Ben Sparks
First Post Using Hugo
Well I’ve been thinking about switching from Wordpress to a static site generator for some time. Now I’ve done it. There are several generators out there, but I’ve decided to go with Hugo. I don’t really get all that much benefit from the WYSIWYG aspects of Wordpress, and it just opens up yourself to hacking and spam because of the ability to edit online. I’m also not a huge fan of PHP, though the application has served me well enough for years I suppose.
2012 is almost over
Well, here we are at the end of the year. I haven’t made very much progress on my resolutions. Perhaps next year will be better. In other news I somewhat recently (August) got interested in angularjs, http://angularjs.org It’s a pretty awesome javascript framework for making web applications. I plan to post some tutorials and other such things soon. The twins are 9 months old now, and I just am starting to feel like I have a little more time to work on stuff.
Doing stuff with node.js other than running a server
Just about everybody who’s doing something with node.js is creating a server. In fact, node.js is often referred to as a “server-side” javascript. In fact here’s a great getting started tutorial on net.tuts+. That tutorial covers a couple of things beyond the “hello world”, creating a simple HTTP server, and creating a live Twitter stream. Anyway, I think that shows my point that most tutorials and things that people are going to do about node.js involve either running a server or hooking up to some internet API.
Mine Mars
My friend John has been working on a WebGL game for some time now, and he’s decided to do a kickstarter for it. I’ve contributed a few bits of code and a dash of inspiration to this project. Check it out!
Resolutions just in time for the apocalypse
Well I usually don’t make New Year’s resolutions. That way I don’t have to deal with any of the disappointment of not following through. However, this year for some reason I’m inclined to make a few. I have been inspired and motivated to get better and smarter by stuff like this: Idea Experiment and Developer Book Club. Not that I’m not always about learning new stuff, but I guess those sites (and others) have motivated me to post this at least and try to hold myself accountable.
XNA Tutorial 2
Welcome to the second tutorial in a series on XNA Game Development. In the first tutorial we learned how to get all of the tools needed and create the basic solution, as well as a little about game loops. Now we’re going to do something much more interesting than just displaying a blue screen. We’re going to display an image on the screen, and we’ll make it move around. So let’s build off of the previous solution, or create a new one if you don’t have that.
XNA Tutorial 1
Following along with the theme from Desert Code Camp, I have decided to start writing a series of XNA game development tutorials. This will be the first one, and will start at the very beginning. What is XNA? XNA is a game development framework created by Microsoft that has access to various game APIs through .NET. It can be used to create games for the Xbox 360, Windows Phone 7, and Windows PC.
Desert Code Camp 2011.2
I gave a talk today at the Desert Code Camp on XNA 4.0 Development Basics. It was my first time presenting at any sort of event. I think overall it went pretty well, tho I had a few issues. The talk was only an hour long, and I found myself being able to cover less than I had thought. I think that in the near future I will be posting some tutorials based around this, so stay tuned.
Chainworlds - a fun gameplay option
Lately I’ve been playing Minecraft a lot. Not only is it a fun game, but I have been working on some voxel type things myself, and I think that it’s important to be knowledgeable about the main game. (how can I create a game like it if I’m not an avid player?) Normal single player tends to get boring however, especially in the vanilla game. There are plenty of interesting mods, but even with that you will eventually crave some sort of community interaction.