Last year in November I worked on implementing a javascript version of Little Man Computer, a teaching, simplified computer created in 1965 and which I learned in a class at Annandale Community Collage back in 2002.

It was pretty cool doing it. I TDD the whole process. I got to recreate the basics of a computer and its machine code. And I made a simple assembly translator for it.

I even made the UI to have the same beautiful colors that computers from the 60s had. And the documentation has a great 1993 feel to it ;)

So here it is:
http://www.hugoestrada.net/machine/UI/machine_ui.html

And its code is here:
https://github.com/hugoestr/lmc

This is my implementation of Eliza, the affordable computer shrink. I wrote this as an exercise in Test Driven Design(TDD). I will write about my experience with TTD later. I can say that it was very positive, and that I learned a lot working through this exercise than I would have by spending the same amount of time reading about it.

To use it, you must click on the web form button. Don't type the Enter button on your keyboard; it will reload the page. I got to fix that.

Type 'Hello' to start, talk, and then type 'Bye' to end.

Eliza

Well, I have finally enabled comments on the site. Although this is not entirely true: only new content will be have comments. I will see how good the anti-spam module is for a few weeks, and then I may figure out how to turn comments on every page.

Yeah, I also wanted to start a political party. And an international political party for that since I am already making one. It is the the International Love Party, where people who are moved by love can join together, enhance their love for humanity and maybe even do something!

I will put a link to its blog soon. Hopefully the store will get up quickly as well.

This stormy weekend I got to make a number of nice silly goals. I built a snow maze in the driveway, I made another igloo, the biggest one that I have made, actually, and I built a sled area for the kids to go down our driveway. I used their sleds to snowboard down it. It was fun.

I did this in the last month over a weekend. We hiked for 6 hours in Great Falls, MD. We hiked over the park in the trails, and then we visited the vistor's center and saw this great little gate keeper museum there. Then we saw part of the falls. We were going to go to the Billy Goat Trail Section A, but then I saw the entry to Olmstead Island, which I haven't been to at all, and we went there first. It was great, and my daughter really loved the island.

Then we went to hike on the Billy Goat Trail Section A. We got to finish half of it since it got dark. We had to use the emergency trail exit. Then we hiked in the canal towpath in the darkness until we got to the car. It was really nice. :)

Here is the label for the Old Virginia Cilantro Tonic, which I brew yesterday. It is cilantro soda pop, from an old Virginia recipe. I only brew 1 liter. Images of the bottle with the label may come later.

Here is the cover of my first pop novel, Cult of Cow. This will be the project that I will be working on when I participate in this year's nanowrimo, national novel writing month. http://www.nanowrimo.org/

Of course I haven't written any of it since I am not supposed to do so. But I hope that you can figure out what this is about by the cover.

UPDATE: I forgot to update this one: Yes, I finished this in time. I am now an author. :)

Well, I am about to activate another silly goal: creating a muppet. Later let's see if I have energy to do put pictures up.

I have taken pictures, but they haven't been uploaded yet. I will have to troubleshoot that this evening.

I am going to run a board game library out of my house :)

At some point I am going to write down a list of board games that I have that I want to share with people. If you live in the Falls Church VA area or you actually deal directly with me in some capacity, you are welcome to take these games homes. You will have exclusive use of the game for 3 weeks.

After that period, you may return it or keep it until someone else asks for it. I will keep a list on who has what on this site.