gameQuery - a jQuery plugin for developing 2D games. Features include sprite animations, collision detection, sound support, keyboard polling, and more.
jQuery feels like an odd fit for game development, but the results seem to be quite impressive - see this zombie game and source code.
Even more strange is they aren’t using canvas, but rather straight up DOM manipulation. Then again, this could make for some pretty crazy game concepts - ie. games disguised as regular web pages (say a news article) with sprites that come to life out of the banner ads and wreak havoc on the other page elements. Hmmm…
Posted on March 11, 2010 ·
Panic HQ - Cabel and Steven sure know how to dish out the envy.
Posted on March 11, 2010 ·
New Tron Legacy teaser trailer. Now with more hottie.
Posted on March 9, 2010 ·
About a month ago, I began using an old-school Merkur safety razor. I love the idea of (potentially) using the same razor for the rest of my life (50+ year old Gillette safety razors still sell on eBay) along with super high-quality blades that cost about 15 cents a pop. Every time I shave, I think about how much nicer the Merkur looks and feels in comparison to the ubiquitous plastic multi-blade razor most people are accustomed to.
Then I began to think about other items that exist today in a much different form than previous generations. I started compiling a list of things that I feel have not evolved for the better. These things used to have more character and personality, were more aesthetically pleasing, were built more ruggedly, or were just otherwise cooler.
Yes, this list is subjective and yes, you can still find the old style items in some cases and yes, you could come up with a list of items that are undoubtably better today, but this was a fun little exercise.
Razors
Bike Saddles
Cameras
Medicine Bottles
Soda Bottles
Fast Food Restaurants
Pickup Trucks
Phones
Plastic toys that used to be made of metal or wood
Deadly Swords
Have any to add?
Posted on March 8, 2010 ·
iA’s Facebook redesign that never made it off the drawing board. Looking at this version next to today’s live FB design, I much prefer this three-panel treatment.
Posted on March 8, 2010 ·
I will be serving on the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel. This Panel advises The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, whose job is to track and explain $787 billion in recovery stimulus funds. I’m doing this because I like accountability and transparency, and I believe in public service. And it is the complete opposite of everything else I do. Maybe I’ll learn something. The practical consequence is that I will probably go to Washington several days each month, in addition to whatever homework and phone meetings are necessary.
Edward Tufte. It’s probably safe to say that his explanations won’t be presented
by way of Powerpoint.
Posted on March 8, 2010 ·
Shaun Inman is now posting short development updates about his game in progress. Followed.
Posted on March 7, 2010 ·
Over the past year, I’ve had the pleasure of working with Sustainable Harvest by way of Relevance. Sustainable Harvest is one of the largest buyers of organic fair trade in the US and they train hundreds of thousands of farmers across the globe in best practices in coffee production and quality control. Apple has even written a business profile about them.
The applications that we’ve been building for them help the company’s supply chain manage the flow of coffee beans from farmer to roaster with a constant eye towards quality testing each step of the way.
The application that we’re currently working on will be used in the field by washing stations and dry mills in these various countries. The tool will allow the users to improve their process of recording which farmers brought which coffee cherries in for processing, how they were washed, dried, milled, and combined into larger units for storage and shipping.
The gentlemen in the photo above were part of a user testing session that took place earlier this week. Silverback was used for capturing the users’ sessions while they were asked to perform various tasks. Updates to the application will come once we have a better analysis of the Silverback videos (which, in turn, await a viable way to make their way back to the product team - most likely on CD or DVD since Internet bandwidth is rather limited from Tanzania).
One interesting bit of feedback made it’s way back to already though. I designed the interface to use big and “chunky” elements. We knew that the eventual users would be very intelligent people, but not necessarily proficient with computers, so the UI was created to feel more like a simple kiosk than a traditional web app.
It turns out that the users are actually used to visually scanning spreadsheets full of dense data and had difficulty quickly identifying items in this style interface. +1 for real world user testing.
I’ve worked remotely on projects for many years now, but this one really takes geographic diversity to an entirely different level. I’m working in Ohio with the development team in North Carolina for a client in Oregon and building an application for people in Africa. How great is that?
All photos courtesy Sustainable Harvest
Posted on March 5, 2010 ·
Shaun Inman (creator of Mint, Fever, and the upcoming Mimeo and the Kleptopus King) iPhone game is interviewed by Dan Benjamin.
Shaun embodies the type of person I most admire - the sort of polymath renaissance man who excels in multiple fields. In his case, his technical chops match his amazing design skills with an obsessive attention to detail across both.
One of my favorite quotes from the interview, when asked what advice he would give to people who want to start something, but don’t have time:
I made Mint while I was working fulltime in another company. I made it in the off-hours, probably between 7pm and 2am.
You can find ways to make time. Instead of watching TV or going out and getting a pint after work, bunker down with a laptop and learn something new and explore some ideas that you have.
Posted on March 5, 2010 ·
For my fellow Rails geeks out there. Chad Humphries (aka.spicycode) is a badass developer at Relevance (though not nearly as physically badass as his Tumblr avatar would lead you to believe). Great tip for ya’lls playing with RVM:
Step 1: Take a directory, any directory. Sprinkle a *.rvmrc* file in the directory.
Step 2: Put “rvm your-ruby-version” in the file.
Step 3: Magic! Let’s test this in the real world…
~/src/codes > ruby -v
ruby 1.9.2dev (2010-02-25 trunk 26759) [x86_64-darwin10]
~/src/codes > cd internet_superstar
~/src/codes/internet_superstar /msater > ruby -v
ruby 1.8.7 (2009-12-24 patchlevel 248) [i686-darwin10.2.0], MBARI
0x6770, Ruby Enterprise Edition 2010.01
~/src/codes/internet_superstar /msater > cat .rvmrc
rvm ree
Posted on March 4, 2010 ·
