I finally got my new blog on WordPress.com working. That should have been the simplest but their automatic spam detector encountered a single post referencing some free iPhone upgrade service I once mentioned. I had no idea that they were not legitimate at the time but an...
Running my own Linux server has lost it’s sex appeal. Now I am going for simplicity and so I am exploring simply not having my own server but using one of the several cloud services. It turns out that there are lots of little bumps in the road to move from one to the other: - I like [Tumblr](http:/...
Can you compose crappy music? I had a field day today ‘designing’ a bit of music for my “Game Of Life” Android game. In the old old days, when computers for the first time allowed you to choose a font for your text. we all became bad amateur typographers and book designers. Do you remember the “rans...
Apparently (not sure why yet) on Android, sound effects files using the OGG format work better than those using wav or mp3. It might be an AndEngine thing, I am not sure. Anyway, here’s my result of half hour googling and experimenting for a reliable way to convert the files. I tried a bunch of things, and I finally settled on MediaHuman AudioConverter. Use it. It really works and is nice and simple.
A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick My rating: 4 of 5 stars Odd book. In the end I really liked it but at first it takes a surprising set of turns and is not at all what you would think. The writing style is almost poetic which is what I think I enjoyed the most, View all my reviews
Here’s a topic I have never written about before… Nation Building. I just want to point you to a great article I read in the Globe yesterday that puts some meat on the question of “Nation Building,” when has it happened before? How long does it take? What is really happening? How does it start and h...
I have become a total Spotify addict. I have almost totally stopped downloading MP3s and am gradually locating all my favorite music on Spotify. I posed a couple of semi-sceptical notes when I first started using Spotify and so I am due for an update, right? - [Cancelled Rhapsory, trying Spotify](/...
I’ve been looking into changing up the primary (and only) disk in my 2 year old Mac Pro to a Solid State Disk (SSD). Based on what I’ve seen on the new Mac Airs I think it will boost performance a lot more than adding more memory would. The problem is that these beasts are pretty expensive,...
I’ve been using various Groupon-ish web sites to great advantage. Whether it’s Groupon itself, or LivingSocial, OpenTable and others, I send all their offers to an email folder and scan the 10-15 offers I get a day ...
So there’s this rather cool new service that says they will find and give you special deals to the stores and merchants you use already. The way they do it is to examine your credit card bills and help you find deals. They say: > With Swipely, you can earn automatic cash back rewards at the best ...
Andrew Appelis one of the best known academics studying and commenting on elections and computer science and technology related to elections. He wrote a really interesting report, “[New Jersey Elections Coverup](http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~appel/voting/nj-ele...
Pricing software is a perennial challenge. I came across this ebook, “Don’t just roll the dice” by Neil Davidson. It’s a very nice introduction to a tricky topic. I am considering a major revamp of the BlogBridge web site, with pricing and feature changes and this guide helps me think through those questions.
Some people are starting to wonder whether Google+will continue to grow and become a major social network. Even for Google, it will be quite an achievement to penetrate the already relatively crowded world of social networks and become a major player. Indeed they have had an excellent sta...
I got some of this list from Lee Sheldon’s course syllabus. I have not read all these books but I want to: - Designing Virtual Worlds. Richard Bartle. - Character Development and Storytelling for Games. Lee Sheldon. - Developing Online Games. M...
If you watched (or didn’t) the preceding video by Jesse Schellyou might have caught one throw away idea mentioned that really intrigued me: Eliminate grades and instead adopt a system modeled more like experience points in a game. The idea he mentions I believe ca...
If you are interested in Game Design you have probably seen this video… I finally watched it and thought it was really worth sharing. I definitely recommend it. Jesse Schell is funny and engaging to listen to and has great insights to offer. The last 7 or so minutes is a fantastic riff on how gaming might / will invade our everyday life in the future. Very plausible. http://www.g4tv.com/lv3/44277Xbox 360 Games – E3 2012 – Guitar Hero 5
I read about Quirky.com in the paper the other day. From my perusal it’s a site where people (you and me) can submit ideas for manufactured products. For example, let’s say...
Check this post One More Thing… from TechCrunch: > "So instead I read what everyone else had to say. Some articles were excellent, many were very good, others read far too much like obituaries. Mor...