Archive for January, 2008
January 27, 2008 at 10:15 am · Filed under Sprites
I was using some of my new found Google searching skills which I learned in a previous article
Searching Google for Tutorials to find a couple of free sprites for you.
Philipp Lenssen created around 700 fantasy-themed avatar images a couple of years ago which he is releasing under the Creative Commons Licence. There is a large variety of sprites facing every direction, I have put a random sampling above, and I have LINKED it here for archival purposes (so many times I have found great sprites only to go back a couple of months later to find they are gone, since these are releases under Creative Commons Licence they are free to share and distribute).
Trying to find none ripped sprites which are free is kind of hard, after a bit more searching I came arcross a contact sheet full of Worms sprites. Click here to view the whole thing, above is a small above is a small sampling. Full credit to Egnio and more is on the spite contact sheet.
While searching for more sprites, I found a great website that is had a couple of Charset Generators (above is one I created) the one I tried is cool, you get to choose the Body, Hairstyle, Items, Face, etc. Quit cool, check it out. Also found a Faceset Generator and Battleset Generator at the same site.
Lastly I found a bunch of great sprites at The_Protagonist’s Domain I have pasted a couple of them above, as you can see they are very good quality, you can find a contact sheet on the site.
January 18, 2008 at 12:14 pm · Filed under Tutorial
This is going to be a listing of my Top 5
Online Education Resources, amongst the links I provide, there are thousands upon thousands of links to sites with Education Resources. As you can see with just the first 3 links I provide have over 500 links to Free Learning on the web.
First site that has a great listing of 200 Free Online Classes to Learn Anything is from the Online Education Database website. This is a great resource if you are looking to learn something from Natural Science, Math, Engineering and Computer Science, Language, Arts & Design, Health, Agriculture & Veterinary Medicine, Law & Politics, Social Science, History, Theology, Business & Finance, Family & Education, plus more. You have to love the online world when you can get some much education, as a free simple download.
Also from Online Education Database I found another great page containing the Top 100 Open Courseware Projects. They break down the list into sections, check out which ever you are interested in : Agriculture , Arts , Architecture , Archaeology , Audio & Video , Biology , Botany , Chemistry , Civil Engineering , Economics , Electronic Engineering , General Engineering , Earth Sciences , Geography & Geology , History , Languages & Linguistics , Law , Literature , Mechanical Engineering , Paleontology , Physics , Political Science , Psychology and Social Sciences.
Seems Online Education Database is a awesome resource on its own, maybe I should just make the whole post about them =) another great page I found on there site is 236 Open Courseware Collections, Podcasts, and Videos find subjects on Archives , Broadcast Learning , Directories & Searches , eBooks & eTexts , Encyclopedias , Open Courseware - University , Open Courseware , Podcasts - University , Podcasts - Other , Research , Videos - Universities , Videos - Other , Video, Directories & Searches.
Now lets finally leave OED and go onto some other great resources. This next one is I believe 1 of the first big ones out from the smart people over at MIT. Check out MITOPENCOURSEWARE website where you will find thousands of full courseware downloads from tonnes of different subjects. Here is a quick link to all 1800 courses they offer, and a quote from there front page :
MIT is committed to advancing education and discovery through knowledge open to everyone. OCW shares free lecture notes, exams, and other resources from more than 1800 courses spanning MIT’s entire curriculum.
Lastly is the OpenLearningInitiative from Carnegie Mellon. Although not as huge as the others, it is a good resource for introductory College level courses. A quote from there front page :
How theory, strategies, and methods from the learning sciences are applied to the design of open learning environments and how the use and evaluation of those environments inform the learning sciences.
January 15, 2008 at 1:03 pm · Filed under Tutorial, Web Development
If you have ever been frustrated trying to find just the right color for a webpage or image you are working on, these next couple of links are for you.
I found an excellent FREE Advanced HTML Color Picker which is pretty amazing. It lets you add a small icon or text link to the website so that you can see right off the bat if the color you are picking is good. A small unobtrusive box opens up with sliders and such that let you change the colors, and you can see the color changing before your eyes. Great little app, and easy to install into you webpage.
A couple of other posts from ColourLovers.com that I found usefull are : 32 Common Color Names for Easy Reference and Ultimate HTML Color Hex Code List.
After digging into the site a bit, besides the post links above, I believe ColourLovers.com is an all round excellent resource for choosing colors. They let there users create Color Palettes and Patterns and even provide you downloads in several different formats (PS, HTML, etc.) If you click on a Color Palette for example a page will load up showing you the particular Color Palette, and then breaks down each color with HEX and RGB code. This site is great. You could find a nice Palette and have all the HEX and RGB codes you need to make up a website with.
I made a small Web Safe Colors page myself a long long time ago which I would keep on my desk when ever I was developing a website.
January 3, 2008 at 2:10 pm · Filed under Python, Tutorial
Doing my usual rounds, checking for new Tutorials, and found a bunch new ones I have seen before. Most are very good for Newbs looking to get into Game Programming in
Python/
Pygame.
First off I found a nice 6 part tutorial on Keeping it Small and Simple website, webmaster is a self professed lazy bones, which most of us developers can understand =) He takes it very slow and simple, and you really should not feel rushed at all when checking out his tutorials. Step by Step for total beginners. Check out PyGame Tutorial Part 1 - Getting Started :: PyGame Tutorial Part 2 - Drawing Lines :: PyGame Tutorial Part 3 - Mouse Events :: PyGame Tutorial Part 4 - More on Events :: PyGame Tutorial Part 5 - Pixels :: PyGame Tutorial Part 6 - From Pixel to Worm
Next I found dCafe which lists a bunch of Python Programming Ebooks, a great resource of ebooks and site links.
Couple others :
January 1, 2008 at 2:48 pm · Filed under Perl, Tutorial
Recently I had the good fortune of being sent on a Perl Course and I must say I have much respect for this robust scripting language. It is very versatile, and I like that since I know C programming, I understood and could follow the code during the course. After reading a bit more, I find that Larry Wall (Perl inventor) actually wrote Perl and derived from C as well as a couple of Unix utilities such as sed, awk, etc.
Below is a couple of quotes that can explain what Perl is better then I, so read ahead, then check out the tutorials.
To borrow a quote from Doug Sheppard (see his Beginner tutorial links below) explaning what PERL is :
Perl is the Swiss Army chainsaw of scripting languages: powerful and adaptable. It was first developed by Larry Wall, a linguist working as a systems administrator for NASA in the late 1980s, as a way to make report processing easier. Since then, it has moved into a large number of roles: automating system administration, acting as glue between different computer systems; and, of course, being one of the most popular languages for CGI programming on the Web.
And another quote explaining Perl taken from the documentation :
Perl is a high-level programming language with an eclectic heritage written by Larry Wall and a cast of thousands. It derives from the ubiquitous C programming language and to a lesser extent from sed, awk, the Unix shell, and at least a dozen other tools and languages. Perl’s process, file, and text manipulation facilities make it particularly well-suited for tasks involving quick prototyping, system utilities, software tools, system management tasks, database access, graphical programming, networking, and world wide web programming. These strengths make it especially popular with system administrators and CGI script authors, but mathematicians, geneticists, journalists, and even managers also use Perl. Maybe you should, too.
Beginners Introduction to Perl Part 1 :: Part 2 :: Part 3 :: Part 4 :: Part 5 :: Part 6 by Doug Sheppard over at Perl.com
Perl 5 Tutorial (PDF) by Chan Bernard Ki Hong
Perl and CGI by Abby Buell
Compilation of Perl Documentation (large file 6+ megs)
Although not for beginners you should know that there is a large repository of everything that is Perl over at CPAN (Comprehensive Perl Archive Network). Before you start writing modules and such, head on over to CPAN and see if someone else has already written or is doing what you want to do, and just download the module and link it to your Perl script. There are tonnes and tonnes of excellent modules located here that let you do almost anything. Once you start really getting into Perl, this site it a must.
Glass Text Tutorial
UFC Blood Sport Logo
Blue and Chrome Text
Darkness Logo
Versus Inspired Logo
