I have just changed the settings disabling anonymous comments. We have had a lot of spammers recently, and this is the only real option we have to limit this.

We will be running a short workshop on programming Android native apps. It will happen from 2PM-5PM on the 15th and 16th of June (Wednesday and Thursday) in lab G21. 

The purpose of this workshop is to create a (very) simple Android game from which participants can create their own (not-so-simple) games, as well as having skills for other applications.

The code will be based on the code structure of my two games Rune Escape and BoB lite,and they are examples of two very different games that has been created on top of this code basis.

To get the full benefit of this you should come to both sessions, and you should have plenty of programming experience  (preferable with Java using Eclipse, but that is not a requirement.)

You register by making a comment on this blog post, and what degree you are doing (and the year if undergraduate).

YOU CAN FIND THE TUTORIAL AT: http://oster-lundqvist.com/karsten/?p=4886

I published another game of mine yesterday evening. It is called Rune Escape, it is a fast paced Mahjong style game.

The twist is, that the game is Adfreeable, which means that players can gain awards from in-game achievements and by fighting other players. If they win 70 Rune Awards the game will become adfree.

I don't know how it could have skipped my mind, but it was pointed out to me today by the ITNG personel that I hadn't told RedGloo of my Android game I've just released. So if you want to see the fruits of my winter hobby code, then go to:

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.karlund.ballslite

or search for "bob lite" in the Android market.

It's a game that mixes the game dynamics of Labyrinth and Pool. You control the red ball using the accelerometers and the aim is to pot the red ball. THere are several game modes, Classic with no time constraints (except for scoring higher), Rush and Attack both have a time limit...

I'd really like feedback if you have any...

I've just exported all of my posts here to my personal blog at oster-lundqvist.com/karsten

The export worked fine, and I only had to do a minimum of changes to remove some broken links and decide what to do with a few private/protected blog posts.

Student Essay Competition

Win £300 and have your work published

"'Flexible learning' is a current buzz phrase; how do you envisage the perfect flexible learning course?"

The Higher Education Academy's Information and Computer Science Subject Centre, is inviting students the chance to submit their opinions and experiences in an essay or podcast/vidcast form. This opportunity is open to anyone studying Computing or Library and Information Science as part of their higher education course. International students studying at a UK institution are more than welcome to enter. However, UK or non-UK students studying at institutions outside of the UK are unfortunately not eligible for the award.

The competition asks if students can express their views and write a 1,000-word essay or record a five-minute podcast/vidcast on: "'Flexible learning' is a current buzz phrase; how do you envisage the perfect flexible learning course?".

Further details can be found at the following url: http://www.ics.heacademy.ac.uk/student_central/competition_essay_details11.htm

Deadline for entries is Thursday 31st March 2011

In the recent Mac celebration of innovation, that normal geeks think of as a release announcement, Jobs claimed about touch screen UI:"We've done tons of user testing on this, and it turns out it doesn't work," adding that "touch surfaces want to be horizontal."

Now I find that astounding! First of all I have at many occasions used my Android phone while being vertical! Actually daily, if not 90% of the time I use it!

I've also used my tablet PC - sorry iPad isn't that innovative in my mind as I have had tablets for 5 years now - in vertical positions, heck even in reverse horizontal positions (as in in bed upside down!)

I have even found myself sat in front of my linux box pointing at windows to move them - yes, it didn't work - but it showed to me that using the fingers on my vertical screens would actually not fell that foreign, actually it would feel quite natural.

Am I really that different from other people?! Am I that geeky, that I can use my super geeky powers in such innovative ways that I can put my greasy fingers on a vertical screen and expect it to move stuff? Apparently! Or has this position by Jobs something to do with Microsoft's patents pre-dating Apple's patents on this, trying to avoid patent wars? I think the latter, and I would have liked Jobs to be upfront about it. I'd actually have praised him for it!!

Twitter has recently changed their authentication method, so that they only support oauth now. This has recently broken the twitter feed on redgloo. The reasoning behind oauth is to allow service A to access service B's information on behalf users to embed it into service A.

This is not exactly what we do here, and although we definitely can use oauth, it seems a little convoluted just to receive what effectively is an rss feed on the front page. Therefore I decided to look at the rss route. Twitter however is not really helpful when it comes to rss feeds of tweets from a user's friends. They want you to authenticate the access to the feed using basic authentication, which they have removed from their site, thus no authentication is provided!

Not sure if I should spend the time - which I don't really have - on oauth, or take the easy option and wait until they fix their rss auth problem...

You might have noticed that the twitter feed on the frontpage of RedGloo has stopped updating, showing some old tweets.

This is due to a change in Twitter authentication, so that they only authenticate against the oauth method. This is probably a good change - unfortunately - it isn't the one we used. I need to change this, which I will do once I have time, probably taking me into next week.

I've finalised the WP export feature, you'll be able to find it in the menu above your personal blog.

This video will show in detail how to use it.