So I’ve been playing this game called BattleForge, and there are a handful of websites that exist just to display information about these cards you can collect in the game (think Magic: The Gathering or Pokemon). People have also made Adobe AIR applications and Microsoft Access databases. So, naturally I thought I would pollute the web with another website.

At first, I was going to use xml + xslt to make it. I actually got a proof of concept working nicely. But once I tried using javascript, it got weird on me because it was XML instead of HTML. Then I changed it to plain HTML + an XHR request to get the XML file and got basic realtime filters working. Then someone pointed out that there was some google docs with the information I wanted so I switched from XML to JSONP.

Anyways, this is the limit of my attention span so I’ll paste the URL now. http://allbfcards.com/

April 8th, 2010 | Life=Boring, Mental Note: Add Category, Portfolio | 1 comment

For a year, I was REALLY into making widgets. I’d would still be making them if they ever fixed the bugs I reported and got the performance of the widget engine better.

My self-hosted homepage for my widgets was here, while my approved widgets are hosted on the official site. There is one secret widget I made that isn’t really hosted anywhere, and that’s my cockroach simulator. That was one of my favorite widgets. It hogged my CPU, but it was worth it to see a cockroach scurrying around my screen.  My most popular script was probably Doom mooD.

I know it’s been mentioned by Dwight Silverman twice before, and I still haven’t found anything that’s even close to the combined whimsy and functionality. When you add in the nostalgia factor, I don’t think anything can match up to it.

From programming widgets, I learned about XML and javascript. I got into some of the heavy object orientated side of javascript, and even started making libraries for other widget makers. I also started making Photoshop scripts to help automate taking my Photoshop designs into the XML layouts for the Yahoo! Widget Engine.

July 21st, 2009 | Mental Note: Add Category | No comments