Category Archives: Community

Cootie Crush! Starling game for Android

Community, Flash, Mobile, Software, , ,

My children are absolutely in love with this game (and so am I)!

Crush swarms of cooties beneath your fingertips. Clear them all before time runs out and advance to the next challenge. Cootie crushing fun for everyone!

Casual game geared toward children – but challenging for adults as well. Beat your high score and race the clock!


Get it on Google Play

This game was developed in Starling as part of the One Game a Month effort.
logo

Even though I’m monetizing the game via the Google Play store – I am still making the source code available through my GitHub account: https://github.com/josephlabrecque/CootieCrush.

Absinthe Dilution Faerie

Community, Software, ,

absinthewormwood

“Absinthe Dilution Faerie” is a small application which calculates how much water one should temper a dose of absinthe with in accordance with the ABV percentage as laid out by Michael Meyers of The Wormwood Society.

The application also has the support of The Wormwood Society! If you are at all interested in absinthe or absinthe education; The Wormwood Society is an absolutely invaluable resource.

Happy to say that some prominent Absintheurs are supportive of this little application!
review

Grab it for FREE on the Google Play store:

Get it on Google Play

I’ve also created an entry for the app on the PhoneGap site: http://phonegap.com/app/absinthe-dilution-faerie/

Education Exchange 2013 Refresh

Community, ,

This week, Adobe released a totally revamped version of the Adobe Education Exchange!

Hey! Look who is quoted on the homepage!

Hey! Look who is quoted on the homepage!


For those unfamiliar; over the past two years or so, the Education Exchange has provided a way for educators to share resources, materials, content, and whatnot to anyone else registered with the exchange. There is also a place set aside for discussions that was introduced last year. The new updates not only redesign the entire system – but also create a more personable environment for collaboration and sharing. There are two features that I’ll highlight here: public profiles and a new points system with a growing set of badges.

Public Profiles
profile
Member profiles are now more public and provide a much greater amount of visibility to a member. Included in the profile are links to other networks, a rundown of EDEX contributions, involvement, and personal network statistics.

Points System and Badges
badges A set of earnable badges are also displayed upon the profile page alongside an activity stream. Some of these are small changes… but I think they’ll do well to enable members to better interface with one another and with the exchange.

I’d recommend that anyone involved in K12 or Higher Education register and contribute to this great resource!

Emergent Collective Two

Community, Music,

Fractured Vision Media, LLC has now released the “Emergent Collective Two” community compilation CD as a free download along with PDF booklet, audio disc image, and high quality MP3 downloads.
Emergent Collective Two
If you visit the release website, you can listen to the album, download it, and view the booklet via Flash Player or HTML (if you do not have Flash Player installed). As before, the entire booklet was layed out in InDesign with help from Photoshop. Both PDF and SWF versions of the booklet were produced directly from InDesign – the images for the HTML version were converted via a decomplier tool from the produced SWF. The CD itself was authored with Audition and then WAV files produced with trusty old CDex. MP3 files are streamed via BandCamp and BIN/CUE CD-Audio images are available for direct download just as with EC1.

There are some differences in how EC2 was produced when compared with the first entry. With EC1, all of the tracks were tweaked a bit so that loudness levels and a sound “signature” was shared between them all. This was done in order to ensure that the tracks flowed well together and that there was a sort of “glue” that held the collection. For EC2 – most of the the tracks appear on the album exactly as they were when they left the artists hands. Why the change? Respect for the material – respect for the artists. It is better for me that the artist is happily represented as they are than somehow corrupted – even slightly – by any tweaks I might make in order provide some extra layer of cohesion. So, in EC2 – you may notice the tracks stand off by themselves a bit more than in the previous release. I think that is okay.

For EC1 – all of the booklet artwork was produced by myself. Generally consisting of extremely blurred photographs which were then cropped and placed into the booklet. Only the cover art was a product of the community. For EC2 – I opened it up wide. Anyone could contribute artwork to serve in the booklet and I received many, many submissions – so many that I did not use them all but anyone who did submit is represented in the final booklet. The cover art (and most of the booklet art) this time around is courtesy of Eric Fickes with additional contributions from Peter French, Chris Gannon, and Anna Thielke.
fvm008_tray
I didn’t have any volunteers for the intro track this time around so took care of that myself. Using a simple audio bed as a backdrop I placed representative samples from each contribution along a continuum. I think it makes a fine introduction to the album and there is also an accompanying exit track to provide a nice set of bookends to the collection.

As always – thank you to all contributing artists for making this release what it is.

Please do check out the collection… congratulate the contributing artists… many are probably open for interviews… spread the word and support your community.

Okay – I have a GitHub account

Community

For whatever reason, I’ve resisted the call of GitHub for quite a while now. Years, in fact. It always sort of turned me off that the service seemed so very Apple-centric and exclusionary and I generally felt that my code wasn’t pretty or even “correct” enough to be sharable.

GitHub

Well, turns out they have a pretty solid Windows app now – and it makes management of your account fairly easy (even creating a public key for you!). I’ve also gotten over the fact that my code isn’t perfect. It’s going to be more useful to others online than it is sitting in some dark archive.

Get at me: https://github.com/josephlabrecque

Also – I get questions about DropFolders all the time. Tons of requests to add this or that feature… so straw… meet camel’s back! You want to improve DropFolders? Go for it! I just don’t have the time or need to do it myself.

I’ve added repositories for a few older projects on here already hoping there may be a snippet here or there that people can benefit from. I plan to eventually include newer projects and demo code as well. Again – none of this code is perfect, and a lot is going to be experimental/demo material.