This story's a long one, so bear with me
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It might sound a bit like bragging, but I am good at math. Competition math, to be precise. So the story goes...
5th grade, 2006-07I started my competition with the AMC8. As a 5th grader, this was unheard of (back then. Now, you see 3rd graders and 4th graders qualifying for the USAMO only 3 years later). So, I took it.
I got a 24. The maximum score that you can get is a 25.
Now this set off a "warning bell" to the administration, and after some conferral with my parents, I was immediately fasttracked to Prealgebra, then a 7th grade class. I decided to take the AMC10 just because, scoring a 127.5, then moving onto the AIME, where I ended a (pretty good) streak. Did ARML for a bit, made SFBA's ARML B team.
This has nothing to do with calculators. It just sets the scene for later. (Yes, in retrospect, I didn't have a graphing calculator when the AMC's allowed graphing calculators... pretty bad, right?)
6th grade, 2007-08The junior high school's Algebra 1 course (the class after Prealgebra) was full, so instead I went to the high school Algebra 2 course.
Algebra 2 => Graphing Calculator.
Thus, I got my first calculator. It was a TI-84+. I still have it, only that the screen's slightly dented. Anyways, I went through the entire competition thingy again, made USAMO, made ARML A team. SFBA A team won. ARML gives calculators to winning teams. In other words, I got a calculator.
The TI-nspire was a new cool gadget back then. Guess what we got? Exactly.
TI-84+ (September 2007)
TI-nspire (May 2008)
7th grade, 2008-09Now in junior high school, graphing calculators were no longer a rare sight, as a new Algebra 2 class was instated to allow the 8th graders who skipped a single grade in math to not have to commute from school to school. Axe was not a programming language back then; Super Mario was the next best thing that existed back then. (Ztetris would probably rank third or so) People in our junior high school avidly created level packs. Seeing the existing level packs as too easy, we created new, harder, level packs. People like leafiness0 went on the technically-advanced route, creating several pixel-perfect regions in mere seconds. Other people like me decided to create levels that were more puzzle-like and esoteric in nature. I'll attach some levels from the era; as a guessing game, try to figure out which two levels are leafiness0's and which two levels are mine
(Two more levels are included and are by other people from our school).
I made Mathcounts Nationals that year. => Calculator, also an TI-nspire.
Also, SFBA ARML team => calculator, yet another TI-nspire.
By now, I was unimpressed by the TI-nspire's OS: It was slow and clunky, lacked BASIC programming stuff, and its emulator was perhaps a third as fast as before. Hence I gave one TI-nspire away as a gift for usage of their house for temporary storage, and "auctioned" one TI-nspire off for $250 (in reality, the final winner was trolled by people who never intended on buying the calculator).
During ARML, one guy saw me playing on my calculator. He showed me this interesting TCG on his TI-84+ SE and the capabilities of Calcsys. When he also won a TI-nspire, he was like "Hm I wonder if I can make a raycaster out of this". He's one of your forum's members; his username is bwang.
(Yeah, I googled "TI-nspire raycaster" a while later during the summer, and stumbled upon this site
, but didn't register because at the time I didn't have anything to say)
8th grade, 2009-10Same old, same old. However two big changes: 1) All the calculator-toting people went to high school and 2) Algebra 2 and Geometry were swapped, Geometry not requiring calculators. Which meant that there weren't very many calculators in sight.
I really do not know what I did in 8th grade. Perhaps it was studying for some test, injecting propaganda for a certain student council member, or eating lunch as slowly as possible. Whatever it was, it usually wasn't graphing-calculator related.
National Science Bowl 3rd place => TI84+ SE, which I use very often now.
ARML => TI-nspire CAS, which I keep
Mathcounts => TI-nspire 2.0, which I gave away
9th grade, 2010-nowSuper Mario became popular again. Also, due to relaxed restrictions, so did iPhone/iTouch games. I found some games and injected them into the calculator-playing realm, and, like a virus, it spread. In particular, I spread Geometry Wars and Tetris Marathon (You're welcome, Brian Coventry!). leafiness0 spread Space Dash and Cube Runner, so he's obviously a squidgetx fan. Anyways, we had the same stats class, and we decided to compete against each other in small programming contests. We started with a random letter generation program. It had to automatically scroll down each step.
My code was this (yeah, it's pretty bad)
"ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ->Str1
ClrHome
Disp "","","","","","","
For(A,1,7
For(B,1,16
Output(A,B,sub(Str1,randInt(1,26),1
End
End
While 1
For(A,1,16
Output(8,A,sub(Str1,randInt(1,26),1
End
Disp "
End
Then leafiness0 discovered Axe. So he won.
I make Tron on BASIC. He goes off making Axe Tron and comes back with a product that's 20x faster.
At this point, I decided to give Axe a try. The new syntax was fairly overwhelming, and the most I could make was a skyscraper-making diversion. Looks like calculator programming's out of my scope now.
Then, leafiness0 contacted me regarding a new game he was making, Graviter. He told me to make some levels. I did.
After three complete rebuilds, each with a brand-new engine, I've been trying to make levels on new parameters each time. First I had to make it 18x12, then I could make it any size, and then I had to make it 18x12 again. Now he's showing me new mechanics (which I'm not at liberty to say right now) and I have to adapt my levels to satisfy those, etc.
Pretty annoying how his requirements change every week or so, but it's pretty satisfying when I see a level of mine in his game
And that's how the story ends. So far. (By the way, I'm expecting at least another TI-nspire... maybe a CX?)
