You can see one of my earlier tests here. But despite the fact I didn't quite get this finished, I have done so so much, and learnt so so much, and have also done a hellava lot of other stuff too.

So here's my holiday list-of-acheivements. It's not a brag (well, not really :D), it's a feelgood list to prove that, for once, I didn't waste my holidays at all. It's in roughly chronological order.
Since November 2004, I've:

• Got a blog, and managed to do a decent job at updating it.
  
• Learnt two new languages: MC++ and C#.
  
• Passed my first year of uni.
  
• Turned nineteen, and at the same time...
  
• Completed a game I've been working on for four years, Snorlack's Treasure.
  
• Worked on upgrading Toria's website for her.
  
• Been to numerous social events with the guys from uni. Thanks for organising it, everyone!
  
• Managed to push my sleep times out to 4:30 AM on many nights over the past few months! O_O
  
• Had a Merry Christmas with World of Warcraft, managing to become totally obsessed with the game for a month, then (even more impressively) having enough resolve to not resubscribe for the next month.
  
• Read the entire Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy-of-five, and loved every bit of it.
  
• Spent two weeks researching and programming the Anatomy Smooth Skinning Test in C#, which confirmed that what I'm doing is working, and also forced me to make some crucial design changes for the master work.
  
• Become involved in the Wikipedia community, making several key contributions and wasting away many a night.
  
• Obtained and setup my new Summit Interactive Forums, which recieved a resounding three or so posts. (Damn, they don't even seem to exist any more! sif!)
  
• Played dozens upon dozens of games of Warcraft III with my good friend and teammate Jeremy, getting some significant ownage done, reaching level 28, at at one point, being ranked (jointly) under 500 in Lordaeron.
  
• Written a script for a 20-minute short film that may never be made - SuperDood II (The sequel to my award-winning 2003 media film, SuperDood). But had a great time doing it.
  
• Had a hellava time reading about, designing, discussing, and implementing Esoteric Programming Languages with Tim and Andrew.
  
• Spent several days learning about how to write HTML the correct way, and also the finer points of CSS. Thanks, Tim, for all your help on that.
  
• Written a new version of my HTML templating program, SiteBuilder, in good ol' Visual Basic 6, making some significant improvements to the algorithm, the interface, and the resulting HTML.
  
• Written a three-minute piece of music for my new secret game, which I am very proud of. Pity nobody will hear it for a year or more.
  
• Begun writing a story - not a crappy little one, but a huge fantasy-comedy story. It's already twelve-thousand words, and has plenty of room for more!
  
• Also written, in between games of Warcraft III, many a hilarious one-word-at-a-time story with Jeremy. Unfortunately they were lost as soon as the text scrolled off the screen.
  
• Grown awfully sick of my parents telling me I've been sitting around doing nothing all holidays!
  
• By some strange miracle, been accepted back into the Children's Performing Company of Australia (ie. Drama) for a third year, despite the fact that I am now nineteen. Well, it's too much fun to complain.
  
• Written and received one thousand and forty-nine emails. (I counted :D) That doesn't include hotmail, spam mail, lyst mail or mail to myself. Phew. I've spent a LOT of time on email!!! Particularly backs-and-forths with Tim and Toria!
  
• And last, but not least, written a great deal of a program (which I've been designing on-and-off for three years) which presently has 9738 lines of C++ and MC++ code, in thirty-four code files, which will be known as Anatomy. It is the third-largest and most definitely the most complex, advanced program I have ever written, and tops off one of the coolest summer's I've ever had.
  
• And I didn't even have to leave my house (much!)
  

So, that's it! As I said, I think I had an extremely productive holiday, but now that it's over, I look forward to returning to uni. I might see you there!

Now... edit for the Simpsons quote!
Toria had a nice quote on her blog which relates to trying/failing:
(why does that make me think of try { ... } catch(.) { ... } ?)

"To try and fail is more a success than never trying at all"

But umm... although I don't agree with this (the following), I gotta quote Homer on this:

"I don't know Marge, trying is the first step towards failure."
- Homer Simpson