Blake Miner's Blog

Overview: My last Java programming assignment for my class at the University of Akron was called "BallWorld."  Its details can be found here .  I will not post any source code here, but I will post an executative JAR file that will run the screen saver.  Anyways, the final project of the BallWorld project was kind of cool, so I modified it a little bit to make a pretty neato screen saver.  You can download the project here:  BallWorld.zip .   The zip file contains a .JAR, an .EXE, and a .JOB.  The JAR file should execute the screen saver on any operating system.  The EXE file works only on Windows.  The JOB (Windows Task Scheduler) file can be used to automatically run the EXE file after a specified amount of computer idle time. Details: The EXE file was created using a program called Launch4j .  Launch4j simply takes a JAR file and converts it into a Win32 EXE.  Obviously, this destroys platform-independency, but... it does have some advantages.  For e

For those you that don't know, our high school is involved with the FIRST National Robotics Competition. The competition was very professional-looking. Most of the robots were supported by large sponsors, and were built in the most professional manner. Some of the robots looked as if they were never touched by a student's hand. Still, our robot ended up being pretty sweet, but it didn't exactly do what we wanted it to do. Despite a few minor complications, we were able to play some great defense. Other than that, though, we were kind of bad. We were unable to score effectively. What I Learned: The simple machine wins. The machine with the most simple design was in 1st place. Who would've thunk it?