Danial.Beta's site

HTML5 Gaming

Mon, 03 May 2010 13:16:08 +0000

On last nights episode of TWIT they started talking about HTML5 and one of the panelists mentioned http://www.kesiev.com/akihabara/. It is a cool site that uses HTML5(and HTML5 alone) to recreate classic games we all know and love.

The cool thing about it isn't that they are pretty good reproductions of games we all loved as kids, but rather that they are done in pure HTML/JavaScript/CSS. This is BYOND level gaming performance in a native browser. They should work in Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera(probably every modern browser which excludes IE of course). It even kinda worked on my phone. I couldn't get past the start screens on the games because my phones browser was not passing through the keyboard command requests and the touch interface didn't work right.

Anyone know of any other great HTML5 games? I know Google showed off Quake II running in HTML5.

Cool, BYOND website themes are back!

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 12:02:53 +0000

Looks like we are getting BYOND holiday website themes again, even if in a more limited fashion than before.

A great once-over of HTML5's outlining tags

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:59:27 +0000

For those of you interested in seeing what HTML5 means for the simple stuff, read through the rather long http://diveintohtml5.org/semantics.html . It's a great read that really breaks down the essentials of outlining in a human readable format. If you're HTML knowledge is low to begin with, you can learn a lot about the proper formatting of pages in HTML generally, and why the formatting is important.

Video Gameish Car sounds from external input.

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 02:55:28 +0000

I figured a game development forum would probably be the best place to ask this, although the issue isn't actually involved with a game.

Thanks to my new Arduino I was able to successfully read the digital tach wire in my brothers S2000(a Honda sports car). To put it simply, I am able to get a tachometer rating pumped into the computer at a nice fast rate. My issue is that I want to use this tach information to replicate the sound of a car, preferably in real time. My issue is I'm a horrible programmer as it is, and I don't know the first thing about sounds.

I want to be able to take the tach reading and somehow use it to modify sounds. Which includes, but is not limited to things like using my own voice as the RPM reving noise, replacing the engine sound with that of a bigger engine(sadly there is actually a market for that), and perhaps taking any looping sound effect and using it.

"Why?" you ask. Well, basically because I think it could be interesting. But the problem is I really don't know where to start here. I have the tach data updating every 1/20th of a second(give or take if my math is right). I've created a basic visual display for this, and it functions quite nicely, but messing with audio is a bit more difficult. I believe most any programming language that supports Serial data interactions should do the job.

Anyone have any ideas, or good starting points for me?

Google Wave Invites go out Today

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 12:37:43 +0000

For those of you who signed up to be invited to Google Wave, 100,000 invites are going out today, as confirmed by Google. A time has not been specified, but if you signed up, you may get one. Make sure to keep an eye on your spam folder, as it was reported that many invites went in there when developers got their accounts in July. Google also suggested that new Wave users would get invites, so if you get in and I don't, please let me know. I did sign up, but best to bet wide. If I get accepted and get some invites, I'll spread them around a little(family and close friends come first, but with gMail originally you got 10 invites that refilled themselves constantly, so if that's the case with Wave, I'll spread the love).

But to curb expectations a little, I saw a few people playing with Wave over the weekend and it was very prone to crashing(it wouldn't bring down the browser, you would just get a message saying to refresh the page). I hope that Google had a major update planned before this invite roll out, because it could be a PR disaster if it is a major problem with a more public showing like this. I am forgiving, especially when you realize how limited 100,000 people really is.

Headlines can be better than the article.

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 21:24:17 +0000

As a browsed my RSS feeds for my morning news, I ran across this headline from my local paper:

"Oldest lifeguard misses pool"

When I saw this headline, my mind started racing with the thought of a slapstick story where a kid starts flailing about in the water and an old man dives off the lifeguard post in the wrong direction, leading to a falling whistle and a satisfying splat as he hits the pavement. Sure it's sick, but it's also hilarious.

Instead, I was greeted with a rather boring story about the world oldest lifeguard retiring. Total disappointment. If you want to read the original, it can be found here: Oldest lifeguard misses pool, but I don't see why you would, as it involves no whistle or splat sound effects whatsoever.

Do you have a favorite news headline that was way better than the article itself? Post it in the comments. If I get enough interesting ones, I'll make another blog post on them.

Using @ to reference other users/guilds

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 14:48:04 +0000

A popular thing at the moment with social networking is use of the @ to point at someone else on the social network. So, for example, if I said @tom it would automatically turn my @tom into a hyperlink to Tom's blog on BYOND, without my needing to do any fancy work.

Another popular feature, of the same type, is using # to mark tags in a story. So if, for example, I'm writing a blog post on Linux and I'm using Ubuntu, I would simply need to put #Linux and #Ubuntu and the BYOND blog system would automatically add those as tags and make them hyperlinks to that tag's search.

It's just a way to make tagging and referencing on BYOND easier. It is in the same boat as CamelCase for Wikis, only more geared to social/news based mediums.

Firefox Extension Ubiquity Enhancement Idea

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:47:51 +0000

I've been playing with Ubiquity today, and it occurred to me, why does Ubiquity popup in it's own little window when there is a perfectly good input box right above the tabs?

Perhaps I have been bitten by the Chrome bug, and am just looking for a ultraslim interface. It just seems to me that Ubiquity could be compressed into the Awesome bar. Wouldn't it be badass to have such a strong natural language filter right in the Awesomebar? AwesomeUbiquityBar anyone? AUB for short. Come on. You know you like it.

NASA Holding a Press Conference at 3PM

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 17:21:53 +0000

Seems NASA has got fed up with all these darn naysayers, or they are having a donkey problem. I guess we will have to wait till 3PM EDT to find out.

My new toy!

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 06:27:16 +0000

Recently I got a blackberry. I've been quite impressed with it. It is my first smartphone, so I suppose the bar wasn't that high.

I originally wanted an Android based phone, but as I was already stuck in a contract with Sprint and it looks like it will be a good while before Sprint gets one, I decided to get a blackberry instead. I'm hoping that I'll be lucky enough to have android released on the Blackberry.

So far, I'm very happy with the purchase. I've never felt so connected with friends and family. It's kinda like the feeling of getting your first cellphone(for the older crowd who grew up in the days when phones where teathered to the wall.)

We'll see how I feel in a week, but today I'm loving it.