This is Jenny.

Jenny just moved in with my parents on saturday. She's an 8 week old Golden Retriever puppy that got born on December 10th and her favourite pastime currently is sleeping… lots of sleeping.

When she's not dreaming of running and playing she spends her waking hours chewing on anything she can get her fangs on (most of which she is not supposed to gnaw on, but she's learning that), rummaging through the garden and playing with her two-legged mates.

She is very energetic and managed to keep me and my parents on our toes for the last days very well (and I'm still quite alert even though I'm now back at home with no dog in sight), but she's also a major cutie. I'm looking forward to the years to come

After upgrading my Arch desktop, I suddenly had a brand new Firefox version installed. One of the new features in Firefox 3.6 is a thing called “Personas”.

After reading a bit I found it to be a *very* simple way to build your very own Firefox theme. All you need to create are two images. That's it.

Of course I had to try it. And what's better than tentacles? Right, tentacles in your browser!

Get the Tentacle Theme now and enjoy a browser matching the one and only website:

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Okay, I'm probably one of the last people who went to see the Avatar movie. But I had really try hard for this one.

First friends asked us go go with them, but in the last moment we found out they had tickets for the German version only. I didn't want to spoil the fun with German dubbing. Then I tried to preorder some tickets but that didn't work so we went to the cinema on good luck. Of course we had none and it was sold out. The next day we wanted to go, the movie wasn't scheduled. So we finally got tickets for Sunday night. Not ideal but I really wanted to see that movie.

And boy, am I glad I did!

This was exactly as I always thought cinema would be in the year 2010. The 3D simply blew me away.

You probably read a lot about the Avatar story elsewhere so I will not bore you about it. It's not the exactly the most innovative story you've ever heard, but it isn't bad either. But the graphics of Avatar on the other hand are fantastic.

And that's not just that is in 3D. It would still be a graphically overwhelming film in 2D. The creatures and plants of the alien world Pandora are so full of details. The animal's movements are extremely realistic. But the most fascinating thing was that I could no longer tell how something in the movie was created. I mean, I couldn't tell if something was classical matte painting, 3D animation, real cinematography or painted models. All these techniques fused together to create an amazing experience.

So if you haven't seen this movie yet - go see it. There will be a lot more 3D movies over the next years, but this one is the start of a new era of cinema and you really should not miss it!

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I don't like Winter or snow. But with several layers of clothing and the snow being white and powdery instead of gray and muddy I can appreciate its beauty.

Kaddi and me spent a long weekend in Braunlage (Harz) and enjoyed a marvelous “Winter Wonder World”.

It was wonderful, but I'm looking forward to Spring, now .

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Vom 29. bis 31.1.2010 fand der Austria Game Jam in Wien statt, und spielend-programmieren¹⁾ war mit einem gesponserten Team von 4 KursteilnehmerInnen Theresa, Mira, Markus, Raphael dabei.

Aufgabe war es, zu einem vorgegebenem Thema innerhalb von 48 Stunden ein Computerspiel zu erstellen. Alle Einreichungen nahmen gleichzeitig am internationalen Global Game Jam teil.

Das fertige Spiel namens Monkey Döner (bestehend aus einem Adventurespiel, einem Actionspiel und einem Bonusspiel) steht sowohl auf der Homepage vom Global Game Jam als auch auf der Games-Seite von spielend-programmieren zum Download bereit.

Mein spezieller Dank gilt an dieser Stelle den Organisatoren Jürgen Musil, David Schwingenschlögl, Michel Doblhofer und Roland Moritz vom Austria Game Jam, die für einen sehr harmonischen & netten und Ablauf der Veranstaltung sorgten. Wie von anderen Organisatoren prophezeit kamen sie vor lauter Arbeit selber nicht zum „jammen“. Vielleicht nächstes Jahr.

Das spielend-programmieren Team fand während der Veranstaltung noch Zeit zur Erstellung eines Videos und von Pressefotos.
Video:

Die Fotos in höhere Auflösungen gibt es auf http://www.flickr.com/photos/horstjens/sets/72157623326268356/ bzw einfach auf das Bild unten klicken:

• http://futurezone.orf.at/stories/1637941/
• http://fm4.orf.at/stories/1637833/

• www.austriagamejam.org
• www.globalgamejam.org
• www.spielend-programmieren.at

Kommentar schreiben an horst.jens@spielend-programmieren.at

Uma vitória do hexacampeão brasileiro e com injustamente um homem a menos. Sem problemas, campeão é para isto mesmo. Nem vou botar a imagem do Império do Amor, mas parece que o Conca já sabia que os cinco gols na defesa, até então virgem, iriam calar (a menor) parte do Maracanã

Amanhã, eu conto como funciona meu microscópio USB, da primeira compra na DealExtreme.

Loneliness to the world,
Shunned by the people you loved.
Hopelessness to the future,
Stunned by the people you knew.

Not feeling wanted,
Saddened more than ever before.
Regretting decisions made,
Feeling depressed, feeling blue.

Wishing you were someplace else?
In a different type of place.
Wish you were someplace else?
Devoid of the human race?

Life is terrifying,
Each of us is all alone.
What is the truth in life, we ask,
As the two-faced people around us always lie.

Proud to yourself,
Being hurt by the people you trusted.
Thoughts no ever considered,
Downtrodden and hurt, you cry.

Wishing you were someplace else?
Not in this rat race.
Wish you were someplace else?
Devoid of the human race?

There’s no need to fear,
You don’t fit in here anyway.
Look up to the heavens,
Its someplace else beyond the sky.

Dreaming of a better future,
End the present failure.
Becoming the person you were born to be,
Leave the others behind to cry.

Wishing you were someplace else?
Wish of some place.
Wish you were someplace else,
Devoid of the human race!

@tante asked for a logo for his new podcast named tentaclepr0n and this was just an opportunity for a ridiculous blog post title that was too good to pass .

Here's the Inkscape SVG file: tentaclepr0n.svg – licensed under CC-BY-SA.

Es war die erste öffentliche Probelesung vom PythonGameBook: Am 17.2.2010 hielt ich im Wiener Metalab einen Vortrag vor der Python User Group Austria (PYUGAT) zum Thema pygame-programmierung. Nach anfänglichen Problemchen mit Beamer und Grafikauflösung gelang es mir die Seiten vom PythonGameBook direkt per Beamer zu projezieren und praktisch vorzulesen. Mein extra zu Demonstrationszwecken gebautes Fang-den-Dieb-Spiel verhielt sich leider nicht wie geplant: trotz zahlreicher erfolgreicher Probespiele vor dem Vortrag gelang es mir nicht, den Dieb (ein rotes Dreieck) mit Hilfe der Polizei (ein blauer Kreis) beim Vortrag live einzufangen. Vielleicht sollte ich einen Anfängermodus mit vereinfachter Steuerung implementieren. Mein Verdacht dass meine cleanrect-Methode nicht ganz sauber programmiert war bestätigte sich leider: Während der Vorführung zeigten sich hässliche Linienartefakte.

Umso mehr freut es mich dass direkt im Anschluss an den Vortrag ein Zuhörer sein eigenes Breakout/Pong Spiel entwickelte.

Die pygame-sprite-Demo ist zwar (noch) kein eigenständiges Spiel, funktioniert aber sehr schön und entwickelt sich sicher noch zu einer Blaupause für pygame-Spiele.

Das Fang den Dieb-Spiel	Die Spritedemo

Für das fang-den-Dieb Spiel habe ich als Spielfläche einen Wien-Stadtplan vom openstreetmaps-Projekt verwendet. Kurz danach erstand ich käuflich eine DVD-Box mit allen Kottan-Filmen. Und jetzt, beim genüsslichen schwelgen in alten Fernseherinnerungen fällt es mir wie Schuppen von den Augen: Es gibt noch kein offizielles Kottan-Computerspiel !

Möglicherweise baue ich mein catch-the-thief Spiel zu einem Kottan-Spiel aus (die vertrackte indirekte Steuerung erinnert immerhin ein wenig an Schremser und Schramml) und man bedenke was für herrliche Bossgegner die Fernsehserie hergibt: Präsident Pichl, sein Kaffeeautomat, Stubenfliegen, Horrak …)

Bis es soweit ist sei auf die Fan-Seite http://www.kottan-ermittelt.at verwiesen, auf der man sich schon einmal in Stimmung schmökern kann.

Werbung:
Amazon.de Widgets

Sehr freue ich mich schon auf die Teilnahme am Austria Game Jam nächste Woche: Gafiker, Soundkünstler und Programmierer treffen sich und bilden Gruppen um innerhalb von 48 Stunden ein Spiel zu programmieren. Das Spiel wird dann eingereicht als Wettbewerbsbeitrag zum Global Game Jam.

Kommentar schreiben an horst.jens@spielend-programmieren.at

Today I finished my very first Arduino project .

It's an ArduinoBoy. Basically it's a device that lets me sync my GameBoy to a sequencer (I'm using Renoise using MIDI. On the GameBoy itself runs Nanoloop¹⁾. This was my first ever electronics project and it went really well. I only soldered one wrong connection which I luckily found after some debugging (de-soldering a IC sucks though ).

After I finished the breadboard version of the ArduinoBoy I began to think about a fitting enclosure. It turned out that finding something appropriate was the most difficult part of all. I finally decided to have a look into the WRT54G router I use solely for distributing wireless OSC messages via either my Nintendo DS and DSMI or TouchOSC on my iPhone. And to my surprise it had exactly that much space left which I would need for putting an extra Arduino inside .

Getting all that stuff in there was a delicate thing to do though. I have to remember to open the thing with care should I ever have to. Unfortunately I'm not that good at drilling holes, that's why the holes for the LEDs look a bit ugly. However, I'm happy with the final result, especially because it took only one weekend to finish which makes me less worried regarding my plans to build an Arduinome (I have all parts except the PCB ).

Okay, now I have to make some nice GameBoy 8bit music .