tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8780987Wed, 10 Feb 2010 07:06:42 +0000Blah blah blah. I'm the author of the (sort of) famous "Eric's Ultimate Solitaire." The sample version shipped on a lot of Macintosh computers. Come here to read about what I'm working on and what's goin' on with my family. Also. Things that are funny.http://www.sniderware.com/blog/noreply@blogger.com (Eric)Blogger93125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8780987.post-3369850637873054662Wed, 10 Feb 2010 06:47:00 +00002010-02-09T23:06:42.820-08:00A raccoon woke us up a couple nights ago at 3am because the chicken it was trying to kill/steal/eat was so loud. We scared off the raccoon enough to find the chicken, decide it was too hurt to live, and then I got the job of killing it. So that all sucked. I fired up my MacBook Pro once we were back inside. I was either going to google up stuff about raccoons or maybe write up the story here. Thehttp://www.sniderware.com/blog/2010/02/racoons-broken-macbook-pro-stuff.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8780987.post-3530037852949867520Thu, 04 Feb 2010 18:43:00 +00002010-02-04T10:47:28.521-08:00On the way to school today Jonah said if he had a wish he would wish for more wishes.Then he said he would wish for:Being able to eat all the junk food he wanted without getting sick and so he'd still grow and be healthyThat heaven was realThat he was a clone*The middle one there made me almost cry. We've had (grown up) friends who have died in the last few years and it's definitely gotten our http://www.sniderware.com/blog/2010/02/jonah-and-wishes.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8780987.post-980271863560643642Fri, 22 Jan 2010 00:22:00 +00002010-01-21T16:29:07.081-08:00The word online from Amazon is they're intending to release an SDK (software development kit) for the Kindle digital book. That means it'll be able to run games and more instead of just being a fancy book viewer. That's cool... Maybe I'll port my solitaire game to it from the iPhone. The performance (aka speed) of the Kindle isn't great, but hey, I've written games for a long time, including on http://www.sniderware.com/blog/2010/01/kindle-and-video-games.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8780987.post-8851700446580966845Fri, 08 Jan 2010 20:50:00 +00002010-01-08T13:00:42.625-08:00Flash forward three months from my sort-of-weird calls from recruiters in India... That all turned out to be legitimate and not a convoluted Nigerian money-making scheme like I was predicting. In fact I'm still working on that project and it's going great. It's an iPhone app, but as is often the case with cool stuff I work on, it's secret. I'm going to stop drinking coffee. I don't drink that http://www.sniderware.com/blog/2010/01/2010-coffee-contracting-health.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8780987.post-7647230319998893270Wed, 14 Oct 2009 20:41:00 +00002009-10-14T13:58:48.274-07:00I'm never super excited talking to job recruiters. I understand their jobs are hard. But any job where the person is paid based on commissions makes me suspicious of that person's actions. Sales people who work on commission don't want you to buy something and return it, but other than that they get rewarded for selling you things that you keep. It doesn't matter much beyond that. Like whether http://www.sniderware.com/blog/2009/10/job-recruiters.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8780987.post-7504924325155767672Sun, 27 Sep 2009 06:19:00 +00002009-09-26T23:59:23.994-07:00 I paid a company ~$600 to restore a crashed hard drive of mine. It had all our honeymoon pictures and more on it. I'm a lot better about doing backups now... Anyway I need to start gettin' some value out of this rescued drive so here's a story with some pictures from the trip. Kelly and I went to the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico for our honeymoon. We have some great stories and pictures. But http://www.sniderware.com/blog/2009/09/yucatan.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8780987.post-5335356798838471958Sat, 26 Sep 2009 04:37:00 +00002009-09-25T21:54:56.128-07:00 Hey, my game developer friend, Oliver, just finished a really fun Flash game -- Vector Conflict: The Siege. For you old timers it's like Battlezone (1980), but an order of magnitude more fun and you don't have to drive a tank around. That's BattleZone to the left. I played Vector Conflict on "Medium" and it was fun, but very tense at times. The levels are really well designed. Once you master http://www.sniderware.com/blog/2009/09/vector-conflict-siege.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8780987.post-2618695693861388292Mon, 21 Sep 2009 18:25:00 +00002009-09-22T16:04:44.962-07:00I just checked Apple again to see if my iPhone solitaire game was approved. I check every 9 minutes. It's said "In Review" the last 1000 times I checked in the past 11 days. I've been dreading the email that would say "Sorry, Solitaire wasn't approved because we don't allow applications to include images of clouds." Or something nutty like that which would mean another round of fixes and http://www.sniderware.com/blog/2009/09/eric-sniders-solitaire-klondike-ready.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8780987.post-6353066754245375796Thu, 17 Sep 2009 04:06:00 +00002009-09-16T21:09:30.106-07:00I'm working on some iPhone programming and had a question about something. Google didn't turn up anything great so I just searched for help in the Apple Developer Forums. I searched for opengl view tabbarcontroller and the forum page offered this helpful advice: Did you mean: openly view Tabascohttp://www.sniderware.com/blog/2009/09/did-you-mean.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8780987.post-587119846662592109Tue, 15 Sep 2009 02:04:00 +00002009-09-16T10:38:26.606-07:00Yeast is weird, and cool. At least if you're baking with it. I made bagels from scratch yesterday and they come out really really good. I used our bread maker to do the mixing etc, but I boiled 'em and baked 'em. Anyway, here's the bread-machine bagel recipe. The bagels came out better looking than the picture. Kelly and the kids were napping when the bagels were done. I tried the most misshapen http://www.sniderware.com/blog/2009/09/making-stuff-with-yeast.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8780987.post-2351769412981756308Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:13:00 +00002009-09-09T13:21:41.327-07:00I've been making pizzas with pre-made dough from Trader Joe's in the last couple months. A few came out amazing, but many came out just okay. It turns out our oven is crappy. It's this weird little European one that only goes up to 450 degrees and only has a burner on top. A combination to ensure our pizzas are never very crispy or cooked quickly. Anyway, I was googlin' up some Alton Brown* stuffhttp://www.sniderware.com/blog/2009/09/making-pizzas.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8780987.post-393238777888211201Wed, 09 Sep 2009 05:21:00 +00002009-09-08T22:59:33.052-07:00Seriously. Ad Hoc Distribution? I hate it. I've wasted so much time with it. Apple has such tight control over distribution to iPhones and iPod Touches that you can't just download and install an application on your device. More importantly my testers can't install my game without having things just so. There are all these hoops to jump through to set up provisioning files etc. It's not super http://www.sniderware.com/blog/2009/09/i-hate-ad-hoc-distribution-on-iphone.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8780987.post-3319068012587693563Tue, 01 Sep 2009 20:50:00 +00002009-09-01T14:01:41.668-07:00Gmail is down so I'm reading my email with the webmail browser for my site. It's not-so-good. Also, apparently GMail filters out the spam that normally gets delivered to me but now I'm stuck reading it. Today's spam highlight: Hey We have hijacked your baby but you must pay once to us $50 000. The details we will send later... We has attached photo of your fume "We has attached photo of your http://www.sniderware.com/blog/2009/09/gmail-is-down.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8780987.post-4288381384617320904Fri, 21 Aug 2009 23:08:00 +00002009-08-21T16:30:53.381-07:00My Palm OS Treo 680 is failing. The case is cracked, there's dust behind the screen and it has lost its mind. Sometimes it just doesn't respond or takes a minute before doing anything. Sometimes it doesn't want to talk to T-Mobile any more. Also. It's a little shaky on letting me send text messages. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can't. Weird. I used this Treo a LOT though. Every day for years. http://www.sniderware.com/blog/2009/08/new-cell-phone.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8780987.post-4410791747516854372Thu, 20 Aug 2009 17:28:00 +00002009-08-20T12:05:13.766-07:00SeinfeldjobsI got some email from someone at DeMatteo Monness a month ago. They're a "a boutique primary research firm and full service broker-dealer serving the institutional investment fund community." They were looking for someone with expertise in the things I know about (board games and porn?*). I spent 20 minutes with my initial contact there talking about my experience, what I know about the things http://www.sniderware.com/blog/2009/08/highly-paid-expert-consultant.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8780987.post-9214283384494071699Tue, 04 Aug 2009 22:00:00 +00002009-08-04T16:05:54.497-07:00hd camcorderhdkodak zi6camcorder Our old camcorder stopped auto-focusing. And it doesn't have manual focus. It's kind of "Random Focus" now. Theoretically we could run around and change the distance to what we're recording to put things in focus (or yell to the kids "Run, fast, closer!"). But then it would react to that and refocus on something random ("No, stop, okay go way back! Go go!"). Kind of a Schrödinger's cat deal. http://www.sniderware.com/blog/2009/08/kodak-zi6-low-end-hd-camcorder.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8780987.post-1245726750211559825Thu, 16 Jul 2009 21:06:00 +00002009-07-16T14:15:12.182-07:00pandoramusicWhen I'm working I listen to music with the web site Pandora. You create a free account, pick some songs or artists that you like and it makes music channels based on those. It's a cool way to find bands that you've never heard of or forgotten about. I kept hearing that they were going to go out of business. Because it costs them money to play all these songs for free. They pay fees to the music http://www.sniderware.com/blog/2009/07/pandora-is-cool.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8780987.post-2905831553772602116Mon, 13 Jul 2009 02:20:00 +00002009-07-16T14:05:49.066-07:00 We bought a citrus juicer, like this one. I think exactly this one. It looks like the Alien from the movie Alien... Or maybe like ET. It gets bad reviews on Amazon, but we paid $1 for it from a neighbor. It's been awesome for juicing lots of lemons. And since lemons are falling off our tree like rain it's helping a lot. We're drinking a lot of lemonade and eating lemon sorbet* between all meal http://www.sniderware.com/blog/2009/07/patchin-pool-and-lemon-sorbet.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8780987.post-2298149152710511180Fri, 10 Jul 2009 04:44:00 +00002009-07-09T22:25:15.528-07:00 Andy's done a ton more fantastic art for my iPhone Solitaire game. The game is starting to look really good. It's been cool working with Andy. He's in Hong Kong so we end up talking when it's morning there and dinner-time here in California. The coolest thing is I wake up in the morning and there's new art! Nice.I'm working on the Settings screen now. It's all custom-drawn in Open GL instead of http://www.sniderware.com/blog/2009/07/cool-web-art.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8780987.post-2518220520420133009Sat, 04 Jul 2009 22:37:00 +00002009-07-12T19:42:32.799-07:00 1) Kelly bought an inflatable (but kind of hard-core) pool for $30 used (it turns out it was $150 new + all the chemicals and more came with it). We set it up in the back yard. I thought it was an "8 foot" pool. But it's 13 feet. It's kind of huge considering our small back yard. Anyway, it's fun. I get to do all the cool stuff my dad did with our pool when I was growing up. Like use the cool http://www.sniderware.com/blog/2009/07/solitaire-lemons-pool.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8780987.post-1097510154708370924Thu, 25 Jun 2009 04:34:00 +00002009-06-24T21:41:43.812-07:00 I'm a big board game geek I don't like boring American games like Sorry, Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit or Candy Land... I like designer/Euro games that are really good. Like Ticket to Ride, Diamant and For Sale. Since I'm a board game geek I like to learn about board games. I like Scott Nicholson's Board Games with Scott . Check it out. Scott's really funny, plus you'll learn about some cool games. http://www.sniderware.com/blog/2009/06/board-games-with-scott.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8780987.post-7859032305539943784Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:37:00 +00002009-06-23T15:26:52.809-07:00Kelly's Kindle 2 Kelly's Kindle 2 (e-Book from Amazon) is broken. Well, the screen is broken. The upper-right corner looks all jumbled and there are some stray vertical and horizontal white lines too. I accused her like 7 times of dropping it or doing something bad. But she denied any wrong-doing. I googled around and the same thing has happened to other Kindle owners. I wonder if the screen is http://www.sniderware.com/blog/2009/06/kindle-and-stuff.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8780987.post-1002865925082890803Mon, 22 Jun 2009 22:45:00 +00002009-06-22T16:02:53.281-07:00I've tried a lot of iPhone games. Here are my two favorites. The Creeps! There are lots of Tower Defense games for the iPhone. This is my favorite. Cartoony monsters try to wake up the sleeping kid. You have to stop them. There's no scrolling or zooming, everything is on-screen. There are multiple modes and lots of levels for each that offer a good variety of game play. The best game design http://www.sniderware.com/blog/2009/06/iphone-games-that-are-good.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8780987.post-4114899678697802970Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:50:00 +00002009-06-19T10:08:02.108-07:00The casual game I was working on at PlayFirst, DinerTown Tycoon, finally shipped! I finished fixing bugs early and moved onto the web version of the game. Unfortunately I was done with the web game super early (normally that's good), but then it was canceled. I'm bummed they didn't cancel it before I did the work. It's sad to see your work thrown out. Then I helped out on the SDK and with other http://www.sniderware.com/blog/2009/06/erics-iphone-solitaire-and-more.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8780987.post-5920626951865014625Tue, 24 Feb 2009 05:12:00 +00002009-03-29T23:18:04.707-07:00solitaireiphoneSo far it's been a pretty stinky year, 2009. I won't go into the details onacounta who knows who reads this blog. Maybe I should password protect it? Sell subscriptions? Then it wouldn't be weird to cover what's what. Then again, maybe I don't need to. Most anyone who reads this (Hi Dad and Mom!) already know everything crappy that's happened this year. I've been making progress on solitaire for http://www.sniderware.com/blog/2009/02/2009.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric)1