Some python to get quick and dirty assets for a project I'm working on (to be replaced by paid assets before anyone sees it publicly, of course) ~

objects = [ "ant", "axe", "baby", "bag", "ball", ] # etc...

crop_and_resize_to = (640,480)

import urllib2
import json
import ImageOps
from PIL import Image
from cStringIO import StringIO
for object in objects:
  url = "https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/images?v=1.0&q={}".format(object)
  data = json.loads(str(urllib2.urlopen(url).read()),"utf-8")
  first_image_data = data['responseData']['results'][0]
  url = first_image_data['unescapedUrl']
  image_file = urllib2.urlopen(url)
  im = StringIO(image_file.read())
  image = Image.open(im)
  image = ImageOps.fit(image, (640,480), Image.BICUBIC, 0, (0.5,0.5))
  if image.mode != "RGB":
    #required to save as jpg, if image is single-channel (or otherwise weird)
    image = image.convert("RGB")
  image.save("objects/{}.jpg".format(object));

Grabs the first google-image result for a given word, crop/fits it, saves it as that word. :)

Some of the images are hilarious (well, at least not what I expected). Axe. Turkey. Mouse. Xylophone.

Deconstructing the Mind's Eye up at Every Day Poets:

The mind’s eye searches, muscles stretched
from ear to ear; the iris spins with stars that dance
and spin and shrink around a pit of darkness,
the point of consciousness: flashing lights
and loss of vision signify detachment.

read more...

age walks behind
you, breathing timeless death
you pick up, second-hand:
...

up at Every Day Poets

FINALLY know how to generate assets for flash properly. Or at least one clean sort of properly. Size of artboard doesn't matter. It's all where your asset is compared to the artboard. select-all (apple-a or ctrl-a). Notice the little 9 dots in the toolbar. Select the middle if it's not. Then type 0 in for X and 0 in for Y. Your asset will have its registration properly in the center!

Two caveats:
1) any items that are completely off the artboard won't actually be rendered (might not be in the svg/fxg, didn't check). Simple solution: group it all together.
2) the "height" value of your object in flash will no longer be correct. it'll report half its height (and half its width) because the height and width of the asset "outside" of the artboard (or "viewport" in the svg/fxg) isn't counted. So be sure to compensate.

The other option being to register your object top left at 0,0... but that gets annoying in code, imo.

Would love to hear other suggestions, now that I finally had this breakthrough. ;)

When you stand on the edge, what do you see? Stories....

"Credencium" started over 12 months ago as a vague idea that was hurriedly turned into an outline over the span of several days. I've  had a soft spot for magical realism, and gutterpunk culture, and the mixing of the two for a while. I wrote my first NaNoWriMo with such a mindset (trunked and/or burned), and have another novella that needs just a bit more TLC that I should get back to some year. I either hung out with or was in a crowd that hung out with a lot of gutterpunks my first two years of college, and while I don't remember a lot, I remember being impressed by their diversity, passion, quirks, and, depending on the punk, antagonism towards social norms.

In gearing up to write "Credencium" I did what research I could online—there's not much. Anecdotes, the occasional article. I found one art series in particular by Darci Pauser titled "Pigs and Poop", and her blog on houselessness; I mined that for what information (and what memories) I could. She was kind enough to send me some of her notes to work off of, as well. I even did some volunteer work in a soup kitchen for homeless youth (not so much out of the good of my heart, but because I...well, because at the time I could, and because I wanted that to inform my writing). I'm not entirely sure it did, and I know it drained time away from my writing, but I'm glad I did in any case.

My wife has told me: never again! I'm a horrible procrastinator. I want that burning spark of inspiration to drive every word on the page, and I do all the writer tricks in the book to find it. I'm sure I caused Jennifer no end of heartburn with my "last-minute...past-the-last-minute...where-did-you-disappear-to..." timing. I was apologizing for delays every other month. I would be writing, or trying to write, every night, every waking scrap of not-working, days up to the deadline and through it. Even if I didn't put a word on the page, didn't have a single idea form, I'd lose the night to worrying at the problem of how exactly the next scenes were going to work out. Coffee, sleep deprivation, sugar, ...these are what primarily informed my writing, beyond my need to play with belief and reality.

It was a very strange experience writing to an outline that I'd set myself, hitting a deadline once a month; watching the characters evolve, details and backgrounds working themselves out as I went. I have characters just barely mentioned in the story that I wrote that I'd love to delve into more deeply (Hunin and Munin especially). I rarely hit my outline—almost always leaving things a scene, or two, before the end that I'd plotted, trying to develop a feel for just the right amount of cliff-hanger and resolution. I'd often jump in a scene or two later than what I'd plotted as well, trying to pre-emptively cut chaff from the story. There's a lot that isn't written, some of which I just hadn't figured out, but I think for the most part I did a pretty good job at writing the _right_ scenes, and I'm pretty proud of that. It was a great learning experience for me—though I doubt I'll ever learn my lesson on procrastination.

There's a lot of power in names, in naming yourself (I'm of the BBS generation, if not the internet generation, and between that and role-playing grew up with a plethora of self-given and group-given names), and there's a lot of room to play with that; there's a lot of self-actualization and self-discovery in self-naming. There's a lot of power in belief. And I hope I tapped some of that with "Credencium", and appreciate Jennifer Brozek (and The Edge of Propinquity) for having belief in the story, and giving me a chance to find it.

Sitting on tenterhooks, waiting for "sponsors" to bid on "Cupid's Revenge" (which was somewhere near--or over?--a year in the making). It only ranked a 6 or 6.5 (of 10) on FlashGameLicense which gives it a 40% chance of getting a bid that I'd consider accepting (whatever that means--it's a tough statistic to read).

[ETA: game links fixed, I think; sorry :) ]

Looking back over the (flash) games I've made, to put this in perspective...Cupid's Revenge took probably 200 hours to make. I spent roughly $30 on sound assets (after trying to do them all myself). Some games I've done have taken as few as 20 hours (including ones that were done in less time and then tweaked iteratively after release)....

Just looking at my (lifetime) Mochi (+ Kongregate) stats ~

	game	views		earnings
	Heaven	138,228 + 722		$97.35 + $2.72
	Coprolalia Jr. Edition	1,496 + 253		$0.68 + $0.64
	Coprolalia	11,485 + 1,437		$7.66 + $4.95
	Hell	79,545 + 68,267		$42.59 + $257.37
	Memory Shell Game	84,782 + 1,378		$28.39 + $8.46
	Hard Choices by Tina Conn…	17,055 + 3,913		$7.57 + $21.09
	Dodge Cupid	40,024 + 744		$7.67 + $2.46
	Hate! Hate! Hate!	16,383 + 0		$5.45 + 0
	Surreality	9,392 + 1,614		$4.30 + $6.17
	Saber Duel	118,592 + 3,134		$50.40 + $7.68
	Ice-9	893,897 + 18,953		$346.37 + $78.23

These are all from ad revenues. That's...pretty...sad. Heaven is cool, done mostly in a day, picked up because of/inspired by xkcd's comic. Was only able to finish it as quickly as I did because I had assets hanging around from Falling Up. Ditto Hell, only it's not so fun to play. (Whoah. I'd forgotten how well it did on Kongregate!) I finally learned Box2D for that one. The one that really started it all was Ice-9, done in an all-nighter when I couldn't sleep. Posted it immediately, and learned the hard way that there are many things you have to do to make a game seem polished. Somehow it's the most fun game out of any of them (or it hit that magic "exposure" sweet spot--Mindjolt helped a lot with that, but I think Memory Shell Game and Saber Duel both had the Mindjolt treatment as well). Part of it could be the market was a lot less saturated way, way, way back then (1,066 days ago), but it wasn't, really. There were huge, well-established portals, gluts of games, etc. So...beginner's luck. And it's been haunting me ever since. ;) All told, I think I'm looking at under fifty cents an hour. Definitely a hobby. I like to think of them (and many other similar sorts of things) as lottery tickets.

And hey, apparently I never posted "Hate! Hate! Hate!" on Kongregate. Maybe I should...I think I stalled out on wanting to fix a few things and then was unable to recompile (because I was using some time-limited software for a contest). But hey, better than nothing, right? Right...? Hmm. Maybe.

It's a good thing other people are able to monetize my programming skills better than I directly am, and compensate me for those. *cough* Though it's a much cheaper hobby than GUD Magazine....

It was the look in your father’s eyes that finally convinced me. Not that you were homely, or that the dowry was lacking—but I saw he was offering you out of love, not hate.

I’m not sure you could recognize that at the time; you wanted to, that was plain in your face, even under your tears, but there’s only so much a young heart can process.

But the ones that come from love have a much richer taste, are much more trusting and malleable. I try not to abuse that trust, and I like to think that’s why they still come to me. I take the beds price and put it back into the community, making sure your father and sisters prosper; making sure your son is provided for. And you let me live on; in spirit and in flesh. And I let you out, every so many years: unlock that little door in your head, so you can see and speak without me as a filter, when you visit your father, your sisters, your son.

Just remember what they’ve done for you; and you for them. Love them, but come back when you’re done. Because there always others we must save from the mores of your society; until it grows up.

Open to any thoughts on what I might be able to do with this. :)

today I... (repetitions deleted; ablutions/cleansing ignored)

* followed up on an antho project
* had an interview
* got excited
* got depressed
* went to work; on the way played words with friends, hanging with friends, chess with friends
* read up a little on Scala, Haskell, Clojure
* had coffee
* discussed interviewing
* looked at Haskell gamedev libraries
* installed haskell and clojure
* remembered I wanted to make music with some programming language I've forgotten the name of
* reviewed some short fiction
* thought about Amy
* worked on a bug with my installation of exim
* played with CMake, git, and our build system
* discussed short and long fiction
* "soccer juggled"
* snacked on a broad spectrum of healthy/unhealthy things
* angsted over some games I'm in the middle of writing and/or planning
* re-researched the state of interactive fiction; TADS is looking long in the tooth, Inform7 is looking pretty sweet!
* answered a crap-ton of email, including responding to a query re: interactive fiction
* thought about iPhone dev
* played left 4 dead 2
* went to the store to get some more pasta sauce
* caught up some with an old friend
* read a few tutorials on getting started with Amazon EC2...and RDP...
* made dinner / ate
* read up on twitter's and flickr's approaches to super-fast, unique, high-access id generation
* browsed through all of twitter's github repos; noticed a ton of Scala....
* installed roundcube
* fixed an obscure error with classes.thegradekeeper.com
* worked on gudmagazine.com
* said goodnight to Amy
* installed a better ISO ripper; and then Virtual CloneDrive to test it (for some FPGA-type-stuffs)
* thought about brains
* thought about PICs
* thought about a handful of other programming projects I want to be working on
* thought about PhDs
* worried about a chapbook that seems to have lost all possibility of momentum
* made a list; which surely missed something, including "the point".

aside: still working on server woes (am at work, waiting to hear on a few things). definitely have db backed up as of may 18, trying to get more recent. also: back from my vacation! It was brilliant. I still need a *break* though. Especially with the server *(#&$(#*$^#(.

http://www.leahpetersen.com/2011/07/5minutefiction-week-60/

When the piano dropped, the crowd inhaled as one, all thoughts of laughter scared away by concern. They looked at one another for permission or understanding. Did that just happen?

A muffled voice crawled out from under the wreckage, hazy and wavering: "Ouch...."

Stage lights spiraled around catching dust motes and ivory keys alike.

The crowd cheered as the announcer boomed, "Welcome, one and all, to the fortress of folly, the jack of no trades and slave of all, miiiiiiiiiiister—"

The speakers went out with a high-pitch squeal. The crowd groaned, then chuckled as the squeal ended and explosions went off behind the scenes.

Another piano dropped on the first, and then a third. The crowd stood, clapping and shouting.

A body dropped onto of the wreckage, its support harness obviously cut. The crowd cheered louder than ever until the theater manager came out, sobbing and telling them to disperse.