User blog comment:SlackerPrime/i'm just gonna put this here/@comment-5483792-20150113024353/@comment-24739388-20150127193142

Why didn't I get a notification when you commented?

Anyway, here's the story.

It's Algebra I, last semester (10th grade). We were using graphing calculators (good ol' TI-84) and I of course brought my own from home. When I was bored I managed to pick up some TI-BASIC on the side of my SmileBASIC shenanigans. It's a dreadfully slow language, but it's good to keep you entertained during whatever time you need a calculator in class; and keeping people entertained is exactly how this all came about. I'm not entirely sure how Illuminati, Satanism, and Communism became a joke in my little circle, but it did. One day, someone happened to draw some *ahem*unsavory symbols*ahem* on someone else's paper. One of the people I sat by opened their big mouth and said "I bet Alex (me) could draw that on his calculator." To clarify, this person new me and my technically inclined personality, and I was also known to tote my trusty TI-84 around.

Thus, it all was born.

I wrote a TI-BASIC program that reads the built in lists for vertex and line data, and draws the resultant shape on the graph screen. Using the built in list editor, I could program in any shape given the necessary data. I eventually expanded the program to rotate this shape data and then redraw it (albeit slowly). Here it is on Pastebin. To appease my peers, I dropped in some *ahem*unsavory symbols*ahem* and showed them all. They were impressed with my work; and they wanted more. It came down to me having to draw a pentagram rotating inside of a circle. All in TI-BASIC using the program I had already written.

Realizing that this would be no easy solution, I wrote another program that generates stars of a given number of points, writes their data to the built in lists, and calls the rotating shape drawing program. I had to do some work on the data after it was generated (namely, connecting the inner vertices of the star) and voila, a spinning pentagram in TI-BASIC. They were very amused, and I was like putty in their hands.

I began to get cocky. I went home a couple days later and decided to blow them away. I spent a few hours tinkering, wrote this very program, and showed them the next day in class. At this point, my little circle had no choice but to be happy about this. Some of them even laughed. 2nd semester just began, and sadly I was switched out of that class and away from them; but I'm sure that they'll always remember me as the kid who could draw spinning pentagrams on his calculator.