Vasinov Blog

Cookie Wars hits 1000 people in the Game Center!

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 14:31:38 -0600

Cookie Wars hits 1000 people in the Game Center!

15-year old girl designs an awesome iPhone game

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 13:28:00 -0600

Three months ago a 15-year old girl, who goes under an alias Alice Red, approached us with an idea for a project. It involved cookies, ice cubes, chili peppers, and, most importantly, fun gameplay that includes explosions and destruction.

Screenshots from Cookie Wars

We were a little skeptical at the beginning but decided to give her a chance. At the end of her sophomore year at Boulder High School, Alice presented us a complete design of the game, which we found quite artsy and fresh.

Picture of Boulder High School in Colorado where Alice Red attends. Courtesy of THE DENVER POST | RJ SANGOSTI

She also provided us with a basic description of the gameplay. We created the game with Alice’s guidance and a month later, we had a working version of the game. People called it addictive; it inspired us and Alice. Cookie Wars was finally released at the app store earlier this week to everyone’s delight. Here is something that Alice wanted to share:

My first try at being an entrepreneur was a failure. I opened up a handmade jewelry shop online on Etsy, but I didn’t have enough time to do everything I needed because of school. I thought making just one awesome product that everyone would like would be better. One day, my friend was playing Angry Birds on her iPhone and I thought, “I could do that.” I came up with the idea for Cookie Wars because I wanted it to be universally appealing, and who doesn’t like cookies? Especially if they explode. My friend who taught me Photoshop helped me connect to Vasinov Studio in downtown Boulder. I couldn’t believe how much they liked my design and how quickly it was created! It was so exciting to see something I imagined become real. If you have a great idea you never know what might happen.

The game is seriously really cool. You should try it out and let us know what you think. Here are 10 promo codes up for grabs:

~~ERM7NAKFXAF6~~

~~3NWPPLPAFPK7~~

~~E69YRPFLPKXL~~

~~P64WXX9JYHFH~~

~~JHMFWFWE4FAE~~

~~46P3J6NHX6A7~~

~~EMLWTL96E7NH~~

~~NF7XHTL4WNJ9~~

~~4E4WF4YR7FHY~~

~~JNPTNAA7MN4H~~

I caught a lightning over Downtown Denver on my camera!

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 21:37:10 -0600

I caught a lightning over Downtown Denver on my camera!

Video

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 14:22:02 -0600

Beginner’s manual photography cheat sheet.

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 18:41:33 -0600

Beginner’s manual photography cheat sheet.

Volumizer and Adobe Repoussé

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 12:20:00 -0600

For the past year I’ve been working on a cool WebGL project at University of Colorado Boulder with a team of four people. We were able to release a well-working demo of our product in May. What it basically does is it allows you to draw objects on a 2D canvas with a variety of tools and then generates a 3D model based on this 2D prototype that can be tweaked in a number of ways. The original algorithm was described by Alex Repenning in his paper.

Picture from Adobe.com

Can you imagine how surprised I was, when I received a newsletter from Adobe that talks about a new technology developed by Adobe called Repoussé? Very surprised. They hooked it up to Photoshop and now you can convert 2D images into 3D objects in a matter of several clicks. I think it’s pretty awesome that such a technology was added to a fully commercial product and will serve businesses and individuals well.

Youth and Monks

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 14:12:59 -0600

Photo of The Beatles from some magazine

Photo of tibetan monks in respirators

I went to the Hill to get lunch today and saw this QR code on...

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 17:20:10 -0600

I went to the Hill to get lunch today and saw this QR code on the construction site for the new lofts. I think it’s one of the better usages of this super geeky technology.

Spider-Pig

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 12:45:00 -0600

In case you ever wondered what the Spider-Pig might look like. Yes, the one from The Simpsons Movie. Here is the original:

Screenshot from The Simpsons Movie

And here is an artist’s interpretation:

Illustration from Leprosorium

Got a Problem with Handwriting?

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 13:42:00 -0600

I just read an essay “Handwriting Is History" by Anne Trubek where she argues about whether it is necessary for us as human beings to be actively engaged in learning and practicing our handwriting skills that some think have significantly decreased in quality in the past few decades. This essay was published in the book that I purchased online on Amazon and downloaded to my Kindle app on the iPad. I am writing this post on the same iPad, which syncs with Dropbox every couple if minutes. If I will choose to stop writing now and continue working on it from my main computer no extra actions will have to be done. The file with the blog post will be right there and I will only have to double click on it. Could I do something like this if I were handwriting my post? Probably not. I would have to have my notebook and a pen with me. I would also have to worry about the security of my writings: what if I am outside and it starts raining, what if I lose it? And lastly, I wouldn’t be able to make multiple corrections without making my notebook look terrible and unreadable. While typing I can do it as much as I want until I call any decently edited version of the post final and immediately publish it without retyping it. So much time, paper, and ink is saved by eliminating handwriting even with this short blog post.

Photo from LIFE

At the beginning of her essay, Anne mentions people’s negative reactions to her earlier article where she argued that we should stop teaching cursive in primary schools. It seems like a lot of people are very attached to handwriting. In addition to Anne’s thoughts on it, I have my own theory of why it is so. Handwriting is a skill that a lot of people have invested too much time into. It is a natural reaction for people to protect something they have spent time or money on. I have a friend who used to play flute and was pretty good at it. Because of some things in her life she couldn’t keep up with practicing flute and eventually her skill decreased. It was really frustrating and now, every month or so, she tries to practice it for a bit but then gets caught up in her daily routine and doesn’t do it for a while again. I think this analogy is similar to handwriting: I spent a long time on developing my skill, I used to use it a lot, and now it just doesn’t fit my needs anymore—what do I do next? Some people seem not to care and just move on, but some overreact and try to protect something that has been long way gone.

Experimenting with a 210mm.

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 00:52:26 -0600

Experimenting with a 210mm.

Video

Tue, 31 May 2011 10:40:42 -0600

This Blog

Sat, 21 May 2011 17:27:00 -0600

I can’t write long, serious posts in this blog. I have about ten drafts with posts on different ideas and experiences I wanted to share, but, as usual, I want all of them to be well-written. That’s why they never come out. I decided that I’m just going to post here casually and keep it short. Post on what? On my experiences with technologies and startups, thoughts, ideas, and pretty girls. Okay, only one pretty girl, who is my girlfriend.

Lady from the 50s: before and after

Eco Ducky is in the App Store

Tue, 11 Jan 2011 11:56:34 -0700

Eco Ducky is finally available for purchase in the App Store. Let’s see how it does on its first day. If you are interested in writing a review for the app, please let me know and I will send you a promo code that lets you download the app for free.

The Year Has Started

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 21:34:00 -0700

The holidays are definitely over and it’s time to start releasing some quality stuff. Eco Ducky is going to be submitted to the App Store in the next two days and, hopefully, approved by Apple shortly after that. Meanwhile, I will be working on the new version of the website for the app. It turns out that my idea for Eco Ducky website about “solving the mystery” isn’t very provocative and popular, thus I only received about 10 submitted ideas.

Here is a screenshot from Eco Ducky that shows a list of potentially recyclable items that can be searched through. Green circle is for a recyclable item, yellow for a complicated case, and red is for a definite no. Each item can be tapped for more details and helpful information.

I am also still working hard on the project that is sponsored by Google and AgentSheets and I and my team are going to release alpha in the second half of January.

Let’s hope that this year will be even better and more productive than the previous one. Godspeed! :)

“Replace All” in JS

Wed, 29 Dec 2010 16:37:00 -0700

Today I learned a very handy trick that makes JS’s String.replace() do “replace all” instead of replacing a single string occurrence. In order for JS to replace all occurrences in the string, you have to provide the function with a regular expression with a global modifier as the first parameter.

Say, you want to replace < with “<”. Then instead of

your_string.replace("<", "<")

you have to write

your_string.replace(/</g, "<").

Pretty simple, huh?

Eco Ducky Graphics

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 12:19:00 -0700

Eco Ducky’s icon and loading screen were finalized yesterday. Check this out:

And the loading screen:

The app is going to be released before Christmas fo shizzle!

Thanks to Aha-Soft for the duck icon.

Well-Made Digest #1

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 03:06:34 -0700

Well-Made Digest is a collection of noteworthy web stuff that emerged in the past couple weeks. I’m planning to publish one digest per week with short summaries and links to the event of the week, interesting articles, and tutorials for developers and designers.

Event of the Week

Facebook Messaging System announced by Mark Zuckerberg:

“This is not an email killer. This is a messaging experience that includes email as one part of it,” Zuckerberg said. It’s all about making communication simpler. “This is the way that the future should work,” he continued.

Photo from Techcrunch

We’ll see, we’ll see. Good idea, but, I bet, for a lot of people it’s going to be a question of trust between them and Facebook.

Noteworthy Articles and Posts

Andrew Hyde tried using an iPad as his only computer device for three months. It didn’t quite work as expected.

Photo by Andrew Hyde

“What’s a cookie? How do I protect myself on the web? And most importantly: What happens if a truck runs over my laptop?” The Google Chrome team knows the answers! That’s why they published the state of the art, online book with the cutest illustrations by Christoph Niemann.

How does 37signals come up with their awesome illustrations and graphics? Here is a sneak peak to the illustration creation process.

Illustration by 37signals

Smashing Magazine smashes its readers with an intense post about web typography. This post is “an extensive overview of educational resources, tools, articles, techniques and showcases all related to web typography.”

Graphics from Smashing Magazine

Internet Explorer Platform Preview 7 was announced on October 28^th. In the announcement blog post Ziad Ismail is talking about how damn fast IE 9 is. It’s good news for me and millions of other web developers. Really good.

Designing for the retina display can be tricky and setting up a proper workflow for the design process even trickier. “Designing for iPhone 4 Retina Display: Techniques and Workflow” article shows how to master the retina display with minimal pain.

Screenshot from Smashing Magazine

Helpful Tutorials

CSS3 Transactions: a portion of Chapter 2 of CSS3 for Web Designers by Dan Cederholm.
CSS Positioning: an extremely thorough guide to static, relative, abstract, and fixed positioning of HTML elements.
Whys and Hows of HTTP and REST.
Sound Dock System in Photoshop: this tutorial covers multiple Photoshop techniques and can by applied to real life problems.
Elegant Hash Tag Links: don’t headbutt the browser window, use the “:before” selector instead.
Test-Driven JavaScript Development in Practice: a very important tutorial on how to develop in JavaScript by using clever software development practices. A must read for beginners.

Did You Like It?

If you liked this digest please subscribe to this blog’s RSS, follow me on Twitter, or “like” my Facebook page. Peace!

Photo from Dirty.ru This is so hilarious. I want it right now.

Thu, 18 Nov 2010 21:50:00 -0700

Photo from Dirty.ru

This is so hilarious. I want it right now.

Apple Store Story

Wed, 17 Nov 2010 19:42:00 -0700

I recently bought a new, slick iPod Touch online and was quite disappointed by the fact that it was crashing every day. So, I went to the Apple Store and talked about the matter. The Genius Bar worker told me that the operating system on the iPod should be reinstalled (duh!) and that she can do it right there. To save time I agreed to wait for the genius girl perform this complicated operation. After wondering around for 15 minutes, while it was reinstalling, and looking at overpriced stuff, some of which was pretty cool (like the credit card reader iPhone extension), the genius girl handed the iPod back to me and said that if the problem persists I should come again.

Photo from Apple

I copied backed up data back from my computer and enjoyed the device without it crashing for a couple of days. Than the problem came back, so I went to the Apple Store on my second quest. This time another genius person told me that perhaps my iPod backup had some messed up data and explained the process of how it can affect the steady workflow by using weird metaphors for not very tech-savvy people.

Yet again I reinstalled the operating system and started my iPod from scratch. The next morning it crashed after disconnecting from my laptop. Here I come again, geniuses! Another Apple Store employee listened to my sad story. He obviously felt the level of my misery after I told him that every time it crashes the date gets reset to December 31st, 1969 and after going back to 2010 all of my calendar event notifications pop up (just imagine tapping about 90 times in a row to close all notifications). At the end he just said that I probably had enough fun with the device, so it’s time to replace it. Five minutes later I was holding a new iPod that hasn’t crashed ever since.

What’s the point of this story? The point is that during the whole process I never felt dissatisfied with the Apple customer service. Even though I got sent back home twice and my device turned out to be defective, I felt like the Genius Bar people were in the same boat as me. They tried solving my problem, probably knowing less about how iPods work than me. And they solved it at the end in the most radical way possible, which I wouldn’t be able to do.