As you may or may not know, I am quite involved in dance. I recently received a full scholarship to a ballet studio, and I am taking full advantage of that, dancing at least 10 hours a week there, and at least 4 hours a week at another studio as well.

Anyway, being that I am so engaged in ballet lately, I have been watching videos of Mikhail Baryshnikov and Rudolph Nureyev, quite possibly the two best male ballet dancers (ballerinos) in the history of forever.

Rudolph Nureyev dancing Corsaire with Margot Fonteyne (who is also amazing):


Mikhail Baryshnikov also dancing Corsaire (though he does only the male variation, a.k.a. the male solo):



Obviously on a personal level I am floored by these performances, as was the rest of the classical ballet community. Nobody had ever seen anything like either of these men. It really helps to know what exactly it is that you're looking at, and to have some understanding of how the moves are executed, so being an actual dancer helps, but they're still pretty amazing to watch. I mean, seriously...HOW THE HELL DOES ANYONE EVER JUMP AS HIGH AS NUREYEV?? (see around 3:20 or so) And those incredible turns in both performances...how do you ever keep your balance like that? It's like they're all superhuman!

Oh well...I am aware that many of you may not appreciate this nearly as much as I, but I wish to expand the world's view of dance, especially the concept and acceptance of male dancers. These men were phenomenal, the best there ever was. I hope you can at least appreciate these a little bit.

If this is the wrong section, please move it, but I feel this is music-related enough.

I feel very strongly about so-called "Hip-Hop" music these days. I feel this poem by Bridget Gray says it very well. Any other opinions about this?





EDIT: She uses the N-word in this poem. Just letting you know ahead of time in case you might be offended by it.

Okay, so I've been working on this for a while now, and I'm pretty happy with how some of my routines are turning out so far. I haven't gotten very far, and I'm still only working on the very basics of it right now, but here's basically what I'm thinking about:


zIDE was inspired by Deep Thought's XDE, but this will be for on-calc Assembly programming. If it ever gets done, here's what I'm planning for it to have:

• Custom text editor
• 4-level grayscale syntax highlighting
• Line numbering
• Line auto-indenting
• Jump to label / Jump to line
  
• Relative label support
• On-Calc Compiling with fairly descriptive errors (as much as possible, at least)
• Running
• #include support (hopefully)
• Saving as a program that can be edited in the normal OS editor
• Back-up to AppVar

   Note: If #include support ends up working, I will make the ti83plus.inc file a separate file so the app doesn't take up a huge amount of pages. However, the ti83plus.inc file will definitely not be the complete file. I will try to include as much of the basic things as I can, but I doubt it will include things like the two-byte key codes (of which there are A LOT).

Honestly I'm not sure how many pages this app will end up being, but it shouldn't be more than two...Hopefully I can get it all into one page.

So, that's what I'm planning. We'll see how much I can actually get to, seeing as I'm basically learning ASM as I go with this thing. I already feel like this has been such a great learning experience!

Right now I'm working on the text input, so nothing stated above is absolutely positively for certain going to happen, but that also means that it can change and be added to! Any suggestions are welcome (in fact, I'd LOVE suggestions to make it even better).

ALSO, I will be asking a lot of questions, and probably have a lot of routines that I'll screw up little things in (or maybe big things) that might need some debugging, so any and all assistance is also welcomed with open arms.

I may have a screenshot pretty soon, but that's all for now!

I have a program that uses two buffers and it toggles which buffer it's writing to using a flag. Because it uses that flag I figured it would be a good idea to utilize that for drawing routines so they can draw to whichever buffer it's currently set to instead of having to have separate routines for each buffer.

While writing those routines, I came up with this set of rectangle drawing routines that I think are pretty good, though they probably could be optimized quite a bit.

Anyway, I thought I'd share them:

;;---------------------
;; Rect Off/On/Inv
;;---------------------
RectOff:
;;Clears a rectangle on the buffer
;;IN:
;; D contains x
;; E contains width
;; H contains y
;; L contains height
;;DESTROYS: All, OP1, 1st byte of OP2
call GetRectLine
ld a, 12
sub c
ld e, a
ld d, 0
_rOffLoop1:
push de
ld de, OP1
push bc
ld b, c
_rOffLoop2:
ld a, (de)
cpl
and (hl)
ld (hl), a
inc hl
inc de
djnz _rOffLoop2
pop bc
pop de
add hl, de
djnz _rOffLoop1
ret

RectOn:
;;Draws a rectangle on the buffer
;;IN:
;; D contains x
;; E contains width
;; H contains y
;; L contains height
;;DESTROYS: All, OP1, 1st byte of OP2
call GetRectLine
ld a, 12
sub c
ld e, a
ld d, 0
_rOnLoop1:
push de
ld de, OP1
push bc
ld b, c
_rOnLoop2:
ld a, (de)
or (hl)
ld (hl), a
inc hl
inc de
djnz _rOnLoop2
pop bc
pop de
add hl, de
djnz _rOnLoop1
ret


RectInv:
;;Inverts a rectangle on the buffer
;;IN:
;; D contains x
;; E contains width
;; H contains y
;; L contains height
;;DESTROYS: All, OP1, 1st byte of OP2
call GetRectLine
ld a, 12
sub c
ld e, a
ld d, 0
_rInvLoop1:
push de
ld de, OP1
push bc
ld b, c
_rInvLoop2:
ld a, (de)
xor (hl)
ld (hl), a
inc hl
inc de
djnz _rInvLoop2
pop bc
pop de
add hl, de
djnz _rInvLoop1
ret


GetRectLine:
;;IN:
;; D contains x
;; E contains width
;; H contains y
;; L contains height
;;OUT:
;; HL points to first byte of rectangle in buffer
;; B contains rows
;; C contains columns
;; OP1 [and possibly first byte of OP2] contains mask data for the line
xor a
or l
ret z ;return if height is zero
ld a, d
add a, e
cp d
ret z ;return if the width is zero
cp 96
jr c, _grl_widthOK ;if width is > 90
ld a, 96
_grl_widthOK:
dec a
ld e, a
call RectLineToOP1
;c contains width in bytes
;b contains first column
ld a, h
add a, l
add a, -64
jr nc, _grl_heightOK
neg
add a, l
ld l, a
_grl_heightOK:
ld a, l ;store height in a
ld l, h
ld h, 0
ld d, h
ld e, l
add hl, hl
add hl, de
add hl, hl
add hl, hl
ld e, b
add hl, de
; This next line gets the current buffer address into DE.
; Obviously zBufMode is the buffer flag in zModeFlags, and backBuffer holds the address of my backBuffer.
; Note that it uses $+# format because I use it normally in a #define. I've just written it out here for you to see.
bit zBufMode, (iy+zModeFlags) \ jr z, $+7 \ ld de, plotSScreen \ jr $+5 \ ld de, backBuffer
add hl, de ;hl points to first byte of rect in buffer
ld b, a ;b contains height, c contains width
ret


RectLineToOP1:
;;IN:
;; D contains starting x
;; E contains ending x
;;OUT:
;; C contains length of line
;; B contains starting x byte
;; OP1 [and possibly 1st byte of OP2] contains mask data for the line
;;DESTROYS: All except HL
ld a, e
cp d
ld b, 0
ret z
srl a
srl a
srl a
ld c, d
srl c
srl c
srl c
ld b, c
sub c ;a contains num bytes spanned minus 1
ld c, a
push bc
push hl
ld hl, OP1
;get mask
ld a, d
and 7
ld b, a
ld a, $FF
jr z, _skipmask
_maskloop:
sla a
djnz _maskloop
_skipmask:
ld b, c
ld c, a
xor a
or b
jr z, _lastbyte
ld a, c
_hloop:
ld (hl), a
inc hl
ld a, $FF
djnz _hloop
ld c, a
_lastbyte:
ld a, e
cpl
and 7
ld b, a
ld a, $FF
jr z, _skipmask2
_maskloop2:
add a, a
djnz _maskloop2
_skipmask2:
and c
ld (hl), a
pop hl
pop bc
inc c
ret
Honestly I'm not sure that these routines are even the best way to do it, but I feel they're pretty good. If anyone has better routines that I could swap these for, then I'd love to see them!

---

EDIT: Thanks to Calc84maniac, the bugs have been fixed and it now works properly! 

If I wanted to write an app instead of just a normal program, what would I have to do differently? More simply: How different is it from writing a program?

Here's a song that I wrote with my friend. I wrote the words and we collaborated on the music, but he's a better guitarist, so this is him in the recording. I'm a better singer but we live two states away, so this is all him.

http://soupinabox.com/nothingatall.mp3

Hey I need some help (obviously...otherwise I wouldn't be posting).

I'm trying to figure out how to split a cubic Bezier curve into two separate cubic Bezier curves at a specified point on the curve, but I can't seem to figure out how to do it. I know the control points, and therefore I know the equation.

Here's the equation as defined by Wikipedia:

Where B(t) is a single point on the bezier curve, and P_n is the nth control point.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!


Edit: Added an example of what I'm talking about. I have a full Bezier (top) and I want to split it at a certain point (of which I know the "t" value for the equation) into two independent Bezier curves.

As part of an entry in a dance competition I have to write an essay. The prompt was "Describe the emotion you feel when you take the stage at competition." Here's my entry:

---

   I am a performer. You are a performer. Every one of us is a performer. Every smile, every tear, every interaction, and every conversation is a performance. Likewise, every performance is a conversation. When I get on the stage, I become a vessel for energy and expression. It is my duty to give that to my audience and to make them feel what I feel. But that still brings us down to a final question: what do I feel? What is the emotion, the expression, the power that I cannot help but pass on to my audience?

   The answer to the question is both surprisingly simple, and unimaginably complex. As I wait to enter the stage I feel relaxed and focused. As I walk onto the stage I feel the surge of energy beginning to flow through me, radiating outward through my limbs all the way to the tips of my fingers and toes. But the instant the music starts is when everything really happens. It took me a while to figure out what goes on inside my head when I dance, but I finally realized that it’s not an overwhelming rush of emotion, but rather an overwhelming rush of music. Even when there is no music, I find my own music either in my mind or in my surroundings. The music engulfs me and sends its energy pulsing through my body. It was only after I understood the source of my energy that I also realized that the music is not just a background track for the choreography. In fact, the complete opposite is true: the choreography is a physical representation of the energy that flows from the music. Thus, I, the dancer, am the only possible means of communication between that choreography and the audience.

   You see, when I get up on stage, I don’t perform for my audience. I communicate with them. The word “perform” implies that I consider myself to be the main focus of my actions, which is simply not true; it’s all about the music. The music is what I have to communicate, and therefore the music is my emotion. Emotion (n.): a natural instinctive state of mind deriving from one's circumstances, mood, or relationship with others.