I previously discussed how double-entry accounting works — including how to create the balance sheet — in my article A Basic Introduction to Accounting. Now let's explore some more basic accounting concepts: revenue, expenses, and depreciation. Fixed assets provide a great way to explore these concepts, so let's not waste anytime and get right...
I recently wrapped up a 12-week batch at the Recurse Center (RC) in Brooklyn, NY, and I can safely say that attending RC was one of the best decisions I have ever made. This was the most creative period of my life, and the amount I learned rivaled my time in college with the added bonus that I was able to learn what I wanted to learn. I had a few...
Background In the late 19th to mid 20th century, the United States Department of Agriculture hired dozens of artists to paint watercolors of every fruit that grows in the United States. The collection contains 7,497 watercolor paintings, 87 line drawings, and 79 wax models created by approximately 21 artists. I thought this would make a great set...
I wrote most of the core code for Plight of the Wizard during a four-day game jam at Recurse Center. The game was perfectly performant at that time given the limited scope. However, I have made a lot of changes to the game since my last blog post, and a lot of my initial code did not scale very well at all. The biggest change I made was...
Media in this article may trigger epileptic seizures. Reader discretion is advised. While watching people play my game, Plight of the Wizard, I observed a clever tactic. Some players learned how enemies spawn and used it to their advantage. The enemy spawner I implemented spawns enemies a certain distance away from the player. This way, if the...
After making an arena shooter for the Playdate titled Plight of the Wizard, there were a few areas that I knew needed some polish. One of those areas was how I handle my character's rotation. Here was my previous implementation: There were two issues with my approach: 1. Rotating a sprite in code is not very performant...
I spent the past five days building a game for the Playdate for a game jam while at Recurse Center. Building the game required learning quite a few new things: lua, the Playdate SDK, working with sprites (including animation), music, sound effects, and the general concept of game design. Working with the Playdate SDK has been wonderful. It's well...
1999 I wasn't happy the day we left Oxford and headed to London. "We're returning home", my parents told me. "But Oxford is my home", I objected. I didn't have much say in the matter, which felt unfair. Four-year-olds tend to have an inflated sense of importance due to their slight deficiencies in experience, wisdom, and just about every other...
Double-entry accounting at its simplest is the accounting equation: Assets = Liabilities + Equity Accounts are created that fall under one of these three categories in addition to revenue and expense accounts. Asset accounts normally[1] carry a debit balance while liability and equity accounts normally carry a credit balance. In simple terms,...
This post contains spoilers for the television show Game of Thrones and the book series it is based on, A Song of Ice and Fire. The ending to the television show Game of Thrones was poorly received and rightfully so. The decisions made and their respective justifications by the showrunners were often questionable at best, and the execution felt...
A brief history lesson July 15, 1983 was a red letter day in gaming history when Nintendo's Family Computer (Famicom) and Sega's SG-1000 were released simultaneously. Today, these video game consoles are known for their charming 8-bit graphics, but it was their processor (that the graphics were incorrectly named after) that was the real star....
Heirlooms are usually objects defined by their desirability that have been passed down for generations from one family member to the next. There is an inherent degree of difficulty in replacing them due to their value or uniqueness. Historically, heirlooms were tools, hence the word loom in the name, but the concept has evolved in modern times to...