OverlappingMarkerSpiderfier
Deals with overlapping markers in Google Maps JS API v3, Google Earth-style — Read more
This is awesome.
I love design-by-numbers guides like this. Really helps the aesthetically impaired such as myself.
jekyll-asset-pipeline
Powerful asset pipeline for Jekyll that collects, converts and compresses JavaScript and CSS assets
Question:
Apart from creating my own graphics, where can I get to see some inspiring tilesets for inspiration and use for a 2d platform game ?
some of my favourites -
SavWae sprites - a huge list of links to sprites & tiles resources
The protagonists domain
Savware is the place to go I believe, thats what leads you to Sprite-Resource.com - one of the best of the best classified collection of sprites
Answer:
Check out this guy’s site, he’s got a ton of free tilesets you can use. I’ve got him bookmarked for when I make my next 2d game.
2012:
- First broken bone
- Antidepressants
- Won a trip to Finland
- Reddit-based mini Euro tour
- Kicked off Gaymer X / GaymerConnect
- Quit my job
- Sold all my stuff
- Trip to Costa Rica
- Built Jekyllhub
- A month at home
- Flash-tour of LA & SF
- Kansas City & Google Fiber
- Kicked off Gamer Talent
- Made the news a few times
- Back in SF to wrap up
2013:
- Make peace with myself again
- Form at least 3 good habits
- Improve my self-discipline
To be honest, this is a post I should have written about two weeks ago. But I’ve needed some time to unpack the whole KC experience, and had a lot of friends here in SF to say hello to before I’m off again.
The quick questions:
Was it really that fast?
In a word, yes. As I tweeted while I was there speeds were generally in the 200-275MB range on wifi, and upwards of 900MB while plugged in. You want the fastest internet, at an absurdly reasonable price? KC is the only place to get it right now.
What could you do with internet that fast?
To be honest, I’m not quite so young anymore, so most of my torrenting and piracy is behind me. And since you can’t be guaranteed static IPs or large numbers of simultaneous connections, doing things like game servers, hosting, virtualization, or other usual business ideas wasn’t a good option.
What I could do was stream anything, at any time, and be sure that regardless of what anyone else in the house was doing, things were moving along as fast as possible. And when you’ve got 3-5 hackers in a house, that sort of thing is important. I never hooked up my portable hard drive, since Soundcloud was available. I watched YouTube movies and Railscasts without slowdown, buffering, or worry.
Also, web pages load fast. Like, crazy fast. The latency is pretty low, and huge pipes mean your browser can open dozens of http connections without flinching. So, when searching for answers, pouring through StackOverflow, or reading up on algorithms and techniques, my frame of reference stuck around. I didn’t have time to get distracted by Reddit or Hacker News. Well, I did anyway, but it wasn’t because I was waiting for a connection - just for answers to pop into my head.
Do you need internet that fast to do your job?
No. In fact, I learned how to do a lot with no actual connection. I had a 50MB Comcast connection in San Francisco (which cost a lot more than Google Fiber) and felt for the most part that it was fine - only when I had friends over did it seem to start running low.
So why’d you go to Kansas City?
When I quit my job and decided to travel, part of the idea was that I could take advantage of offers like Homes for Hackers to try out different cities. Free rent, a new place to explore, a community of entrepreneurs, and a crazy fast connection sounded like too good an offer to pass up. I’m still extremely grateful to have met people like Ben Barreth, Mike Demarais, Albert Tong, Chris Lewman, Matthew Beerman… the list goes on.
Should our business move to KC for Google Fiber?
Depends. If you pass around a ton of huge files and databases, this could be really helpful. If you’re a medical imaging / astronomy startup, and you need to test with actually huge files, the bandwidth in KC could give you a real boost. My experience with three separate offices in SF was filled with pernicious wifi issues, and none of those issues popped up at the Hacker House in KC. Also, housing is cheap compared to SF, and you get most of the benefits of building a startup from the beach.
But ultimately, only you know whether moving your business is a good idea. Maybe try a week at the Hacker House AirBnB room and see what you think. If you haven’t been to the midwest recently, I think you’ll be surprised how much cool stuff is going on there.
