JorgeBlogs

Guitar Center Coming to College Station

Sat, 23 Jun 2012 22:48:17 +0000

I don’t know when, but we must have been deemed awesome enough to get a Guitar Center in College Station. That’s cool. They are building out the old Circuit City building. The one on Harvey Road. I will be visiting…if nothing else, just to drool over the shiny instruments. I love checking out instruments in music stores. I’m that guy that walks into a music store and starts playing an impromptu song.

Check out my latest album at http://jorgegoyco.bandcamp.com. My family and I made some folksy music. You will like it…and you’ll want to share it. It’s a free download.

So, in the meantime, while we wait for Guitar Center to open, go visit Lipmann Music and Guitar Studio for your instrumental needs.

Don’t forget about the local guys. Brian Lippman from Lippman Music and Bobby Schilling from Guitar Studio are really great guys. They have been here for a long time, and they always are willing to help find a solution for your musical instrument needs.

Sure, Guitar Center is a big store and it’s got the space and a whole bunch of instruments, but remember the local guys.

Moving to Another Website

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 18:38:56 +0000

Hello reader. Thanks for reading. Hey, I am moving my blog to another website. I bought the url “lifeinbcs.com” and have set it up. I’ve moved all the past posts, and have even written several others by the time you read this.

I have been wanting to have the blog have its own domain name for a while, and this seemed like as good a time as any.

So, if you found this site, head on over to LifeInBCS.com for more interesting reading and restaurant reviews and stuff.

Same guy writing it, just an easier name to remember…Life In BCS!

See you there.

Mamma Mia! Coming to College Station February 22-24, 2011

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 23:03:39 +0000

I grew up listening to Abba. I remember going on road trips with my family and Abba was a staple, as was the BeeGees, Simon and Garfunkle, John Denver, Niel Diamond, Men at Work and, surprisingly, Eddy Grant (of Electric Avenue fame).

I think I roller skated faster when Abba songs came on.

Later, in college, I met a girl (who later became my wife) who liked Abba. I like to imagine her in roller skates with disco lights, boogying around a skating rink.

So, I’m sure you have heard of the Broadway play that was made using Abba songs, right? If you haven’t, well…there was a Broadway musical made using Abba songs. Then later a movie. The movie was pretty huge and the musical was a massive hit. In fact, it’s in it’s twelfth year. That’s a long time. In fact, it’s currently number 11 on the Wiki list of longest running plays. Before you hit that link, can you guess which one is number one? (I guessed Cats, but I was wrong).

Well, MSC OPAS is bringing Mamma Mia! to College Station on February 22-24. Cool. I am taking my wife. We are excited! We haven’t seen the movie so it will be new to us.

Truth is, we have never been to Rudder Theater to see any plays, so this is exciting.

I was told that they will be unveiling the events for the coming 39th season on Thursday, April 28th at 6:30pm via a 30-minute TV program on KBTX. Cool.

MSC OPAS stands for Memorial Student Center Opera and Performing Arts Society – OPAS is a committee within TAMU’s Memorial Student Center. It is unique because the board of directors in comprised of community leaders and TAMU students.

When OPAS was founded, there was an opera every season. As the years passed, opera companies stopped touring as much and became extremely expensive when they did tour. The organization’s name was shortened to just MSC OPAS about ten years ago when it became apparent that including an opera every season was not possible.

I asked them what the biggest show they ever did was. They said it was when they presented the world premiere of the Bolshoi Grigorovich Ballet Company performing The Nutcracker, Nov 23-Dec 1, 1990. 21,000+ tickets were sold. This was a huge international story that resulted in OPAS being mentioned in The New York Times’ Arts Section. OPAS has also had sold out performances featuring Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, Emmanuel Ax, RENT, RIVERDANCE and a week of LES MISERABLES.

Their first show was classical guitarist Christopher Parkening on November 3, 1973.

I was told that parking is convenient and FREE (nice) and right across the street. Awesome.

So, the Mamma Mia! story goes like this:

An independent, single mother who owns a small hotel on an idyllic Greek island, Donna is about to let go of Sophie, the spirited daughter she’s raised alone. For Sophie’s wedding, Donna has invited her two lifelong best girlfriends—practical and no-nonsense Rosie and wealthy, multi-divorcee Tanya – from her one-time backing band, Donna and the Dynamos. But Sophie has secretly invited three guests of her own.

On a quest to find the identity of her father to walk her down the aisle, she brings back three men from Donna’s past to the Mediterranean paradise they visited 20 years earlier. Over 24 chaotic, magical hours, new love will bloom and old romances will be rekindled on this lush island full of possibilities.

Inspired by the storytelling magic of ABBA’s songs from “Dancing Queen” and “S.O.S.” to “Money, Money, Money” and “Take a Chance on Me,” MAMMA MIA! is a celebration of mothers and daughters, old friends and new family found.

Produced by Judy Craymer, Richard East and Björn Ulvaeus for Littlestar in association with Universal, the creative team responsible for bringing MAMMA MIA! to theatrical life includes some of the most gifted and celebrated talents of musical theatre and opera. With music and lyrics by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, MAMMA MIA! is written by Catherine Johnson and directed by Phyllida Lloyd. MAMMA MIA! has choreography by Anthony Van Laast, production design by Mark Thompson, lighting design by Howard Harrison, sound design by Andrew Bruce and Bobby Aitken, and musical supervision, additional material and arrangements by Martin Koch.

More info about Mamma Mia! and the North American Tour here.

And here is a link to the Crew that are coming.

So, get your tickets soon. Should be a great show. I’ll let you know what I think of Mamma Mia!, the Rudder Theatre and the experience as a whole. Here’s the Wiki page in case you want to learn more before you go.

Flowers Family Benefit Concert – Friday, Feb 11, 2011

Fri, 11 Feb 2011 16:00:59 +0000

I’m sure many of you have heard by now of the tragedy that happened to a local family. 4 boys lost their mother, then a few months later lost their dad. The grandmother has come down and is working on adopting them and taking them to her home in Colorado.

Here’s an exerpt from The Eagle:

It’s hard enough for a child to lose one parent, but the loss can seem almost insurmountable when both a mother and father pass away in rapid succession.

That’s the fate that befell four College Station brothers — all under the age of 15 — who lost their mother, Kim Flowers, in October and whose father, Nolan Flowers, died earlier this month.

Kim was just 34, and the cause of her death has not been determined. Nolan, who was 42, suffered a fatal heart attack.

Kim Flowers’ mother, Susan Solich, says the boys are coping, but she worries about the long-term effects of the loss.

“The tragedy is four little boys losing their parents,” the grandmother said.

But the double blow has been softened somewhat by the outpouring of support for the four Flowers children — 14-year-old Brandon, 12-year-old Justin, 9-year-old Tyler and 6-year-old Conner.

You may have also heard about the benefit BBQ that happened a couple of weeks ago at the Kroger on Rock Prairie, where they raise $36,000. This is pretty amazing. Well, there is another opportunity to donate to the family, as well as enjoy some live local music.

Lifechurch is hosting a benefit tonight (Friday, February 11, 2011) to benefit the Flowers family. There are 6 musical performers ranging from a bells choir to a metal band, and everywhere in between. The performers are the PGM Choir, Elmo Weedon, Etched In Stone, Brothers In Arms, Behold The Great Throne and a Special Guest.

Local chefs (including Chef Denise from The Lemon Wedge and Chef Shawn from St. Joseph’s) will be donating chili for a chili cookoff. Come and taste and vote. Here’s an article we wrote about The Lemon Wedge.

Starbucks will have a barrista serving up yumminess and there will be other concessions and band merchandise. Most or all proceeds will go to the Flowers family.

Project Yogurt (which is just around the corner from LifeChurch) is donating 30% of their sales during the concert. Try the chocolate. It’s really really good. So is the cheesecake.

There will be a silent auction as well.

This will be a great time to hang out with friends, enjoy some great music, and know that you are helping a family cope with loss.

Cover charge is $5. Doors open at 6pm. Bands will be playing all night…probably through midnight.

Chili will be served until it’s gone. Same with Starbucks. I believe the way it’s going to work is that coffee is free, but you can donate for it if you want. Chili tasting is free as well, and I believe you will need to “purchase” a ballot to vote…something like that.

LifeChurch is in the Tejas Center on Villa Maria and Texas Avenue…behind the JoAnn Fabrics…right next to the Theater Company.

I was told the kids were really looking forward to the concert. I am too.

Benefit Dance Concert for Slum in South Africa

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 17:30:08 +0000

This Friday, Feb 4, several dance and musical performers (including the Chara Christian Dance Company) will be dancing at the Bottlebrush Benefit Concert at Life Church in Bryan. This event features local and out-of-town dance and music performers and groups. The event is free and starts at 6:30.

The purpose of the event is to raise money for Bottlebrush, which is a slum in Durban, South Africa.

For more information visit the facebook event.

Bottlebrush is a slum located in Durban, South Africa. It is the biggest slum area in Durban and 50% of children there suffer from HIV. The concert consists of dancers and musicians performing throughout the night! T-shirts will be sold for $10. This event is free.

All proceeds from the benefit concert will go directly to the Bottlebrush area to help pay for meals, medical assistance, community center renovations, etc.

We’re going to be a part of something so amazing… helping those in need of course! The weather won’t cancel this!

Coffee, Tea, & Hot Chocolate will be sold for $1 a cup, and bottlebrush Tshirts are $10! Any money you give tonight goes straight to the kids in Bottlebrush.

I asked Connie Templin (who has put this benefit concert together) some questions and she graciously answered:

Why Bottlebrush?
Africa was the first place besides the U.S. I had ever been, and Bottlebrush was the first real life “ghetto” or “slum” I had ever spent time in. Bottlebrush spoke to my heart after spending days with barefoot kids, no running water, shacks that served as houses, and glass covered roads. Of all the nationalities represented in Africa this summer, Americans were the minority. I knew I wanted to share this to everyone I could to raise awareness.

What was your experience at Bottlebrush?
My experience was nothing short of eye opening. I grew up so privileged and to see kids without the simple necessities I take for granted, it really broke my heart. It made me appreciate so many simple things in life.

Why Dance?
Dance has been in my life since I was 2. I always danced in a Christian dance studio, and I’ve always been taught to use my talents for the Lord and ministry. It’s so powerful! Dance can illustrate so much and if someone watches a dance and says ” I didn’t get it, until I saw that dance”…. that’s when I know it makes a difference. When I was in Africa we used Dance, Music, and Theatre to reach out to the kids and it only seemed fitting to do it here too.

Is there something “extra” special we should expect? A new dance move or choreography?
We have a couple of special things going on tonight. We have one piece of choreography that illustrates a struggle, and is kind of deep. Most dances for a benefit might not have something so dark, but I wanted it to be realistic. Not everyone in Bottlebrush is singing praises to Jesus just yet, a lot of them have burdens and I wanted it to be represented. I am also using a lot of visual aids. Three of the main pieces have the words being played on the screen with some professional photos that were donated by local photographers. The songs we dance to have such powerful words and I wanted them to be tangible. I’ve haven’t seen a lot of dances with visual aids at the same time, so I think it’s pretty special.

What are some of the songs that will be danced to?
The piece that represents carrying burdens is called “Heavy in Your Arms” and the first line says, ” I was a heavy heart to carry, my beloved was weighed down.” I saw first hand and prayed for mothers that were broken, this song represents them. It’s also personal for me and the other dancers. We are dancing through our own struggles while we portray burdens in general. Pretty deep. The 3 main pieces we’re doing are all by Brooke Fraser, who is an avid mission worker. “Orphans, Kingdoms” “Albertine” and “Flags” are the songs we are using. I suggest looking up the words to Flags if you have time, it’s like poetry. The final line, of the final song tonight states, ” I know the last shall be first.” Which is what our prayer is for Bottlebrush. [check out a youtube video of Flags with lyrics]

Who are the musical performers?
The musical performers are all my friends from random areas of my life! 2 girls, Liza Linney and Michelle Prichard, I know from 5th grade and they moved here to attend TAMU are singing tonight, each of which are amazing and are trying to pursue music. Wesley Taylor, Aubrey Hunt, and Rylee Owens are “Young Life” pals and they play around the BCS area on a normal basis. I know Wesley from High School and the other two girls attend Life Church. Will Agnor is our opener tonight, he is one of my friend’s that I acquired through his wife and he isn’t performing he’s “singing to Jesus with his eyes closed.” The John Family, drove all the way from Colorado to be here and they are natives of South Africa! Pastor Dennis started the feeding program in Bottlebrush, and he’s the one that raised awareness about Bottlebrush to Y.W.A.M. His children will be singing tonight as well.

Map for Lifechurch | Map of Bottlebrush, South Africa

Doors open at 6:00, hope to see you there!! :)

It’s Big Event 2011 Time! Whoop! March 26th!

Thu, 03 Feb 2011 23:25:46 +0000

As if there wasn’t enough to love our hometown Aggies for – this one takes the cake, in my opinion! THE BIG EVENT!

If you don’t know what it is, here’s how the official site describes it:

The Big Event is the largest, one-day, student-run service project in the nation where students of Texas A&M University come together to say “Thank You” to the residents of Bryan and College Station. For the past 28 years Aggie students have participated in this annual event to show their appreciation to the surrounding community by completing service projects such as yard work, window washing, and painting for community members. Although The Big Event has become the largest one-day, student-run service project in the nation, our message and our mission remains the same – to simply say “Thank You.”

This is the coolest thing ever! A bunch of energetic TAMU students coming to your house to lighten the load and take care of some things you just can’t seem to get around to – and all just to say “thank you”! Only in Aggieland.

We’ve only done this once since we moved to the Bryan College Station area 5 years ago. The first two years, we didn’t know about it! How is that possible? Then, last year, we didn’t get registered in time. Don’t let this happen to you.

I couldn’t find a deadline for this year on their website. I think this is because they can only take a limited number of applications, so it’s first come – first served. They started taking applications on January 12th. You can even register online now, so it’s super easy! Edit: OK, a reader pointed out that the deadline is on the application (thanks Kathryn!). Here’s what it says:

Due to limited resources, we will only be able to accept the first 1,500 jobs submitted before February 18, 2011.

When they came to our house in ’09, we had them do some wall-paper removal, painting and some yard work. The Big Event Committee sent out about 20 students to our house. In typical Aggie spirit, they had incredible attitudes and great work ethics. Those guys got the job done and then some. A couple of the guys decided that the “sink hole” we had going behind our backdoor needed to be filled in and leveled out. I guess we had some engineering students because they did a fantastic job!

So here they were, a bunch of guys and gals in a narrow hallway peeling 1980’s wall-paper, jamming out to some tunes and having a great time. My kids wandered through and chatted with these very kind and gracious students. The painters (no pictures of them – boo) were in two bedrooms dealing with paint fumes and ~~puke~~ moss green paint (just a little bit of “painter’s remorse” here). They did a great job with high ceilings, ladders, painter’s tape and kids running under-foot.

The students who worked the front shrubbery beds went over and above, as well! They made our poorly landscaped house actually have some curb-appeal!

We were told that it was not necessary to feed our volunteers but we provided sandwiches and chips and drinks for them anyway because we were so thankful! Then we got to sit around our living room with these kind, brilliant and enthusiastic young people and chat while they ate!

There’s lots of things they can help you with but they are not allowed to use any power tools. The things they can do are cleaning, painting, raking and other yard work, moving dirt and trimming trees. This year, we will be getting some much needed help with our yard. My grandmother always used to say “many hands make light work”. We’re so thankful to these generous students for helping lighten the load around our casa!

The Bryan College Station area is very blessed, indeed! God bless you, Aggies!

leigh

Gourmet Food from a Truck – Mobile Food Vendor – Chef Tai

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 16:37:07 +0000

Some of the best tacos I’ve ever had were from a taco truck. Now I can say that the best burger I’ve eaten, I purchased from a truck. Mind you, it was a Kobe Beef Burger. A Street Food Kobe Burger…in College Station…really?

What’s Kobe Beef? [wiki]

The Wagyu cattle that produce this highly prized meat were introduced into Japan in the second century as work animals, used in rice cultivation. As beef consumption became more prominent in society, farmers began hiring workers to massage the animals’ backsides to improve meat quality. The mountainous topography of the islands of Japan resulted in small regions of isolated breeding, yielding herds that developed and maintained qualities in their meat that differ significantly from all other breeds of cattle. Herd isolation and distinctive feeding techniques which resulted from the limited land availability have led to distinguishing features that make the meat both superior in marbling and in the ratios of unsaturated versus saturated fats.

I think it was my dad who first told me about the idea that Kobe cows are fed beer, but apparently, that is not correct. That’s kind of a bummer that it’s not true. My 8yo daughter was pretty fascinated that they fed the cows beer. I’ll break the news to her later.

She is actually becoming a burger connoisseur. She thought this burger was pretty fantastic…and it really was. So tasty and tender.

So, where did I get the Kobe burger from a truck? From Chef Tai.

Chef Tai is (I believe) the first Gourmet Food Truck in College Station. There are several taco trucks and ice cream trucks, but this is different.

Chef Tai (full name is Taisung Lee) hails from the Veritas Restaurant, and all of the menu items they offer from the truck are amazing. Everything is $8. We have had the Kobe Burger, the Burrito and the Tacos. We got the Short Ribs in the Burrito and I tried all three versions in the taco.

Choices:
Korean BBQ Short Rib
Pulled Pork with Sweet Chili BBQ
Caramelized Brussels Sprout & Tofu (VEGETARIAN)

These Brussel Sprouts were really tasty…and you can tell they are fresh. Consider tasting Chef Tai’s Brussel Sprouts. Really.

Where can you find him? You can go to Chef Tai’s website, get on his Facebook page or follow him on Twitter. Here’s what his website says for this week:

WEEK OF 1/31- 2/5:

LUNCH: 11:00 AM – 1:45 PM

MON: COPY CORNER, map
TUE: WELLS FARGO PLAZA, map
WED: CLOSED
THU: STATA, map
FRI: FEDEX KINKO’S, map
SAT: CHASE BANK, map

DINNER: 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM

MON: FEDSTAR CREDIT UNION, map
TUE: COPY CORNER, map
WED: CLOSED

Get the most up to date information on our Facebook & Twitter site or send me an email to be added on our detailed weekly email.

So, check it out, looks like Madden’s is going to start-up a Mobile Food Cart as well. I am hoping more restaurants get on this train. Austin has several…check out this website of some of Austin’s Food Carts.

This is a great article in the Austin Chronicle about starting up a Mobile Food Vendor Business.

Looks like there is some talk about changing the laws around town. As of the end of 2010, there was still a law stating that food vendors could only sell for 21 days in the year, and could not sell for more than 3 consecutive days. I’m researching on if that is still in effect. Also, it states that the cart cannot be parked closer than 300 feet from another restaurant and 100 feet from any Northgate Restaurants.

I think that if I was to start my own Mobile Food Cart, I would make it a Puertorican Cart. Bacalaitos, Tostones, Ropa Vieja, Rice and Beans, Mofongo, Empanadas, Pernil Sandwiches, Arroz con Gandules, Pasteles and maybe Cuban Grilled Sandwiches.

That sounds pretty good. I think that to make it as a Mobile Food Vendor, you’d have to offer a “different” kind of food than just tacos or BBQ. Just my thought anyway. An Indian food one would be great. Fuegos Tortilla Grill should do it too.

Wanting to start a Food Vendor Truck?

I spoke to Lauren Amelia Hovde ’06, Staff Planner (979-764-3570) at Planing and Development Services who is proposing changes to the Mobile Food Vendor Ordinance to the City Council on February 24th, and she sent me this:

The comments we have received from stakeholders have been most helpful in its development. The Planning and Zoning Commission will hear and take action on this ordinance on February 3 at 7:00 pm in Council Chambers. This proposed ordinance will then be taken to the City Council on February 24 at 7:00 pm in Council Chambers. Both meetings will be a public hearing, and you are welcomed and encouraged to come speak at both or either. Council Chambers is located on the southern end of City Hall at 1101 Texas Avenue, generally located across from Texas A&M. I have attached the revised ordinance as proposed by Staff that will be presented to the Planning and Zoning Commission and City Council. [Download the Proposed Revised Ordinance -Feb2Draft]

This Proposed Revised Ordinance basically makes it possible to operate a Food Vendor Truck year round, and states the restrictions, requirements and limitations. Pretty good reading. This is all coming up pretty quick, so go buy your truck.

So, you want a gourmet meal, check out Chef Tai’s Mobile Bistro around College Station.

Jorge – GoycoDesign.com

Comfort Food with Lots of Zest! The Lemon Wedge

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 22:52:12 +0000

Jorge’s wife here. He asked me to write about The Lemon Wedge, on Main Street in Bryan, since I’ve been there twice in the last week. Hey, when I like something I can get really focused. Don’t get me started on Froyoyo. Maybe I’ll post on that next. Jorge has a poll going about the yogurt shops in town – be sure to vote!

But I digress… So I’ve only been to the Wedge (yes, I’m a regular now, I can call it that) for lunch so far. The first thing I noticed was how easy it was to find as the front of the restaurant is painted a lovely, lemony yellow. Maybe someday they’ll get an artist to paint some trailing ivy or something along the sides. I think that would look nice. Unfortunately, they had a little trouble with construction last year but the road is fully open now! Yay!

The inside is as fresh and cheerful as the name Lemon Wedge itself. On my first visit, I sat by the window (this was at the request of my dear friend, who accompanied me, who has “seating issues” – as we like to call it) and was a very nice sunny spot in which to relax and enjoy lunch. My second visit (sans “seating issues” – different friend) was mid-way to the back in what the maitre d’ called the “hiding from the paparazzi” table. Large shuttered doors divided the area from the surrounding tables. It was cozy and quiet. Very nice.

On to the food! So far, I’ve tried the Whistler (a toasted brie sandwich with asparagus and Canadian bacon on ciabatta) which was recommended by the waiter. It was light yet satisfying and really delicious. It came with homemade potato chips! Who does that? No Lays bags laying around this kitchen.

I’ve also had the Green Chicken. The “green” is pesto. I LOVE pesto! It was served with tender crisp veggies and corn pudding. This was a comforting meal to me. I could eat like this every day.

Each time I went, we were served a small plate of fresh baked bread with butter while we perused the menu. The first time was pumpkin and the next was banana nut. So delicious!

As much as I try to stay away from desserts I couldn’t resist the Chocolate Chess pie. My friend and I shared it to reduce the guilt. It was served with fresh whipped cream, caramel sauce and a strawberry. I’m pretty sure it had a pecan shortbread crust but my mouth was too full to ask the server about that. It was gorgeous. Next time I’m trying the Mississippi Mud pie. I’m sure the “non-chocolate” pies are absolutely amazing but, well, I’m just one of those chocolate addicts you read about. I admit it. You’re welcome to comment on their other pies for me!

Scrumptious food. Delightful, quiet atmosphere. Attentive and courteous waitstaff. An amazing Chef. You can read about Chef Denise here. Definitely one of my new favorites in town!

I really want to go back for Breakfast and Dinner!

leigh

College Station Chuy’s is OPEN NOW

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 03:02:49 +0000

OK, so, I ate at the new College Station Chuy’s and it was everything I expected and more.

Wonderful staff. Wonderful food. Wonderful atmosphere. Just a wonderful place.

If you’ve never experienced a Chuy’s…you’re gonna love it. Promise.

Check it out. I have some new info for you. Wait, first, let me tell you what I ate. I took my family. Chicken Pancho’s…those are nachos…super tasty.

I had a Dos X (because it’s kinda the only beer I like). My wife had a Mojito, and it was really really good.

A couple of the kids each had a burger, and you know what? It was excellent. They told us it is always fresh meat…not frozen. Super good.

Oh, ask for the Creamy Jalapeno dip when they bring the chips out. You’ll see.

I had the Fajitas and my wife had the Veggie plate. I don’t know what it was called, but it had an enchilada and a Chile Relleno. Their Relleno is excellent. The Fajitas were awesome.

OK, so the manager told me a “secret”. Since this is Chuy’s 24th restaurant, they hid 24 maroon army men around the place. They’ve also done this in other stores with something of local significance. We found one of the army men in the hubcap room, and my daughter found a couple more on the way to the bathroom. Fun.

Check out the decor. He told me they hung over 1200 fish in the restaurant. And take a close look at those fish…some of them are very special.

Being in the hubcap room, we tried to count the hubcaps…we didn’t get very far, but I’m pretty sure there are about 400.

Oh, and I don’t know if you read my earlier post about the silverware stickers? Well, I was the first to write a message and stick my sticker on a hubcap. They got a picture of me doing it. My kids wrote a couple too.

Their shirts are pretty fantastic too. We saw a maroon one that said, “Home of the 12th Nacho”. That’s funny. I’m sure we”ll see those around town on Maroon Out days.

All in all, it was a really great experience.

Oh, and I got a “yes” on the dog wall. Bring in a picture of your dog in a frame and get a free appetizer. I’m sure if you cat people dress up your cat as a dog…maybe.

Go eat.

—

jorge goyco
goycodesign.com

Red Mango – Frozen Yogurt and More

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 17:32:20 +0000

Have you seen all the Frozen Yogurt places popping up around town? There’s Froyoyo, Yogurtland, Project Yogurt, Spoons, Red Mango, etc. Well, they all have their own bit of love going for them, but Red Mango has a bit more.

Check it out…Yes! Red Mango is a self serve Frozen Yogurt shop, but it’s also a Smoothie shop. They even offer Granola so you can make your own Parfait…that’s a whole meal.

So, here’s how you make a Parfait: Choose a flavor, scoop in some granola, squirt some more frozen yogurt, scoop some fruit in there, more yogurt, more granola and fruit, top it off with some more yogurt. It’s pretty amazing. You will be very pleased with the granola they use. You can tell they tasted a few before they chose this one.

On to smoothies. We tried a banana-strawberry smoothie, and it was truly wonderful. We are definitely going back for more of that.

Of course, they also have the self serve Frozen Yogurts. These guys do “Tart” really well. They have a Mandarine Orange and a Key Lime Pie that you just have to taste. They told me they have over 20 flavors, probably close to 30. They switch them out every day. They even have a “Mojito” flavor that was pretty tasty.

That’s where the facebook page comes in. Go like the Red Mango Facebook page and get daily anouncements and flavor updates.

They also told me there are some pretty amazing specials they are going to announce on their Facebook page coming up here pretty soon…like discounts, contests and give-aways. The manager told me about a scavenger hunt that’s in the works.

By the way, this place has some of the best staff around. Really nice people working there. I have never felt like I was just a customer. They always treat me like they want me to come back. I was in there one day and overheard the manager treating someone to a discount just because they had just moved into “The Lofts” (the apartment complex above the Red Mango store). That’s customer appreciation.

Oh, and another thing: Red Mango (like many places in town) offer fund raising oportunities. Like for example, you have a fund raising opportunity, they set some hours during the day, your charity gets a percentage of the sales. Red Mango gives 20% of the sales. That’s a pretty high percentage. And they told me they do it during Prime Time hours…that’s just nice.

These guys seem to be positioning themselves to be here for a long time, so go make them your favorite!

Red Mango is located across the street from Wolf Pen Creek Park, and kinda next to the Ice Skating Rink. They are in the stores under the “Loft” apartments.

614 Holleman Dr. Ste. 1150

College Station, TX

Girls: How to Attract the Wrong Guy

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 21:35:09 +0000

OK, so this is not going to be a friendly post. By “friendly” I mean that you might assume the post is going to be about where you look for a partner or what to say etc. Nope. It’s about how you dress.

And for the most part, I am talking to girls that are “Christian”. Yeah, dressing sexy for church…crazy, right?

I’m a guy, so I can tell you from experience that girls are dressing more toward making men think about sex. They may not mean to do it, but it’s being done.

It’s hard to draw a line in the sand on some of these points because the truth is, for some guys a t-shirt and jeans is very enticing. But you know, there’s tight and then there’s tight. I would think any girl would know when she crosses the line, what she is knowingly or naively putting “out there”? Truth is, it doesn’t look comfortable.

Tight, revealing clothing can and does produce a reaction in young men. I know, I was not raised to guard my eyes. What I mean is that as a young boy, I would look all I wanted. I had no idea I was creating a pattern that would become an addiction…an addiction that is harder to break than smoking or pot or alcohol, because it’s all around, and it’s free.

I realize that this article and the things I am saying might make some of you feel guilty for making boys and men sin. That is not my point. I would hope that all of this would be two-fold. One, that girls would dress more appropriate, two is that guys would realize what’s going on and turn away…literally.

Oh, and just so you know, I have gotten really good at looking away and putting my hand out in front of my eyes so I don’t look. My eyes are really quick, but I can be quicker. In fact, I know where ads will be placed in magazines. I know where billboards might be. You do too. Billboards, magazine ads, TV commercials, Movie posters, video games, facebook ads, grocery store magazine shelves, etc. You know what I’m talking about. It’s all over the place. It’s not difficult to plan around NOT looking. It’s all about deciding that when Jesus said “if you look at a woman with lust you have already committed adultery” He wasn’t kidding around. It’s not a game and it can mess up your relationships – with women, with your wife and with God.

So, back to clothing. Let’s talk about legs. Really short skirts are a problem. Girls, think about the last time you wore a short skirt. Now think about how many times you had to put something in your lap so that people couldn’t see up your skirt when you sat down. Or how about crossing your legs? How careful you have to be. When I was younger, I got really good at placing myself in the right spot so that right at the moment when the short skirted girl sat down, I could just glance over and see her panties. Or wait until they bent over or something.

Take a look at this clip from the film “Roger Dodger”: WARNING – RATED “R” CLIP (bad words)

It’s not just me. This is real stuff.

Sounds sick doesn’t it. It is, but I assure you, it’s happening to you if you are wearing a short skirt.

Cleavage is funny. It’s out there. I went to an auto dealer for a part one day and the girl taking my money was in a booth behind a window. The floor in her room was at least a foot below the room I was in, and she was sitting down at her desk. I had to look down at her to talk to her…there was no other way. I tried to not look, but it was just so obvious. Truth is, it confused me. I wasn’t sure if that was on purpose or not, I mean, she was just taking my money, she wasn’t up-selling me to buy anything else or selling me a car or whatever. So why the cleavage? And why so obvious? What reaction was she wanting to get from men? I didn’t notice if she was married or not, but maybe she was single and hoping some cute guy would notice her and they would start seeing each other.

What’s funny is that sometimes I can’t help it. I mean, you know, when it’s like…”out there”. My eyes might pop down there for a split second, then I feel bad. I just looked at that girls boobs. I know she didn’t see my eyes dart down. Then sometimes, something frightening happens…she adjusts her shirt to make sure it’s not too obvious…or something (I’m not a girl, I don’t know what is behind making sure your cleavage isn’t showing)…did she see me? Do my eyes have lasers that she can feel? Did she see me look and thinks I’m gross? Or worse, that I’m am one of those guys that likes to look at women’s cleavage?

Look, the deal is that guys look. I try not to and I still accidentally glance every once in a while. And I am making a concerted effort to NOT LOOK.

I have been in situations where I notice that a girl is dressed in this way, so I do my normal looking to the ground or down to my hands. Then I watch the boys and men (some quite obviously) watch her as she passes.

I often stand up and change where I am sitting if I think there is danger of an eyeful.

Honestly, it doesn’t feel good to see that. I feel bad for the girl being watched, and I feel bad for the guys watching.
Just look at what you are wearing. Yeah, be attractive, great, just don’t be “sexually attractive”.

Oh, and high heels. Look at yourself in the mirror without high heels, then put them on. What does it do to your butt and chest? Sticks them out, right? Is that really what you want? Oh, maybe you just wanted to be taller. Sorry. My bad.

For the sake of guys who are wanting to be pure in their thoughts, and for the men who are happily married, and for the young kids who don’t know why they like to look…be mindful. Don’t show off. Save that for your husband. He’s going to love you and respect you and want to look at you all day long, and you are going to like letting him. You are going to make him crazy. You are going to make him want ONLY you. That should be your goal.

Sorry if I made all this sound gross. I just have to be honest and I feel like this stuff needs to be talked about. I have to believe that young Christian women would not want to ‘cause their brothers to stumble. I know it’s hard to balance “fashion” and wanting to look nice with all this stuff. The truth is, some guys are gonna sin and stare and have wrong thoughts no matter what you wear…even in a Burka. I’m just asking you to be honest with yourself. Do you look nice, well-put-together or do you look sexy? I think we all know the difference.

jorge

Care Bears, Love Comes Softly, How To Train Your Dragon

Thu, 08 Apr 2010 15:41:55 +0000

I admit, I borrowed a Care Bears DVD for the library for my kids. I really had no idea what to expect, although with names like Rainbow Bear and Care-a-lot, I thought it would be pretty innocuous. Well, I was wrong.

Those bears are ugly to each other. They have bad attitude and are not something I want my girls watching. I looked on the cover and saw that the particular video we had was made in 1988.

Well, bad attitudes and namecalling aside, there was something else that bothered me. This particular episode had a sea captain upset because there was a girl on his ship. “Girls aren’t supposed to be on ships” he said. Well, she wanted to sail the ship. The captain would have nothing to do with that. So the rest of the show was basically how the girl convinced the captain that she could do it. More like “should” do it.

I don’t have a problem with girls doing things, but the way the captain was made out to be an idiot bothered me. Everything the captain did was stupid, and everything the girl did was perfect and wonderful and even better than the captain.

The moral wasn’t that captains should let let girls sail their ships, the moral was that girls can do men’s jobs better than they can…all canned in a sweet little fluffy bear.

This seems to be a theme in sitcoms and movies lately, and really for a while now.

We just watched the third movie in the Love Comes Softly series. We have a bunch of friends that think these movies are the best movies ever. And I understand that it’s because the main characters are Christians and God is portrayed in a favorable light, but man, “Love’s Long Journey” was so out of whack.

OK, the stories are written in the Woman’s perspective, but to portray a Christian Woman from that time period acting like she was acting is just wrong. She turned out to be the hero. And I’m fine with girl heroes, but she put herself in front of her husband. Historically, that’s not accurate, and Biblically, it’s not either.

At one point, she was first to greet and introduce herself to a store owner. “This is my husband”, she said. Her husband was just pretty, with his bright blue eyes.

I think it would different. I’m pretty sure the husband would have introduced himself, and in fact, maybe not even introduce his “humble”, “gentle”, “quiet” wife.

At another point, She is in a situation where she needs to present 3 people, and she decides to introduce the wife, then the husband, then the wife’s brother. Just strange.

Again, I’m fairly certain that the times back in the old west were paternal, not maternal.

The real issue is that these movies were made for TV, and the media is portraying men as idiots and fools and the ones who can’t make decisions and the ones who can’t lead. That’s sad.

That’s my point. It’s sad. I won’t make any sweeping statements about gender roles, I’m just upset by the portrayal of men in popular media, and even Christian Media.

Not everyone is doing this. If you haven’t already, watch “Facing the Giants”. That was a great Christian movie…for Christians, mind you. I hope that starts a whole series of Christian movies. That would be fun.

We also have recently watched “How To Train Your Dragon” and “Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs” and the fathers don’t know how to talk to their sons. Is this because it’s true? Or is it because the writers want us to see the sons as smarter than their dads? I think this is dangerous ground we’re walking on.

Toy Story: Dad is not there or mentioned
Finding Nemo: Dad is overbearing
Up: Russel’s dad is not around
Ant Bully: Dad is an idiot
Robots: This one is actually good
Kung Fu Panda: Po is adopted. New dad doesn’t listen to him
Meet the Robinsons: This one is pretty good too
Tale of Despereaux: Dad is bumbling and fearful
Spirit: Dad is not around or mentioned
Bambi: Actually, I think I remember the dad being good in this one
Surf’s Up: Dad died
Coraline: Dad is lame and weak

OK, so not every one, but you see my point here, right?

Hollywood seems to think that dads aren’t great. This sucks. I’m a dad, and I am trying to be a good one. And…I love my dad. Sure there are things I want to do completely different than he did, but he loved my mom, defended her, wouldn’t let us talk to her disrespectfully, always said he would fight for her if he had to.

The more weighty issue here (I think) is that our “model” for our relationship with God (the Father) is based somewhat on our relationship with our earthly Father. So (conspiracy theory alert) it seems like we’re being brainwashed to think that dads are lame, not smart, weak, etc, and so then what are we going to think about God?

jorge

My Free Wii Ideas

Jorge — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:16:00 +0000

My wife's parents just bought our kids a Wii. It's pretty fun. The kids are bowling and golfing up a storm. I also got a couple of other games. I got Elebits, Raving Rabbids, Big Brain Academy and Mini Ninjas. Pretty fun.

So, here's my idea. The next Wii console should have a multi-disc changer.

Here's my thinking...

1. It's a pain to change out discs whole toting along the remote and the nunchuk. It's also a pain to unstrap the remote every time I want to change a game.

2. The way we play games is that we play one for a while, then switch out and play another one. Especially with Wii Sports. It's fun for a while, then we are on to something else, but we will come back. If it was possible to just have all the discs in there, then choose from the menu which "disc channel" I wanted to play, that would be awesome.

3. I don't care that the Wii is the smallest console ever. Who really cares about that. It still takes up the space on top of my TV with the remote thing. I don't think that adding a length to the console will really keep people from wanting it.

---

Next idea is downloadable apps, like on the iphone.

I'm talking about small apps for 100 or 200 points each. Apps like little mini games, gas prices in town, a Bible, bejeweled, etc. Anything really.

I'm looking around and I don't really see anything like that. The WiiWare thing got me all excited, but only to find out it's really nothing. Unless I'm missing something. I just see a potential here. So many slots available for channels on the menu, but all I can download is old SNES and SEGA games? I don't think so. I'm not really interested in that.

I'm interested in a small little 15s puzzle game, or a Tower Defense game or a guitar tuner or even a magazine you can flip through the pages. Yeah, periodicals you can download...like a reader, you know? Make the Wii like a Kindle or the iPad. That would be cool. A radio station...Pandora even. Pocket God could be WiiGod. A racing game.

Not huge downloads, small little apps. That would be great, don't you think?

---

Third idea: Google Earth

This seems like a no brainer.

---

Anyway, I actually just experimented and used the internet channel to go to my games website and I played some of my flash games using the Wii remote. That was pretty fun. Check out the City Smash game. I think that one worked quite well using the remote.

So, downloadable flash games? That would be cool too.

So, there you have it. If you know anyone that works at Nintendo, give them these ideas and call them your own.

jorge

Anti-Abortion Flash Game

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 05:14:34 +0000

I built this Anti-Abortion Flash game. Truth is, it’s not really a game per se. I mean when 4000 babies are being killed every day in the US, no matter how you look at it, it’s not a game. Somethings got to be done.

For me, that something is praying. I pray every day, and every time think of them. I pray that God ends abortion. God can not like abortion. It’s killing. This is a huge problem.

Anyway, I built this flash game and it’s not the funnest game, but it’s the only anti-abortion flash game I’ve ever seen. There wasn’t one built, and so I thought I would build one.

[play it here]

Gameplay:
You have to pray (click on a prayer) to keep the abortion machine from starting up and aborting a baby. For the most part, if you stop praying, the abortions will happen at least every 20 seconds.

Thoughts behind the game:
My initial though was that we need to pray for the end of abortion in the United States. The idea came to me while I was on my face praying for Houston While the Silent March on the Planned Parenthood Facility was going on.

If I could get people reading prayers while they are playing a game, then those prayers might become stuck in their minds, and later be brought back up and used to play for the ending of abortion.

The intro to the game starts with the filling up of the city outline with blood, then when the player starts the game, there is already money on the right hand side of the screen. Every time a baby is aborted, more money is added, but every time a baby is born, money is taken away. The symbolism here represents the fact that abortion facilities charge around $400. Abortion facilities like Planned Parenthood get our tax money as well. Babies being born will take money away from these abortion facilities and force them to shut down.

The babies are sitting on a platform in their placental sack. I know, it’s strange. tried to make it not too bloody and gross. As soon as the game starts, the “death timer” starts spinning. I made it take about 20 seconds for it to go around. The abortions in this game don’t always happen every 20 seconds, but sometimes many babies are aborted at the same time. When a baby is aborted, a large vaccuum thing appears from the top and sucks the unborn baby away. A little bit of blood is left, and the blood flies over to the money area and adds green to the stack of cash.

The symbolism here is that it is blood that is funding the abortion facilities. They are making money on murder. That is totally crazy.

When you pray, sometimes one and sometimes several babies are affected, which means they are one step closer to being born, and one step farther away from being aborted. Also, the level of red in the city begins to go down.

You’ll notice that there are more black and brown babies than there are white babies. That’s because statistically, Blacks and Hispanics are having more abortions, and I believe this is because they (and all of us) have been fed the lie that it’s a good alternative to having a baby.

Women regret abortions. Families are scarred by abortions. Grandparents who take their granddaughter to the abortion facility regret doing so. Friends who drop them off to get the procedure hurt as well.

This is not a good solution.

Abortion facilities claim they are not targeting minorities by saying “that’s where the need is”, but I believe that’s only because they believe the lie, they advertise the lie, and the lie is accepted as truth.

The only right solution is keep the baby. Don’t kill the baby.

To “win” the game, pray until all the money is gone, then the vaccuum machine will break. At that point, you can keep praying, and keep birthing babies indefinitely, and it will keep on counting them.

On the other hand, if you leave it alone and don’t pray, the stack of money grows and dark clouds form over the blood red city. This will also go on indefinitely, aborting babies and counting them.

The big idea that I felt came from God is an encouragement that he is hearing our prayers. Prayers will bring change.

—

Focus on the family recently paid for a commercial spot on NBC during the 2010 superbowl. They paid almost 3 million dollars for that ad. They talked about Tim Tebow. Apparently Tim Tebow’s mom was urged to abort him while he was in her belly, but she didn’t.

Well, so, play my anti-abortion flash game…see what you think. Are you a christian? Then pray for the end of abortion.

You might disagree that NBC should have aired the Tim Tebow Commercial during the Superbowl or not, but one thing is for sure, you agree killing is wrong, right?

Me too.

Personally, I think this ad was done in good taste.

Want more information?

Focus on the Family

Bound4life:
Committing to praying to end abortion

The Call
A solemn assembly focusing on fasting and prayer to end abortion and human trafficking

Abortion Recovery
Really great site about recovery care

These links/companies above have nothing to do with my game. They are not endorsing my game or sponsoring it in any way. They are sites that have really good information that some of you might want to check out.

See ya.

Ringtone – I Love You

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 07:02:53 +0000

That’s my girls singing “I Love You”. This one starts in classic “Jorge” fashion with a sweep and noise and then drop the beat in.

It’s kind of like a CosPlay rave, with little piggie tail girls skipping around the night club with way too much jewelry and really short skirts going around kissing everyone.

—

Running time: 20 seconds

File size: 328K

http://goycodesign.com/clients/ringtones/Ringtone-ILoveYou.mp3

[download mp3] (right-click and Save Link As)

[view the whole ringtone archive at once]

Visit the WAP site on your phone at: http://tagtag.com/weeklyringtone

Jorge

Ringtone – More

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 07:01:44 +0000

This is another clip from an original song I created. I love the piano in this one and the stuttering drums, and the sweeping noisiness.

I am imagining looking at devastation from an explosion or a crumbled building. Maybe realizing that it was predicted by some guy who made a ringtone and posted it for free on his blog and then pretended like he predicted something in the future by writing some nonsensical sentence. The prediction went something like this:

“…in the year after the spinning in the sky, only the bridge remained between the double craters. Contrasting hands were held together in agreement by an unflinching eye…and the two rose…”

—

Running time: 22 seconds

File size: 380K

http://goycodesign.com/clients/ringtones/Ringtone-More.mp3

[download mp3] (right-click and Save Link As)

[view the whole ringtone archive at once]

Visit the WAP site on your phone at: http://tagtag.com/weeklyringtone

Jorge

Ringtone – For You

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 07:14:32 +0000

This is a clip from an original song I made. It’s kinda happy and fun and jumpy and exciting. Perfect for when you are standing in line taking back Christmas items that you have decided you waited long enough for it to not be rude to take back.

—

Running time: 20 seconds

File size: 324K

http://goycodesign.com/clients/ringtones/Ringtone-ForYou.mp3

[download mp3] (right-click and Save Link As)

[view the whole ringtone archive at once]

Visit the WAP site on your phone at: http://tagtag.com/weeklyringtone

Jorge

Ringtone – Ice Creepy

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 16:40:26 +0000

Perfect timing for the cold weather on the way. Kinda chimey and kinda buzzy. I was trying to make a sort of strange Ice Cream truck kinda song. This would definitely get my attention if I heard it coming down the street.

—

Running time: 9 seconds

File size: 76K

http://goycodesign.com/clients/ringtones/Ringtone-IceCreepy.mp3

[download mp3] (right-click and Save Link As)

[view the whole ringtone archive at once]

Visit the WAP site on your phone at: http://tagtag.com/weeklyringtone

Jorge

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 07:00:34 +0000

This is a short alert type ringtone that’s basically a synth sweep. A sweep is a note on a synth that is held and it travels through any of a variety of modulations…for example: it could be a volume swell or a frequency span or even a note change. I think this ringtone would be good for text or maybe an alarm to wake me up.

—

Running time: 10 seconds

File size: 84K

http://goycodesign.com/clients/ringtones/Ringtone-SplittingSky.mp3

[download mp3] (right-click and Save Link As)

[view the whole ringtone archive at once]

Visit the WAP site on your phone at: http://tagtag.com/weeklyringtone

Jorge

Restaurant Website

Jorge — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 15:32:00 +0000

I just built a Mexican Restaurant's website in town. It's Ninfa's. It was fun. It was also hard to not be hungry while I was working on it.

I took on the challenge of photographing the food. That was interesting. It actually went better than I thought it would.

When I started researching food photography, I kept seeing stuff like "If you can photograph food, you can photograph anything." That wasn't making me very confident.

And I remember from working at a Digital Photography Studio back in the 90s that it took all day, a food stylist, lots of light, etc.

Well, what I found out was that I needed to use natural light. I almost made the mistake of using my flash. I had them set me up at a table next to a window, I taped a large piece of white paper on the window to diffuse the light, and took along a stretched 2x2 foot canvas to reflect the light on the other side of the window. So the setup was: window, paper, food, camera, then the reflecting canvas.

I didn't figure out how to change the white balance on my camera, and didn't have time to research that, so there's a little blue cast on the shots.

I also photoshopped them a little (mostly just levels move and some dodging and burning). I added some steam to the fajitas by drawing white lines arbitrarily coming up from the food, then taking the smudge tool and massaging the lines, then playing with the opacity. I think they came out pretty good.

Oh, and the camera was on a tripod, and I messed with the shutter speed to get the lighting right.

You can see the photos I took on the website at www.ninfascollegestation.com.

There was actually another shot of some enchiladas with chile con carne on it, but it didn't look good...it was just brown and not much contrast. Truth is, as tasty as enchiladas are, they are very appetising to look at.

Anyway, it was a cool project. Maybe later this year I'll try to convince them to do some flash games on there.

Animated Gif Loading Thingies

Jorge — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 15:47:00 +0000

Check out this site:

www.ajaxload.info

It's where I got this:

And this:

Blogger may or may not be animating them, but go to the site and you'll see what they are supposed to look like.

I've used it twice already. One on this site: LifeChurchOnline.net and one on a site I am working on that's not up yet.

On the church site I used it during the onload:redirect. I built the page as a wordpress blog, but they needed to keep their domain name for server space. You'll see the little graphic while you wait for the redirect. (otherwise it looked like the site was just sitting there not doing anything while it redirected).

The other time I am using it is as a background image in a table cell, then on top of that table cell, I added another table, and that table has a script I found that changes the background image of the table cell.

The reason I did that was because I needed the image in the table cell to be wider than the width of the page so that as the page stretches for different resolutions, the image will still be there. If I added the image in the table cell, it forced the table to be the width of the image, but I wanted the whole site to be 100%...scalable.

But, the images were taking a little too long to load, and basically had a white area there while it loaded. Now it has a little loading graphic.

Here's a sneak peek of the home page of the site I'm building, but it won't be there forever. And none of the back end programming is working...it's still in the design stages.

Getting Spam through my PHP Contact Form

Jorge — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 14:14:00 +0000

OK, so I have a previous post that explains how to make a PHP contact form. Easy enough. It works great. Well, a few months ago I started getting spam emails from my contact form. This is lame. Basically, a bot has found my contact form, and it's been flooding my inbox with fake email addresses, and 5 or 6 url links in the message.

I thought I would append my initial post with what I've done to fix the problem.

1. Rename the form (add a "2" or something) Like this: before=contactForm.php; after=contactForm2.php. Which means you will need to make sure the path in the html form is pointing to the right place.

2. Add a "hidden" field in the contact form.

Like this:
<input type="text" name="email2" style="display:none" />
<input type="hidden" name="redirect_thanks_url" value="http://www.yourdomain.com/thankyou.htm" />

I put it between the last text field and above the submit button, but it doesn't matter where you put it...in fact, we might all help defeat spam bots if we put them in different places and even name the fields differently. In this example it's "email2"...see in the code above, and also in the php code below.

3. Add this php code to the for script (which you can download from the other post I talked about).

if(isset($_POST["email2"])) {
if(!empty($_POST["email2"])) {
# THIS IS PROBABLY SPAM
header("Location: ".$_POST["redirect_thanks_url"]);
exit();
}
}

You'll need to add it somewhere in the code inside the main opening and closing php code, make sure you don't put it inside another function. I put mine right after line 12 in the script mentioned on the other post.

What it's doing is basically telling the spam bot that there is a field to fill in. Bots are attracted to fields. So we attract it with a label like "email2" or "message" or something that's not already in use, but still attractive...not something like "honeypot" or "spamtrap".

It's hidden from humans, so if it's a human filling out the form, the script checks to see if the field is blank. If it's not blank, the script tosses the submission, but redirects to a thank you. I read that some bots wait to see if the redirect goes to an error page or not, then will try again.

Now, it's possible that spammers will teach their bots to look for "hidden" fields and not fill them in at some point, but then we can come up with something else.

For the time being, this helps.

Again, the contact form on the previous post still works just fine, but I'm afraid it's just a matter of time before a spam bot finds it and starts spamming you.

Hopefully you remembered where you got the script in the first place and checked back to see if there was a solution.

What a pain this spam thing is. It's like a battle of escalations and counter attacks. Kinda fun, just annoying and time wasting.

I looked into some CAPTCHA solutions but it was really difficult to implement, and most of them cost money. (CAPTCHA by the way means "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart"

Hope this helps.

jorge

New Christmas Game Called "Ball Hanger"

Jorge — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 15:20:00 +0000

Last year, some of you may have see my "Bobblehead Nativity" Flash toy thing.

Well, this year, I've gone and made another Christmas game. This time it has to do with hanging balls on a tree. Check it out.

And have a safe and wonderful time with your friends and family.

Stay tuned this year for more games on my website. I've got some puzzles, a couple of "shooters" and some other things I'm working on.

Oh, and do you have a cell phone? Check out my free ringtones. Free...like a Christmas present. Yay.

Jorge

iPhone Game Idea

Jorge — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 21:22:00 +0000

I don't have an iPhone, but I thought that with the accelerometer and GPS, that this idea or an idea like it would not be too far off. I don't think it's there yet, but I think it's close.

I saw that there is a compass app you can download, but the compass is not an actual compass. You actually have to know wha time it is and where the sun it, and I assume it calculates the date of the year and maybe even GPS location to figure out where north is. That's cool.

My idea goes a bit further.

My idea is a sort of "virtual" place you can go to.

You'd start playing the "game" by finding a large parking lot or open field or something like that and setting your center point (assuming you are in the approximate middle of the area you've chosen).

Maybe you can choose a 25 foot diameter or 50 or even 100.

So, you hold the phone up in front of you and it becomes a "window" into this virtual space. If you turn right, the image in the phone displays what is to the right, etc.

So, think about a hedge maze where you are stuck in the middle, and if you walk into the hedge, you lose points or it resets you to the center or something.

Or, what about a Counter Strike or Halo type game where you are hiding around buildings and shooting aliens or whatever...maybe you can use the camera button as the trigger.

Or what about a mansion where you have to find clues...maybe by taking pictures of objects in the rooms.

In reality, you could have a virtual 3D "Missle Command" or "Space Invaders" Type scenario where you hold the phone up toward space and defend your planet by shooting them out of the sky.

What about a "Search and Rescue" game, or a "Treasure hunt/Metal Detector" game, or a mine sweeper game. Maybe even where your friends can hide a text message or a picture or something somewhere and you have to find it.

It seems like once the technology is there, there would be many possibilities.

What about a "seeker" where maybe you are in a mall and you look for other players by looking through your phone...and you can see through walls all the way across the mall. Sort of like a laser tag or something.

Maybe I'm jumping too far ahead. But it sure sounds fun.

Anyway, just thought I'd put it out there.

Someone hurry up and make it.

I guess we'll know someone has invented it when we hear about people running into trees or parked cars or sides of buildings.

Jorge

Three Really Interesting Things

Jorge — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:30:00 +0000

I came across something today and it lead me to a few other things, you know how that ol' YouTube gets you that way...you can spend hours clicking "related" videos...what a great idea on their part.

Anyway, the first one is about a sculptor (Theo Jansen) who might be a modern day DaVinci. He makes these kinetic scultpures that "walk" using wind power. This is more than just art, I think:

The next one uses what seems to be an iron liquid or something called Ferrofluid, and when magnetic waves are applied to it, it reacts in a really interesting a beautiful way.

And the third one is a cute little dancing robot named Keepon that has quite a few moves programmed into him, and he reacts to the different sounds of the music, as well as things that excite him and things he doesn't like.

What an interesting time we are living in...

Mashing Multiple Feeds into One Feed Using Yahoo Pipes and FeedBurner

Jorge — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 16:38:00 +0000

OK, so, why I found this was because I was looking for a way to make a feed from a Facebook Group on Praying for our pastor, and then figuring out how to post it to a Wordpress Blog (see the sidebar). (update: I took it off...had second thoughts about this because anyone can post whatever they want on the Facebook Wall...that might not be approrpiate to have on the website. I'll have to rethink this.)

Well, I figured it out...and, something else in the process.

I found a way to make one feed from multiple feeds, and it was a cool process. I used Yahoo Pipes, and I really liked the interface. You drag boxes around and connect the boxes with little "wires". It's really cool. I'm posting this YouTube video because it explains everything you need to know to do a basic mash-up (it's from techbays.com).

You can see the mash-up I did of my 4 blogs on the sidebar of this blog.

So, let's say you are running a blog about underwater basket weaving, and you daily read blogs about pool maintenance, basket weaving material supply warehouses, SCUBA gear gadgets, and eCommerce shopping cart building for crafty websites, and you think your viewers want to view this wonderful information themselves, well, you can mash-up all your favorite blogs, create a pipe, burn your new pipe using feedburner, and add the new feed into your blogs sidebar.

There you go...a reason to use this information.

Have fun.

jorge

Making a YouTube Video with iMovie

Jorge — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 10:20:00 +0000

I've just recently jumped on the YouTube Train uploading a few videos here and there. I'm on a Mac, and I have iMovie. I like iMovie, it's fairly similar to FinalCut, Premier and even the AVID software (well, without all the cool stuff you can do with those other apps). But it's linear editing, and once you get the hang of it, it's fine for simple editing. I'm just dropping clips in and using transition effects, titles and adding music...simple stuff.

Anyway, I found a site here that explains how to make a YouTube video that works really well, it's basically what I'll explain below.

A couple things to know about YouTube is that there's a 10 minute time limit, and a 100Mb size limit, and the ratio for the movie is 320 x 240 pixels.

Knowing that, here's what you need to do )oh, I'm using iMovie 5 (HD):

1. Main Menu, file, go to "share"
2. Compress movie for: select Expert Settings, click "share"
3. Name your movie, select where you are going to save it to
4. At the bottom, Export: Movie to MPEG-4, then click "Options"
(NOTE: the next time you do this, if nothing needs to change, there will be an option to chose "Most Recent Settings" underneath the "export" drop down where it says "Use:")
5. New dialog box:
File format: MP4
6. Click the "Video" tab
Video Format: H.264
Data Rte: 2000 kbits/sec
Optimized for: Download
Image Size: 320 x 240 QVGA
Preserve aspect ratio: checked
Select: "Fit Within Size"
Frame Rate: 30
Key Frame: Automatic
7. Click "Video Options" button
Restrict Profile(s) to: Main
Encoding Mode: Best Quality
Click OK
8. Click "Audio" tab
Audio Format: AAC-LC (Music)
Data Rate: 64 kbps
Channels: Mono
Output Sample Rate: Recommended
Encoding Quality: Best
9. Click OK
10: Click Save
11. Wait
12. Upload to YouTube

That's it. That will get you a pretty good quality video. Here are a couple I did for my wife's Pet Portrait Painting. Here's a painting of a dog, and here's a painting of a cat.

I thought this would be a great way to market her website. I took pictures of the painting while she was painting it (trying not to get in her way too much), and then made it into an animation.

Basically, I grabbed the folder with all the pictures in it, and dragged the folder into the place where the clips go...at the bottom. I selected them all, (the duration of pictures was already set to 1 second) and clicked the transition to crossfade and clicked apply. That added a cross fade to all the pictures. The I added titles, dropped that in at the beginning and the end, and made the last picture last longer by dragging the end of it to the right. Then I added music, faded the sound out at the end, and that was it. Pretty simple.

I think YouTube is a great way to promote her website. I've been wanting to do this for a while now, and I think I'll do it whenever she paints something.

My 4 year old stuck her head into one of the pictures while Leigh was painting the cat. She's so funny.

My wife's website is dogonawall.com. She paints pet portraits using acrylic and canvas. You send her a picture of your pet (and some money) and she'll do what she does. Check out the gallery on her site...she's really good.

Jorge

Derren Brown and How Advertising Works

Jorge — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 14:15:00 +0000

My dad sent me this. Wow, I am utterly impressed. Derren Brown apparently knows how to "suggest" things to people, and get them to believe stuff that's not true. He's using several techniques, but what it looks like is that he breaks unconscious patterns, presents commands, uses hidden words as suggestions and distracts.

This video I'm presenting has to do with a couple of advertisers that Derren "hires" to come up with something for him in a short amount of time.

What I think is really cool here is that one of my teachers a long time ago told me that art is stealing. What he meant was that everything we create comes from our memories, and our memories are a collection of things we've seen, heard, read, whatever.

Now, I believe (contrary to what most people try to convince me of) that there is in fact original creations, original ideas, and never-before-seen inventions or works. Sure, maybe they are built using memories of things that have been seen, but I believe individuals can take an idea farther than it has ever been taken.

Now, this video shows that we are highly suggestible, and as visual artists, even more so. I am most definitely always on the lookout for interesting things. Like variations in repetitive things, graffiti, logos, websites, flowers...anything.

It all goes in, then flops around in there for a while, then comes out sooner or later.

I'm going to be watching some more of his videos here.

Tales of Egroj - The Stones of Edun

admin — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 14:51:00 +0000

Egroj suddenly found himself falling into Sensuois Nocnu.

Sensuois Nocnu was a dream-like place that would capture the victim for an arbitrary amount of time. Sensuois Nocnu was built by Emit. Emit was not a friend of Egroj, and was not going to release him any time soon.

Someone would have to get him out. That can happen several ways, but you are probably wondering how he got in, right? So am I.

Well, Egroj had been wandering, looking for something, but not knowing what exactly, when he came upon a nicely stacked pile of stones. As he took a closer look, he realized they were stones from the Edun Sea.

These stones were smooth, soft, warm, and kinda tingly when you touched them, especially with your tongue. Apparently, this was something to do when you were looking for something to do.

Licking Edun Stones was tricky business. One has to lick only for a moment, then stop licking quickly before the stone's tingliness overcame the "licker", and plunged them into Sensuois Nocnu.

Egroj wasn't very good at taking his tongue off at the right time, and found himself many times waking up next to an Edun Stone.

It was a good thing that Edun Stones were rare, and not laying around everywhere, or Egroj would not have been a very productive member of society.

Little did Egroj know that Emit had set this trap using the stones as bait, along a path he knew Egroj would be wandering on.

Well, Egroj unsuspectedly put his tongue on one of the Edun Stones, and as usual, held it too long, and slipped into Sensuois Nocnu.

Usually Emit would release whoever fell in after a little while, but when he realized it was Egroj, he was very happy.

Egroj woke up, this time not on the path next to an Edun Stone, but on the muddy shores of the Edun Sea. He couldn't move, so he just waited.

Meanwhile, Princess Eel was trading words with Regna. Regna was trying to force Eel to tell him where Egroj was, but Eel wouldn't tell him. He was trying to grab her, but he had very poor eyesight, and it was very easy to avoid his hands.

Also, he had to be careful not to move too quickly or strain himself.

Regna was upset with Egroj for tossing him a vial of Aeeraid, whichfell to the floor and splashed onto Regna's foot, causing sharp, bubbling stomach pains, panicked mandatory visits to the land of Teliot (if you could make it) and an immediate fear of Stoot Diuqil, who was a formidable opponent. Regan had meant to catch the vial, but with his eyes being so poor, didn't even see it coming.

So you understand why Regna was upset.

Regna promised to Eel not to hurt Egroj and she told him that she had a way to find the Anti-Aeeraid solution.

Eel took Regna into her home and found a pair of Egroj's Stnap Rednu. She rolled them up and forced them into a cup of Trop Elet.

She then dropped in a couple of drops of Rednif and watched with a smile.

She put her fingers into the cup and pulled out a vial of Regnirb.

Meanwhile, Egroj was thinking about drinking some Retaw. He had become so very thirsty. He was thinking about lifting himself up to crawl over to the Edun Sea and have himself a drink when he felt something being taken out of his Jolly Sack.

Eel had taken off the lid of the vial and dropped one drop into the cup containing Egroj's Stnap Rednu.

Egroj suddenly felt as though he was being pulled to the sky. He watched the Edun Sea with its muddy shores get smaller and smaller as he flew straight up toward the clouds.

Suddenly, the cup exploded and Egroj appeared in its place, then instantly flew up to the ceiling and stuck there.

Egroj opened his eyes and looked around bewildered, finally noticing two figures standing on the ceiling.

He rubbed his eyes to try to clear his view and see who they were, and came crashing down to the ground, right between the two figures.

Once he figured out who they were, he stood up and gave Eel a hug.

"Thank you for bringing me," he said as he kissed her on the cheek.

"You are welcome," she said.

"That sounds like Egroj," said Regna with a grunt, turning his head toward Egroj's voice.

"Hello, Regna," said Egroj.

Regna just glared toward Egroj's voice, caferul not to make any sudden moves.

Egroj took a step back. Eel reached over to Egroj's hand and grabbed out of it the Edun Stone he had been gripping so tightly.

She secretly dropped it into a cup of Retaw and held it up to Egroj.

"Egroj," she said to him with a wink. "I promised that you would give Regna the anti-Aeeraid solution, and he promised not to hurt you."

Egroj winked back at her. Regna had no idea all this winking was going on.

Egroj reached into his Jolly Sack and pulled out Rednes solution and dropped a drop into the Retaw.

"That should do it," said Egroj, replacing the lid back onto the vial.

"Here, Regna," said Eel, and placed the cup into his hand.

He drank it and immediately was gone...cup and all.

Eel and Egroj stood there in silence for a few moments.

"It's good to be home," said Egroj.

"Did you find it?" said Eel.

Egroj was already digging in his Jolly Sack, and produced a small lump of what seemed to be white clay of some sort.

"Well," said Eel. "Come on, how does it work?"

Egroj rolled the clay stuff up into a long tube and got close to Eel. He shoved one end into Eel's ear and the other end into his own.

The clay stuff was a Renetsil, and by putting it in each other's ears, they could hear what they were thinking.

Their expressions told the rest of the story.

Both Eel and Egroj looked confused, like they were listening to another language, squinting, then they looked surprised, their eyes wide open, then they both smiled.

Egroj closed his eyes and looked very peaceful, so did Eel.

Then suddenly, Eel's face became red as an Otamot.

The End

My MTV Engine Room Audition

Jorge — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 10:34:00 +0000

I posted my MTV Engine Room Audition video on YouTube here!

The deadline for submissions is June 30th, and filming starts somewhere around the 14th of July...apparently they will notify who will be on the show by the 10th of July.

jorge

Tales of Egroj - The Gniklat Sea

admin — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:42:00 +0000

Leafar the Smart and Egroj had just finished eating some Azzip Revotfel, and had just sat down on Leafar’s very comfortable Chuoc Rethael.

“Well, I’ve never been there, I’ve only read about it in old books, but it’s supposed to be very beautiful,” said Egroj. “Why?”

“I’d like to show you something,” stated Leafar.

Leafar the Smart stood up and motioned to Egroj to follow. Leafar stepped out of Egroj’s way and nodded, extending his hand toward the door. Egroj walked past him and they walked toward the Denetyrf Forest.

On the way, Leafar pointed out many things that were true about the trees, bushes, rocks and wind that passed them.

“Egroj, a Tephorp has told me that something is going to happen to our town,” said Leafar. “But he didn’t say what it was…if it was good or bad.

Egroj was listening.

“I need you to find out for me,” said Leafar.

“How can I do that?” asked Egroj.

Before Leafar could answer, if he was planning to answer at all, the forest cleared and they reached the shore of the hidden and mysterious, legendary Gniklat Sea.

“This really is beautiful,” gasped Egroj, forgetting what Leafar had just said.

Leafar let him enjoy the view.

Egroj started to take off his clothes. This was normally not something to be alarmed about, Egroj was known to take off his clothes…usually for some complicated and purposeful reason, but Leafar knew Egroj’s intentions.

“Egroj,” said Leafar calmly. “Do you see the signs?”

Egroj had just untied his Jolly Sack when he turned his head and noticed a sign that he didn’t think was there when he arrived. Egroj read the sign.

“PLEASE DO NOT SWIM.”

Suddenly it seemed there were many of these signs all along the shore. In fact, Egroj realized that the whole shore was packed with the signs. Somehow he had missed them as he walked up to the shore. He figured that he had been so focused on swimming that he hadn’t even see them.

“If it is such a big deal to not swim, then why is there no fence?” asked Egroj. “Or why is this place not better hidden?”

“Egroj, a fence would take away the beauty of this place,” said Leafar.

“And the signs don’t?” demanded Egroj.

“You will not see the signs when you can see past what they are declaring,” said Leafar. “You are angry and frustrated right now, and so the signs are obvious.”

Egroj started to count the signs.

“There is no need for the signs,” said Leafar. “They merely point out the fact that you want to do the opposite. They will disappear in time.”

Leafar looked at the sun.

“I must leave you.” He said, and he left.

Egroj didn’t question Leafar’s need to leave, of his haste in leaving.

Egroj quickly turned back to the beautiful Gniklat Sea. It was a fantastic view. The Eguh Trees surrounding it so tall and majestic. The Deppac Wons Mountains on the horizon framing the breathtaking scene. The water so calm and inviting.

The signs weren’t very pretty though. And there seemed to be more and more of them at every moment. Egroj was strategising on how he could get past them

Egroj finished taking off the rest of his hot, sticky and sweaty clothes, and ran toward the sea. His plan was to dive in, but signs kept popping up and getting in his way. They seemed to be slapping at him and trying to trip him, but he prevailed…barely.

His toe made it into the water. For a moment, it was nice…just as he had expected, but then immediately, it felt like he had just eaten an Oñepalaj fruit. He was burning up inside.

As he backed away from the shore fanning himself, he noticed something happening to the sea.

The water had turned orange, and was bubbling and rolling like an overflowing pot of Klim.

Churning, waving, spewing.

Then something even more strange happened. Animals from the Gniklat Sea began popping out of the unconcealably orange water.

They were piling up on the shore. Hundreds of them.

Egroj recognized some of them from his schooling. No one had ever actually seen them before. Mostly it was just a theory that the animals existed. But apparently someone had either seen them or dreamed about them or something, because here they were.

He began to hear what sounded like voices. Yes, angry voices…coming from all around the seashore.

One of the sea animals, which had landed uncomfortable close to Egroj’s foot, began to speak directly to Egroj.

“We put those signs up on purpose,” it shouted. “You are a Tlusni!” it yelled.

“He’s over here,” it yelled to the other animals on the shore.

“You are a Tramston!” Yelled another.

“And a Nam Yllis,” yelled another.

Many other angry animals flopped over to where Egroj was standing. They were all yelling angry things at Egroj. Some he had heard before, but most had never been directed to him.

He began feeling very bad.

So bad, in fact, that he ran away. Away from he shore and all those yelling animals, and into the Denetyrf Forest. He ran straight through Leafar’s town, which seemed to be abandoned, and into the Desert of Noisser Ped. He found an Evac deep in the dessert and hid himself.

The thing about the Dessert of Noisser Ped is that Regna ruled there, and once he knew you were in his dessert, he would fill your mind with his thoughts. This was a place where true feelings were silenced by Regna. This was also a place where Emit visited often.

Emit would fool the observer into thinking that he had just arrived, while Ragna would occupy his mind with pointless ideas that were not true at all, or so twisted and complicated, that they did not resemble the truth anymore.

Egroj was stuck there. He was stuck there for a long time. Long enough for the Sreitp Menwot to come and force the good people of Leafar’s town to leave. Long enough for the remains of the town to become hills and fields and shrubbery.

Egroj became distracted by a white Kud. This Kud had been trying to convince him that he was carrying a plate of Azzip, and Azzip was Egroj’s favorite food. Egroj was not convinced. In fact, he was arguing with the Kud that he in fact was not carrying a plate of Azzip. Kuds don’t have arms, so Egroj thought his argument was better than the Kud’s.

Suddenly, a thought of Princess Eel came into Egroj’s mind. Last time this happened, Emit and Regna took it right out, but Egroj figured out a way to hide it from them this time.

Egroj pretended to be watching the Kud, and stood up and began walking.

Emit and Regna must have been sleeping, and Egroj had gotten really good at not waking them with Snoitome. So the Kud followed Egroj, and Egroj kept walking.

The thought of Princess Eel led Egroj to the edge of the dessert. As he stepped out of the dessert, he could hear the sea animals again, and that frightened him. He could feel his mind clearing up a bit.

The Kud had stepped out of the dessert as well.

Egroj’s mind was still spinning. He needed to travel to the town of Retfal. That would fix everything. But he couldn’t remember how to get there.

“Egroj,” Said a sweet smelling voice.

Egroj looked up to find that the Kud had turned itself into a wrinkled, slouched and wobbly old woman.

“Are you the Kud?” asked Egroj, looking around for the Kud.

“Not exactly,” she said. “I am Eel. Appearing to you as a Kud was so you would be distracted.”

Egroj was confused. He squinted his eyes at her, then looked around her.

“So where’s the plate of Azzip?” asked Egroj, still foggy.

The Princess didn’t acknowledge his silly question.

“When I heard that you had run into the Dessert of Noisser Ped, I went in after you,” she said.

“I battled Emit for a long time,” she said as she looked to her wrinkled hands. “But I was able to bind him momentarily so you could hear me calling you.”

“It’s really you?” asked Egroj, and he hugged her hard. He was so happy to see her.

“I’m so happy to see you,” he said.

“I know,” she said with a little smirk. “You always are.”

Eel flicked the long white hair out of her face.

“Egroj,” she asked. “Do you have the Vial of Revasyad?”

“Yes,” said Egroj. “It’s in my…” Then he realized that he had left his jolly sac on the shore of the Gniklat. In fact, he was in such a hurry he had run off without putting his clothes back on.

“You have to go back,” said Eel. “Not just for the vial.”

“I know,” said Egroj. “I know.”

Egroj stood motionless for a moment.

“Can you get it for me?” asked Egroj trying to look as pathetic as possible.

“You know I can’t,” said Eel. “Plus, I need a nap.”

Eel collapsed next to a Retropsnart tree and was asleep before she hit the ground.

So Egroj left her, walked through the empty landscape that used to be Leafar’s town, and ducked into the Denetyrf Forest, the whole time trying to block out the angry yelling of the Gniklat sea animals.

He reached the edge of the forest and had to shield his eyes from the bright orange that was the Gniklat Sea. The animals were all there. The Eguh trees were all wilting…things were not happy here. They smelled him right away and began hurling their words at him again.

He tried to hide behind a Gnidih tree, but the angry words went around it, and right into Egroj’s ears, giving his ears quite a Knaps.

He could see his Jolly Sack, and his clothes, but he couldn’t reach them without going out into the open, and those angry words hurt when they hit him.

He could hear some of the mother animals crying for their babies. He could hear baby animals crying for their mothers. He could hear father animals trying to comfort their families.

Egroj began to cry. He had done this. All because he wanted to swim.

Egroj looked up at the piles and piles of angry and helpless Gniklat sea animals and whispered, barely audibly: “I’m sorry.”

The yelling suddenly stopped. The orange sea turned clear again. The trees perked up and the signs started disappearing.

The closest sea animal, which was also the loudest, said to Egroj, “Oh, no worries, have a great day.” And he hopped back into the pool, as did the piles and piles of animals that had gathered on the shores.

The sea was calm again. It was quiet. Everything was back to normal. Oh, except Egroj needed to get dressed.

He got dressed, strapped on his Jolly Sack, and ducked back into the Denetyrf Forest, but only after taking one last look at the beauty of the Gniklat Sea. It was so beautiful with all signs gone.

As he stepped out of the forest, Leafar’s town appeared. Egroj was confused.

“Egroj,” called Leafar.

“Leafar?” said Egroj. “Why is your town here? It was gone.”

“What do you mean,” asked Leafar. “Did you go swimming?”

“How did you know,” asked Egroj.

“Swimming the the Gniklat Sea is a mysterious adventure. The sea is the Noitacav home of Emit, so the swimmer is plunged into Emit’s world for a moment, and as you know, a moment for Emit could be whatever he wants.”

Egroj was processing.

“So, you passed through our town during your adventure with Emit?” asked Leafar.

“Yes, I did,” remembered Egroj, a bit embarrassed.

“Did you see anything you can tell me?” asked Leafar.

Egroj thought about having run though the town without clothes on. Then he thought about how it appeared abandoned, then he thought about the Sreitp Menwot.

“Oh, yes,” said Egroj. “The Sreitp Menwot are coming.”

“Thank you for the warning Egroj,” said Leafar. “I must warn my people.”

Egroj said goodbye, and then immediately wondered if Eel would be waiting at the edge of the dessert where he had last seen her.

He could see a figure leaning onto the tree. It was Eel. She had picked a fruit from the Retropsnart tree and was taking a bite.

“Don’t eat that,” yelled Egroj as he accelerated his step.

But it was too late. The beautiful, flowing, sweet smelling Princess Eel had disappeared into nothingness. Well, she wasn’t gone, she was just somewhere else. That’s the effect of eating the fruit from the Retropsnart tree.

They would find each other again, they always did.

So, now Egroj had to figure out what to do next. He adjusted his Jolly Sack and wandered toward the next town.

The End

Yahoo.com $34.95 Domain Renewal is Not a Hoax

Jorge — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 09:39:00 +0000

It's not a Hoax. I called and they told me that yes, domain renewals after July 1st, 2008 will be $34.95. That's too bad. I am transferring my domains to godaddy.com.

---

This is part of the email I received on June 19th.

Important note: Beginning on July 1, 2008, Yahoo!'s annual domain renewal price increases to $34.95 per year.

Here's why I was thinking it sounded like a hoax:

1. There is no mention of it on the Yahoo website. I'm on hold with them right now and I'm going to ask them (1 hour and 40 minutes later). I will post what they tell me here. (no one's blog or news article is saying anything official from yahoo.com, everyone is just bashing yahoo.com).

2. (from the yahoo.com site): As long as your service is active and not past due, Yahoo! will automatically renew your domain registration (and pay the associated renewal fees) at the end of each term.

3. This part of the email is fishy: We're writing to remind you that it's time for the annual autorenewal of your service. I say that it's fishy because "autorenewal" means "automatic". That's what it's been this whole time. I don't ever get an autorenewal notice.

4. When I go to manage my domains on yahoo.com, they all say my renewal cost is $12.95. And although the email says that the price goes into effect on July 1st and won't be seen until after July 1st, it just doesn't make sense.

5. Why would yahoo.com do this? It doesn't make sense. Unless godaddy.com and all the other registrars are going to have to do it too, but I can't find anything that says that. Verisign increased prices at the end of last year, but not this high. ICANN is steadily going up too, but again, not this high.

6. I searched the yahoo.com small business help site using "domain renewal $34.95" and nothing came up. Nothing about the specific price. I even searched "Yahoo!'s annual domain renewal price increases to $34.95 per year." and nothing came up.

7. Yahoo.com is still selling domains for $1.99 for new first time users. OK, that's a loss leader...so if GoDaddy.com, but this is a direct quote from their site (on June 20th) $ 1 .99 /1st year for Yahoo! Domains ($12.95 / year after).

I'm just saying that this sounds like it could very well be a hoax by some yahoo.com hater, who wants to hurt yahoo.com.

I know that "sender" addresses can be "forged" and made to look like it's a legitimate company. I get fake ebay and paypal emails all the time.

I only have a few domains on yahoo.com, and have transfered a domain from them before and it was a total pain to do it, hopefully they have changed some things to make it easier (I noticed it's quite a bit easier to find the authorization code...that's nice).

jorge

I Might be on MTVs Engine Room

Jorge — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 15:29:00 +0000

Wow, well, I did something kind of on a whim. I entered an MTV reality show casting call. It looks like it has to do with designing and being on a team of international artists and designers, and then competing against other teams. I'm now going to do some research on their websites (MTV Engine Room, SuPak's Blog) because I received this today:

Jorge, Thank you for entering the Engine Room casting call. We checked out your work, and we're strongly considering you for the show! As a top contender, we'd like to encourage you to upload some more samples of your work on our casting site. Not only is it better for us to evaluate all the narrowed down entries in one place, but in addition, by uploading your work, your portfolio will automatically be eligible for a chance to be selected as a weekly audience winner in accordance with the Official Rules should you not make the show. If you choose not to upload any additional works, this won't be held against you as we narrow down the contenders.

The casting call deadline is June 30th, so please respond as soon as you can.

Thanks!
- Engine Room Casting Team

I can't tell if this is a form letter or not, but wow. I'm kinda trippin'. Maybe everyone gets this email. Maybe so that more people start talking about it. Maybe I'm just skeptical. I'm still excited.

I sent in some examples of website designs, some of my wallpapers, some music, just anything I had that I thought would catch their eye. I guess I did just that.

The deadline is June 30th, and I'll know by July 10th if I've been chosen. If I'm chosen, I will be off to New York for a Month. That's a long time. I'll have to invest in a webcam or something so I can hang out with my family. Skype's the way to go, right?

Crazy.

Camel Notices Something

admin — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 10:00:00 +0000

Once there was a camel who ran free in the desert, feeling lighter than air, fully refreshed and rejuvenated, his thirst completely quenched and more purposeful than ever.

But he wasn't always like this. Let me start the story over.

Once there was a camel who lived in the desert. He was fairly content. He like the way the sand dunes moved a few feet every year. He liked the adventure of looking for and finding water. He liked the way the land in front of him sometimes looked like it was a mirror.

He didn't necessarily like it when he came across his own footprints in the sand, and he didn't like it when other animals pooped in the watering holes.

Well, one hot and dry day, he awoke to find himself with a load on his back. The truth is, the load had always been there, he just didn't always notice it. You know how that is, like when something stinks, but after a while your nose sort of turns off and you don't smell it anymore.

But today, the pack seemed heavier. He didn't actually know what was in the pack, but something was jabbing him in the side, and he could hear toys and games clinking and sliding around as he walked, and some tinkling He couldn't remember if there was anything of use in the pack, but he carried it nonetheless. It's all he knew to do.

Camel stood up, grunting under the weight of the load, and decided it was time to find water.

He knew of a couple of places in the vicinity that had water, but he was up for an adventure. So he decided to brave the large dune to the East. He had heard of an Oasis a couple of days walk over the dune.

The first few hours were easier than the next few hours, and the first day was easier than the second day, but he trudged along, knowing that the water was waiting for him.

As he reached the peak of a smaller dune, he noticed a figure far off in the distance. He knew not to get excited, it would be hours before he would even know if they were walking toward each other, and then another few hours before they would meet. So Camel occupied his mind with counting games his father had taught him.

How many breaths it took to reach a certain number of steps, then multiply that by the number of heartbeats that took place for every four steps, then divide that by the number of birds he saw flying around, which would change the whole equation every time he saw another bird.

He had another one that included bones and blinking, and another that had to do with how many times he thought of the word "Mochila", which wasn't very often, but you'd be surprised...it did come up. This made for an ongoing proccess where he had to remember how many times he had heard the word. I think he was at 7. Mostly it was when he heard someone say it, although when you are by yourself for long periods of time, words can get stuck in your mind where you say it over and over, and if that happened to "Mochila", that number could climb to 500 easy.

All those hours came and went, and Camel found himself off in number land when the figure he had seen hours earlier was standing in front of him.

It was Jackal.

"Hello Camel," said Jackal. "It's been a long time."

"Yes it has," said Camel. Camel didn't like Jackal. He couldn't remember why, though.

"I see you're still carrying the load I gave you," said Jackal.

Camel suddenly remembered why he didn't like Jackal.

"Hmmff," grunted Camel as he started to step to the side to get around Jackal and keep going.

"It looks like it's made you strong and confident," said Jackal. "And happy?"

Camel though about it and he did feel stronger. And he in fact did feel confident in his abilities.

"I don't know about happy," said Camel.

Jackal laughed a little.

"Then I have something for you," said Jackal. "Something that could remind you to think about being happy."

"I don't need anything else from you," said Camel, still trying to get away.

"Well, it's obvious that you do," said Jackal as he pulled out something wrapped up in a very colorful cloth. "I'll just attach it to your Mochila."

Before Camel could protest any further, Jackal had jumped up onto the load, and attached some sort of jingly bell or something onto the load, then crawled over to the other side, scratched around a bit, lapped at what sounded like a bowl of water, and then jumped down again.

"What did you do?" asked Camel. "What is that jingling? And is there water up there?"

"It's just a little something to remind you to think about being happy," said Jackal. "every time you hear the bell, it will remind you that you are very fortunate to have a load so large and wonderful on your back. Many are jealous of your beautiful and grand Mochila."

Camel couldn't help feeling a little proud of his load, but the jingly bell was already annoying him.

"I will see you later," yelled out Jackal. He was already many meters away.

Camel was glad that he was gone. Jackal took what he wanted, and only gave if it benefited himself. He was not pleasant. Camel stood very still so the bell would stop.

Then he thought about his quest for water, and cringed at the sound as he took his first steps.

After a few hours, the bell sound would come in and out of his mind, and it was not making him think of being happy, it was distracting him from his numbers. He tried to count the jingles, but they were uneven and seemed random.

And he was nearing 100 with "Mochila". It was all he could do to think of other things.

Finally, he reached the oasis. It was fairly small, but it had shade, and water.

He got to the water's edge and gazed into the sweet, cool pool. It was beautiful. He lowered his head to take a drink, and with a loud jingle, his load slid a bit toward his head, which made Camel jolt his head upright to catch the load from falling.

Every time he tried to take a drink, his load would slide, almost falling off, and Camel would stand upright again to keep the load from falling off.

Every time, with a loud, obnoxious jingle.

Camel was getting frustrated. He would have cried if he had any tears, but he hadn't had any water for some time now.

He considered turning back and getting water from that tank of water where the level was a bit higher and he wouldn't have to lean so far over, but he knew he wouldn't make it back.

He turned back to gaze into the pool. He had a feeling this was the last thing he would ever see.

He hung his head and sighed. That's when he noticed something at the bottom of the pool of water. It looked like...he wasn't certain...yes...toys? Games? Some useless objects and small pieces of fabric? There were hundreds, maybe thousands of Mochillas sunk at the bottom of the pool. Well, maybe not thousands, but Camel was excited, and you start seeing things when you get excited.

Camel immediately had an idea. He was, after all, a very smart Camel. Without hesitating, he leaned over and let his Mochila slide off his back, and with a gurgling Jingle, watched it sink to the bottom.

He drank and drank and drank. Oh, it was really good. It was fantastic. It was the best.

As he drank, between the ripples of cool, quenching water, Camel saw that each of the Mochilas had their own little bell.

All of them were silent.

---

So, this gets us back to the part where Camel is running all happy...let's see:

Once there was a camel who ran free in the desert, feeling lighter than air, fully refreshed and rejuvenated, his thirst completely quenched and more purposeful than ever.

The End

Redneck Trailer Flash Game Nears Half a Million Plays

Jorge — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:09:00 +0000

You remember that flash game I submitted into the JayIsGames.com flash competition. Although I did not win, It was picked up on a "non-exclusing" basis by AddictingGames.com and in about 2 weeks, has gotten almost 500,000 plays.

This is amazing to me. See my Redneck Trailer Flash Game here!

Sure, the game is silly and it's no action arcade game, but it's getting plays. I was told that the average play time for the game was around 10 minutes. That's pretty good. In fact, the website likes that stat better than the amount of plays.

The game is rated and reviewed by members of the website and it hasn't moved much from about 60% like it and 40% don't like it.

It's really great to see the comments. Some have reviewed it as "best game ever". That's pretty funny.

More of my Original Flash Games here!

jorge

How to Make URL Hyperlinks in InDesign for PDFs

Jorge — Fri, 30 May 2008 10:23:00 +0000

OK, so there may not be too many opportunities to do this, but I have a client that publishes a newsletter through PDF, and they need their email addresses and urls to be live links.

I found two ways to do it. One way is through using InDesign's "Interactive" options. Here is an in depth, step-by-step tutorial on how to make URL Hyperlinks using InDesign (it's pretty easy) but here's the run down:

1. Highlight the text you want to be the hyperlink (you will need to color it and underline it or do something to it or it will just look the way it looks and no one will know it's a hyperlink)
2. From the Menu, go to Window, then Interactive, then Hyperlink
3. Click the little New icon at the bottom of the pallette
4. Select URL in the type field and type in the URL (http://www.domain.com -or- mailto:emailaddress@domain.com)
5. Select Invisible rectangle and none for the highlight field
6. Export to PDF, make sure to check the Include Hyperlink button on that first screen

That's it.

Now, here's another way.

That first way is handy if you want to have the link read something other than the actual URL or email address. (you know, like link as opposed to http://www.goycodesign.com)

If you want to display the email address or URL and let that be the link:

1. Highlight the text
2. Underline it
3. Color it (blue or whatever)
4. Export to PDF

That's it. You don't have to add a "mailto:" or an "http://" or anything. Nice. Either Adobe Acrobat is smart and sees the link with the underline or InDesign does something.

Either way, it works.

jorge

My Original Flash Game Did Not Win

Jorge — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 11:12:00 +0000

Well, I feel like I'm not good enough, my skills aren't up to par, everyone is better than me, etc. whatever.

Not really. I'm fine. I'm happy for the winners of the JayIsGames.com Competition. Sure, a win would have been nice. I was really just hoping for hits to my Graphic Design Website...and I got them. (I really wanted the CS3 software license).

I had put MochiAds on there, so in three weeks I have gained about $20. That's fun. Tricked Out Trailer ended up getting 25,000 plays in three weeks. UpBug got around 8,000. That's pretty good. The winner of the "most played award" had like 1 million. Wow.

Both games are now in the MochiMedia competition...although Tricked Out Trailer is having some problems with the external movies...lesson learned. (they received over 200 games, so I'm not expecting to win this one either).

I learned quite a bit through this competition. For one, it's a lot of work to promote a flash game, not just building a complicated flash game.

I thought I had a chance with my game being funny, but I guess that doesn't carry as much weight as I had hoped.

The winner of the competition was a space shooter which was actually quite good. Similar to many games in that genre, but had it's own coolness.

So, I guess I really have to consider what I'm getting into next time there's a competition. It took way more time than I thought it would, but I'm not sure I would have been motivated to make a game like Tricked Out Trailer if there wasn't a competition.

So, to all of you that played the game, thanks.

Here's another one I've been waiting to release...it's just a simple Tic Tac Toe game, but it's cute. My 6 year old likes playing it.

Have a great day.

jorge

Flash Game Competition Update

Jorge — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 11:32:00 +0000

There's less than a week left in the JayIsGames.com competition #5. My two entries have been doing pretty well.

Tricked Out Trailer has been played over 20,000 times in just over two weeks. I expect it will get a couple more thousand hits before the end of the competition. The game was picked up by a couple of game portals (DigYourOwnGrave.com and Kongregate brought a bunch of hits). I'm pretty excited about the views it got.

UpBug has gotten over 7,000 plays...which is pretty good considering the game is pretty simple, and not potentially controvercial like Tricked Out Trailer. I'm planning on submitting this game to Mindjolt.com and see if it gets another round of plays...see what that does.

Tricked Out Trailer is a multi file game, which means it calls external movies during game play (the two mini games - skeet shooting beers and playing Monster Truck Poker). This causes problems with some portals. I could not get this game up on Newgrounds because of this, and I know that it would have gotten a bunch of hits there.

I tried to modify the code to make it so that I could host the external games on my server, but I couldn't figure it out. It kept messing up the score. bummer. I'm certain that would have bought me another 1,000 hits at least.

Newgrounds has been really interesting. There are so many people on that site every day, that within the first hour or so, each game I submitted would get like 200 views. That's pretty intense. The views drop sharply after a day, and then almost disappear after that, but it's a big deal to get so many hits all at once. Check out my submissions...there's probably a game or two of mine you haven't seen. I'll probably be posting more of my games there when I get some time.

Last week, the competition sponsors opened up a way to vote on the games in the competition. Here's the page where you can cast your vote by donating $1 to your favorite game. The donated money goes to the developer, and the game with the most votes also gets a $500 cash prize. That's nice.

I voted for BFD (Bovine Flatulent Defense). It's a good game.

So, if you haven't played my games, go play them. If you have, thanks (you can always play them again...if you played them early, I've updated both of them after the first week).

The nex t competition is the MochiAds/Gaia Online competition which is coming up on the 7th of April.

jorge

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Keep Them In and Keep Them Out

admin — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 09:21:00 +0000

Once there was a Peacock Papi who was so beautiful and colorful. He had four little peacock chickies who loved to play.

They all lived in a nice fenced in yard where there was a tree, some shrubbery and a little pond. It was a perfect little spot.

The Papi Peacock was so beautiful that every day, animals would come over and ask him to show them his train. It was so beautiful.

Once day, the cow came over and asked Peacock to show her his plumage. So he did.

While he was showing her his feathers, he looked over and saw that his little chickies were playing by the fence.

He excused himself and went to the fence.

"Hey, you guys," said Papi Peacock, "I don't want you guys to play by the fence. You can play by the pond, climb the tree and play in the bushes, but just don't play by the fence."

They apologized and went to play by the pond.

The next day, Dog brought a couple of cat friends to see Peacock's tail feathers.

While he was showing them, he saw out of the corner of his eye, that his chickies were playing by the fence again. In fact, they were playing ON the fence.

He excused himself again and went over to them.

"I thought we agreed you wouldn't play by the fence," said Papi Peacock, "And here you are ON the fence."

They apologized again and went over to the tree.

The next day, a bunch of the animals came over with cakes and chips and drinks. They had been planning a potluck for a while. While they were all talking and laughing, Papi Peacock took a look around, hoping that he wouldn't find his chickies playing by the fence.

He searched the fence line and they weren't there. He breathed a sign of relief.

Then he searched the rest of the yard for them, wondering where they were. He couldn't find them. He looked in the tree, by the pond and in the bush, and they weren't anywhere.

He started freaking out. He asked everyone who came for the potluck to look for them, but no one found them.

They looked for hours, and nothing.

After a while, they all left. They would look on their way home.

Papi Peacock cried and cried and would not let himself go to sleep, well, until he couldn't help falling asleep because he was too tired.

When he woke up, he remembered right away and started to cry again.

He slowly stood up and took a look around the yard. To his surprise, there were the chickies, right in the very center of the yard.

He rushed over to them and hugged them and kissed them and loved on them and told them how worried he had been.

"Where were you?" he asked. "What happened to you last night?"

"Well," one of them said, "We were playing by the fence, and suddenly, well, we found ourselves on the other side of the fence."

"And we couldn't find away back in," said another chickie.

So they went on to explain what happened.

It turns out that while they were on the other side of the fence, a fox came over and offered to help them get to the opening of the fence.

"Get on my back and I'll take you there," said the fox.

The chickies believed him, and got on his back.

Once they were all on his back, he bolted...the opposite way of the fence. He was taking them away.

The chickies started screaming and tightening their claws on his back. They even started pecking him.

"Stop pecking me!" the fox yelled.

But they didn't stop.

"Not until you let us down!" said the chickies.

"Fine!" yelled the fox. "Get off my back!"

The chickies jumped off his back, and the fox quickly ran away.

The chickies realized that they were far from home and started crying.

After a while, they finished crying and decided to try to walk back home.

It took them all night to walk home...foxes run very fast.

Once they got to the fence, they looked around the whole fence line, but couldn't find the way in. But instead of crying again, they decided that they would try to get up onto the fence, and then jump off in to the yard.

As they were talking about how they were going to do it, the fox appeared behind them, and he had brought his whole family... his wife, his three little fox cubs, and his brother.

The chickies freaked out and jumped higher than they thought they could, right over the fence.

Once they were in the yard, and safe from the fox family, they carefully calculated the exact middle of the yard and huddled together, shaking and trembling.

"And that's where I found you," said Papi Peacock. And he hugged them again.

"I'm sure glad you found your way back," he said.

They were too...and they never played by the fence again. Well, there was that one time that the ball got kicked over to the fence, but that's different.

The End

Why Lambs Always Land on their Back

admin — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 17:15:00 +0000

Once there was a fluffy little lamby who suddenly found herself at the very top of a very tall tree.

She didn't normally climb trees, and when she found herself up the tree, she didn't know what to do.

Since this was a new thing for her, and didn't actually know if she could climb down, she decided to sing a song.

It went like this:

I'm just a little Lamby
Singing in a tree
Not sure how I got up here
But I think I have to pee.

And when she thought about it, she realized she really DID have to pee. So she stuck her bottom out as far as she could, pulled up her tail (so she wouldn't get pee on her fluffy tail) and trickled her pee from the top of the tree.

What she didn't know is that some Piggie friends had chosen to have a picnic directly under the tree.

One of them was putting some bread on his butter, and felt a little drop.

"Oh," said the Piggie, "I think it's raining." She took out her umbrella, opened it up and went back to buttering his bread.

Meanwhile, the little lamby was relieved to not have to pee anymore, and was happy. So happy, in fact, that she decided to sing another song.

It went like this:

I'm a little Lamby
I don't know what to do
Not sure how I got up here
But I think I have to poo

And just as she said it, yep, she felt like she had to poo.

So, she wiggled her bottom a little further out on the branch, lifted her fluffy tail out of the way, and let out a stream of little pellets of poo.

Well, the Piggie friends had just finished eating their butter with bread, and wanted to move on to the baggie of potato chips. Well, they looked everywhere, but had apparently misplaced the baggie, and just as they almost decided to think that they had forgotten the baggie back at the house, one of the found it just beyond a root of the tree.

The Piggie reached her hand out from under the umbrella, and grabbed hold of the baggie.

Just as soon as she brought her hand in, there started a rat-a-tat-tat banging on the umbrella.

They decided it was the tree dropping some acorns and tore into the bag of potato chips.

Meanwhile, back up the tree, the little Lamby felt again relieved to not have to poo anymore.

So, being happy again, she decided to sing again.

Here's how the song went:

I'm a little Lamby
I might have heard a hoot
Maybe there's an owl around
But I think I have to toot

And then she realized that yes, she did have to toot.

So she scooted herself further out on the limb, and was about to push, when she slipped and fell off.

Meanwhile, the Piggie friends were looking for the whipped cream to put on the pudding. Apparently, someone had forgotten the whipped cream as well.

So, as the little Lamby fell down toward the ground, she flew past a bird's nest and a squirrel's house, then some falling acorns, and even a few little drops of rain.

Then she smashed into the umbrella, and bounced right back up into the air.

This is when she remembered what her grandmother had told her:

"Always land on your back where it's the fluffiest."

So Lamby twisted herself around as she started back down for the second time.

The Piggie friends heard the large thump on the umbrella and decided to see what it was. They closed the umbrella and put it away, then took a look up toward the tree.

They missed the little fluffy lamby as she fell right into the pudding.

The Piggie friends decided that there was nothing to see and went back to eating.

"I thought we forgot the whipped cream," said one of the Piggie friends pointing at the pudding.

The Piggie friends licked their lips, grabbed their spoons and aimed for the pudding with the fluffy whipped cream on top.

Yum!

The End

Pilot a Robotic Bug Flash Game

Jorge — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 15:07:00 +0000

I've entered two games into JayIsGames.com casual Game design competition #5. My other game is a redneck trailer sim game where you trick it out with upgrades like Wheel spinners, spoilers and undercarriage neons.

The theme for this competition is "UPGRADE".

My Robotic Bug Game entry is a simple idea that got very complicated very quickly. In fact, I think I might have made the game a bit too hard, but maybe not.

It started as an "avoid the other bugs" game that got gradually harder by adding more bugs. It starts with a couple of ants, then some spiders, then some really annoying mosquitoes.

The enemies are not intelligent...they do not chase you, but there are a lot of them, and they seem to be random, but they are actually not. There are probably some players that will find the "safe spot" where no bugs will hit you.

So it started with the bug you drive around avoiding the bugs, and eating the "food" bugs. That's it. It was kinda boring. So I added a health system, where if you eat a food bug, the heath goes up, and if you get hit by a bad bug, the health goes down. I mae it start at like Health:20%, and then when it got to 100%, it triggered the "win" and it would go to the next level.

So then I decided that once the level was finished, the reward should be a newer faster bug, that was harder to kill and needed more food. So I built those, added more enemy bugs, and it still wasn't holding my attention.

Oh, and this whole time, there are also obstacles that make the whole thing like a maze, so I played with putting those in strategic places to make the levels harder.

Then, I wanted to add weapons. Not weapons that are attached to the robot bug, but that are on the field.

I made a nuke that you drive over and it blows all the bugs away for a second or two...giving you a little much needed breathing room on the 3rd and 4th level.

Then I felt like coming up with another one, but instead of a weapon, I made a little "incubator" I called it "Horde". Basically, you drive over that and 4 food bugs speed out of it. This can help when your health is low.

The third and last powerup is the plant remover. I called it "Hydro". Basically, when you roll over it, it takes away the plants on the field so they won't be obstacles.

Then I decided to make some of the plants where you can go under them...just to confuse things a bit.

I thought I was done. I made 4 levels, so the game could take about 10 minutes to finish. Oh, and I added a high score board (mochi Leaderboard) that tallies how many Robot Bug Vehicles you used to finish the game. The best possible score is 4 (which I still have not achieved...I think my best is 6 or 8 or something).

So then I though about a "Survival Mode". This is like that video game "driver" where like 6 cop cars are chasing you and you try to stay in front of them.

Well, I used the same idea, where you get a modified version of the "Stinkbug". I chose the stinkbug because it is fairly small (not like the cockroach) and not too slow. So I switched out the engine and added traction and navigation from the cockroach, and drop him in the middle of a mass of bugs. More bugs come out at 40 seconds, 80 seconds, and 100 seconds. There are a couple of nukes thrown in there for a moment of calm, but it doesn't last long.

Well, then I think now I have a pretty good game.

So the idea is you successfully pilot one ship, and your reward is to get upgraded to a higher performance vehicle.

Oh, and you have to do a flight check before you launch. This was a nod to the JayIsGames.com comunity, that seems to really be fascinated with "escape" games (search JayIsGames for "escape the Kitchen"...it's my favorite. It's not a complicated flight check, but you have to do it before you can deploy. (just click on buttons and switches to see what they do. Some are time toggle switches, some are press button and some are motion sensor buttons...you'll see. Don't get frustrated...it's easier than you think.

Oh, the "survival" mode has it's own high score system, capturing how long you stayed in.

Maybe in the future I will add levels, but only to add powerups and more enemy bugs. I didn't want to make the game too long because it's kind of the same thing throughout, and that gets dull sometimes if it's not a puzzle or something.

So, something I've done with this game is new for me, sort of new. I have created a game I can not beat. Well, I may have beat it once, but I have to build in cheats while I'm testing it, and then take them out for the launch. I've only created a couple of games like that, and it's funny, I always wonder what people do in those cases...maybe just get testers to test the heck out of it or something.

As far as coding goes, I think almost all of it is "HitTests". Pretty simple.

The owner of JayIsGames said that during the month that the games are being judged, the site gets over 1 million hits a week.

Here is basically what he said:

The site gets 750,000 unique visitors each month, and each competition
collection (they've had 4 so far) gets 1-5K views each day. The competitions
each got around 1,000,000 hits during the competition judging period (about
3 weeks), and this time (competition 5) is expected to "eclipse" the number
of previous visits because of some "viral" directions they are taking (ie. letting other game portals host the games simultaneously).

I hope my games get played...I hope people visit my website as a result of that, and I hope I get work from a few of those visitors.

Go play games...not just mine, play the other submissions too...these are brand new games by developers who worked very hard to get these games submitted in a very short amount of time.

Here's a direct link to the game on my website, and a link to the JayIsGames Competition page.

Oh, and that's my voice going through the flight check. I found an actual 777 flight check (the actual flight check sequence is really really long and complicated) and got some ideas from it.

jorge

Redneck Trailer Game

Jorge — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 14:35:00 +0000

I have entered a flash game competition over at JayIsGames.com. I entered 2 games. One is a redneck trailer game and the other is a robot bug game.

I'll write about the 2nd game later this week.

The theme of this competition is "UPGRADE".

The redneck trailer game is called "Tricked Out Trailer" and the gameplay is like a sim game. You need to make money doing several things so you can buy upgrades to your trailer.

Upgrades you can add to the trailer are: wheel spinners, a spoiler, a new paint job, decals (like a flame job or a racing stripe), some undercarriage neons, etc.

You can make money by pawning something, going to work at the beer factory, skeet shooting some shaken up beers, playing poker, or buying scratch-and-win game cards.

There are a few fun little things you can play with, like: you can adjust the antenna, you can knock out the christmas lights, and a couple of other fun things.

I really have a good feeling about this game. I think that it could win, although it probably won't.

This is where you come in. There are several ways to win. Most of the big prizes are judged, but one of the prizes will be determined by counting up how many plays a game gets.

The reason why I started making games was to get people to my business site. This is still my ultimate goal...to get some customers, be it for web design or game development. Either way, that's great.

So, if you go and play my game, click the "send to a friend" button and send it to a few of your friends.

Play some of the other games too...I am sure there will be some great games submitted.

As always, I learned so much making this game. I have a BUNCH or "Movie Clips" that are "watching" the score. For example, the scratch and win icon on the left has a watcher script on it that says: If the cash equals less than $5, then hide the icon, but if the cash equals $5 or more, the show the icon.

More compliated was the pawn shop items. Once one is sold, the code tells a "watcher" to equal "1", so if when the items Movie Clip enters the frame, it looks to see if the watcher says "1" or "0", and then shows it or hides it.

There are watchers watching if you have purchased an upgrade, if you have gained a "Golden Beer", If you have purchased the gun, and even if it's day or night.

The other huge thing in this game is that it calls external swfs. The skeet shoot and the poker game are stand alone games (sort of) that get called when the frame gets to a point once you've clicked the icon.

I also added MochiAds and Mochi Leaderboards (a high score system). The high score I chose to focus on was how much money was left over after you get your 6th "Golden Beer".

It's a pretty fun game, I think so far, everyone that's seen it hasn't been offended, and has actually laughed at least once. I think one of my friends actually shot some of his drink out of his nose while playing it.

It's not action packed...it's a sim game, but it's still pretty fun.

Please go and play the game at jayIsGames. I am also hosting my game on my server, and it counts toward the "Viral" score I talked about earlier.

Please let me know if you played the game. Do you think it might win?

jorge

Skunk Finally Smiles

admin — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 10:55:00 +0000

Once there was a skunk who was, well, she was unhappy. I'm not sure why she was upset, but it seems like everything bothered her.

If it rained, she was bothered. It it was cold or windy or hot, she was bugged. None of her friends could actually think of anything that made her smile or laugh, and believe me, they tried.

Every second Tuesday of every third month (unless it fell on an even numbered day - which would move it to the first Saturday morning that everyone could be there), they met to talk about new ideas they could try, and failed attempts of the past couple of months.

Well, in the meantime, Skunk knew that they were meeting, and since she didn't know what they were meeting about (and was never invited),that made her very upset, and even suspicious of all her "friends".

It just seemed like everything that anyone tried to do, even in love and honest concern for her wellbeing, was seen by her as a jab, and a dagger.

Once, squirrel made Skunk a beautiful cake, and it wasn't even Skunks birthday. It was strawberry inside with little chunks of cashews inside, layered with a coffee icing, then the whole thing iced with a dark chocolate cream cheese icing, and little white flowers all over it.

Well, Skunk ate a small piece of it, and was pleasant while Squirrel sat and chetted, but once Squirrel left, Skunk threw the rest of the cake away. She thought Squirrel meant by bringing a cake that Skunk was too skinny, or was addicted to sweet food, or something...she couldn't decide. But she was upset by it.

Once, Lizzard brought her flute and played a sweet little lullaby for Skunk. Well, Skunk immediately thought that Lizzard wanted to put Skunk to sleep, so she pretended to fall asleep.

When Lizzard saw that Skunk had fallen asleep, Lizzard quietly cleaned up the kitchen and tidied up the living room. Skunk kept peeking at Lizzard when she had her back turned. When Lizzard finally left, Skunk was sure that Lizzard thought Skunk was a messy animal and couldn't keep a clean house.

There was nothing that anyone could do that Skunk wouldn't assume they meant as a negative judgement on her character.

Well, the last straw for Skunk was when Froggie invited her to a "We Love You, Skunk" party. It was even held on a second Tuesday.

Skunk didn't RSVP, but knew that they were still going to throw the party. She had the idea that they were finally going to tell her she had to leave the forest.

Well, she was right...about the party still being thrown, but not the eviction.

As the Tuesday approached, Skunk prepared to show them all. She was going to finally let them how she felt about the...and it was not going to be pretty.

It took her a whole morning, and she even skipped lunch, but she finally found what she was looking for...Hemlock.

She gathered a handfull of Hemlock seeds and took them home. She crushed them into a powder, and added a little bit of water so that it made a paste, then she put it in a little acorn shell and stored it behind the pots and pans.

On Tuesday morning, Skunk sat at her kitchen table, with the Hemlock paste in front of her. She watched the clock. She had gathered all the pictures of the forest animals and set them up on the table.

There was a picture of Skunk and Froggie from when they went to the forest fair, and a picture of Stork and Squirrel laughing at Skunk's kitchen table. There was a picture of Skunk and Lizzard jumping into the pond.

She looked them all for a long time, thinking that they were all faking their friendship with her.

On the other side of the forest, Froggie and the others were putting the final touches on the decorations. They were beautiful. Garlands, flowers, a couple of cakes, lots of punch and cookies. Some of them had even brought presents.

Stork had the idea to make a card and have everyone sign it, and everyone had done that except for Mouse. Once mouse signed it, Stork put it on the table with the presents.

Once the time had come for the party to start, Froggie wondered what was keeping Skunk. Froggie sent Grackle to fly above the forest to see if he could see her on the trails.

Well, at the time the party was supposed to start, Skunk picked up the Hemlock and put it in her mouth and swallowed it.

She felt very proud of herself. She was going to show them. She felt like they disliked her so much that she was going to teach them a lesson.

As her mouth and throat started to get tingly, she thought of how Squirrel and Lizzard had wronged her.

As her mouth filled with saliva, she thought of how Froggie and Stork had done such bad things to her.

As her muscles started twitching, she thought of how badly all the forest animals had treated her and how judgemental they all had been.

As everything in her cozy little burrow started getting darker, she thought of how satisfied she would be knowing that all the forest animals would get a dose of their own medicine.

And when her breathing became shallower and harder, she thought she would finally go to the party and see if they had finally learned their lesson, but she could not stand up, in fact, she couldn't move a muscle.

---

Grackle didn't see Skunk on the trail, and he didn't see her anywhere around her burrow. When he finally landed and peeked inside her home, he immediately knew something was wrong.

He went inside and tried to wake her, but he couldn't. He looked at all the pictures stretched out in front of her on the kitchen table and smiled.

---

They never found any trace of the Hemlock, and all thought so highly of her. They were sad that her time had come so unexpectedly, but were all so touched by the fact that her last moments were spent gazing at her friends.

There was even a smile on Skunk's face.

She was finally happy.

The End

The World is my...

admin — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 10:39:00 +0000

Once there were two chipmunks that loved each other very, very much. You could tell because they hugged and snuggled everywhere they went...sometimes maybe too much. Well, not for them, but you know how some people are...some people just don't like seeing that stuff out in public.

Anyway, these guys loved being outside. They loved to explore new places, climb interesting things and sleep anywhere they thought was safe.

They would take a weekend here or a couple of days there and go off on some fun adventure.

Then, when they returned, they would invite everyone in the forest to come over and listen to them tell of their exciting vacation.

Sometimes, the forest animals would ask them to retell stories, and the chipmunks would always oblige.

One of their favorite adventures was when they went to a beautiful place where the trees were huge, and there were massive logs everywhere. They even had a picnic on one of the fallen logs.

Another favorite was when they found a mound of large boulders piled up into an awesome place to explore.

There was also the time they hiked along a large mud pit, and they both ended up with sticky mud up to their knees.

Oh, and there was also the place where the earth opened up in a huge crack. They explored the crack all day. At one end there was a forest of thorns and vines, and in the center was a huge sink hole.

Everyone loved their stories, and they were both so good at telling them.

One day, the Monkey family invited them over for dinner. They did this every once in a while.

Once the little baby monkeys were down for the night, Mr. and Mrs. Monkey and the Chipmunks played games, sang songs, talked and laughed. They were very good friends.

Sometimes they would tell each other things that no one else knew. That's what you do with good friends.

Well, it may have been an accident how the subject of pooping was brought up, (although it seemed to be a favorite topic along with underleg trumpeting for the Monkey family).

Accident or not, the chipmunks admitted to something that surprised the Monkeys.

Monkey's side was hurting from laughing so hard.

"Well, sometimes we're just too far away from a restroom to go back!" said Mr. Chipmunk.

Monkey finally calmed down enough to ask them, "So, at the forest with the logs?"

"Yep," said the chipmunks, "we left a couple logs."

"And the the pile of boulders?" asked Monkey.

"We made our own pile." said the chipmunks.

"And the big crack?" Asked Monkey.

"Right at the edge of the sink hole." said the chipmunks.

"And the mud pit?" asked the Monkeys.

"That was a bit messy," said Mrs. Chipmunk, "I think it was the lamb burgers we ate for lunch."

Oh, they laughed about that for a while.

The Monkeys promised not to tell anyone in forest about their "adventures" during their outdoor adventures.

But whenever the chipmunks told the forest of their most recent adventure, the Monkeys would have to fight laughing out loud.

Especially when they told about their trip to the city dump. Oh, and they almost fell off the stumps they were sitting on when they told about getting pinched on some thorny bushes at loaf mountain.

They couldn't keep their snickers quiet when the chipmunks went to the lake and caught a bunch of Crappie.

The End

Blah and the Falling Blah-Blahs

admin — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 09:35:00 +0000

Once there was a blah that was very blah, and loved to blah. Of course, only when the blah was blah or blah blah, which was actually quite blah blah.

Well, one day, a bunch of blahs dropped out of the blah, and the blah was so blah that everything changed.

First, all the blah in the blah went all blah blah. Then the blah became completely blah blah, which was really a blah thing.

There wasn't anything that the blah could do about that, but that didn't stop her from becoming blah blah.

Well, the blah made lots of changes in her life to make up for the changes that the falling blah had caused.

The problem with that was that the blah had no idea how to be a blah, and the next few days, all of the blah's friends became upset with the new blah...they didn't like the new blah very much.

But, they all loved her so much, that they all decided to do something about it.

All of the blah-blah's climbed the blah with blahs in their blah blahs, and tried to put them all back, but that didn't work...the blah's kept doing what they had done before, remember, what had started the whole thing.

Well, when the blahs came down from the blah, the blah saw them and knew exactly what they were doing. She was so happy that they cared so much about them that she got all blah-blah and began to blah.

Then all the other blah's got confused by seeing the blah getting all blah-blah, and they all started to blah.

The blah's were so blah, that they began blah-ing themselves, and one even blah-ed himself against the blah. Well, the force of the blah blah-ing against the blah made a bunch of blahs fall from the blah.

When the blah realized that it was just blah falling from the blah, she blah-ed, and then couldn't stop blah-ing.

The rest of the blahs saw her blah-ing and began blah-ing as well.

They blah-ed for a while until they got hungry, and then forgot what had started the whole thing.

The End

How Much Can You Make on a Flash Game

Jorge — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 16:37:00 +0000

It's the big question: How much can I make on a Flash game? I've recently started actively trying to get my games to make me some money, and it's actually been working.

I've started adding MochiAds to some of my games (which gets me pennies at a time).

I've also posted a couple of games on FlashGameLicense, and that's actually brought in a bunch of offers for several of my games.

I've been researching what is "a good offer" and how much can I really make on a game. Considering if it's a game that gets "dugg" and on the front page of several big online gaming sites, it looks like it's possible to make several thousand dollars...just for building a flash game. That's pretty good.

MochiMedia posted this great article about Will Hankinson and his game "filler". It's a great article, explaining quite a bit about how much is possible to make on a flash game. This is exciting.

Here are my games, just in case you are curious.

Maybe one day I'll make a game that blows up.

jorge

New Flash Game - Ladybug's Robot

Jorge — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 13:03:00 +0000

OK, so I had been wanting to make a flash platform game, side scroller type, and I also was liking the "escape" games. Escape games are a game where you have to click around the screen and either gather stuff or set things in motion. Here's an example of a good one called "Escape the Kitchen", and one that I made for the Meineke Auto Repair Shop in San Antonio called "Escape from the Garage".

So, I kinda mixed the two genres together and came up with this one. As the game progressed, I started thinking about why the ladybug would be building a robot, and ultimately what would happen once the robot was finished.

I was inspired by this book called "Robot Dreams" by Sara Varon that I got at the library (really great book), and a story I wrote for my Children's Stories Blog called "Robotic Ladybug".

Well, so you are a ladybug and you go around exploring the environment. You've got some bugs to eat, other bugs that you have to get rid of, a pond to jump over, some clouds to bounce on, a snake to watch out for and of course, a robot to build. The story is revealed once the robot is activated, so don't give up.

Play Ladybug's Robot

My research found that ladybugs have no enemies. In fact, the give off a bitter tasting and foul smelling substance by rubbing their legs, so that's what you "shoot", but you have to get the "bullet" first...you'll see.

I used a platform engine by Nathan Stockton, but then modified it to suit my needs.

One of the new things (for me) in this game was adding a volume slider for the music (you'll have to look around for it).

I also wanted to make it more dramatic, and I found some great soundtrack music from a guy named "Edgen" on Flashkit.com. A credit to him is at the end scene.

Another fun thing was the animation of the end story movie. Notice the part where there is something coming down (don't want to spoil it). That's an animation effect I learned fro watching Anime cartoons. Mostly just the background is moving, but it makes it look like it's moving fast. That was fun.

The robot area has a hit test with this code:

onClipEvent (enterFrame) {
if (this.hitTest(_root.char.hit)) {
_root.robot.nextFrame();
_root.char.hit.gotoAndPlay("off");
_root.char.gear.gotoAndPlay("gearWait");
}
}

Basically if the ladybug is in the "hit" mode and it hits the robot hit area, then it does three things 1) the robot's movie advances one frame (revealing the next part of the body), 2) the ladybug's "hit" mode turns off, 3) the "gear" goes to wait mode.

Each object that the ladybug hits, calls a _root.char.box.gotoAndPlay("gearFall"); which tells the gear to come down so that it's ready to trigger the robot movie again.

Anyway, enjoy.

Oh, I also started putting MochiAds on my games (the little ad that displays while the game is loading) so that I can start making some money. I'll write about that later.

jorge

You should be very conscious whilst selecting domain names. Moreover, website hosting can also have a strong impact on your advertising model and therefore, for getting good web development services always look for a skilled webmaster.

Einstein Law Meets with SEO Experts - Watch this Video

Jorge — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 10:34:00 +0000

This video series is fairly heavy on the promotion of Einstein Law, but it's not difficult to see beyond that and take home quite a bit of "meat".

This series was filmed at the Webmaster World 2006 in Las Vegas.

Einstein speaks with Danny Sullivan on subjects like White Hat vs Black Hat practices, the future of internet video, search engine results, content, linking strategies, Link Farms, being sandboxed and Website size.

Einstein then speaks with Jake Baillie about local searches (as opposed to phone books), relevancy, quality of results, TrueLocal, website spam, link trading, content resource, call tracking and vertical searching.

Then with Greg Niland about the difference between a good SEO company and a bad one, link popularity, the sandbox, search engine updates and how it affects websites, long term vs short term results, quality content and video.

Watch the video series here.

Really informative stuff. It's fairly long, so play it in the background while you work.

Enjoy.

jorge

The best networking certificate is the ccna certificate and Microsoft certified systems administrator or mcsa certification is also growing in scope. So, if you are planning to appear in any Cisco exam like ccnp or ccie you have to practice online sample papers.

Free Tech Event, Bryan Texas, January 26-27, 2008

Jorge — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 10:10:00 +0000

I just got this, and I'll be attending.

BarCampTX

Check out the proposed topics:

Proposed Sessions

* User Centered Design/Development
* Rich Internet Applications (RIAs); pros and cons of using; technoligies: XHR, Flex/Flash, etc.
* "Design is ____" (v2) a presentation on the definition of design, its importance, and how to use it to its fullest potential - Roby Fitzhenry w/ 372
* "What is branding anyway?" - Roby Fitzhenry w/ 372
* "Do's and Don'ts in starting your own business" - Travis Ward & Roby Fitzhenry w/ 372
* 'Tips on communicating with customers for designers and web developers' - Brad Dressler w/ bcd design
* CSSBurner.com 's Toolkit (Markup and CSS)
o Getting Started (planning)
o Recyclable starting points
o The Techniques We Use the Most
+ Rounded Corners
+ Sticky Footers
+ Corner Pinning
+ Holy Grails
o Coding Practices ( or Our Clients Love Us for This)
* Optimal lawn mowing paths w/code! - Jeremy Kelley
* Meta-resources: Whats next for RESTful web services? - Ben Burkert
* Software testing practices - Ben Burkert
* 'What We Can Learn About Marketing "The Conversation" From The Online Adult Entertainment Industry' - Johnny Citizen
* Memorial Service for the term 'Web 2.0': let's put the term 'Web 2.0' to rest, have it live on in the term "Web", and keep cranking out cool new sites with better interfaces, user contribution, and open APIs.
* "MVC and PHP" or "Hey, those Rails kids had a great idea!" - Daniel Cousineau
o ...or any other PHP or Server-Side design topics, I would prefer to have a nice session on MVC even though most people (everybody except for Rails coders, and even some Rails coders) don't know the MVC design pattern at all.
* PEAR has done the work for you: Quick Forms is my hero - Daniel Cousineau
o While I would pick the above presentation over this one, a good 15-30 minute presentation on the wonders of Quick Forms (PHP only, however anyone else can get ideas and write their own libraries for Rails, etc.) and how much it speeds up dev time.
* Financing your startup 101 - Josh Tabin
* Any tech startup related issues (equity, financing, business model, etc.) - James Lancaster
* Managing the "Omni-Me" - James Lancaster
* Mobile journalist (MoJo) setup using (mostly) open source tools with podcast-type tips from a former radio anchor - Jonny Dover
* Code, values and culture: A discussion of what's important and what it means for the Web's architectural path. - Ethan Moore,

Awesome! Maybe I can present something...I don't know...what do I know.

jorge

The Hundred Babies

admin — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 21:27:00 +0000

Once there was a little girl named Sofie, and she had one hundred babies.

She had a little kitty cat baby and a furry mouse baby and a dog baby. She even had an elephant baby and a bear baby and a gorilla baby.

They were all so cute and cuddly. She loved them all so much. They all slept on her bed with her every night, and she could tell when even one of them fell off the bed.

One morning, as she hugged every one of them, the counted only 99 babies.

“Oh, no,” she thought.

She hugged them all again, and again counted only 99. She knew it was wolf who was missing.

Where was he? Sofie decided to leave the 99 babies in the care of Baby Alligator and Baby Stork, and she took Baby Snake and Baby Gorilla with her to look for them.

Baby Lamb and Baby Raccoon cried when Sofie left.

“I’ll be right back, sweeties,” she said to them.

Sofie, Baby Snake and Baby Gorilla looked everywhere. They looked on top of every rock, and under every tree. They looked in all of Baby Wolf’s favorite places, but they could not find him.

They all sat down for a rest, and just as Sofie opened her backpack to take out some snacks. She always had snacks in her backpack. But before she could open the backpack, she heard a little noise.

She knew right away that it was Baby Wolf. It was a cute little yelp, but it was a frightened little yelp.

Baby Gorilla and Baby Snake heard it too.

“Baby Wolf!” Sofie called out.

They all heard another yelp. They were close.

They followed the yelping to a small hole, and when they peered inside, there was Baby Wolf.

“Baby Wolf,” said Sofie, “Are you OK?”

Baby Wolf just yelped.

“You’re hungry aren’t you?” she asked. “I brought some Snackies.”

She opened her backpack, and was surprised at what she found…nothing.

“Hey,” she exclaimed, “I thought I had Snackies in here.”

She peered into the hole again.

“Sorry, Baby Wolf,” she said. “I don’t have any Snackies for you. You’ll just have to wait until we get you out.”

Sofie asked Baby Snake to stretch himself as long as he could and slide down into the hole. Baby Gorilla made sure Baby Snake didn’t fall all the way in.

“Now, Baby Snake,” said Sofie, “Grab on to Baby Wolf as tight as you can.”

Baby Snake grabbed on to Baby Wolf’s nose, and Baby Gorilla and Sofie pulled on Baby Snakes tail as hard as they could, but not too hard to break Baby Snake.

Baby Wolf wasn’t budging.

They pulled and pulled, but nothing.

“OK,” said Sofie. “Baby Snake, you can let go. We have to think of something else.”

So Baby Snake let go and was pulled out of the hole.

Sofie gave Baby Gorilla a hug for being so strong, and Baby Snake a kiss for being so long. But when she kissed Baby Snake, she noticed that her breath smelled like Snackies.

“Baby Snake,” asked Sofie. “Why does your breath smell like Snackies? We brushed your teeth last night, didn’t we?”

All Baby Snake could do is point down to Baby Wolf.

Sofie looked down into the hole and that’s when she noticed the crumbs all over Wolf’s nose and chin.

Baby Wolf, did you eat the Snackies from my backpack?

Baby Wolf whined an embarrassed whine.

“Oh,” said Sofie sadly. “That’s why you’re stuck.”

She sat down next to the hole to think.

“Well,” said Sofie, “I guess we’ll just have to wait until you get smaller, and then you won’t be stuck anymore.”

Then she stood up.

“Baby Snake and Baby Gorilla?” She said. “You guys stay here and I’ll be right back.”

She kissed them before she left, and reached down into the hole and rubbed Baby Wolf’s nose.

Sofie was back in a flash with all the babies following her, and a backpack full of Snackies for everyone. They all played and ate and took naps next to the hole where Baby Wolf was, including him in all the games they played…as well as they could.

Later that evening, when some of the babies had fallen asleep, and it was fairly quiet, a very loud and muffled honking sound came from the hole where Baby Wolf had been all day, and then suddenly, Baby Wolf popped out of the hole. His toot has dislodged him from the hole.

Everyone laughed and hugged and kissed Baby Wolf.

Baby Wolf licked Sofie all over her face. She knew he was sorry for eating the Snackies without asking.

I don’t think he did it again.

The End

Monkey Loses Mouse...Again

admin — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 15:54:00 +0000

Once there was a little monkey who had a mouse for a best friend. She loved the mouse, played with it every day. Fed it, watered it, cleaned it's cage, everything.

Well, one day, the mouse died. It was a sad day. Monkey cried and cried.

Actually, she didn't cry at first because she didn't know what "died" meant.

Well, Papi Monkey told her that the mouse wasn't going to breath or eat or move around anymore. She still didn't cry. Not until Papi Monkey told Little Monkey they had to put it in a plastic bag and throw the mouse away.

Oh, then she cried and cried.

Well, Papi Monkey suggested that Little Monkey write the mouse a goodbye note. She did. It was very sweet. It said "I love you mouse" and "Goodbye".

They folded it up and took a shovel and the plastic bag with the dead mouse in it to the backyard.

Papi Monkey picked a spot next to a Live Oak and started digging. There were roots all over the place, but he was able to make a hole about a foot deep.

Maybe it was less than that.

Anyway, Papi Monkey opened the bag with the dead mouse in it and whew, was it stinky.

Papi Monkey told his little girl that when something dies, it starts to rot. Just like when she accidentally dropped an apple core into the couch and they found it all moldy and soft and stinky a couple of weeks later.

Just like when they forget to put the garbage out on trash day and have to wait a whole nother week, and it stinks like crazy. It’s because the garbage has things in it that are rotting.

They talked about how flies like to eat rotten stuff and they lay their eggs in the rotten stuff and the baby flies are born and they are called maggots. Eww!

Little Monkey dropped the folded up note into the hole and Papi Monkey dropped the dead mouse into the hole. Actually, they looked at the mouse first, then dropped it in.

Papi Monkey put dirt over the hole and they went inside. Later that night, Little Monkey asked how deep Papi Monkey could dig, and Papi Monkey said he couldn’t dig too deep. Maybe a few feet.

Little Girl monkey asked what would happen if he kept digging…if he could. And Papi Monkey took out their “Earth Ball” and tried to figure out where they would end up if they kept digging.

The answer was “Somewhere in the ocean”.

Little Monkey then asked about what kind of animals lived in the ocean, and they talked and talked about fish and sea horses and plankton and whales and coral well into the night.

Papi Monkey was suddenly woken up by a scream coming from outside. He found himself on Little Monkey’s bed, but Little Monkey was not there.

He ran out of the house and found Little Monkey standing next to the Live Oak tree, pointing to the ground.

When Papi Monkey reached his daughter, he saw that the place where they had buried her little mouse was disturbed. In fact, the mouse was gone. Little Monkey found her note a few feet away, in the direction of the deep forest.

Papi Monkey explained that he should have dug a deeper hole and that some other animal had come and taken her mouse away.

“Why would anyone do that?” she asked.

“Well,” said Papi Monkey carefully. “To eat it.”

Little Monkey’s face got all scrunched up and looked like she was going to throw up.

Papi Monkey took her hand and they climbed the tree house and listened to the wind for a while.

They didn’t talk about eating a rotten dead mouse.

The End

New Flash Game Competition (#5)

Jorge — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 14:34:00 +0000

JayIsGames.com is having another competition, and the prizes are getting better.

Prizes:

1st place:
o $3,500
o (1) Adobe Flash CS3 Professional license
2nd place:
o $1,750
o (1) Adobe Flash CS3 Professional license
3rd place:
o $1,000
o (1) Adobe Flash CS3 Professional license
Best use of competition theme:
o $1,000
Viral award:
o $1,000 - most game views as determined by Mochi Media's MochiBot statistics for the 3-week competition judging period.
Audience award:
o $500 - determined by JIG community popular vote.

Deadline:
Sunday, March 3rd, 2008 at 11:59PM (GMT-5:00).

Theme:
Upgrade

Here are the winners from the previous competitions. I was checking them out to see if there's a "type" of game that keeps winning, but there's not. Maybe a "quality" of game.

Competition #1 Theme: Click Drag Type
Competition #2 Theme: Grow
Competition #3 Theme: Replay
Competition #4 Theme: Ball Physics

I'll be entering with something. Not sure what. I'll keep you posted.

jorge

Excellent web hosting can promise you to give an excellent web design, however, for increasing your search engine ranking you are required to apply good search engine optimization tools.

Plan B - When Your Clients Don't Pay

Jorge — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 16:08:00 +0000

So, last month I reported my new plan to get my delinquent clients to pay, well, it didn't work. I didn't even get a response from them.

So I send them phase 2, and the email was a bit more dramatic:

All you owe me is $375.00. (I've attached the invoices)

And if you pay me now, my kids will have food on the table and maybe some presents for Christmas.

You can pay with a credit card online by going here: http://www.goycodesign.com and clicking on the paypal pay now button.

Have a wonderful day. And remember, just $375.00. That's nothing for you, but it's my electric, phone and water bill for this month.

jorge

This picture is the picture I attached to the email. This actually got a response. They thought it was cute, and the boss would talk to the accountant. And why wouldn't it get a response...she's so cute. I actually couldn't get her to make a sad face...even her sad face looked like a smile.

Well, it's been a couple of weeks, and still no check in the mail. So I've sent Phase 3. I'll report on that soon. Still haven't figured out what Phase 4 will look like...maybe a flash game. Hmm.

Hope your clients are paying.

jorge