It was about this time that I discovered binaural beats, a way of combining two different noise frequency pulses, that when put on with headphones, would become one sound that “speaks” to the brain directly. In more accurate words, it influences the brain waves; you can think of it as your brain wanting to match with the frequency it hears around it. Of course hearing this I was highly skeptical and wondered that, “if this really worked, then why is it not being used?” Looking into binaural beat generators, I found a handful on the web (I’m not linking). I had decided to go into a meditative position and then just listened to the binaural beats on an alpha wave (8-12Hz). It was less than 5-minutes in when my eyes started fluttering and they didn’t just start fluttering, it also seemed like I was in a much deeper state of REM than any other time before. This stunned me.

Now, while I was still skeptical, because I’d reached a state of REM before with meditation; I figured I needed to test it elsewhere. Not explaining what it was, I set the generator to theta waves and put it on my, now ADHD diagnosed, nephew who, at the time, was 6-years-old, for 10-minutes. He sat on a chair next to me and 7-minutes in was completely asleep. I next set my brother up, who was 23-years-old at the time, with theta waves. 8-minutes in he was completely zoned out. Once he realized how zoned out he was, he removed his headphones and stood up very quickly. I assume to attempt to wake up, though he was drowsy for at least another half-hour afterwards. It was soon after that I stopped researching these things because I became busy.

Over a year later, after reading up to try and fully understand my ADD (ADHD-I), I came across a lot of reading that explained the typical brain activity of someone with ADD. What’s most interesting about it is how the ADD brain will go through the different brain waves like anyone else, but it’s just always on the high end, which means that it’s like it’s typically on the wrong “mode” of the correct wave at the right time. This is caused by lack of brain producing substances that help control activity. That said, where do binaural beats come in? Well, I got interested in trying binaural beats again, but this time with focus on, well, getting myself focused. So I decided to start playing with binaural beats at times where I’m doing a certain activity. In the morning, after waking up, I play beats that are in the high alpha range. Soon after I will play 10-minutes of a lower beta (aka beta 1) range of 13-16Hz, with the intention that I will be more focused and alert. When I come to a situation where I’m having problems thinking, I will play gamma waves with the intention that my problem solving and mental activity will increase. When going to sleep at night I play 10-minutes of low alpha waves, which I have automatically followed by 10-minutes of high theta waves.

Where did all of this get me? I wonder that myself. I’ve been waking up and sleeping much more consistently than usual for the last two weeks. As far as my work is concerned, I seem to have a much stronger ability to focus on it and I haven’t stopped working on one of my projects for, well, two weeks now. Which is like a world record. I question if it’s truly a cure or if I’ve tricked my brain with little less than a placebo. All-in-all, I can’t say with certainty as to how it will help me, my future, and the future of all of those suffering from ADD. One thing is for sure though, I just focused on writing this article over the last hour with lower beta binaural beats playing in the background of my earbuds.

I’m not really sure what caused the template to suddenly break, but I’m just going to go ahead of remove WordPress. My ADD is telling me that I’ve procrastinated long enough.

Clean and Simple 2

Dark Essence

Smooth Dark 3 v3

I’m attempting to supersede Monkey Ai v1, which was closed source. This will also be the framework that T-ACT Engine is going to use. Mind you T-ACT is still closed source.

Update: We failed thanks to a bug in Monkey Flixel that was so incredibly out there that we still haven’t figured it out. 10 hours and we just sat at the same place in time. Debugging it to hell and no difference was made.

Anyways, here’s my programming stream: http://www.justin.tv/nrgsoft#/w/2887360112

I will be on when I’m working and it will also be used for Ludum Dare 23 on April 20th-23rd.

NOTE: I am generally on between Thursday-Sunday GMT-8. I also am on late, so, if you think Japan time minus a day you’ll find me on during the “day.”

Watch live video from nrgsoft on www.justin.tv

That said, we may need the fine people at KickStarter’s help to finish the game engine running inside the game that’s making the game, itself (very confusing sounding when I write it like that…). Cause if it’s not what people really want, then there’s no point to making it. The game in question I cannot talk about yet. Only that it is running using the ACT Engine, which is an engine that is written into the game to make the game, itself, in live time. After that project is completed T-ACT Engine will be taking a portion of the ACT Engine code and sticking it into the T-ACT Engine to make tactical games. As long as people also support this, which I hope they do, I’ll be very happy. Cause I’ve wanted to work on it, but had no money to actually make this project get off the ground to make it worthwhile. Can’t live off of air, you know?

Back onto the topic though, I’m open to suggestions for site layout. I’ve got one in mind, but I don’t trust my site ideas most of the time. I’d like to note that I can write any site, I’m just bad at coming up with layouts.

- Pancakes

http://skyknitters.com/gdemos/quad_trees/

I’m sure there’s going to be one or more people coming in wondering if I’m going to go deeper into explaining what I did. I’m not. Quad trees are fairly simple. My math level is algebra and I more than understood how to make quad trees. Theoretically, if you have a moderate amount of programming experience, you should have no issue coming up with your own implementation of a quad tree. I just put this up because I spent a couple of hours working on it so I felt like showing off.

Sometimes I feel like you want to love me, but then go ahead and throw a curve ball that I never thought was possible. In this latest series of tests I discovered that the creators of php like to allow very strange things I didn’t know about. If you didn’t know you could put a function name or class name in a string and call it, you might want to take a look at these code examples.

First, let’s start off with the first test. String function calling.

$funccall = "test";
 
function test()
{
	echo "Hello World<br />";
}
 
function test2()
{
	echo "Wut?<br />";
}
 
$funccall();
 
// $funccall . "2"(); // Doesn't work
// "test2"(); // Doesn't work
$funccall .= "2";
 
$funccall();

Okay, so what it boils down to is that php will allow you to store a function name in a string an call it from the variable. However, you cannot just use a string to directly call a function. Okay, if you want it that way php.

Then it gets stranger. As you can then use a similar method to get static methods from a class.

class Program
{
	public static function Execute()
	{
		echo "Execute!<br />";
	}
 
	public static function Param( $pancakes )
	{
		echo $pancakes . "<br />";
	}
}
 
$classmethod = "Program::Execute";
// $classmethod(); // Doesn't work
 
$classname = "Program";
$staticmethod = "Execute";
 
$classname::$staticmethod();
 
$staticmethod = "Param";
 
$classname::$staticmethod("No way");

Okay, so with this one you have to separate the class and static method into their own variables. If you try to combine the two it won’t work saying something like “Function not found.” Then just like you’d regularly call a static method, do it with the variables and it works.

Now, I’m not sure what to say after doing these experiments other than php is a very strange language at times. On that note I’ll leave this here.

Edit: I should mention, this is not the limit to what can be done. I’m fairly sure I’ve done tests in the past that go something like this. ‘$className = new Name(); $publicMethod = “Display”; $className->$publicMethod(); $publicVariable = “Name”; $className->$publicVariable = “My New Name”;’