Here’s a fun tip about the HTML5 version of Cut the Rope. If you launch the game with this web address: http://www.cuttherope.ie/?boxbackgrounds=true …then you’ll get a page background that changes depending on the box your playing. In the first box (the cardboard box) nothing changes. In the fabric and toy (IE) boxes, you’ll see updated [...]
(UPDATE: I added a more careful version of how I feel about the future of Silverlight to the bottom of that section.) I spent last week at BUILD (all caps?). What a good week for Microsoft! Now that I’ve had a day or two to consider the big announcements and shake off the reality distortion [...]
I’ve used all kinds of systems for tracking my time, but by far the most effective is a pen and paper. At the end of the week everything gets reviewed and inputted into the digital tool du jour (I really like Harvest), but for the day-to-day mechanics of keeping track of where I spend my [...]
This is really neat. It’s a very very early digital 3D rendered film (family lore is that it’s the first, ever). It looks old because it is. It was created in 1972 by Ed Catmull (the founder of Pixar) and Fred Parke with a little help from my dad. I also think that this is [...]
I’ve been (not so) quietly rolling out a new design for nerdplusart over the last couple of weeks and tonight it went live. Really, this project is over a month (2 months?) old now. It’s hard to make time for personal projects! Tonight, however, I bit the bullet. When I started writing 301 redirects I [...]
Here’s a Photoshop Action (i.e. a script) that I made to pre-dither an image so that it renders nicely on a display with 16-bit color (like Windows Phone 7). A quick warning before you download it: the first thing this script will do is flatten your image (e.g. merge all layers into one). So don’t [...]
I’ve been meaning to write something about this for a long time! Over the summer we created Agent 008 Ball, a spy-themed HTML5 pool game. Creating it was a blast! We put a little video together to talk about the design process. You can check it out below. Also, here’s the case study for the [...]
Plenty of people (myself included) have had some less than favorable things to say about text rendering in WPF and Silverlight. Well haters gonna h8, but we’ve come a long way! Here’s thet thing: text rendering is not only hard but it’s highly subject. That’s why a tool like photoshop makes you choose a rendering [...]
I got an email tonight with a great question and I thought I’d share my thoughts / gather some feedback. Here’s the question: One problem that I have always had that after I design a website or Silverlight application I tend to start second guessing what I have produced. Next thing you know I start [...]
Titilium Very nice sans serif that works well for display. Comes in many weights. I’ve actually used this font a lot in WPF for display and had good luck with it. It’s a little square so it leaves the UI looking a little futuristic if you don’t manage the weights properly. Raleway Light weight font. [...]
