Archive for December, 2010
Who’s Next?
Sunday, December 19th, 2010
My second run with #iDevBlogADay has been great. It has forced me to blog once a week, even with a newborn baby in the house. I can say with absolute certainty that I would not have been blogging without the push from iDBaD. However, I think it’s time to pass my slot on to someone else in time for the new year.
Between the baby, my contract work, and trying to find an hour here or there to work on my own projects, I feel like writing these posts is just taking too much of my time right now, and something’s got to give. Québarium’s excellent iDBaD post yesterday reminded me that I need to buckle down and do some work (not that I’m blaming my withdrawal on him!) So, maestro (aka @mysterycoconut), if you please, add me to the end of the (extremely long) waiting list and hand my slot off to the next worthy iDev blogger.
Owen
Dirty Diapers: Now Available!
Wednesday, December 15th, 2010
Originally prototyped in 8 hours for the 360iDev Game Jam, and developed in roughly 3 days, Dirty Diapers is now available on the App Store for 99 cents!
In a nursery full of babies, can you keep them all happy? They’ll need to be fed, changed, and rocked to stop them from crying.
Drag actions from the bottom of the screen to unhappy babies in order to soothe them. But as time ticks on, they’ll get fussy more quickly. Can you keep up? Keep a cool head to master this frantically fun game.
How many Dirty Diapers can you change?
The game is universal (meaning you buy it once and you can play it on iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, and supports Retina displays) and requires iOS 3.2 or higher to run.
Let me know what you think.
Owen
Coming Soon: Dirty Diapers
Sunday, December 5th, 2010
I’ve been writing a lot of lifetstyle and technical posts for my #idevblogaday posts lately and, quite frankly, they take a really long time. 
This week I’m short on time so I’m being a little more selfish.
As I mentioned last week, for the 360iDev Game Jam in November I prototyped a game I called “Dirty Diapers”. I’m excited to announce that I worked the prototype into a finished game and submitted it to Apple for approval on Wednesday of this week!
This game has a couple of firsts for me:
1) It’s a universal app and will run on iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and retinas displays, all for one low price!
2) This was an experiment in whether I could produce a shippable game in under a week of work. In fact, it was completed in about three days of work! Bear in mind that the game is very simple, but does do things like handle multitasking, tracks your best score for each difficulty, and saves your game in progress if you quit. Plus, it’s really fun!
As I mentioned, the game has been submitted, and with any luck we’ll see it for sale before Christmas!
So, without further ado, here’s a sneak peek at the game:
In a nursery full of babies, can you keep them all happy? They’ll need to be fed, changed, and rocked to stop them from crying.
Drag actions from the bottom of the screen to unhappy babies in order to soothe them. But as time ticks on, they’ll get fussy more quickly. Can you keep up? Keep a cool head to master this frantically fun game.
How many Dirty Diapers can you change?
Attempting the Impossible
Sunday, December 12th, 2010
How many times has this happened to you? You’re on your favourite tech blog reading about a new cool tech gadget but your eyes drift inadvertently down into the user comments. The comments are full of fanboys professing undying support for their device while claiming everyone else is an idiot. Random trolls are throwing around racial slurs or homophobic garbage. Know-it-alls claim that they had the idea for the product 10 years ago and only an idiot wouldn’t have thought of it sooner. Other geniuses claim “your stupid.” You move your mouse to the window close button and vow never to read user comments again.
I’m taking a small departure from talking about iOS development today and I want to talk about a new website I’m launching.
I spend a lot of time on the internet. Between twitter, reading blog posts, reading tech and game news, and learning new stuff, a big part of my day is spent online. One of the things I’m constantly frustrated by is the level of discourse I see taking place on blogs and forums. Racism, sexism, homophobia, and general bigotry is rampant online. I used to get so angry reading the user comments on CBC News stories that I had a friend of mine write a script for my browser that just removes them from the site entirely when I browse it (I’m much less angry now).
After seeing several friends attacked online by various internet idiots I had the idea to form some kind of organization whose goal is to improve the quality of online discussions. An impossible mission, of this I am aware. However, I felt like it’s worth a shot. With this in mind, I have created SocBID.org.
SocBID is The Society for the Betterment of Internet Discourse. Its goal is to encourage people to treat each other with respect when posting comments online. I have outlined 5 simple guidelines for people to use when posting online. The guidelines are common sense, but it can’t hurt to state them outright. If you see someone being a jerk on your website, feel free to politely direct them to SocBID and encourage them to participate in the discussion in a meaningful way. If this is something you also care about, take the SocBID pledge not to be an online jerk and help make the internet a better place.
Owen
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