Benjamin A.'s Blog

 

 

Latest Posts

22 Jun 2020 . projects .
Designing My Self-Driving Car

This year, Hack Club (A global network of code-loving high-school students) started something called Summer of Making, challenging members to learn more about tech and create cool hardware projects. I decided to use the opportunity to create something I’ve always wanted to make - a model self-driving car, inspired by the Donkey Car Project. As of the latest update, I’ve currently developed much of the basic hardware and software and I’m mostly learning about AI and waiting for a part to arrive so I can fix my RC car and finish the build Project repo The RC car Originally, I... Continue Reading



01 Mar 2019 . code .
Make a fun HTML & JavaScript game - part 2: JavaScript tutorial

post thumbnail In this tutorial series, I will guide you through the steps to create your own simple but fun online browser-based game, using HTML and JavaScript. Click here if you want to see the game we will create. Remember that you will be able to customize your own however you want. This is part two of the tutorial. If you have not read part one, you should read it now. Click here for part 1: HTML tutorial. Once you have read it, you can continue with this part. In this part of the tutorial, I will show you how to add... Continue Reading



03 Feb 2019 . code .
Make a fun HTML & JavaScript game - part 1: HTML tutorial

post thumbnail In this tutorial series, I will guide you through the steps to create your own simple but fun online browser-based HTML game, using HTML and JavaScript. This tutorial is meant for beginners (or almost-beginners), but I will only cover what is needed to teach you how to make this game, so I will include links at the bottom so you can learn the topics in greater detail. Keep in mind that this is a very big project to use as a first HTML project, so if it seems too complicated, just learn more about the topics and come back when... Continue Reading



26 Dec 2018 . code .
Why and How to use Version Control: A Simple Git and GitHub Tutorial

post thumbnail In this simple git tutorial I will try to explain as simply as I can, what version control, Git and GitHub is, and why you should use them. I will go over the basics and only a few more advanced points in this article. In this tutorial I will be using the the command line git commands, so I will assume that you know how to use the command line, and I will go at a fairly fast pace. What is Git? Git is a version control system. In this article, I will focus on Git, which is the most... Continue Reading



30 Sep 2018 . projects .
Halloween Projects (a post in progress)

post thumbnail One of my favorite times of the year for making is Halloween. There are so many cool things to create to freak the trick-or-treaters out. In this post, I will list a few of the ones I’ve made. Keep in mind: I will add to this list as time goes on, so check back in on it every once in a while! 1. Motion-sensing Halloween Skull This is one of the first Halloween projects I ever made, and actually one of the first good arduino projects I ever made. This looks like an ordinary plastic skull to trick-or-treaters - until... Continue Reading



09 Aug 2018 . code .
Why Use a Static Site Generator?

post thumbnail Suppose you want to create a blog. But you don’t want to use one of those drag-and-drop, Word-style, CMS (content management system) programs like Wordpress or Blogger, because first of all you want more control and customization, and second of all you want to program your site, not just design it. You have several options. You could program the whole site, with a backend, using a framework in some language like python, java, or C - but writing a whole backend and frontend just for a simple blog? You might not want to do that. Or you could write a... Continue Reading



28 Jul 2018 . projects .
Radar Defense Game

post thumbnail As my first (actual) post on my blog, I decided to write about a game I made this week, which I named Radar Defense. About a week ago I had found a picture of a cool game that was programmed in python with pygame, a python library for making simple 2d games. What I thought was really cool about it was the guy had also built an external controller to control the on-screen game. When I saw it, I decided that I wanted to make something like that. Since I just saw the picture and didn’t read about it, I... Continue Reading



27 Jul 2018 . other .
First Blog Post

Yeah!! Welcome to my blog! this is my first post ever. It works! :smiley: I created this blog using the jekyll static site generation program, and hosted it using github pages. Many thanks to le4ker on github for creating the wonderful { Personal } jekyll theme that this website is based on. Continue Reading



More Posts

updates

28 Sep 2020
I've started blogging again (hopefully)!

I’m currently working on a few new posts for my blog. Coming sometime this week is a tutorial on making a personal “cloud” and CDN, and a tutorial on making slack bots and/or discord bots might be coming soon as well! I’ve also been working on updating my robocar post.

24 Sep 2020
Netlify CMS

I just set up a simple CMS for my site using Netlify CMS, allowing me to change or create projects, blog posts or updates for my site without needing to manually open a text editor, create new content and push to github! It was insanely easy to set up.

21 Jun 2020
Summer 2020 update

I really do want to start blogging again I’m just not entirely sure what I’d write about. Also, I’m participating in Hack Club Summer of Making and will be posting updates for my project here.

29 Jan 2020
New personal site, yeah!

The first part of my new personal site is live! It’s at the root of this domain: benjaminashbaugh.me

20 Dec 2019
Domain transfer

Hello - as you can see I migrated my site from scitronboy.com to benjaminashbaugh.me. Please note that some features might not work properly or might be disabled completely until I roll out my big update in a few weeks.

13 Dec 2019
December update

As you may have noticed, this site’s been kind of dead, as my last post was in march. The good news is, I will be making a new, more personal site in early 2020 to advertise myself. It will be on a new domain, and I will be moving this blog to a subdomain there and hopefuly reviving it a little. On a different note, I’ve been working on another project lately - a multiplayer math game. It’s not ready yet, but you can learn about it at arithmerace.com.

20 Jan 2019
New domain!!!

I just purchased a new domain for my website! scitronboy.github.io is now scitronboy.com.

23 Dec 2018
New project: Evolutionary Algorithms

I’ve started working on a simple game that uses an evolutionary algorithm to teach circles to jump over blocks. Click the title to check out the code!

04 Oct 2018
LESSON LEARNED (the hard way):

While using git, NEVER EVER checkout a previous commit in a different branch without first stashing or commiting the changes in your working branch!