Hey person hey,

Wednesday is practically Sunday, right? Apparently having a job means having less time to my hobbies or at least I need to plan them better so I can actually update on a Sunday. I haven't been doing enough of my hobbies recently so I'm going to schedule more focused hobby time instead of unfocused chill time. My hobbies make me just as happy as my unfocused chill time so there will be no issues. I'm actually started this tonight. I've already worked out (for the second time today), watched a movie, and now I'm cooking dinner. I still have about 3 hours before bed so I'll use that to get some stuff done.

My Alien Invasion game is coming along nicely. I was a bit silly to think that I would finish it quickly but I'm enjoying the process. I'd love to let you guys see it but according to the internet, Python and HTML don't work too well together. I need to do more research and try to find something that can help. But for now, here's a link to a screenshot of the game: the aliens are coming. So far, I've got a few things set up as you can see. So the ship is pretty much finished. It moves side to side by holding down the left and right keys on the keyboard. It shoot bullets by pressing the space bar. Right now it's set up so that only three bullets can be active at a time. Once one of the bullets passes the top of the screen, you can shoot another bullet.

I only have one alien right now but soon it'll be joined by others to form a fleet. And the fleet will move side to side and advance down towards the spaceship. The book essentially walks you through the coding, holding your hand the entire time. It shows you the code and explains exactly what each line is for. But it doesn't show you everything at once. You build it up slowly as you would normally do. I wish I had gone through more of this game before I started the coding challenge I did last month. I've learned how to better organize my code (which makes it run more predictably). Next challenge I'll be ready.

I've also been looking into data science courses. I think I'm going to do the IBM course on Coursera. It's a lot cheaper than doing part-time courses from one of those bootcamp companies or a university. When I'm done with the course, I'm going to take exams on Machine Learning and AI. A few companies offer exams for less than $275 (together) and give you free classes to prepare. I figure passing those exams will make me a better candidate in big data companies.

So that's it. I'm trying to balance everything and hopefully I'll get better at it. There are some new developments in my life but I won't let you know until it's finalized.

Till next time,
Cope.