Copy contact information efficiently Select contact information such as name, address, phone number and email address in any application. With just a keystroke you can copy all data to your contact database.
Driftmoon Alpha 7! - Instant Kingdom
We nearly completed all of the new areas last August. But when testing the whole game through back then, we discovered some areas of the game-play and the content, that we wanted to tune a bit further to make them just right. It was a relatively large and time-consuming task, but now that we’ve spent the last two weeks playing and replaying, we’re really happy we decided to do it. Why? Simply because we ourselves have now had so much fun with our own beta-testing play-throughs. And if we’ve really enjoyed adventuring in Driftmoon ourselves (even though we know beforehand pretty much everything that’ll happen), we have high hopes that you will too
Gratuitous Tank Battles is coming to the PC and Mac, developed by Positech Games, makers of Democracy, Kudos and of course Gratuitous Space Battles. Gratuitous Tank Battles is an RTS/Tower Defense hybrid with online elements and customisable units. The player can take the role of the defender or the attacker in a series of top-down explodey battles. A built-in map editor will allow easy sharing of custom maps and defensive challenges with other GTB players in a similar fashion to GSB’s challenge system.
Botanicula is point’n'click exploration game created by Jára Plachý and Amanita Design. It’s about a bunch of five friends - little tree creatures who set out for a journey to save the last seed from their home tree which is infested by evil parasites. The original soundtrack and sound effects are created by Czech alternative band DVA. Release of Botanicula is planned for early 2012.
I enjoy the adventure of Miles (and his parents before him) so much I actually own 2 copies of “Young Miles” so I can lend one and not be without. There are very few books that I have ever done that with. It is Trickster Space Opera and you don’t need to be a SF reader to have fun with it.
Available in more formats than is sensible, too. No excuse!
And even though 2012 have an absolute plethora of games coming, I still want to play some of these games I missed, because I am curious, because I enjoy all sorts of gameplay that I won’t necessarily find in new games, and in some cases because I feel I ought to have played them.
So, just like I have the Mount TBR challenge, here’s the (totally unofficiall) Dusty Mousemat, challenge (yeah, I know, won’t win any awards for that name, but “dusty mouse” sounds evil to anyone who ever had a mechanical mouse and “dusty joystick” could be misinterpreted)
The rule I make up for this is simple:
- play an old game you never finished or never played. 1 per month at least.
- old means it came out before 2010, ideally before 2006. It can be a game you have owned a while or it can be an old game bought “new” this year in a bargain bin or digital distribution
- it should be a game you wish you’d played at the time, or think you ought to have played since people keep mentioning it
- give it a chance, play it at least a couple evenings
Here’s a random selection of games I might revisit this year - if I arrange it right I could revisit (or discover) 4 a month!
The first game at the moment is Port Royale 2 - simply because I started on Pirates of the Black Cove and encountered a bug, and hadn’t quite sated my nautical wish yet. I have mostly played the commercial sim part of the game, I fail many of the missions due to not figuring it out, and whereas I can handle some sea battles, the battles against towns just defeat me (even in the tutorial). Still, there’s a lot to figure out and I shall at least master the commerce a bit more, before I get myself annihilated trying to take over a town and quit 
I could continue on a nautical theme for quite a while as I have Pirates of the Caribbean, Tortuga 1/2, East India Company, Ship Simulator and Sail Simulator, Sub Command, Silent Hunter IV, Tradewinds, Patrician (2 and 3), Naval Warfare (that’s actually a shooter). Don’t ask…
I’ll probably switch to an RPG or action game before I go through all these, though.
]]>
I figure this won’t happen unless I make a list of the first few books to get publicly started. So these are the first five, chosen in part as they were in boxes here upstairs and therefore reachable.
The Robber Bride
The Derwish House
We The Drowned - not sure I can forgive what he did to that dog, strangely enough
Good Behaviour
an attempt to restart and finish The Lacuna
and for when I have to travel I have many ebooks I have had a long time
We’ll see if making even this tiny bit public will keep me on track. 25 books from the old pile should be easy
]]>Wizard’s Tower Press — a science fiction and fantasy publisher
Welcome to Wizard’s Tower Press, a science fiction and fantasy publisher. We concentrate mainly on making out-of-print works available once more as e-books, and helping other small presses exploit the e-book market. We will also publish a small number of limited-print-run anthologies with a view to encouraging diversity in the science fiction and fantasy field. Finally we publish Salon Futura magazine, an online non-fiction magazine devoted to discussion of science fiction and fantasy literature.
Rebellionstore.com | eBooks in New Worlds of Fantastic Fiction
1889 Books – Make Your Brain Happy
1889 Labs is an independent publisher dedicated to producing the best strange fiction conceivable by the human brain. Catering to a specific demographic of men and women between the ages of 3 and 97, we print everything from kids books to serious stories for adults. Our goal is to bring you on an amazing adventure onscreen and off. We hope you’ll take us up on the offer.
Welcome to DFP! We’re dedicated to bringing well-written, character-focused stories to readers with a hunger for the good stuff and an understanding that quality fiction isn’t found only on the shelves in a chain bookstore. We offer an alternative path to publication for authors who want to have more control over their work and are ready to thrive in a professional and supportive environment.
Welcome to OR Books A great, exciting project! —Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing OR Books is a new type of publishing company. It embraces progressive change in politics, culture and the way we do business. More
I spent 2010 travelling so much for work and spending a week (or more) at a time away, that I couldn’t carry enough books along. I tried watching TV but frankly I prefer a good book to much that is on TV.
I tried buying books when there and bringing them back, but this is wasteful - I didn’t have the time to go to a proper bookshop and airport selection is full of disposable clones… and it is not as if I need more random books!
Simultaneously I became aware how many books I already own and how many my technical books quickly became outdated clutter. Even when you are a keen reader with a big house (and planning some special bookshelves, but that is another blog post), it only makes only sense to own books you will either re-read in the future or lend to friends.
So I decided I’d been keeping the book-and-gadgetaholic inside me at bay for long enough, it was now more than reasonable for me to get an ebook reader. That way I could have hundreds of unread ebooks too
My rules for book versus ebook
Books versus ebooks is mostly resolving the conflict between storage and longevity. Paper lasts forever and can be shared. Ebooks take no space.
* Is it a technical reference book? ebook. They are too big and bulky as books and become obsolete too fast
* Do I already know I will lend it or reread it? book
* Do I already know I will read it once? library borrow, or ebook
* Is it an impulse or curiosity buy? ebook
* Is it available only with DRM? book or library borrow
I wanted a device using standard formats to be sure that in 10 years I still can read them in some way. I wanted to add any book in any format wherever I found it, through copying the file, not have to jump through hoops. I don’t particularly need an on-book shop (which seems to be important to reviewers, strangely) or a dictionary or some of the other bells and whistles.
It couldn’t be the Kindle. I’m not anti Amazon, by far, I buy many books from them for convenience and if they offered ebooks in open formats I possibly would buy from them some of the time - and if they made the Kindle more open I could have been tempted, its a lovely device - but the Kindle’s geography lock and the closed format are too worrying for me. I want to be able to buy french ebooks too, if I so feel.
And if I am honest I think it dangerous if too much is on Amazon only when it comes to ebooks - a monopoly on ebooks would be bad for authors, publishers and readers. So I won’t help it happen, even if it deprives me of many books.
I was not content to lock myself out of the Amazon ebook store and format by not getting a Kindle (I know there’s ways to convert files but I can’t be bothered and I don’t want to increase the monopoly anyways). No sir! I am also locking myself out of most of the other big stores as I refuse to buy DRM files.
DRM is simply a way to cripple the content to make it less yours and less reliable - I cannot trust that any DRM scheme will remain unlockable in 10 years time - after all I own a few games which I can no longer play as the “unlocking” server is long gone, or the deal between the publisher and the distributor has been severed in the last 10 years. Not to forget limited activations (i.e. you can only copy it to your next phone or ereader so many times, 5 most commonly!). I don’t want this to happen to books, which I am much more likely to want to revisit in 10 years than games.
DRM does not respect the user, and as a consequence I reject it.
My reader
So I did my research and settled for an Iriver Cover Story, and a year on I am still very pleased with it.
The screen is not as contrasty as it should be (only 8 levels not 16 like newer ones - one thing I do regret about it) but it is small and solid, has a touch screen, notes, supports many formats including for work documents, has an extension card port, wifi, email, and even supports audio. Battery life is long, recharged via USB. And it is, all in all, quite open.
And it doesn’t look half bad
So how did I manage?
I think the whole no kindle, no DRM could have gotten rather drab and frustrating, but I already knew of Baen and that and Gutenberg could keep me going for years, so I wasnt worried.
In the end it turned out to be a blessing, because I had to dig a bit and indulge in risk taking and curiosity, and found many books and authors I would not have read otherwise. And that only happened because I put these limits on myself.
I got the largest number of my books from Baen and Angry Robot - one because I knew they did open ebooks by design since the nineties (including a mountain of free ones to kickstart any reading) and I could finally now reward them. The other I found via a review and the first random books were so good I kept buying (and now subscribe). I also got subscriptions or issues of quite a few hard-to-find-in-europe magazines.
Are there many publishers and books I would get and try but cannot, because they are only on Amazon/Apple, or only available with DRM? Sure! But I found others instead, more interesting than what I would have bought on Amazon.
PS: Here are the places where I have bought good books in the past year. I will list the books with 1 line comments in a separate post, this is long enough
Directly from publishers:
* Baen webscriptions and the Baen Free Library. Now found at http://www.baenebooks.com Also have books from Nightshade Books from the Baen store
* Angry Robot - got so many good books from them I now subscribe to their entire output!
* Apex Books http://www.apexbookcompany.com/collections/ebooks
* Almost all computer and science/reference books publishers sell their own without DRM, I bought from dozens.
* wizard tower (genre) http://www.wizardstowerbooks.com/ also has some magazines and other publishers books
* rebellion http://www.rebellionstore.com/
* 1889 labs http://1889.ca/books/
* OR books (non fiction) http://www.orbooks.com/
* Ps publishing is starting to have ebooks and eshorts http://www.pspublishing.co.uk/ebooks-31-c.asp
Small ebook stores:
* Fictionwise http://www.fictionwise.com << also has some genre periodicals like Analog, Asimov's, Ellery Queen etc. awesome!
* Weightless books << http://weightlessbooks.com
From the author:
Also bought direct from the author eg: Cory Doctorow but these are few and far between.
Lynn Abbey, C.J. Cherryh, Jane Fancher at http://www.closed-circle.net/WhereItsAt/catalog
Please feel free to spam this with comments regarding any place where you found good DRM free ebooks
]]>
Webuilder - needed a web editor again for occasional use and my web designers had made me buy it for them (at a previous job) so went for this
JRiver Media Center (upgrade)
Paragon Rescue Kit (upgrade)
BitDefender
Goalscape
ECMerge
Ashampoo® Burning Studio 10
ConceptDraw OFFICE 2 (upgrade)
Postbox
Driver Cleaner.NET (for the purpose of installing an ATI driver on an older laptop using one of these laptop cards ATI refuses to install new drivers on)
Paragon Hard Disk Manager 11 Professional (upgrade)
Genie Timeline
O&O Defrag 14.5 Pro (upgrade)
Rainlendar2 Pro
SmartDraw 2012 (upgrade)
ACDSEE Pro 4 then 5 (upgrade)
Linkman Pro
DisplayFusion Pro
TwistedBrush Pro Studio / Curvy 3D / Genetica / Dj D Artagnan / Project Dogwaffle 4 / Archipelis Designer 2 / Texture anarchy / AnyFX / DAP (all DC’s fault)
PDF Annotator (update)
CrossOver Linux Professional (renewed)
Object Desktop Renewal (renewed, but might be the last time)
TaxCalc 2011
Recovered my license of Spherical Timesheet Tracker (never found suitable alternative!)
Wireless IRC (phone)
Gravity (phone)
Syncplicity (not renewed)
Expression Engine 2 (web)
Lifejournal
Paid Web Services/memberships:
Spideroak (renewed)
Fastmail (renewed)
Hiveminder (renewed)
FreeAgent
Newsblur
If you’ll be at FOSDEM, come and hear how OSI is changing: http://t.co/93rLAi1I
Climate scientist disowned by Newt Gingrich speaks out over book spat | Environment | guardian.co.uk
Last two paragraphs of this link from @stevesilberman are the most disturbing. http://t.co/634BY4MH FoIA requests as antiscience weapon.
I Won a Major Award! - Skepchick
You guys! I Won a Major Award! http://t.co/AGfNihgH
Campaigning inspiration for WoodWatchers, from WoodWatchers by the Woodland Trust
Quick and easy planning update - what is happening in England? #WoodWatch #nppf - http://t.co/Xzw3vCJF
New Movies For January, And Where In London To See Them | Londonist
This month’s new movies…paired up with the most apt London cinemas to see them in http://t.co/96FrvaFN
As Kodak Fades, Workers Remember Their Moment - WSJ.com
At Kodak, Workers Remember Their Moment http://t.co/tEwXoc2I
The Ultimate Productivity Blog
I shall now be following the useful advice of the Ultimate Productivity Blog: http://t.co/F9XJJFWQ via @fatbusinessman
I then dabbled with the idea of making it a more general blog, including more related to my more professional interests, as well as perhaps sharing more aroung hobbies, learning an resolutions - perhaps finding other kindred spirits and a support network )
Blog about all the things I know - tools and resources I found and take for granted, but which are often of far more interest than I would have imagined. Blog about the dog and walking and great food. Lots of ranting too, as I so well can do. And still more about games and books and computers, too.
So what happened?
1) I have been busy. Since my last update about “work” was in, what, 2002? you can imagine that indeed a lot has happened. I started an agency, grew it, then moved on. I was a CTO, an serious solution and technology architect, a coach, an agile consultant, an entrepreneur. I got too busy,worked too much, lost hobbies. Recoved a bit of a life, then lost both my parents. Worked a lot abroad too. Was not all that much in control of my time or my life. Could not find the time to tackle this site much… intention and guilt, yes, time and action… no
2) Adding all those types on this site will make for an inconsistent mash unless some clever reorganisation happens - tags at the very least. Of course there is no problem if I add as rarely as I have, but still, blogs are supposed to be focused… I’m not sure any of my 10 occasional readers wants to see all that extra stuff, and as for others, who knows?
3) The site is ugly and that is hardly motivating. It needs a redesign - but I have no will to find, adapt and cut/deploy another template. I should find someone who would take my current pages just as HTML/CSS, improve them, then give me the sources to chop/deploy. That I could imagine doing.
So what now?
Well I intend an nth attempt at catch up and revival of this.
Keep up traditions:
* catching up at least to add the games I own and games (especially non AAA) I am watching, as was the tradition on this site
* catch up with at least some book and film one liners to share the goodness
* do the annual “software I live with” post
* update “where to find me online”
After that:
* tales worth sharing from the past few years
* photography and hikes
* cage rattling and opinions especially around web/technology
* sharing discoveries beyond just bookmarks
* track learning, progress and resolutions
It will be messy and random and who knows how much I’ll actually do…
]]>Very powerful piece on the climate ‘debate’ by Physics Today, including thoughts on how to deal with denial http://t.co/VwPsHclX
CSS Menu Builder | Free online navigation generator
CSS Menu Builder Please check out our 300+ horizontal menus, our 700+ vertical menus combinations and our breadcrumb menus that consist of more than 200+ combinations, in total the site offers more than 1000 menu combinations not including the endless color combinations. Below is a small sample and if you click around, you will notice that our own site menu randomly changes between the menus we offer.
Visual authoring of HTML5 user interfaces - in the browser! Maqetta is an open source project that provides WYSIWYG visual authoring of HTML5 user interfaces. The Maqetta application itself is authored in HTML, and therefore runs in the browser without requiring additional plugins or downloads.
Initializr - Start your HTML5 project in 15 seconds!
Initializr is an HTML5 templates generator created by Jonathan Verrecchia to help you getting started with a new web project based on HTML5 Boilerplate. Initializr will generate for you a clean customizable template with just what you need to start!
P2P Foundation » Blog Archive » On the link between community, monetization, and gifting
Community is woven from gifts. Unlike today’s market system, whose built-in scarcity compels competition in which more for me is less for you, in a gift economy the opposite holds. Because people in gift culture pass on their surplus rather than accumulating it, your good fortune is my good fortune: more for you is more for me. Wealth circulates, gravitating toward the greatest need. In a gift community, people know that their gifts will eventually come back to them, albeit often in a new form. Such a community might be called a “circle of the gift.”
Dishonored - New Game of the Day #33 - Made 2 Game
What? A new steampunk-inspired stealth/action game from one of the bods behind the legendary Thief and Deus Ex franchises When? Q2 2012 Where? PS3, PC and Xbox 360
What? A new steampunk-inspired stealth/action game from one of the bods behind the legendary Thief and Deus Ex franchises
When? Q2 2012
Where? PS3, PC and Xbox 360
This Post Could Get Me Thrown in Jail for Life…
This Post Could Get Me Thrown in Jail for Life… http://t.co/ymY3jzAJ
The Best Ideas of 2011: The Power of Collective Action | Humanitarian News
Blogpost: The Best Ideas of 2011: The Power of Collective Action http://t.co/F06oR9uO
Developers’ Most Anticipated Games of 2012 • Articles • Eurogamer.net
Dylan Cuthbert, Ken Levine, Peter Molyneux and friends tell us about their most anticipated games of 2012: http://t.co/W8URzLEB
Learning to Say No—Unless They’re Paying - Ecademy
Learning to Say No—Unless They’re Paying [David McQueen] - I have two key mentors for my businesses. They add mas… http://t.co/BqUOwfo9
Great to see Bradford talent highlighted RT : Rise
Great to see Bradford talent highlighted RT @NickAhad: Rise of underground theatre in W Yorks http://t.co/MsNjlZds @ADatMill @invisibleflock
BBC’s John McCarthy meets Phillip Cribb, a botanis
BBC’s John McCarthy meets Phillip Cribb, a botanist & orchid specialist at Kew who’s spent 30yrs plant hunting in China http://t.co/u5hXur3n
ACLU fights Kafkaesque secret Occupy Boston Twitter subpoena - Boing Boing
This legal case is America’s future - regardless of your voting persuasion, we must join together and reject it: http://t.co/bWGgffQ0
A modest proposal to give Free Software equal legal standing as proprietary - http://t.co/cXzm0e3c raises important points #law
farmlandgrab.org | Accaparement des terres : un processus opaque et complexe
Outre les 73% d’acquisition pour motifs agricoles, le reste est donc réparti entre le secteur forestier, la séquestration carbone, l’extraction des minerais et le tourisme. Dans 9 pays tropicaux, 258 millions d’ha de forêt sont déjà sous concession du fait d’une demande croissante de bois d’œuvre mais aussi sous la pression de la culture d’huile de palme. Quant à la demande en minerais, elle est elle aussi croissante du fait de l’industrialisation des pays en développement. De grands territoires sont ainsi réservés à la concession, rendant les droits fonciers des populations locales précaires alors même qu’une partie seulement sera réellement exploitée. C’est le cas en Amérique du Sud, où l’exploitation minière représente 23% des transactions foncières.
Nomad is an beta Android application that allows you to communicate over a private or public social network called Oasis. It allows you to create digital snapshots with your camera or your photo gallery, share and comment it with your friends and the world from your Smartphone. The particularity of Nomad is its ease and its asynchronous management of data. Imagine you are in an area without network coverage, or imagine that you have access to the Internet periodically, with Nomad you can still create your digital content, geolocate, save and send it when you can. When it’s connected to Internet Nomad save the news online on your Android device and you can read them when you are offline and also comment it. On offline mode, Nomad keeps safely your data created who will still be editable until they are sent once an internet connection found. With Nomad enjoy the “social and digital nomadism”.
Abandoned cities reclaimed by nature. A population decimated by a modern plague. Survivors are killing each other for food, weapons; whatever they can get their hands on. Joel, a brutal survivor, and Ellie, a brave young teenage girl who is wise beyond her years, must work together if they hope to survive their journey across the US.
Adequately Good - JavaScript Module Pattern: In-Depth - by Ben Cherry
Games::Construder Information Page
Construder is a 3D game written in Perl and C, featuring a dynamic infinite world of cubes to explore and change. In an artificial infinite structure the player has to gather resources for construction purposes and his basic survival. It’s 3D engine and basic game play is inspired by Minecraft and Infiniminer. The goal is to get 10,000,000 score points and get the “Construder” rank. There are multiple ways to gain score points: building blocks in the world (for example for your home base), constructing items (such as teleporters for easier travel, message beacons for navigation or even programmable robots - which you can program to help you building things or gathering resources). Another way to earn many score points is to finish construction assignments. Dangers the player might run into are starvation, as all his actions require biological energy and the randomly appearing robot drones, which - on a task to cleanup the world - teleport the player far away
Scratch | Home | imagine, program, share
Xi Game Engine Feature / Motivation List Game-centric Object Architecture - Having worked on several games, I factored out a common object structure that applies to all the ones I’ve worked on. It consists of an Application object, a Screen object, ScreenTransition objects (transition in and transition out), ActorGroup objects, and finally, the main object, Actor. All of these objects are serializable at any time, and little to no custom serialization code need be written for user objects that extend these. A big problem with Ox is that it exposed a lot of functionality to the user, but it gave the user no idea of how to structure an actual application. By providing this object model out of the box, the developer gets started clearly and quickly. Facet System (AKA, ‘Components’) - Many newer game engines use some type of component system to allow actors (AKA Entities in other engines) to be composed at design-time. This allows new actor behaviors to be contrived by combining Facets on an Actor at design-time with little to no additional code. Only a few facets exist currently, but more will be forthcoming.
Project Description Ox is a mature 3D XNA game engine ready for use in your free or commercial project. It features a 3D scene system with a visual scene editor, a 2D gui system (also with its own editor), JigLibX physics, fully-integrated XNAnimation animation system, and C# game scripting system.
Microsoft Research FUSE Labs - Kodu Game Lab
Kodu lets kids create games on the PC and XBox via a simple visual programming language. Kodu can be used to teach creativity, problem solving, storytelling, as well as programming. Anyone can use Kodu to make a game, young children as well as adults with no design or programming skills. Join our community, and discover games created by others and share your game at KoduGameLab.com. Kodu for the PC is available to download for free. Kodu for the XBox is also available in the USA on the XBox Marketplace, in the Indie Games channel for about $5.
Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a teaching tool for introductory computing. It uses 3D graphics and a drag-and-drop interface to facilitate a more engaging, less frustrating first programming experience.
Getting started with XNA Development
Getting Started: The I Hate to Read Version Everything you need to make games with the XNA framework for the PC is free. You need to learn to program in C# before you can make games with the XNA framework. You will need to make sure your PC has a video card that supports the minimum requirements of the XNA framework. You will need to install some applications (all free) from Microsoft that you will use to make games. Nothing about game development with the XNA framework is drag-and-drop, you have to program it all, but the sky is the limit. You will not immediately be able to make your dream game, but if you work hard and learn the basics, you can someday.
Jaws » HTML5 Javascript game engine / development library
Jaws HTML5 javascript game lib Jaws is a 2D game lib powered by HTML5. It started out only doing canvas but is now also supporting ordinary DOM based sprites through the same API. Jaws is very much work in progress, so expect big changes within the first months of 2011. Game engine highlights - Sprite() - Onscreen, movable, scalable objects - Game states - Separate sections of your game for better organized code - SpriteSheet() and Animation() - Load spritesheets and animate frames - Assets - Jaws will preload all your images before the game starts - Documented code and explained examples - Does Not depend on any other javascript library - Builds on lessons learned from years of developing Chingu, a Ruby game lib
Kodu is a new visual programming language made specifically for creating games. It is designed to be accessible for children and enjoyable for anyone. The programming environment runs on the Xbox, allowing rapid design iteration using only a game controller for input.
Gosu, 2D game development library
Gosu is a 2D game development library for the Ruby and C++ programming languages, available for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. It has been in development since 2001. The C++ version is also available for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. Visual C++ 2008 (recommended) or 2010 required for the Windows C++ version, but the free Express versions are fine. Both languages have access to: 2D graphics and text, accelerated by 3D hardware Sound samples and music in various formats Keyboard, mouse and gamepad input
Cobra is a new programming language, designed specifically with the independent games developer in mind. It combines an easy and intuitive language with a host of features and special effects that will allow you to rapidly create games that are easy to play and stunning to watch! Cobra is designed and tested by other users of RAD programming languages, so it is specifically geared to give indie developers the kind of language that they’ve been missing out on!
RPG Maker VX - Official Site | Download here
With RPG Maker VX you can create games with a resolution of 544x416, 32bit colours with a smooth, steady framerate of 60 fps. The ability to have characters run is now included as a standard function and the in-game default font has been changed from previous versions for easier reading.
PySoy, a 3D Cloud Game Engine for Python
PySoy is a 3d cloud game engine for Python. It’s object-oriented API is designed for rapid game development while speed critical functions, such as physics processing and rendering, are implemented in C. Cloud games can be played without having to wait for downloads or managing updates. Python-based games will run on a server and be playable on Android phones, embedded in web pages, XMPP chat clients, and even game consoles.
Chingu - OpenGL accelerated 2D Game framework in Ruby
- Lightning fast OpenGL accelerated 2D graphics! - A basic game object with x,y,angle,color,scaling and zorder. Hit the ground running! - Basic collision detection, box vs box, circle vs circle, box vs circle! - Support classes for Animation, Parallax-scrolling, Particles etc. - A simple and robust game state system to keep your levels sorted - Asset-solutions, load your sounds and images quick ‘n easy. - Pluginable, stackable logic called ‘traits’
DB schema migrator inspired by Rails migrations. Allows developers to store changes to a DB schema in “migration” files, then run the migrator to get all the pending migrations for some DB executed. That allows for easy and automated upgrading of any database used for a given project. Executing migrations just up to a point (as opposed to “up to the latest version”), or applying single migrations (say, applying 4, even if 3 is still unapplied) is also supported.
Nine Stubborn Brain Myths That Just Won’t Die, Debunked by Science
Mindfulness-the unconventional research of psychologist Ellen Langer | Harvard Magazine Sep-Oct 2010
Execution through Processes, Projects and Communities
“When we talk about execution- achieving some business outcome- each of us has our own bias for how. Some of us think about who we will task with an assignment. Others, particularly if it is a game-changing initiative for our company, will begin to think about the team, the stakeholders and the initiative’s leadership. For this discussion, we are going to focus on the organizing structure which will most effectively achieve business outcomes. “
This is “Not Quite Perl”—a compiler for quickly generating PIR routines from Perl6-like code. The key feature of NQP is that it’s designed to be a very small compiler (as compared with, say, perl6 or Rakudo) and is focused on being a high-level way to create compilers and libraries for virtual machines (such as the Parrot Virtual Machine [1]). Unlike a full-fledged implementation of Perl 6, NQP strives to have as small a runtime footprint as it can, while still providing a Perl 6 object model and regular expression engine for the virtual machine.
A “purchase” of a digitally distributed game is a conscious pledge not to download it for free. It’s a decision by the player to financially support the developer, the publisher, and the distributor. Even though they could easily save money and get the exact same experience — or an experience with negligible differences — by pirating the game, the player decides, no, these people deserve my money. Nowhere is this more evident than with the Humble Indie Bundle, a rotating bundle of independently developed games “sold” at a pay-what-you-want price. Donate at least a penny, and you get a link to download games. Once again, the donors know what they’re doing; it’s not the semantic trick of calling it a “purchase” that helps these bundles raise so much money. This isn’t cynical pedantry, though. The fact that PC gaming is a thriving digital media industry supported by voluntary donations is a wonderful thing. It’s living proof that creative endeavors can be financially viable based solely on their fans’ desire to reward the creators, assuming the creators treat their fans with dignity and respect
This is ‘Niecza’, which is a Perl 6 implementation focusing on optimization and efficient implementation research. It targets the Common Language Runtime
P2P Foundation » Blog Archive » The coming war on general computation – Cory Doctorow @ #28C3
The last 20 years of Internet policy have been dominated by the copyright war, but the war turns out only to have been a skirmish. The coming century will be dominated by war against the general purpose computer, and the stakes are the freedom, fortune and privacy of the entire human race. The problem is twofold: first, there is no known general-purpose computer that can execute all the programs we can think of except the naughty ones; second, general-purpose computers have replaced every other device in our world. There are no airplanes, only computers that fly. There are no cars, only computers we sit in. There are no hearing aids, only computers we put in our ears. There are no 3D printers, only computers that drive peripherals. There are no radios, only computers with fast ADCs and DACs and phased-array antennas. Consequently anything you do to “secure” anything with a computer in it ends up undermining the capabilities and security of every other corner of modern human society.
Do We Really Have To Prepare For The Fourth Box? - Falkvinge on Infopolicy
Last night, the United States Senate ignored all such science and voted 86 to 13 that anybody could be imprisoned indefinitely, or even executed, without a trial or charges. 86 to 13! This is what I mean by the United States being already lost. For what happens when it doesn’t matter how much people try to adhere to laws, but can be thrown in jail and even executed anyway? When there’s not even a pretense of a rigged mock trial? I tweeted about that yesterday. I even referenced the Fourth Box. Also, the wordspin has already started to apply this to ordinary dissenters. People who don’t agree with The Man. The indefinite detention and execution thing in the United States will only apply to “terrorists”, but at the same time, ordinary protesters in a rally were just labeled “low-level terrorists”. There’s no rocket science needed to see where this is going
Central to our work as an educational charity is the Colour Experience. We work with people of all ages introducing them to the joy and science of colour through workshops, talks, outreach and online resources. If you’re a group within travelling distance of Bradford you could book a visit to the Colour Experience at Perkin House and choose from a wide range of hands-on workshops and other activities including a tour of our interactive gallery. If you’re further afield then ask us about our outreach services.
The Archdruid Report: Tweedledoom and Tweedledee
In the last weeks the agreement on PNR transfer between the EU and the US was one of the hot topics in European politics. The text of the agreement was kept secret and only recently publicized. The release of the agreement and the mis-communication of facts about PNRs lead a group of concerned NGOs to deliver a letter to MEPs. Several issues were focussed in the letter: The agreement will not result in improved legal security for citizens The proposed agreement does not meet the conditions set by the European Parliament There is no access control or access logging There is no appropriate information to travelers Further, the agreement is binding to the European Commission and Parliament but not signed by the US Senate or Governement.
Welcome to Ceylon Ceylon is a programming language for writing large programs in a team environment. The language is elegant, highly readable, extremely typesafe, and makes it easy to get things done. And it’s easy to learn for programmers who are familiar with mainstream languages used in business computing. Ceylon has a full-featured Eclipse-based development environment, allowing developers to take best advantage of the powerful static type system. Programs written in Ceylon execute on any JVM. What? Ceylon is a general-purpose, imperative, statically-typed, block-structured, object-oriented, higher-order language featuring a syntax similar to Java and C#, and a type system based on the notion of principal types.
