Blog: Favourite YouTube Videos (Volume 35)

In this volume of my favourite YouTube videos we get the chance to talk about creativity, hats, story telling and bowser's arms.

• The first set of videos are from Charlie McDonnell. A while ago he decided (if that's the right word) to have a "YouTube Midlife Crisis" and he talked about some of his creative stresses. He also talked about some of his rules for YouTube videos, which I think are also interesting rules to look at for any creative endeavour. Interestingly I didn't favourite Part 2 of his rules, but had to watch that video immediatly after I watched Part 1 so I decided to throw it in as a bonus.
• Next, did you know that Team Fortress 2 has a story? Well now you do, and it only took a minute, thanks to the Lore Team.
• For all that I like Belated Media, I wasn't exactly sure why I'd favourited this video ... until the last 5 seconds. Stay tuned kids. Stay tuned. (Although it is a bit spoilery for A Cabin in The Woods)
• Finally, we have the kick off episode of Chuggaconroy's Let's Play of  Super Paper Mario. As with most Let's Play's I tend to favourite the first episode if the whole series is worth while and this one is. It's a lot of fun and is apt to keep you distracted for a while to come.

Project 4: A Further Surprise Snake Update (Version 0.2.0)

So it seems I still have a lot of procrastinating to do. I've managed to turn out another version of Snake. (This time version 0.2.0).

This version introduces:

* Awful Sound Effects - it's weird old beeps, that kinda appealed to me
* Mute - press 'M' to turn off the awful sound effects (this doesn't preserve between games yet)
* Scaling Snake Colour - now as the snake grows it fades to grey towards the end of it's tail. This makes it easier to see which way you're going (especially when coming back from pause).

Please play and let me know in the comments if you run into any problems or bugs or any thoughts at all really.

You can get the game from these links:

• The Windows 32-bit version and the Windows 64-bit version
• The Mac OSX version
• The Linux 32-bit version and the Linux 64-bit version

Thanks as always!

Project 4: A Surprise Update on the Snake (Version 0.1.0)

Again, my skills in procrastination have allowed me to get things done. This time, now that I don't have it as an active project, I managed to put out a revision of the Snake game.

This version introduces a couple of new features:

• Pausing! Now you can press 'p' to stop the game whenever you want. To resume the game just press any of the arrow keys and start going again. 
• Bouncing Scores! I'm sure I'm the only person who cares, but now when you hit a target the score bounces up and down a little bit. It's not amazing animation, but it's something.
• Proper key handling. This doesn't change the game at all, but I was able to apply a lot of the things I've learned about Processing.org and realized that the tutorial I'd followed way back in the beginning had a strange way of handling key presses (relying on the main loop of the program). Now I've updated it to use proper event handling. 

You can download the update:

• The Windows Versions (32-bit, and 64-bit)
• The Mac OS X Version
• The Linux Versions (32-bit and 64-bit)

If you'd care to beta test this for me I'd really appreciate it. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section.

Blog: Favourite YouTube Videos (Volume 34)

In this volume of my favourite YouTube videos we get the rest of the launch of Geek and Sundry. meaning we get to geek out about board games and books and we'll also get the chance to geek out about cake and sex, relationships and words too.

• The first videos in this volume are from Wil Wheaton's Table Top. Here we watch him play games with a bunch of cool people (This week, Grant Imahara, Sean Plott (Day[9]) and Jenna Busch). This show is great for the witty banter and it also let's you see people playing your favourite games or learn about cool games you may have missed. They also include some extra footage of their guests which are also pretty cool (and here we see Grant Imahara's).
• Next up, Rossana Pansino and CourtnyPants make rainbow unicorn cake on Nerdy Nummies. (The cake does not actually contain unicorns.) If you wanted to know how to make a cake of many colours, this is a pretty good guide.
• The next video in this volume is the inagural video episode of Sword & Laser (or The Sword & Laser ... I'm not sure they ever sorted that out). Here, Veronica Belmont and Tom Merritt talk about the lastest and greatest in Sci-Fi and Fantasy books. The audio version existed long before the video one started and continues on now that the video show has run it course. They also have a strong community over on Goodreads.
• Finally John Green talks about sex and relationships. The most important advice he gives I think is maybe the most important advice for any situation. "USE YOUR WORDS!"