I’m a fan of agile practices in programming, and encourage my team to work along agile principles as much as possible. One thing that has always been tricky about that for us, however, is that we don’t really match the usual profile of a software team. Most agile teams (at least in the literature) are [...]
As I’ve discussed the idea of using game mechanics to help focus and motivate people with friends over the past year or two, I’ve received some tepid feedback at times, but haven’t been able to really grok the concerns they have expressed. Sebastian Deterding, at the recent Playful 2010 conference, does a brilliant job of [...]
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Posted 08 November 2010
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Games
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There is a growing movement of people who are learning on their own, rather than relying on institutions of higher learning to provide the necessary structure and opportunity. The Internet has begun to provide access to information with ease and rapidity never before seen in human history. As a result, people who are interested in [...]
The series of events: We offer to look after our neighbor’s dog while she’s away. Our neighbor deposits her keys with us and leaves town. Liam’s friend Noah comes over to spend the night with us. We go have spaghetti dinner with friends down the street. Liam, Noah, Maggie and I return to the house [...]
I have family and friends who are terrific at making some really cool stuff. And while much of it looks great in situ, sometimes I want to take a photo that shows something off all by itself, with no background to distract the viewer from the subject of the photo. You know, like this: To [...]
All of you folks who are as interested in location-based gaming as I am have been checking in on Gowalla, Foursquare, SCVNGR, Facebook, Rally Up, or Yelp for a while now. But the lame thing about those services is that you actually have to go somewhere and do something to earn points! Enter Mojo, the [...]
Seth Priebatsch, the CEO of SCVNGR, a company developing an interesting eponymous location-based gaming platform, gave a talk at TED recently. He covered some interesting ground, including a few game design patterns with in-game and real-world examples. If you’re as interested in this stuff as I am, it’s worth 12 minutes of your time: Is [...]
Back in March, I posted my Thoughts on Titanium, which we were using at the time to develop Texas State’s iPhone application. Since that time, we’ve become increasingly frustrated with the system, and have finally decided to leave it behind and rewrite the application in a combination of native Objective C code and HTML/CSS/Javascript. This [...]
This has been a fairly quiet summer for us. We’ve had no huge adventures, as we’ve recently had to replace both a minivan and our home HVAC system, leaving us with very little money for substantial trips. I have, however, had the chance to take each of our children out for a day on the [...]
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Posted 30 July 2010
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Family
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Ah, the blessed hour between the time I wake up and the rest of the house slips free of sleep. Quiet. Peace. A chance to read, to write, to meditate, to pray, and — a wonder! — not just hold back entropy, but to make a little progress against it. Worship by making breakfast tacos [...]
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Posted 18 July 2010
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Poetry
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