News

I've been working on the concepts and design for Sphericle 3.0 lately, and I want to share some of what I have so far. The past versions of Sphericle have not been designed nearly as well as they could have; I rushed into development too early, and the game suffered for it. This time around, I want to make it very pretty, more intuitive, and more fun! Here's some of what I'm working on: read more »

Today, Dave Rupert released the 17th episode of The ATX Web Show podcast, and I'm pleased to announce that it features me! His podcast is a great rounding up of what's going on in the Austin web scene, and I'm honored to be a guest. Check it out!

This past Tuesday I attended my first Cafe Bedouins meeting, which usually takes place at a coffeeshop, but this one was at Cospace. Cafe Bedouins is basically an open weekly space for tech people to work on their side projects... it's supposed to provide a kind of regular space for projects that otherwise might never get those spare hours they need. It was also my first time going to any web/tech social event, at all.

Having freelanced for several years now, and having friends who are mostly not tech people, an event like this was a really refreshing experience for me. Going to Cafe Bedouins, I was surrounded by a bunch of people with whom I could talk about web application frameworks, the latest is database server trends, and whatever else the big geek in me thinks about for several hours every day; something I needed more than I realized, perhaps.

So, this is to say, I'm going to be doing more of this! If any of you readers have other Austin tech meetups you know about, please let me know. It's time for Coffeeshopped to get more social. read more »

One of the next Coffeeshopped projects is a game for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and it's a collaboration with my brother, Fredrick Wood! The game is still in its early stages of design and development, but here's a sketch (by Fred, the Art Director) to whet your appetites.

Today I completed the release of the next version of HourPatch, which now includes the ability to create invoices. To go with it, I revamped the promo materials on the HourPatch website.

The tag line now is "Proactive Time Tracking", which I think nicely sums up what HourPatch is about: planning out your project schedules ahead of time, which simplifies time tracking and invoicing while also getting your self-employed life a little more in order. Here are the main points of what HourPatch is about:

• Tracking your work hours
• Keeping notes of what you did
• Knowing your availability, both this week and months in the future
• Generating invoices based on your hourly rate(s)
• Balancing work with the rest of your life
• Setting aside enough time for each project

So, take a look at all my hard work.

It's still May, but temperature-wise, summer is just about here in Austin. It's hot, and I now find myself trying to figure out where I should spend my laptop hours.

For the past couple of months, I've kept a steady schedule of either working full days at home, or working mornings at home, until the afternoon heat comes, at which point I go to a coffeeshop. But now it's getting to where even the mornings are getting pretty warm, and my wonderful duplex apartment just isn't the best-insulated. As much as I like spending hours at Thunderbird and Cherrywood Coffeehouse, last summer it started feeling like I practically lived at those places. So as this summer approaches, I'm trying to come up with new alternatives.

First off, how about the library? The Carver Branch of the Austin Public Library is closest to me, and it looks like they have wi-fi, so I'm going to try that out soon. It's probably pretty quiet there, which is a plus, and it'll be a new experience for starters. read more »

My new iPhone App "Glory Math 2" is now available on the iTunes App Store. Check out the Glory Math Home Page for more details on the app itself (including a short video featuring William the cat). Excitement!

Glory Math 2 is almost ready. And Glory Math 1 is still available.

I've made a lot of progress on Glory Math 2... it's starting to make some beautiful music! In case you missed it, I posted a video of the work in progress last week (although it's already come a long way since then).

But aside from working on the app itself, there are always the accompanying materials to be made, such as the icons (big and small) for the iPhone, and the App Store itself. Today I thought I'd share with you what I have for that so far:

The colors are from a screenshot of the app, and the keys are from my roommate's Wurlitzer EP276, which sits in our living room.

And, if you haven't got your copy of Glory Math 1 yet, you should do that now.

Here's footage of Glory Math 2 in development. The audio you hear is coming from the iPhone in the video. Glory Math 2 builds off of the cellular automaton in Glory Math 1 and adds generative music to it. I plan on going a lot further with what's going on with the audio, but even so far I think it's pretty interesting.