02 September 2016

MacAnagram - 29 years in the making!

A new take on an old Word Game has finally been published after 29 years in the making!

MacAnagram, the anagram Word Game for Mac and PC doesn’t just confound you with some cryptic clues, it’s also slightly rude if you get it wrong! It started life in 1987 on my original Macintosh Plus which ran Apple's amazing scripting language, HyperCard! Sadly, Apple abandoned development of HyperCard. The functionality of HyperCard was picked up and extended with a different product and company called RunRev. That as then transformed into LiveCode which is now based in Scotland.

After a major re-design to comply with this modern programming language and to make it Internet compatible, MacAnagram has taken on a new lease of life and is available for you to enjoy!


The screenshot shows how the game provides a random scrambled word based on categories selected! A free hint is provided and all other help is 'purchased'. Clues are mostly cryptic to increase the challenge and it provides a randomized 'slightly rude retort' should you get anything wrong! The dictionaries can either be web-based (most current) or on-board which is updated with each new release of the App. From an Educational point of view, once the answer is revealed, an option to check it out on Wiki pops up in its built-in browser.

You can get it here and read more about it here.

01 April 2016

Capture Those Precious Memories

Alan Stenhouse used LiveCode to quickly build an app that allowed him to capture some precious memories with his father. I'll let Alan tell the story.


"One day when I was going through some old photos with my father, I was getting him to tell me something about them - who was there, where it was, when etc. I realised that I needed to record this easily and store it with the photo. Initially I just thought I wanted to take notes about each photo, but realised it would be great to record his voice recollections as well. Anyway, that afternoon + evening I made the first cut of an app which worked out quite well and I used it the next day successfully with my Dad."


In the screenshot you can see the the main palette window showing the image list with various controls at the top and a text area for taking notes at the bottom. Beside it is the image viewing window. 




The app also allows you to play back the images in a slideshow, automatically playing the spoken memories and displaying any written notes. 

Alan has created an iPad version of the app. He's called it Re-Collections

28 March 2016

Co-ordinating Timezones

Pat M, known as 7Leven, is an intern at a company called ThoughtSTEM LLC in California. ThoughtSTEM is a company that for a while taught kids to program in the San Francisco area. They would use innovative and fun methods to teach the kids like helping them Mod in Minecraft. Currently, they are developing a video game by the name of CodeSpells. In the game the user, a wizard, uses code to make all their spells.
Pat helps run the forums, run contests for the forum users, and relays information to and from the users. There is also a monthly update where the users can talk to the developers over a live streaming service. 

There are many users from many different locations around the US and other countries. So keeping up with the time zones is difficult. As a result, he made an application with LiveCode that always has the correct timezone that correlates to the developers location. This application also counts down to the the time for the update livestream the application and opens the livestream in the user's default browser. 


The app connects to a MySQL database and gets the time of the update each month from that database. Pat created a second application that updates the database to which the users' applications connect.