Recovery

This weekend was obnoxious.  I caught something from Collin, and it was not fun.  Had to miss a BBQ and doing much away from the house.  At least I didn't throw up like Collin did.

The worst part about being sick is how you feel like you are missing everything and that life will pass you by while you are recuperating.  Then you realize, hey, my body is probably telling me something (I haven't been getting enough sleep), and to enjoy everything else, I first need to be in good health.

So I polled my facebook friends, and apparently they only want to hear about unicorn poop and rainbows.  Which is retarded.  It's what my almost three year old would ask for.  Well, he'd ask just for the poop part and then I'd remind him again that people don't like it when he talks about poop all the time and could he talk about rainbows instead?  So where do the unicorns come in?  I don't know.

Speaking of, Collin is very clever.  He can make up stories now.  He told one last night about spiders he found out in the garden.  They climbed up their web, up and up, until they were at the top.  Then (according to mr. almost-three) they pooped and it went on everything and everything turned into poop.  And Collin should have ended up in time-out for that one.

So, ummm, technology?

Matt and I have been working on GMS - list maker application.  Friday we got GMS to run a game on iPad, and over the weekend Matt and Mike got scroll working more nicely and the ability to dynamically create lists and add new items to lists.  Yesterday we figured out how to restrict the width of a field so that text typed in does not overflow the box but instead hides text.  Some progress.  Marcia created her first seamless tile, which we will probably use in the list program.

Restricting text basic methodology:

• A user types on their keyboard and as they type a string buffer is filling.
• The string buffer is drawn on the screen in the location of the focused text box, offset a tiny bit to center it.  Naturally, since the 'text box' is just a sprite on the screen, when the text being drawn on top of it overflows, it just keeps going
• Instead, check the length of the string.  If the string length is larger than the box, set the string to be displayed to cut off the first character.  Keep cutting characters until the text fits.  
• Viola!  The text stays in the box

Foothills of Technology

Rainbows after much needed rains - the High Park fire was about 12 miles outside of Fort Collins.  The Poudre has black-water rapids today.

It was not the beginning, but it was a beginning...

I am beginning this blog to chronicle my development process and anything I happen to be thinking about as I begin a new project.

The project: learn to create mobile applications.  Make things I want to use.  Kinda like Jim Butcher writes the kinds of books he would like to read.

About a week ago, I started learning Game Maker Studio.  I followed the basic tutorial and had that clown running all over the place.  Collaborating now with several others on two projects that are still in their infancy:

• list management
• clockwork faeries story/game

Because I really want them both, I am going to share details throughout the design process.  This transparency might enable others to "steal" the ideas, but we all might benefit from that as well.  Of course, not sure that my collaborators would feel the same way...

So, as I have time throughout the day, I'm going to write this stuff down.  Make it a habit, several times a day and I hope the habit sticks!

Now, off to finish 89 emails for my job here at CSU.