Twitter is a great social network for catching up on the latest — oh hey, I got a new Tweet! Be back in a second.
Whoops, sorry. As I was saying, Twitter, the “other” social network, is an incredibly quick and easy way to catch up on all the news that’s fit to type in one convenient place. But, in order to fully make use of the #awesomeness that is Twitter, you’ve got to learn a bit. Luckily for you, @I have made one that @you are reading right now. #whatluck
Ninjas.
That’s what computer programmers are calling themselves nowadays. The profession (if you can even call it that) goes by a litany of none-too-glamorous names, such as developer, programmer, engineer, technician, and more stuff that doesn’t quite make you the most popular guy in the room. Hence, a lot of, er, programmers (for lack of a better word) go by ninja or such. Which I find slightly annoying – you’re writing code, not killing enemies of the emperor. But I digress.
tl;dr – hathix.com had some downtime but my super-helpful host WebHostingHub cleared it up immediately. Also, I apologize for the fanboyishness – it’s just that WHH is that awesome.
I was recently working with some so-called cutting-edge web programming techniques (parsing JSON using PHP from client requests using JavaScript and jQuery… told you it was gory) and realized I needed a new version of some software on the server that hathix lives on.
I’ve got a dirty little secret. Well, not so dirty, really, more… creamy. Sugary. Frosty. Sprinkle-y.
Here it is: for the last year and more(computer searching reveals since January 29, 2011 – even before hathix.com was founded), I’ve been working nonstop on a “little” web-based adventure game. And it’s never been formally released to the public – until now.
Here’s a look at the making of the game. It’s taken 16 months and over 100 hours of development.
Shameless advertisement: Download Cabra, the newly award-winning flashcard program!
Cabra, my surprisingly useful flashcard program, has a new feather in its cap. It’s now also an award-winning flashcard program. I’m not kid-ding (sorry about the goat pun.)
This March I shared Cabra at my regional computer fair (sponsored by the county’s Intermediate Unit) and was awarded a trip to the statewide computer fair.
Which brings me to yesterday, when I arrived in Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA. Great campus (Dickinson is the 16th oldest college in the nation) and nice small town. It’s a smaller college but very well-regarded, and its facilities were great for the fair’s purpose.
Back in my day (OK, before my day), the profession of web developer was a low one. It ranked below puppy hater but above Yankees fan on the scale of professional honor. Because of all the tags and transparency spacer images we used, we were seen as crude hackers with no sense of aesthetics.
Well, we may still be lacking in aesthetic sense, but as the Web has developed so has the profession of web developer. These days there are countless tools we can use to make well-written, standards-conforming, and beautiful (OK, maybe not that last one) web pages. Most of the great websites you use today (shameless plug: including this one) are built using these tools.
tl;dr – a free MLA format template for Word 2010
I don’t know about you, but I’ve had more teachers than I’d can count who graded papers solely on how well you followed the proper format and not, you know, on that fluff they call ‘content.’
If you’re a student, chances are pretty good you have to write many, many papers – all in MLA format, a common format for papers, essays, and such. The MLA format was designed, I’d imagine, to regulate the look of all papers and to drive students crazy. There are tons of random rules and guidelines you have to know, such as:
