Text or graphics? Buttons on an HTML5 canvas
It is fairly easy to draw text and graphics to the screen with the HTML5 <canvas> element, but which is best for making buttons or links? Today, I will go over the pros and cons of each approach and how they affect collision detection.
BlazeBlogger-mod officially uploaded, an update on VECTOR
I finally decided to upload my modified version of BlazeBlogger to GitHub. For now, I’m just calling it BlazeBlogger-mod. Please note that it’s not a complete fork, just the scripts I modified. To use them, backup the scripts from the official package and drop in the modified versions. I had to modify BlazeBlogger so that it would generate valid HTML5 documents, as the canvas tag is apparently not supported in the XHTML 1.0 Strict specification (won’t validate).
Easy GPG encryption for msmtp and OfflineIMAP
Msmtp, and OfflineIMAP make a great and speedy combination for sending and retrieving mail, and you always have an offline copy of your messages. Just about the only major problem is that everything is in plain text, including passwords. If you don’t specify your account passwords in the config files, then you have to enter them for each account every time the programs run. If you use e-mail a lot, than this can be a real pain. Let’s do something about that.
VECTOR engine half finished!
Most of the major components for VECTOR are now working! This includes collision detection, object spawning, and scoring. Keep in mind that the game is still far from finished, but right now, it is playable. You can find the repo on GitHub (button in the sidebar). I encourage everyone to check it out and let me know what you think. An official VECTOR site section is on the way too.
Changing my nick and installing Trisquel 6.0
This month, I decided to change my online nick to TuxRag3r, and I have been busy bouncing from site to site, editing profile information, user names, posts, pages, and other things manually to reflect this change. Unfortunately, there really is no such thing as a global name change on the Internet. I also threw out CrunchBang and replaced it with Trisquel 6.0 and full disk encryption.
Extending BlazeBlogger with custom post footers
Thanks to Jaromir Hradilek’s comments in the blaze-config and blaze-make utilities, I finally managed to add a new feature to BlazeBlogger: custom post footer code!. It is now possible to specify an append file, the contents of which will be added to the bottom of every post. That means you can now add code for Disqus, share buttons, a custom comment form, or just a simple footer.
Textile, the Markdown killer
I’ve been looking for a Markdown replacement, and I think Textile fits the bill nicely. Like Markdown, Textile supports lists, links, code, emphasis, and images. Unlike Markdown, Textile also supports tables, in-line class and id attributes, in-line CSS rules, and a few other features. More features translates into a greater chance of getting things right the first time, especially for tools like BlazeBlogger.
A quick update on VECTOR and this site
I haven’t posted in a while and with good reason. I’ve been busy working on VECTOR, cleaning up the code for this site, and researching other tools I can use to make the whole experience less painful for writing. If you look at the sidebar and at the end of every post, you’ll see that the AddThis buttons are gone. I removed them for a few reasons. First, the buttons are implemented using non-free code, something that I try to avoid using as much as possible. They also seem to cause problems with the W3C Markup Validation Service, and as far as I know, they don’t support themes.
VECTOR starting up again
Some of you may be wondering why I haven’t posted in a while. Well, I caught the flu last week and that basically left me in no condition to write. Just about the only computer-related thing I did was watch videos and read news articles on TableTop. I eventually stumbled across an excellent HTML5 game development tutorial series by Gyrostorm. When I saw that he wasn’t using any fancy libraries, I immediately bookmarked his YouTube page.
An update on operating systems
A while back, I started searching for something to replace Ubuntu. Well, I decided to go with the 64-bit version of Linux Mint 14 for Thor, and leave the Debian Edition of Mint on the D520, which I have decided to call TableTop. I also decided to kick Puppy Linux and Tiny Core to the curb and install CrunchBang 11 Waldorf on my Cruzer Fit flash drive. Puppy Linux and Tiny Core are great for their intended purposes, but for making a dedicated “dev drive”, I found them both to have too many limits. In the end, it was easier to just use a “normal” desktop distribution as a base and go from there.
