For those of you who don’t know, the Year 2038 Bug will affect computers in early-mid 2038 depending on the operating system. Any program on a non-64-bit operating system involving usage of a timer, a clock, dates, or random number generation will face unpredictable problems. At best we will face Y2K-style wraparounds to 1901 (or 1899) and at worst we will face buffer overflows. Without getting into technical details, “buffer overflows” are responsible for such things as (poorly-developed) programs crashing or acting bizarre until you restart your computer.

The Year 2038 Bug is easily solvable with usage of a 64-bit operating system, as Microsoft has been phasing in since Windows Vista and Windows 7 (Windows XP had a 64-bit version as well). However, this isn’t feasible for “embedded devices” – for example, a dishwasher powered by a software timer may never stop running, do tasks in the wrong order, or refuse to start, depending on how it was designed.

I also got A Sound Relief, a 2005 concert by The Gathering off eBay. I watched the first disc (there is also a bonus disc I have to watch before leaving feedback on the seller) and can only come up with a simple one-word review: “Wow.”

I also ordered A Noise Severe, the heavier “sequel” to the softer material on A Sound Relief, and am awaiting it in the mail.

After weeks of being up at night listening to my favorite night talk radio host, I finally got it done. It is a great program, with three character classes, each with their own 6 levels of unique weapons and armor, 13 enemy types plus 5 bosses at the end of the game. All in less than 6K of calculator RAM.

Sounds good? Well, it turns out there was a lot more to that “ERR: MEMORY” I was getting on those games.

“It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.” – Edsger W. Dijkstra, 1975

TI calculators include assembly programming and (in my case) TI-BASIC. If you’re familiar with BASIC, you know how completely unlike modern professional programming languages (like C/C++, C#, Java, and even modern MS Visual Basic) it is. Instead of storing data in an object or passing parameters to a function, BASIC is procedural – the code is read in the order of a page, from top to bottom. This result in you hopping all over the place with GOTO commands. Thus it was very difficult to program.

But there’s much more.

TI-BASIC has a major fault in it – unlike other BASIC languages, GOTO commands leave behind pointers with each step – causing memory leaks! It wasn’t about squeezing variables in on my calculator, it’s about a poorly designed programming language leaving allocated memory open – with no means of deallocation as with modern programming languages.

The only solution would be to redesign the whole thing. Having put off writing this program for probably almost a year, this is not likely to be done for a very long time.

All the wasted nights. I could have been screwing around but instead put all my effort into a pointless waste of time. So sad. And the TI Calculator Community is in desperate need of a program like this. We have great, simple hacking-related ones, but not working, complicated medieval ones.

This YouTube video, linked to by Ren & Stimpy creator John K’s blog, shows them side by side.

You may have also noticed that the calculator section was separated again. I plan on doing more programs under the X-Cop name, notably one of those quasi-RPG games popular with calculators where you buy gear and fight enemies (Hacker RPG, etc.). I want a medieval one which doesn’t suck or isn’t a memory hog. But right now I’m too much of a lazy ass. Stay tuned!

The blog is my personal blog, just as the Azz Pizz Institute blog was, while the other pages deal with X-Cop Fly Company matters. I also released the first TI calculator game, Vegas Casino, under the X-Cop Fly Company name.

Here’s the code Technorati wants as I set the new blog up: tgr5p8kw2d
(Fortunately the word “gay” doesn’t appear in the code this time

I just deleted Mob Wars from my Facebook. There’s a Mob Wars and a Mafia Wars. The latter is more famous. And you just don’t have the time.

I’ve been getting back to offline, single-player games lately. What I used to play for years, when games were much more creative. Downloaded some of the newer Roguelikes. Maybe I’ll download some IF. (Probably not, don’t have *that* much time.) Card games, Boggle clones, all awesome. I’d play, but I’m really tired right now from working on what is “Almost finished.”