Author Archives: rob

Highcharts Treemap jsfiddle

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I’ve been working with Highcharts a bit and they recently came out with a pretty cool Treemap chart. Here is a JSFiddle of a treemap that has a breadcrumb-style navigation (Treemap comes with a built-in navigation button, but it’s not super customizable). I built this one using BackboneJS.

http://jsfiddle.net/roblacy/4sb8vb1m/

The data comes from my cupcake post from last year and shows a breakdown of the number of free cupcakes that have ganache (instead of frosting) by day of the week each month.

Ozric’s Hole to China Rewrite

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A few weeks after I completed the first draft of my children’s book, Ozric’s Hole to China, I started a first-person version just to see how it would compare. I completed three chapters and actually liked the result quite a bit. It still needs work (I’m an amateur writer, so this pretty much goes without saying) but I think it’s an improvement over the original.

If you happen to have read OHTC, or at least the first few chapters, I’d love to hear what you think of this version. I added it to the main Ozric page, and here is a direct link: Ozric Rewrite Ch. 1-3

If You Like Frosting, Go to Georgetown Cupcake on Monday

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On a chilly Friday in March, my coworker, Bekah, wrapped up my team’s daily status meeting with our new ritual: she opened Georgetown Cupcake’s twitter feed for the secret flavor of the day. This cupcake would be given away, free, to the first 100 customers who ordered it by name. Running on just a cup of coffee, I waited to see if this could be a plausible snack to hold me over until lunch. “Chocolate Ganache Surpise,” Bekah read, as I shook my head and wandered back to my desk.

cupcakes

But wait, why was I turning down free cupcakes? Wouldn’t it be delicious? Well, yes, all of Georgetown’s offerings are superb, and they brew a solid cup of Illy coffee. During our early days of cupcake freeloading, I would have happily made the trip across the street. But by that point I had learned to skip ganache days.

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Pit Game Engine

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I recently wrote a game engine for the card game “Pit” and posted it to my Github.

Pit Deluxe (from Amazon.com page)

The Card Game

Pit is a commodities trading card game. It’s quite fun, and good for groups up to eight. Even though I only recently learned of it, the game has actually been around since 1904, when it was first sold by Parker Brothers. The game play involves trading cards with other players until you complete a set of nine of the same card, at which point you yell out (or ring the bell) and declare that you have cornered the market and won the round. Trading consists of yelling out offers and making deals to exchange cards (blind, and always for the same number of cards) with other players. It can be quite hectic, and is probably something like an actual commodities trading floor.

Wikipedia Page
Rules (I use the bull/bear variant)
Boardgame Geek Page
Buy from Amazon.com

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Boston Bus Map Android App

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screen shot of BostonBusMap app On Friday I downloaded a new app for my android phone: Boston Bus Map. It’s a free app that uses the MassDOT xml feed to show current bus locations and give estimates for arrivals at a given stop.

I have only just begun using the app, but so far I find it very cool & useful. I brought up the 77 route, which runs near my house, and got a google map with an overlay showing the location and direction of each bus on the route. Tapping on a bus shows a little pop-up window with the bus id, route name/number, exact heading, and number of seconds since the last update.

Like many people in the Boston area, I often have two or three ways to get from point A to point B, and knowing exactly how long it will be until the next bus will be a great help in deciding the best way to go. At some point I’m going to go sit at my nearby bus stop and try to get a feel for how accurate the data really is.

BostonBusMap has a…
web page
twitter account
developer blog

Cuervo Games Boston

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Here are pics from my camera for yesterday’s Cuervo Games in downtown Boston. I joined team Red’s Army in the blog/media category. We didn’t win (didn’t even get to finish the final event because they ran out of time) but had a great time, and made up for it w/ free drinks & apps at the bar afterwards.

Other people were also taking photos, and I’ll try to get a copy of those and upload them as well.

Cuervo Games Boston

Gravatar Created

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I just set up a profile on Gravatar, which was easy since it made use of my existing WordPress.com account.

Gravatar is a service that automatically adds a profile photo any time you comment or post on a blog/website/forum that supports it. You create an account, register your e-mail address (or multiple addresses), and upload a photo. After that, your photo will appear whenever you use your e-mail address when commenting/posting. This includes sites (like mine) that require commenters to provide an e-mail address, but do not display it to the public.

Pretty cool!