ethosBASIC

Tips On Using Your New Android

admin — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Using an Android device is not as hard as it may seem. Android devices are made to be very customizable to each individual, depending on your interests. Say for instance you want to change your wallpaper. You can do this by tapping and holding your finger down on the touch screen. You should get a menu that allows to click on ‘wallpapers’. Tap on the ‘wallpapers’ option and choose any image you want to use.

Android devices also let you customize what applications you can use. Browse any type of application you may find handy using the Android App Market. This comes standard with every Android device, and you can find it in your ‘app drawer’, or your ‘app menu’. Once you’ve downloaded your apps, you can also arrange them on your home page menus.

You can customize your android home menus to either have 3, 5 or sometimes 7 panels. Adding apps to your home page menu is almost the same process as setting your wallpaper, except you can choose to add either ‘shortcuts’, ‘widgets’, or ‘folders’.

There are many ways for somebody to customize their Android device. Play around with the phone and see what you can do!

How To Understand Directions Of Texas Instruments

admin — Mon, 30 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Have you ever received an electronic device as a gift or bought one with the intention of reading the directions? Usually I just toss the directions aside but I was utterly befuddled with my new electronic device. It was a new scientific calculator and I bought it because it was (almost) just like the one I used in high school algebra. Ahh, to go back to the days of easy quadratic equations! I say this because when I started using my new calculator I could not, for the LIFE of me, figure out how to use the “memory” function. I was bound and determined to figure it out tho. I looked on line to no avail. My searches wouldn’t bring up exactly what I needed. Then I looked in the direction where I tossed the directions and turned to the section on how to use the memory. You know what? The answer was there ALL THE TIME. I kid you not, I was frazzled by then and was grateful to have the answer!

…and all I had to do was read the directions. Who knew? Oh, maybe the people who wrote them, sure…but I’m way smarter than that, right?

Guess not!

So, to all of the direction writers out there wherever you are. Thank you. Had I looked in the recommended place first, I would have a couple of fewer gray hairs.

Kudos to the TI direction writer. You guys ROCK.

Tips On How To Use A Texas Instrument

admin — Tue, 10 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Texas Instruments have been graded as one of the highest quality calculators available in the market today. But with quality, comes a lot of different options. Even when you know how it can be confusing. Here are some tips to follow that can help you to eliminate the confusion:

1. Read The Owner’s Manual – This will help you to know all of the options available to you. When you know what you can do with it you’re much freer to be able to use it in that manner. Reading the manual can also help when you are having troubles with it. You can go to the troubleshooting pages and find the problem you are having and solve it that way.

2. Support Is Available Online – If you have any trouble you can always ask online and usually you will get an answer.

3. Take Care Of Your Texas Instrument – Accidents happen, but when you are wreckless with your calculator, you are a lot more likely to have problems with it. For example eating jelly around it can make the keys stick.

These are some basic tips on how you can make better use of your texas instrument.

Try Basic for yourself

www.ethosbasic.com — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000

If you’re a regular reader of ethosBASIC.com, you’re probably ready to try some programming for yourself. There are plenty of freeware versions out there, but for a great introductory language, we recommend Microsoft Small Basic, launched by Microsoft DevLabs in 2008. This simplified BASIC variant is intended for beginning programmers of any age, and has been tested successfully with middle-school students and older.The download of Small Basic is free. The language does require Windows XP, Vista, or 7 (other languages are available for other operating systems). It’s also necessary to install the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 in order to run Small Basic.Small Basic itself is inspired by BASIC, but is also based on Microsoft’s .Net Framework Platform. Microsoft stands behind its product with a basic introductory curriculum and a full-blown blog with information on technology updates and other cutting-edge information. Taking advantage of wireless internet is one of the best ways to stay connected to this information no matter where you go.As Microsoft itself writes in its Small Basic FAQ, their language is just one of over 230 different dialects. If there’s another one that catches your fancy, give it a shot. After you get some experience, you may want to try a more advanced version, anyway. Small Basic has only 14 keywords. While this is great for beginning developers, and can actually accomplish a number of tasks thanks to the built-in libraries that ship with the software, you’ll have to move on to another dialect if you want to experience the BASIC language’s full possibilities.Games have always been a part of learning BASIC, and Small Basic delivers on this front. Section 4.4 of the Small Basic Curriculum is “Advanced Games.” The PowerPoint presentation helps users to create a basic Tic-Tac-Toe and a simple ball-and-brick-breaking game. While solutions are included for both of these games, going through the previous sections should provide users with enough of a background toWhile being able to play Tic-Tac-Toe on your computer is a great achievement, the real accomplishment that comes with Small Basic is learning that programming can be fun. That’s something that ethosBASIC.com and its readers have always known, and it’s something that we hope can be passed on to future generations. Thanks to helpful beginner languages like Microsoft’s, we feel confident that interested parties will be able to embrace programming and its possibilities well into the future.

Blitz BASIC and you

www.ethosbasic.com — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 16:53:24 +0000

What do you think of when you hear the term Blitz BASIC? If your answer is “speed and action,” then keep reading. Blitz BASIC was designed as a compiler for programming games and graphical interfaces. The first version of Blitz, designed by Mark Sibly, appeared on the Amiga computer and was published by Memory and Storage Technology, an Australian company. Blitz Basic, published by the company Idigicon, appeared in October 2000. Since then, the language has been continuously refined.A 2001 update added a 3D graphics engine, and a 2003 2D-only version offered control support for native Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs). The latest version, released in 2004, is called BlitzMax and was the first Blitz language compatible with Mac OS X and Linux, in addition to the original Microsoft Windows. BlitzMax also included object-oriented concepts for the first time and represented strings using the 2-byte Universal Character Set (UCS-2), making it possible to write programs outside the standard ASCII set of characters.Blitz has always been designed for creating innovative and entertaining games, and they’re a far cry from the minimalistic recreations that the original BASIC developers came up with (see our earlier article “Early BASIC games” for more on that subject). You may be familiar with the computer game series Worms, in which players take turns trying to blast their opponents’ worms with a variety of outlandish weapons. The first entry in the series was developed as Total Wormage using the Amiga Blitz language, before being released as Worms in 1995.More recently, Squash Software (aka developer Anthony Flack) developed Platypus, a side-scrolling shooter with claymation graphics. The game originally appeared on the PC before being released on the PSP in 2006 and the Playstation Network and Xbox Live in 2009. A traditional role-playing series, Eschalon, has also been developed for the language. The story is being told over three different games, known as Books. Eschalon: Book I was released in November 2007, while Eschalon: Book II appeared in May 2010. Whether you’re a game developer, fan, or both, the continuing innovation of the Blitz language can only mean good things.

Early BASIC games

www.ethosbasic.com — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 14:00:30 +0000

ethosBASIC may have been designed expressly for game developers, but programmers had been using BASIC to create amusing diversions for decades by the time it was released. These early games were collected in a compendium, appropriately titled BASIC Computer Games, which was released in 1973. Written by David H. Ahl, this book collects the code for 101 different games which could be run on a BASIC interpreter. A few of them are summarized belowthey’ll seem either quaint or nostalgic to you now (depending on your age), but at the time these were the boldest examples of what BASIC could accomplish.

Chomp This 2-player game has many mathematical implications, but the basic rules state that on a grid made up of small blocks, each player must take turns choosing a block. That block, and any below it and to the right of it, disappears. The person who eats the block in the top-left corner loses.
Hamurabi A precursor to modern strategy games, this input-based text game allowed players to take on the role of an ancient ruler (like Hammurabi). By deciding how much land to buy and how much grain to give your kingdom, for example, you determine whether your kingdom lives or dies.
Hexapawn This 2-player game is played on a board like that of chess, except it can be any size. Each player starts with a row of pawns and must move all of them to the other end, or block all of their opponent’s possible moves.
Nim Another 2-player game. Players take turns removing different numbers of objects from discrete groups. The person to take the last item loses (or wins, depending on the variant).
Pawn Duel This game is played on a chess-board, usually with three pawns for each player. The goal is not to reach the other side, but to block all of your opponent’s moves.
Super Star Trek A text-based game is based off of the legendary cult series. Using a combination of short and long range scans, the player must use phasers and photon torpedoes to destroy the Klingon warships.

Bill Gates’s shot at BASIC game development: a history lesson

www.ethosbasic.com — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 21:07:06 +0000

It was 1981, and Bill Gates had a problem.IBM was preparing to roll out its 1981 PC, which the new company Microsoft (barely six years old) was supporting with its PC-DOS/MS-DOS operating system. These OS’s included Microsoft BASIC, which Gates felt was light years ahead of anything else out there. But how to prove it? The answer, it turned out, was a game.Gates and developer Neil Konzen locked themselves in the closet which served as their development office then and pounded out DONKEY.BAS. Although ostensibly a driving game, there was nothing similar to accelerating or braking in the controls, let alone steering. Instead, the player pressed the SPACE bar to switch lanes on a two lane road, avoiding the donkeys which randomly appeared at the top of the screen. If you avoided them, you got a point. If not, the donkeys got a point.The game was a point of ridicule for Apple developers at the time, but it did manage to show off some of the graphics and colors available with Microsoft BASIC. Unsurprisingly, no one turned to Gates for game design in the future, though.