It's not Tetris. I assure you of that. In fact,...

 

"I Swear This isn't Tetris"

 

See, the thing is: Alexey Pajitnov created a legendary puzzle game that we all grew up on. As coders, one of the first things we like to do when testing our new tool-kits is to re-engineer these classics. But unfortunately, unlike the game of "chess", we're not allowed to call this game what it really is, because the trademark is currently possessed by the Tetris Holding Group, which has a reputation of taking down free versions using the name "Tetris".

 

So my game here is inspired by Alexey's classic, but I assure you this is *not* Tetris. ;)

 

My version is free; do what you will with it! It may be modified, expanded on, distributed or... well anything you can imagine. :)

 

It comes bundled with a node.js server which allows 2 players to compete against each other. Don't misunderstand that to mean only one two-player game may be served at a time; the server permits *any* number of two-player sessions at the same time (but matches currently can only consist of 2 people).

 

Additionally, I've introduced a minor gameplay mechanic, which will spawn special golden blocks for point bonuses. Actually, from my point of view the most interesting and entertaining aspect of my approach to the classic game is my scoring system. Bonuses are given out in a variety of ways, chains and multipliers are used to keep things interesting, and I've taken great care to see that the level progression & point-dispersal feels right.

 

If you don't like my approach to scoring, you're welcome to tweak it to your liking. That's what open-source is all about. :)

 

Check it out now, and show the rest of the world who's the best by competing a game and registering in my leader board.

 

Play | Download

You know that one classic game where blocks of 4, in various arrangements, are falling from the sky and you arrange lines with them to clear them. I can't think of what it was called, or rather I choose not to say it by name because the company holding the copyright for it today likes to snuff out little guys like me when they provide the same game for free.

 

Anyhow, "that one game" or "ISTIT" as I like to call it, seemed like a perfect fit for getting my feet wet with web sockets & node.js.

 

I set out to get as much of a ISTIT server done in the weekend as I could, and I am very happy with the progress.

 

Right now I have a fully functional multiplayer version live and ready to try (though it lacks fancy bells and whistles and pretty UI at the moment).

 

Nonetheless, the whole web-socket implementation is there; events are sent back and forth and acted upon. Lines cleared get sent to the opposing player, and well.. there's not really all that much else to it! ;)

 

Check it out here.

 

(either get a friend to test at the same time or open two tabs up)

 

Where I go from here:

 

I will clean up the code a bit; there's still a bit of refactoring I'd like to do, and I'd like to improve the feedback from what is going on and what you are waiting for, and improve the session management, and pretty up the UI a little.

 

It will be available for free, for anyone who's looking for some multiplayer games to throw on their website. ;)

I guess it probably won't come as a big surprise to you, considering the current look of this website, but I've always been a big fan of gray. I guess that's just because I am... a very gray person. :) :(

 

Anywho, I've been in need of a simple, non-structured app/page where I can jot down notes. Of course there are countless mobile apps, but why on earth would I go get someone else's when I can create one exactly as I want it myself. ;P

 

That's what I'm doing here.

 

Since the actual amount of code work required here has been quite minimal so far, I've taken the opportunity to play around with the design a bit. I'm going for the "everything is gray because my life is gray" sort of look. How am I doing?

 

I also wanted to take the opportunity to finally crack the code of how you go about creating "inverted" border-radii (that's plural for "radius", stupid).

 

It turns out that there isn't a "proper" way to go about this. Like many other concepts related to web design, you just hack and slash until you get the look you're going for. Simply put, it involved creating various elements side by side with different colored background colors in order to achieve the look you see there with the "add" area.

 

Well, I finally have a quick & dirty little way for me to jot down my thoughts during the day. Now if only I could find a way to make my thoughts... less chaotic.

I love keeping an eye on  my server's status, and what better way to do that than to get a visualization in the form of a chart.

 

Since I've been pretty happy with RGraph so far, I have continued to use this system for my latest little endeavor: graphing my server's CPU temperature, CPU usage, and system load.

 

If you want to see the page in action, check it out here:

 

http://sikosoft.net/system/

 

(It will update every minute)

 

PS: thanks to www.rgraph.net for easy to use chart system (which saved me lots of time!)

Finally: some sort of visual representation of my tweeting habits. Granted, I had a "top 10" already, it doesn't compare to having it laid out into a chart.

 

RGraph to the rescue!

 

It's easy enough to implement RGraph into your project and it sure does allow for quite a bit of customization, but I noticed that it lacks colors for pie segments after you have too many segments (which I apparently do). By default, after all the pre-defined colors are exhausted you end up with segments of the same color all side-by-side. I'd call that a bug, but maybe it's just expected that you define your own colors.

 

Instead of wanting to take the same approach RGraph seemingly has with hard-coded colors, I decided to implement a color generator. After a little digging I saw that there was an aesthetic way to go about this and get visually pleasing colors (it involves using the golden-ratio). I discovered this random color class someone has already written in javascript, so I've included it and what you see above is the result. :)