mattx Posted February 3, 2008 Posted February 3, 2008 (edited) Need an excuse ? Teachers on your back and you need to give them some answer just to make them happy ? Never fear fellow Edugeekers - the Instant Excuse solution is here !! Unzip this script and double click on the edugeek excuse.exe and be ready to shout the excuse from any staff room up and down the land..... [ Soon to be Incorporated into the Edugeek Admin's Admin Bar.....]edugeek excuse v1.1.zip Edited February 4, 2008 by mattx Updated Excuse Thingy Script 3
Edu-IT Posted February 3, 2008 Posted February 3, 2008 Great program! It would be nice to be able to generate a new excuse by pushing a button rather than having to close the program and open it again.
mattx Posted February 3, 2008 Author Posted February 3, 2008 Great program! It would be nice to be able to generate a new excuse by pushing a button rather than having to close the program and open it again. Your wish is my command, I'll add that feature later in the week.....
mac_shinobi Posted February 4, 2008 Posted February 4, 2008 need two tabs hardware and software and then have a button on each. Otherwise you will be clicking the button for ages trying to get an excuse that sounds some what realistic.
mattx Posted February 4, 2008 Author Posted February 4, 2008 need two tabs hardware and software and then have a button on each. Otherwise you will be clicking the button for ages trying to get an excuse that sounds some what realistic. Its only a bit of fun Gecko !! But I do like the idea of splitting it - when I have some more time to spare I will most probably take this into consideration....
mac_shinobi Posted February 4, 2008 Posted February 4, 2008 Its only a bit of fun Gecko !! But I do like the idea of splitting it - when I have some more time to spare I will most probably take this into consideration.... yeah I know ... hehe you using vb 6 or what are you using ?
mattx Posted February 4, 2008 Author Posted February 4, 2008 yeah I know ... hehe you using vb 6 or what are you using ? Its done in AutoIT - nothing too fancy...
mattx Posted February 4, 2008 Author Posted February 4, 2008 how are you selecting the excuses ? The excuses are in an array, then I just used a random function to choose one. Had a bit of a problem getting them in an array to start with - [ I don't normally script along those lines ] - once I got that right it was straight forward to get the random aspect to work. This random function uses the Mersenne Twister random number generator, MT19937, written by Takuji Nishimura, Makoto Matsumoto, Shawn Cokus, Matthe Bellew and Isaku Wada.
Gonk Posted February 4, 2008 Posted February 4, 2008 I have to admit my favourite excuse is to tell teachers that "the Flux capacitor isn't set to 2.21 jigawatts" If you have time, you've got to add that to your excuses array.
mattx Posted February 4, 2008 Author Posted February 4, 2008 I have to admit my favourite excuse is to tell teachers that "the Flux capacitor isn't set to 2.21 jigawatts" If you have time, you've got to add that to your excuses array. I think a flux capacitor excuse is in there - let me check..... Arrrr yes - excuse number 277: "Your Flux Capacitor has gone bad." I shall add the other one though..... 1
Gonk Posted February 4, 2008 Posted February 4, 2008 I think a flux capacitor excuse is in there - let me check..... Arrrr yes - excuse number 277: "Your Flux Capacitor has gone bad." I shall add the other one though..... Sir, Your are an absolute gent. Cheers
mac_shinobi Posted February 4, 2008 Posted February 4, 2008 ok I wasn't far off then as I was going to use a select case or switch and for each select case or switch get it to use a number and then get a function to randomly select one and get it from the select case Public Function RandomNumber(ByVal MaxValue As Long, Optional _ ByVal MinValue As Long = 0) On Error Resume Next Randomize Timer RandomNumber = Int((MaxValue - MinValue + 1) * Rnd) + MinValue End Function select case RandomNumber case 0: msgbox "the flux capacitor" case 1: msgbox "message number 2" case 2: msgbox "next message" End Select not sure if that would work though ( just knocked that together quickly )
mattx Posted February 4, 2008 Author Posted February 4, 2008 ok I wasn't far off then as I was going to use a select case or switch and for each select case or switch get it to use a number and then get a function to randomly select one and get it from the select case Public Function RandomNumber(ByVal MaxValue As Long, Optional _ ByVal MinValue As Long = 0) On Error Resume Next Randomize Timer RandomNumber = Int((MaxValue - MinValue + 1) * Rnd) + MinValue End Function select case RandomNumber case 0: msgbox "the flux capacitor" case 1: msgbox "message number 2" case 2: msgbox "next message" End Select not sure if that would work though ( just knocked that together quickly ) Your idea is close to how I first approached it - I did not want to use an .ini or text file as that would take the 'fun' out of the excuse as people could just read the excuses then.... So in all my daft wisdom, I added each excuse as a variable then tried to use the random function to pick a random variable. That didn't work - which is why I ended adding them to an array.
mattx Posted February 4, 2008 Author Posted February 4, 2008 I've updated the Edugeek Excuse Thingy. I've added Gonk's flux capacitor excuse + now it flashes up an Excuse for 5 seconds, then pops off - if you want another excuse just click the 'Excuse' button again....... Yes folks, it's that exciting. edugeek excuse v1.1.zip
webman Posted February 4, 2008 Posted February 4, 2008 Can we not have a little LED on the dialog that flashes different colours for different cateogries and severity and believability of error messages? It would make my life so much easier. Does it automatically fix the problems too with a command-line parameter?
tech_guy Posted February 4, 2008 Posted February 4, 2008 Mattx you have far too much time on your hands!? I'm envious! P.S. Any chance of creating an insult generator specifically for use in an education environment?!
mattx Posted February 4, 2008 Author Posted February 4, 2008 Can we not have a little LED on the dialog that flashes different colours for different cateogries and severity and believability of error messages? It would make my life so much easier. Does it automatically fix the problems too with a command-line parameter? Courses it fixes the problems with a command line - just use the /f [ short for fix ] after everything you type. Cor I dunno, didn't you know that ??
mattx Posted February 4, 2008 Author Posted February 4, 2008 Mattx you have far too much time on your hands!? I'm envious! P.S. Any chance of creating an insult generator specifically for use in an education environment?! I had to do something whilst Mrs Mattx was watching Eastenders... As for a generator specifically for use in an education environment - just start making a list of quotes and I'll knock one up..... Ooooerrr missus.
webman Posted February 4, 2008 Posted February 4, 2008 Damn you got me there I didn't RTFM To ease the addition and removal of excuses, we could have it connect to an Oracle/DB2 database to get the quotes; but have it separated using the client-server model with communications taking place using SOAP XML web services. And then factory classes for different types of excuse. This could be really good!! Good work though mattx
mattx Posted February 4, 2008 Author Posted February 4, 2008 DB2 databases - your taking me back now - used to knock up endless queries and procs in SQL [ all command line ] about 6 years ago on a IBM mainframe. I even wrote a game [ crap one ] in Rexx / SQL - it was a basic adventure game. I had to revoke access to it in the end as I shared it for everyone and errrr everyone was playing it - ended up using far to much CPU on the mainframe....Got in a bit of trouble for that. Also wrote a really crappy SQL / Rexx tumb terminal screen saver. All it was was a collection of badly done ascii art. It was a picture of a man running accross the screen - I think it was about 100 odd different screens quickly flashing on and off. There was no CLS command or anything so I had to write some real dirty code which ran query after query after query after query.....you get the picture. I miss those days...... Could have a lot more fun there that what I am doing now - I feel sad now.
Edu-IT Posted February 4, 2008 Posted February 4, 2008 To ease the addition and removal of excuses, we could have it connect to an Oracle/DB2 database to get the quotes; but have it separated using the client-server model with communications taking place using SOAP XML web services. And then factory classes for different types of excuse. This could be really good!! Are you being serious about that or is it just nonsense? Either way it's gone way over my head.
webman Posted February 4, 2008 Posted February 4, 2008 @mattx: I'm not old enough to remember those, I just read about it. Hmmm.. games on mainframes - trés geeky @Edu-IT: They do exist, but that was an example of what gets posted every now and then over on http://www.thedailywtf.com - i.e. seriously over-complicating a very simple problem using enterprise-level technologies and methods. It would be totally possible to do it using those, but its a bit like using a JCB to dig a flower bed 1
mattx Posted February 4, 2008 Author Posted February 4, 2008 Are you being serious about that or is it just nonsense? Either way it's gone way over my head. Oh its dead serious, I'm going to add a few tables to our MIS system and run the 'Edugeek Excuse Thingy' as a Crystal Report....
mattx Posted February 4, 2008 Author Posted February 4, 2008 games on mainframes - trés geeky Oh thats nothing compared to some of the other strange sh*t I've done.... I won't bore you with that though as I feel I may end up in one of those padded rooms.....
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