• Brent's Toys,  Technology,  The Lazy Designer

    Game Dev Update

    Decent work has progressed on the kid’s educational/robot building game (and to the supplemental document I’m writing to explain my design process on it). If you are bored/curious, it’s the top link on my unity page. Lower your expectations accordingly. It is not feature complete, but it’s feature sufficient and probably won’t be tweaked too much more. The most recent addition I’ve made to it is a player tracking mechanism, so I can keep tabs on how well the kids are doing while playing the various educational levels. There’s no front-end view for the data yet, but I’m tracking what I need to be tracking. This tracking led to an…

  • Brent's Toys

    Latest Toy: AT-AT

    So this is what my 6yr old recently bought. Pretty cool, eh? He saved up for it for quite a while but unfortunately it was sold out by the time he had the cash. Luckily my wife phoned around, found one on the other side of the country and had it shipped here. I had an AT-AT when I was a kid but this version would eat that one for lunch.

  • Brent's Toys,  My Life

    Meat Eater or Plant Eater?

    So I was talking with my 3yr old the other day and trying to explain to him that a tauntaun was a herbivore. I was explaining that one way to tell was because it had horns and that predators generally don’t have horns. Which led us to the Wampa. I really don’t think it should have horns. It is a blood-thirsty predator after all. We got into quite the debate over that but finally we decided it was probably an aberration, an omnivore that due to the frigid conditions on Hoth had to adapt by eating tauntaun meat. The horns are just vestigial remnants. And then the kid picked up…

  • Brent's Toys,  My Life

    I Built a Robot

    Well, okay, I didn’t really build this so much as snap together the prebuilt pieces. Was delighted to find the final piece in the mail after returning from vacation. Bonus points to those of you who might guess why I’m excited to add this figure to my Star Wars Collection. (p.s. Bonus Points may not be combined with any other offer or redeemed for anything of value.)

  • Apple - iPhone/iPad,  Brent's Toys,  Game Reviews,  Lego

    Lego Games on iPod and iPad

    Our sons (3 and 5 years old) are playing more and more with Lego, which pleases me greatly as I was a Lego kid growing up. Being a hoarder I kept most of my old Lego as well we have bought several newer sets for the kids. In the last couple months the two of them have started to show more interest in the Lego than simply playing with the vehicles and sets we assemble for them. Now they are starting to build their own things… which is awesome. The other night I decided to check the Apps store on the iPad to see if they had any interesting Lego…

  • Brent's Toys,  Technology

    Sifteo Early Access Program

    Sifteo is pre-selling test units of their Sifteo blocks. I was about to shell out the money for this but unfortunately they only ship to the United States. If you like new tech and live in the States go check their site out and if you get the blocks let me know what you think of them! I’ll try not to be jealous of you.

  • Brent's Toys,  My Life

    iPad + Kobo + Instapaper = Awesome

    Longtime readers might remember me ranting about not enjoying the reading experience at online magazines such as Strange Horizons or Clarkesworld. I very much dislike scrolling and prefer a paging experience. This is probably one of the reasons I really like reading eBooks on the iPad as all the book apps use a paging interface. Anyways yesterday I stumbled upon a good solution… using Instapaper I can flag stories I want to read later and then read them through the Kobo app on the iPad. This gives me the ability to page-read (no scrolling!) So I’m happy. And now I’m going to go sit downstairs by the fire and finish…

  • Brent's Toys

    Yet Another iPad Post

    Finding myself using the iPad more and more… I’d say about a quarter of my ‘computer time’ is now on the iPad instead of the main computer. This style of device is what I’ve been waiting for, for years. It sucks for content creation but is perfect for keeping up with social networking stuff (which I’m trying to avoid on the work computer, you know, to help focus on work). And I’m reading a lot on it — mostly going through old DRM-free eBooks I bought years ago. I’m still undecided about which format for eBooks I’m going to adopt… I really hate DRM (long story short I have a…