Hey, Phoenix here

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Socoder -> Off Topic -> Hey, Phoenix here
Mon, 04 Mar 2013, 06:14
caligula	Username's different, since I forgot my bloody password again. I can't remember how long ago it was since I left this place. Was it three years ago? Anyone been scratching the days on the wall? Anyone? Oh, well. The people are still here, and SoCoder is as ugly as ever. It's like that wonderful mixture of tobacco and freshly-made biscuits I would smell whenever I went to my grandma's. Smells like BlitzCoder. So what has Phoenix been up to in the past God-knows-how-long? Well, I haven't done much programming. I left programming because I felt that it took up a lot of time without giving a lot back in return, and so I left SoCoder too because otherwise it would be like quitting smoking, "except for when I'm at parties." Since then I actually have quit smoking. One month now, woohoo. So I'm typing this in Beijing, China. "China?!" I hear someone shout in the back. Yup, China. Doesn't really matter if I'm smoking or not; the air quality here killed my lungs a long time ago. I started studying Mandarin in 2011, because I felt directionless and needed something to do. Once I started studying Mandarin it completely consumed me, and I left for China in early 2012 with the intention of getting really good at Chinese. I'm actually pretty good now. 不要用谷歌翻译! I've seen some really interesting stuff here. Made some friends and I started a band, while working as an English teacher. But I'm leaving this country on the 18th, and I'm working on picking a new direction now. That's where SoCoder enters the equation. I've decided that I should get back into programming. Why? Not entirely sure, but I figured that I always liked doing it so there's no reason not to. I'm not sure what kind of programming though. These days, you've got a billion different platforms though; things were much simpler when my world was all about Blitz and Windows. Right now I'm debating whether I should give game programming another shot or if it was just a childhood fancy that stretched on for a bit too long. Jury's still out on that one. What's clear though is that something has to be
Mon, 04 Mar 2013, 06:32
Jayenkai	tsk! You only need have asked for a new password. I'm always here* (Except for last year, when I mostly wasn't) Great to hear from you! How've you been? All good, I hope! There's a group of us still bumbling about on here. Nothing major, but still here!! I think the world of Twitter and Facebook has done more damage to our little group than the whole CW-Closure escapade ever did. Folk are happier shoving random crap on Twitter, than bothering to post onto old-skool forums. The whole Shoutbox->Forum thing is supposed to help that, a little. Sometimes it does.. Other times it's a bit too random! But it works, and helps to keep the forum look like it's vaguely popular. Given that there's only about 30 or so regulars left, here, we all seem to use drastically different languages. It's a bit odd, really, but we still gather and occasionally post snippets, even if they're unusable by anyone else. Personally I'm using Monkey (Successor to Blitz : See "Learning with Monkey" topic), and am having a whale of a time with it. Once I got a framework built up, it's been super-handy. If you really want to get back into a Dev-Mode, might I suggest giving OneGameAMonth a go. Basically you challenge yourself to produce a new game each month, then try to stick to it, and track progress using the website. Works well, and a few of my Twitter Followers have been using it to get back into coding again. It's tricky, but if you can manage it, it's great for motivation. CaffeineKid, in particular, is using it to launch a new Android game each month, and is even putting them on the Android store for sale! Given that he's not really coded anything for the past couple of years, that's quite an improvement Anyway, welcome back! Hope you can stick around, and if anything breaks any more than already has (feckin' Unicode!! GRR!!), that's a bonus! -=-=- ''Load, Next List!''
Mon, 04 Mar 2013, 06:40
caligula	Haha, I had a gut feeling SoCoder wouldn't like Unicode. So has your illness mostly gone away? I'm still just toying around with thing as of now, and I'll see what happens. It's amazing SoCoder is still alive btw! Trivia: SoCoder is unreachable in China without VPN. Odd.
Mon, 04 Mar 2013, 06:48
Jayenkai	Illness = I'm still being sick every other day, (better than every day!) and the dizziness hasn't gone yet, but .. yeah.. getting better! Unicode = grrr!! I'm not sure where the bork is, but I'm whittling it down. It should be fixed at some point before the end of the year And.. SoCoder's blocked?! Blimey! ... \o/yeay\o/ -=-=- ''Load, Next List!''
Mon, 04 Mar 2013, 09:27
Dabz	Hey... I recognize that name... Welcome back! Dabz -=-=- Intel Core i5 6400 2.7GHz, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 (8GB), 8Gig DDR4 RAM, 256GB SSD, 1TB HDD, Windows 10 64bit
Mon, 04 Mar 2013, 10:35
spinal	Welcome back Pheonix! China eh?... cool.
Mon, 04 Mar 2013, 12:39
Afr0	I think you should get back into the programming business, preferably into the MMO business. That's where all the money is these days. If you make it playable on Windows, Mac and Lunix, even better! -=-=- Afr0 Games Project Dollhouse on Github - Please fork!
Mon, 04 Mar 2013, 13:11
spinal	hehe, I think I can count on one hand how many posts Afr0 doesn't mention MMO. -=-=- Check out my excellent homepage!
Mon, 04 Mar 2013, 14:29
CodersRule	spinal hehe, I think I can count on one hand how many posts Afr0 doesn't mention MMO. You might need to do it in binary, but it's certainly feasible.
Mon, 04 Mar 2013, 19:07
blanko1324	Hey Phoenix! Let's hear some interesting China stories! -=-=- My Twitter
Tue, 05 Mar 2013, 05:38
caligula	Interesting China stores? Hmm... Well I found some woman online who said she'd help me find a job in China, so I bought a one-way ticket here and landed at 2 am in Beijing. I had no idea where to go and I knew little about China, and there was no one there to pick me up. So, naturally, I was ripped off by a taxi driver was really happy to see a lost whitey in the middle of the night. At least he took me to the right address. Turns out this agent was a bit of an asshole as well, taking roughly 2/3 of my salary for herself every month, setting me up with a truly horrible apartment contract and threatening to "use her connections within the government" to get me deported if I left. After a while I decided that I'd had enough, took a chance that all of her "connections" were bullshit and simply faked my leaving China. I told my landlord to pretend that I'd left if she would ask. I changed my phone number, my email, and stopped going to work without saying a word, and she seemed to buy it. Then I found a nice job, on my own. The great thing about this job was that no one at the school spoke understandable English, neither teachers nor students. So I basically had 8 hours of mandarin practice every day at work, and when I came home I would hang out with my Chinese neighbors or Chinese friends, meaning even more Chinese. Does wonders for your language ability. I went online and found a British guy who had just come to Beijing, and we decided to meet up. We clicked instantly, and both played music, so we decided to start a band. For about a month, we met up pretty much all the time and wrote music together. We didn't have a drummer though, and my singing is decent but not excellent, so the sound was a bit empty. Anyway, we took our instruments and started walking around Houhai asking pretty much every bar if we could play. Although, if you... 1) Don't have a (pretty) female singer 2) Don't play Chinese music 3) Don't play covers of western hits 4) Don't have a drummer ...you're pretty much doomed to fail. We did however get one bar interested, and started playing there in the evenings, until I got pissed with the bar owner and blew it for us. Hehe. Oh well, in total we earned something like $150 playing bar music, so I can consider myself having worked as a professional musician at one point in my life. Life in Beijing isn't all drama though. It doesn't take long before you feel like it's home. I'm slightly sad about leaving this place, mostly because I'll miss some of the people I know here. Although it'll be nice to be treated as a normal person again, as opposed to a tall, white, walking ATM. I'll stop rambling now! Edit: And then there's the time when I accidentally asked a student if he had a vagina instead of asking if he had a pen. Both are pronounced "bi" but the intonation differs slightly...
Tue, 05 Mar 2013, 05:49
Jayenkai	Ramble More!!! There's been a lot of great rambling posts on here, lately. (See "Office Politics" for more) I'm loving it! Sounds like a lot of fun. I've not really done anything with my life :\ .. I can code quickly, though!! -=-=- ''Load, Next List!''
Tue, 05 Mar 2013, 06:01
caligula	A fascinating thing about this country is how hard they work. I earned many times the average salary around here, doing a fraction of the average workload, but I never heard anyone complain. Some people at my school worked pretty much 10+ hours days every day for peanuts, doing really exhausting jobs, having to keep up relations with parents and having essentially no chances of promotion. I didn't like my job, but I've got no right to complain. I felt like a spoiled brat a lot of the time over there, because I had a rather responsibility-free job while the Chinese people were working like crazy. Certainly hammers some perspective into your head.