OK, so I read The top 9 1/2 Books in a Hackers Bookshelf earlier and just had to compile my own list. I won’t repeat any in the original list although I’m sure I have most of them around here somewhere.

Hacking Exposed 5th Edition: Network Security Secrets and Solutions (Hacking Exposed) One of the best network security references around. Worth the read if you do anything related to network security or even general programming.

The Art of Intrusion: The Real Stories Behind the Exploits of Hackers, Intruders and Deceivers

Definitely worth a read. while Hacking Exposed talks about the technical details, The Art of Intrusion teaches you about the mindset of an intruder. How they think and how you should think about network security issues.

Genesis Machines: The New Science of Biocomputing I wrote a review on this sometime ago. It is a really good, technical biography of the history of computing, mathematics and ultimately biocomputing. Fascinating stuff.

Turtles, Termites and Traffic Jams: Explorations in Massively Parallel Microworlds (Complex Adaptive Systems) - While this doesn’t really come under the subject of hacking, it is a great introduction into decentralised systems and decentralised thinking. While short (about 2-3 hours reading) and it won’t have an obvious benefit to you if you are knew to programming. Trust me. It is a good character builder.Discrete Mathematics Using a Computer - Theory, theory, theory. Again no obvious benefit at first but it will help you when you start getting into programming.This book doesn’t go into Finite State Automata (that I can remember) so pick up another book on that as well.

Operating System Concepts - OK, i read this book in my first year of uni as part of my operating systems module, if anyone has a copy they want to give to me I wouldn’t say no. “the dinosaur book”–Operating System Concepts by Avi Silberschatz, Peter Baer Galvin, and Greg Gagn is a great reference on operating system theory.

Real Digital Forensics: Computer Security and Incident Response - There are an array of books on digital forensics. I have chosen this one because it deals with issues from an industry standpoint and so it is very thorough. There are segments about collecting information that can be submitted as evidence in court. If you want to know how much information you computer stores about you without you knowing, read this book.

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

What can I say? A MUST read book for anyone who loves computers, science fiction and sword fighting. MY favorite book EVER.

Worth a Mention: Anything by Isaac Asimov

I have a list of books that I want to buy, but that is for another blog post.

So about 7-8 months ago I was messing around with XML and XSL and ended up creating a small concept language code named Smash (Smash Markup to Articulate Semantic Hypertext - yes I always struggle for acronyms) Any way the project is a sibling of the now ancient CASTL project which Dan and I worked on 3-4 Years ago. One very nice feature of Smash was its default stylesheet which allowed it to produce renderings of bar graphs(this is as far as I got into the project before I became distracted with other things. The original draft documents for Smash are still online, so feel free to look around and become inspired. I might take this project up again if Dan is serious about reviving the CASTL project.

Well today has been a slow one, most of the work has been done on the backend so no nice screenies to show. Basically mouse movement works perfecting with a full looking around now done (with upper and lower bounds set). I have also updated the collision slightly by adding some less than perfect sliding collision to the environment items(boxes, cylinders etc). I really should make a too do list has the last few days a lot of feature creep has settled in detracting from the aim. Here is a list of current features:

• 3D World Loading from file (floors - wall worked out automatically) - file format needs overhaul to include items
• Normals set so OpenGL lighting works - Need to learn more about lights in OpenGL
• Texture setting works
• Environment Obstacles (non moveable items) can be loaded - need to test on different sizes/types to make sure collision is consistant
• Placeholder gun and crosshairare in the correct place - need to work on this more
• Classes for Maps, Obstacles and Player are coming together - Need one for Lights and another for Fog settings
• Messed around with different height blocks - realised the initial level format needs some work before this becomes a permanent feature
• Edit Mode hasn’t been started.
• Anything above the Obstacle Layer is still in theory land. Everything below is in messy hack land.

Target for Tuesday : Bring the Current Code Up to Acceptable Standards with Comments, Class Files and No Global Variables(I think I have 2) - Remove all outdated code.

There we go. Now I have to do it.

So, I know this is slightly earlier than I thought I would be updating but I couldn’t help myself. I have started planning how items are going to work. So in order to do this I had to test the theory. Check the screenshot:

I have removed the temp crosshair and gun placeholder because they just looked messy. The next step is the get multilevel levels working so I can implement ramps and stairs. After that I am planning to design a basic level so I can work on some decent collision and then its onto the actual level editor.

So, I ended up re-writing the rendering functions, it took some time but the engine is now a lot more efficient, i’m pretty sure i’ll end up re-writing it again at some point but since this is mainly a learning exercise I am not too worried.

I have light, not entirely finished but they are getting there, having some issue with some normals, but makes for some cool effects. The mouse input is getting there, you can now turn around using the mouse but there is no up and down movement yet.

As for other things, the level format hasn’t been worked on yet and anything above that(enemies, light position(currently hardcoded), items etc.) will have to wait. Enjoy the new screenie and I will keep you updated.

So today I started work on a new project. Well I say today, most of the ground work was laid last night. I am attempting to create an FPS engine in the hopes of building a fully fledged game on top. MY task for today was simple, render a simple level from a file and allow the camera to walk around it. 3 hours in and it is done. I would have taken less time but having to relearn everything takes a while

.

So now that is done my plan for tomorrow is to get mouse support working so I can look around the world. I am planning to take this project slow to give me plenty of time to clean the code up after every change.

Now for some technical details:

• The Engine is written in C++ using the SDL Library and OpenGL
• The Current Engine reads in a simple text file which lays out the level, it then uses this to place planes and cubes

So thats it for today, stay tuned for updates.

I don’t know about you but I am sick of people pronouncing GUI as “gooey”. NO!! GUI is an abbreviation not an acronym! If you really want an acronym to use then I suggest Gooie or Graphical Object Oriented Intuitive Environment. There we go, if you say “gooey” I will assume you are talking about Gooie and not GUI since there is a minute difference between then which I will not go into but you should be aware of….

Edit: as mentioned Mr. Mac from The Decline helped develop the Gooie acronym.

Yes, yes I know. I haven’t really been keeping to the posting schedule.

The  thing keeping me busy is Clio, my little eeepc, yes I have one of those, and it is probably the best little laptop in the world ever! But more on her next week.

Ann Summers and Apples logos are very similar…go ahead and check, both apples with a little bite taken out of them. Hopefully Steve Jobs isn’t thinking of going into the lingerie business can you imagine? Lingerie that could only be used by 5% of women….

Yeah, I forgot to prepare an article today…

Heya all, as you may have seen I am still working some kinks out in the site. Because of that I am not going to start with the articles today.

Instead Iam going to direct you to a post by Rich Skrenta entitled PageRank wrecked the web. In it Rich summarises what I and many other people have been saying for a while.

The end part of the article is a nice declaration.

Google is the cause of all of this.
and Google is going down with it.

Listen up Google, you started it, and in time the good, decent developers of this world will finish it.