In the Zone

So, this semester (my last one with classes) is now over.  I was in a video game development class this semester, and had a ton of fun making an educational (and fun) video game targeted at the 1st grade level (in math).  It’s not all math problems – but rather primarily a space war in which you pilot your ship in order to catch up with Distractor and take him down.  The math comes in as you attempt to use power-ups found along the way… they are locked, and the only way to unlock them is by solving math problems…

(Intro Sequence for Space War)

(Molly helping you with a math question)

(Fighting the Boss “Distractor”)

… it was a true group effort – I was one of 3 in my team, and we spent quite a bit of time and effort coming up with a back-story, etc… which is somewhat integrated into this working demo.  You can listen to the story-line in the game by selecting the Story option — or if you want to just jump into the action – select the Space War option (the only module we had time to implement).  I’m actually interested in furthering the game a bit, as my kids actually enjoy playing it.  I’d love to hear any feedback you might have!

So, how do you install it then?  Not as easy as I’d hope — but you’ll first need to get some prerequisite applications on your Windows XP or Vista computer:

.NET 2.0 (Windows XP Only)

.NET 2.0 SP1 (Windows XP Only)

Vista SP1 (Windows Vista Only)

DirectX 9.0c (Both XP & Vista)

XNA Runtime 2.0 (Both XP & Vista)

Once you’ve got the above pre-requisites installed… then download and install EgdelWonk (26MB).  If you happen to have an XBox 360 controller – plug it into your computer and use it… as we designed/tested/developed the game specifically for the XBox 360.  You can play it with the keyboard – but the gameplay is much better with the XBox controller.

Again — let me know what you think!  It was fun to make, hopefully you’ll enjoy playing it (or having your kids play it)…  Bonus quesion — who plays the voice of Molly?

I’m quite impressed with the amount of data that Google has collected by camera mounted cars driving through all the streets across the nation.  Albuquerque in particular has been covered quite well – in fact, you can get a perfect view of my house as good as if you had driven by yourself.  For those of you that know my address – just enter it into http://maps.google.com/ and click on street view and there ya go — that’s my house :)

Just to show an example – so you can play around with it – here is the street view of the chapel that we attend church at:

Quite impressive both in the amount of data they have collected (both satellite, and now street view) as well as the seamless way they present it to the end user.  I’m sure there are privacy concerns from many – regardless – this is quite an amazing piece of work that Google has done, and continues to do.

You can even see the car that the pictures were taken from:

Neat stuff!

I am testing a new feature called Jott. I can call my cellphone and have it automatically post a message to my blog from my voice. Anyhow, this is the first test. We will see if it works. listen

Powered by Jott

So – I’ve finally migrated over to an actual server that is not located in my own home.  Don’t get me wrong – I still have the old server at my home, but I’m hosting on an external server now, in hopes that it’ll free up more time.  Time will tell – if I actually do free up some time, I suppose that means I might have time to blog some more – which is something I’d like to do… cross your fingers :)

I originally created a website / alumni tracking tool for my 10 year high school reunion (see http://www.mayfield95.org/) about two years back.  My wife, who also graduated in 1995, saw the site – and figured, hey – why not re-use this for my 10 year reunion?  Thus… I ported the code over for her 10 year reunion (see http://www.goddard95.org/).

One of my brothers is getting ready to help put on his 20 year reunion, and asked if he might be able to take advantage of what I did for our reunion to track alumni, get tickets purchased, etc… and so I figured I’d take the opportunity to make my code more generalized so that the next time I’m asked to port it for another high school – it will *cross your fingers* hopefully require only copying some files, copying a database structure, and then modifying a single configuration file.

Anyhow – so taht is what I did… the site looks awfully similar – but the code behind it is much more general pupose now (see http://www.mayfield88.org/ for my brother’s site).  Yup… leave it to me to spend more time just make the behind the scenes stuff look better w/no change to the front end :)

I’ve taken on another project – the making of the Sandia District website here in Albuquerque. Take a look:

http://sandia.gileszone.com/

It’s a fun project, and I believe a much needed one as well. Feedback is much appreciated ;)

I’ve been using ImageMagick (a great image library / toolset by the way) for some time now. Recently, I ran across a bug in the library when trying to draw straight dashed lines. You can get the details on the ImageMagick forum itself.

As that forum doesn’t allow posting of images (as far as I can tell) – I’m posting the error condition and the output of it here in hopes to aid developers more quickly find a fix for it :) The problem is Read more…

Yes, it is finals week once again.  I have 3 finals this week – one in about 45 minutes – a 2 hour comprehensive final for my Digital Image Processing course (it is going to be a doozy)… then I have two take home finals, one which has already been handed out, the other I get on Thursday morning.  These are in Digital Signal Processing and Pattern Recognition.  I do enjoy learning, but I will be glad when Friday night comes, and all my finals are finished … it is a great feeling, one that I’m looking forward to.  Of course, it all starts up again in the fall :)

Well… sorry hackers, but I’m getting fed up with your little games. I’ve found what appears to be a great module that works with apache to help monitor/block your hacking attempts. I’m impressed by what I’ve seen so far.

I’ve gone ahead and implemented a mod_security service to logwatch as well, to aid in parsing through the audit_log that mod_security spits out as it does its work. I couldn’t find a decent one out there already written, so decided to write my own. It’s nothing fancy, but gets the job done. I figured I’d post it here in case someone else might find it useful.

Just place each file in the appropriate place… for my fedora core install, that happens to be in /etc/logwatch/* — exact locations for each file are then (click to download):

/etc/logwatch/conf/logfiles/audit_log.conf

/etc/logwatch/conf/services/mod_security.conf

/etc/logwatch/scripts/services/mod_security

Use at your own risk… :)

Wow — school is eating me up… I’m back in school after having graduated with my Bachelor’s back in 2001, and then working for a good 5 years. I’m still working (1/2 time), but have just begun work on my Masters degree in Electrical Engineering (emphasis in Signal Processing).

I imagine I’ll get back into the swing of things soon enough, the sooner the better. I’m taking three classes this semester – Advanced Optics I (fun class); Linear Systems (not too bad); and Random Signal Processing (the class that is taking all my time).

We just had our first test in Random Signal Processing yesterday. I think I did ok – but it took hours and hours and hours of preparation. I have literally been spending 3-6 hours 4-5 days a week on this single class, but – I feel like I’m finally getting it. Hopefully the amount of time I’m having to spend will decrease as time continues, so I can start putting some other priorities back into their rightful places (i.e. Family, Church, Work).

Well — time to veg a bit, its been awhile since I have been able to just sit and do nothing. Unfortunately, it is already 10pm, but hey – gotta take what you can :) I’ll try and get back here more often. Time will tell …