Chris Howard's Writing & Art

Saltwater Witch Promo poster

I had a QR Code project going over the weekend for GBeCS--where my kids go to school.  It involved dropping the school logo into the center of the code and a bit of recoloring while maintaining enough of the code to be read.  From there I started goofing with my own QR code that will get viewers  to SaltwaterWitch.com (those with smart phones and a QR code reader app, which means just about everyone, right?).

Click for the full view!

Cocos2d animation, accelerometer, and supporting multiple orientations

This started out as a way to test and quickly roll through some animation I'm working on, and I thought it would be cool to share some of it with you.  (I'm building on a thousand informative Cocos2d forum posts, and the animation tutorials by Ray Wenderlich and the rocking team at Get Set Games--so check out their blog posts on animation, awesome stuff).

 
One of things I love about the Cocos2D framework is how easy it is to set up a batch of animations and then shift between them with a call.  So, you can load a spritesheet (an image with a bunch of images--sprites.  These can be a sequence of frames in an animation--or more likely a bunch of sequences showing your characters, space ships, asteroids, frogs, sea dragons in different states--fighting, swimming, running, falling, etc.) and in the course of play and state change, your app shifts to different blocks of animation.

Here's a shot of a sea dragon animation I'm drawing--making it easy at this stage by doing everything on one side and mirroring it for the other: 

There are certainly better ways to display animation in a real game, but for my test app I've set up a SeaDragonType, placing this in SeaDragonScene.h

 

typedef enum
{
    DragonTypeLiving = 0,
    DragonTypeDead,
    DragonTypeGlowing, 
} DragonTypes;

 

And then I keep track of which dragon type is being displayed at the moment, looking for a screen tap to rotate through the dragon animations. 

Essentially, it's

What dragon do I want to show now? 
Run the action for that dragon type.
Stop the action for the prior dragon type.

                _dragonType = DragonTypeDead;
                [_spriteDragon runAction:_undeadAction];
                [_spriteDragon stopAction:_liveAction];       

I'm using Zwoptex (http://zwoptexapp.com) to create spritesheets.  See Ray Wenderlich's post and the Zwoptex site for details on how to use the util.  Powerful stuff.  Here's my sheet for this app, three variations of the same sea dragon, a healthy living version, a sort of glowing one, and an undead version, each with the same bit of flipper action.

 
Using the Accelerometer on the iPhone and iPad to manipulate your sprites
 
This is easier than you might think.  Let the app know you want to use the accelerometer up in your init:

 

        // enable accelerometer
        self.isAccelerometerEnabled = YES;

 

And then drop in the accelerometer callback, which let's us know what's going in with the device.   (Debugging on the device is necessary for this, so set your target for Device and run to see this work).   It doesn't do a lot, simply rotates the dragon--positioned in the center of the screen--in the direction the user tilts the iPhone/iPad.

- (void)accelerometer:(UIAccelerometer*)accelerometer 
didAccelerate:(UIAcceleration*)acceleration
{   
    static float prevX=0, prevY=0;
   
    #define kFilterFactor 0.05f
   
    float accelX = (float) acceleration.x * kFilterFactor + 
(1- kFilterFactor)*prevX;
    float accelY = (float) acceleration.y * kFilterFactor + 
(1- kFilterFactor)*prevY;
   
    prevX = accelX;
    prevY = accelY;
   
    _dragon.rotation = - (-accelX * 120);   
}

Supporting different screen orientations in Cocos2d

I've basically swiped the UIKit rotation code Frogblast posted on the Cocos2D site, and included it in my test project to see what happens to the animation when I turn the device around.  This method pushes the rotation handling off to a UIViewController (MultiplatformViewController)  I'm using the UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait and UIInterfaceOrientationPortraitUpsideDown, and ignoring landscape views.
 

Here's the SeaDragonTest project zipped.  I'm using Cocos2D v0.99.4 (current stable release) and iOS 4.1 SDK. 

Have fun. Make something cool with Cocos2D!

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Lightspeed Magazine iPhone app

I'm a bit late reporting this: my app for Lightspeed Magazine is up at the iTunes App Store. Right now, it's pulling in the feed for the site and arranging nicely for reading.  The goal was to get something useful in the store.  Look for fancier stuff as we--me, Sean Wallace, Jeremy Tolbert, John Joseph Adams--design the next gen app for iPhone and iPad.  I'm also working on an Android version.

Got an iPhone or an iPad? Go get it! 

Ebook conversion tip: MS Word to clean HTML

CKEditor (http://ckeditor.com) is a free editor built for web pages. You can run it locally, or copy it to a hosted site, and what's really cool is the MSWord to HTML conversion built into CKEditor. I've been using it to convert docs to HTML for a while.

You can try it out the editor on my site here:
http://www.saltwaterwitch.com/ckeditor/editor/

A few easy steps:

1. Open CKEditor in your browser.
2. Click the MS Word button. Looks like this:

3. Select your book/story/document from MS Word and paste it into the CKEditor Word conversion dialogue. Looks like this: 

4. Hit the OK button and when you see your doc show up in the editor, click the "Source" button at the top left. This shows you what CKEditor's using behind the scenes. Yes, very nice, clean HTML.

The "Source" button:

The HTML:

Okay, I'm sold, Mr. Jobs. I love the iPad.

I think everyone should have one of these badass glass-topped and sealed easy to use powerhouses.

My iPad showed up yesterday around noon, and I've been playing with it since. I've downloaded a dozen or so apps, including iBooks, Pages, Plants vs Zombies, Autodesk Sketchbook Pro, Marvel's comic app, and a pack of others. I'm even typing this post on my iPad.

Getting started

If you already have an iPhone or iPod Touch, getting started with an iPad will be a  breeze.  If you're new to Apple's phone and consumer device scene, it'll take you about fifteen minutes longer.   I know grasping Apple's OS's is supposed be intuitive. Unfortunately none of us share the same code, brain, a priori knowledge, automatized whatever, so there are idiosyncrasies you'll have to get used to--that either arise out of the device's portable nature or Apple's sense of how things ought to work, which may not match yours.  Nothing extraordinary, but don't be surprised if you hit a couple behavioral expectation anomalies. It won't take you long to get it all down.

Again, I'm typing this whole thing on a keyboard made of glass.  And my expectations were low for actually typing anything serious on this flat virtual keypad.  I even ordered the dockable keyboard, certain that I'm going to need it. I still think I'll use a real keyboard for writing, but I'm really impressed with the usability of the on-screen deal.

Apps and books

On day one, April 3rd, there are a bunch of necessary iPad-specific apps available like Apple's own iWork apps--but not thousands.  I'm typing this in Pages, which I don't really like on the Mac.  There are just better alternatives available.  It's more than adequate on the iPad.

Here's a screenshot of the top grossing apps in iTunes, with some good stuff, including the rockin' OmniGraffle.  Notice also the prices of the ipad apps, all of them higher than typical iPhone apps.  I'm putting that down to the ability to offer and do more on the iPad platform over the iPhone/touch. The apps I have on both platforms, like Sketchbook Pro, tell me that the iPad versions are just going to be bigger more-featured versions of their iPhone counterparts, and consequently pricier.

The iBooks app is stunning.  In terms of book-like beauty, iBooks sweeps everything else away.  I have a Kindle2 and a Sony Reader.  I love them.  I love reading ebooks.  I'm a fan of eInk's reflective technology.  But I'll come right out and say it: iPad with the iBooks reader kicks their asses.  This is the closest I've ever seen to reading a real book on a device.

On the other hand, iBooks, in terms of content, is a total disappointment.  Some solid bestsellers, big non-fic titles, but it's going to have to really ramp up if Apple wants to take on Amazon, B&N, Sony, and anyone with more than a thousand books and a delivery process.  I fully expect them to, but if I could have wished for one thing to have at the iPad launch, it would have been a gigantic pile of content available in the book store.  Sigh.

No camera

I don't want a camera on this thing.  Now that I have it in my hands, the last thing I'd want to do is take pictures with it.  It's just too big.  Until I had the iPad in my hands, the lack of a camera bothered me.  In the future?  It would work, and it would be a nice extra.  But now I see what Apple's designers saw.  It would be like taking pictures with a dinner plate, little bit silly. I have cameras on several other devices.  I can shoot and send the pic to my iPad.  The lack of a camera just doesn't seem like the problem it did a couple days ago.

File importing and exporting

As it stands, this is a pain in the ass. I'm hoping for an cleaner, easier way to get files on and off the iPad in the future.  Here's the File Sharing section at the bottom of the Apps tab when your iPad is connected.  I didn't even see it at first, didn't even know I could scroll down, or what I would find when I did.  (I searched Apple help for this one).

Locked into Apple and iTunes?

Maybe. I think DRM is a waste of time and money, and I don't think Apple would disagree.  Even so, I don't feel locked into much with my iPad. I only buy about half my music from iTunes. Importing music, video and audio books is simple.  If you really need something write it yourself.  I've written a batch of iPhone apps, a couple in the app store, and I'm already writing iPad apps, stuff for the App Store as well as utilities for myself.  Complaining about Objective-C I can understand--and I have a fairly strong C and C++ background.  Still think we should have been able to develop apps in Lua, Python, etc. all along.

The sealed, glued device you don't own because you can't easily take it apart?

I say "easily" because that's exactly what they did on iFixit.com, and they make it look pretty easy.

This is probably the least understandable argument against the iPad. It has a Luddite fear of technological change hysteria to it. A Luddite may even want technological change, but at a snail's pace and only if it uses last century's materials, tooling methods and design constraints.  It's a fear felt by those who want technology to remain at a comfortable level, a level they can understand and work with.  While I just see smaller, sealed, easier to use nearly-unbreakable devices as the future--and I don't know about you, but I see a future where homes, cars, furniture, and consumer devices are sophisticated enough to self heal, powerful enough to evolve and grow new parts instead of requiring firmware upgrades and replaceable batteries, devices you can communicate with, devices that can tell you how they work if you want to know.  Sorry to say we're not going to get there with screwdrivers.

Technology is what I want

Yeah, there's been some iPad-bashing, some of it well-deserved, some of it just makes me shake my head. I can understand slamming the hype machine, because so much of the time that's all a product is, a lot of talk, bright colors, the big and loud stage show.  Not the case here.  And yes, the Apple freaks can get out of hand sometimes, ooh-ing and ah-ing and sacrificing blood relatives to Vengeful Cupertinoea.  You know who you are.  We all know you're excited.  Come on, break it up.

Here's the thing, I genuinely think the iPad is a revolutionary device, and it will change everything--or maybe a better way to put it: the iPad will drive everyone else into this tactile slate format future with a device that's easy to use, that's as powerful as any computer without the system and config hassles, and solid enough to use as a weapon.  .

That's it for now.  I'm going to write the other half of the book I'm currently writing in Pages on my iPad.  I'll be posting on progress, the good and bad.

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Dude, where's your iPad?

According to UPS, which claims it will have it on my doorstep on April 3rd, it's right there in beautiful downtown Shenzhen with an ORIGIN SCAN and just this morning, BILLING INFORMATION RECEIVED!

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Ebooks: Apple will be the one to beat.

I'm on an email thread with some colleagues talking about ebook readers (Kindle, Sony, Nook, etc.) and social reading services like copia (http://www.thecopia.com).  And as promising as a lot of this is—I love every bit of this because it's heading in a direction I want reading and publishing to go: more ebooks—to me, Apple's iPad looks like the device to get. 

I've gone through a few generations of iPhone—the original, 3G, and I currently use the 3GS.  I love the Kindle app for the iPhone.  I’m also a fan of eInk and have used Sonys and Kindles for several years—love the paper-like experience of the tech. 

I haven't used an iPad yet—I just ordered one, but I already think eInk's days are numbered. 

Apple's really done something here with the iPad.  Here's what every other ebook reader vendor is up against: color, clarity, brighter, bigger screens with support for full length video, superior audio, ability to plug into full sized TVs and projectors, WiFi and 3G access to the largest media channel—audio books, movies, television, podcasts, indie content—and ebooks!, not just annotating but full word processing, video editing, and presentation capabilities built in, 150,000 existing apps, a device that’s ready and adaptable through app development with the largest developer community of any mobile device.  I can't see any ebook reader effort coming close to what the iPad seems to promise, except maybe a better name.

As far as the social reading side, the Copia thing, I think that’s an even steeper climb than the device market.  The major social nets like Facebook already provide the groups, apps, linking, twitter cross-posting, commenting and content creation tools for readers—and all the authors and readers are already there, registered, friending, communicating.  Who's up for joining a new community on the ground floor? Unless copia is radically different or focused in the way that Mendeley is different, focused on providing community and content services for academic and corporate researchers, I can't see it taking off. 

http://www.apple.com/ipad/

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Just ordered an iPad

My mobile code

Does your mobile device/phone read 2D barcodes? There are half a dozen free iPhone apps for reading Datamatrix or QR codes and then processing them in some way.  For instance, if you're encoding a URL like the one to my blog (http://the0phrastus.typepad.com) the app will decode it and pass it along to the browser (Safari if you're on an iPhone).

Get yours here. (links to Nokia site).

Here's the QR code for the same address:

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My first iPhone app in the iTunes App Store!

PhotoStamp, an iPhone app that makes it easy to stamp any image in your Camera Roll with a copyright line, a URL, your name, any custom message.  Great if you're uploading your photos to TwitPic, Flickr, SmugMug, etc.  It's free.  It's in the iTunes App Store. 

Interesting note: I sub'd PhotoStamp on July 1 and exactly fifteen days later it's in the iTunes Store. I don't know how many apps are submitted daily, but it's a lot, and they're handling it well.  Apple, you rock!

Here's the link:

(opens iTunes)

Go get it!

Screenshots:

Isn't this beautiful?

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