I have only been using the software for a couple of days, and mostly in three different situations; scripting and testing a web-based game, using Photoshop with a mouse, and web development at work. It’s pretty cool to see the differences in mouse movements in each of the situations! (yep, I’m a geek) I have yet to try tracking my pointer movements when digitally painting using my tablet.

Check out the creator of IOGraphica’s Flickr set of his mouse trackings, and my (so far) mouse track images below:

The software is free, small and easy to understand. You can save the images as full-resolution PNG images so you can overlay them ontop of a desktop screenshot, like I’ve done in some of the images above. If you’re interested in trying it, just download it from here. Then you start the recording, forget about it, and after a few hours or so you have your very own image!

HTC Desire, my new mobile phone toy

I recently got myself a brand new mobile phone, HTC Desire with Android 2.1. And (apologies to my bf) I’m in love. Not only with the phone itself, but the OS as well. I was sick of my previous phone which was, in more ways than one, like a piece of brick – a HTC Touch Pro with Windows Mobile 6.1. I wanted a smartphone with touch screen, possibility of installing additional software (apps) and a well-functioning way of syncing contacts, mail and calendar with my PC. The choice was between an iPhone or an Android-based phone. I’m not a fan of Apple and iPhones, so I decided to give the fairly new Android OS a shot. Almost immidiately after getting myself a Android phone, I see at least five things my phone can do that iPhone can’t.

A few days after I bought my HTC Desire, a bunch of friends also bought a HTC Desire saw how awesome HTC Desire really is that they bought it. Even my boyfriend. He who spent a few days defending his beloved and trusty HTC TyTNII, only to wake up one morning and totally fall in love with my phone. So to share my excitement for Android, support the expanding app market and to tell people which apps that would totally rock their world (well, at least the phone’s world), I’m listing my favorite Android apps in this post. The application market for Android is fairly new, but is expanding fast. There are already tons of applications that make your Android phone even more awesome.

I’m warning you, this post is lengthy. I’ve tested all apps on my HTC Desire (Android v 2.1), and they are all free. I live in Norway where we haven’t made a deal about paying apps. Yet. The apps below are my absolute “must”s, mostly general tools, widgets and some games. I’ve included barcodes to each app, so if you have Barcode Scanner or Google Goggles on your Android-phone, use it to get the direct download link on your phone. Otherwise I’m providing the link to each app on Androlib, a web site where you can find all Android apps, on your PC. Enough talk, let’s get started!

Essentials (in my opinion)

Barcode Scanner

I’ll start the list with the app you’ll need in order to take advantage of these funny images/barcodes in this post, Barcode Scanner. It does as its name says, it reads barcodes. And it does it well. I’m amazed how this app can identify items such as books, DVD’s, food products and more, just by scanning their barcodes. If you want an app that can identify more than just barcodes, I suggest Google Goggles (I’ll get to it later in this list), but it is slower than Barcode Scanner. Note: If your mobile’s camera pretty much sucks, you’ll need good lighting and a steady hand in order for this app to be able to successfully scan anything. Not a problem on Desire, but I know HTC Hero is troublesome.

Apps Organizer

Apps Organizer is the app if you come into a habit of clogging all available home screens with shortcuts to your programs. With this app you can place your wanted programs into groups, say “Internet”, “Games” or “Tools”. Then you can add the group as a single icon on your home screen, and clicking on it displays a box with all shortcuts to all programs that resides in that group. Easy to use and configure, and a great space saver. Previously I used 2 and a half screen for shortcuts only, with Apps Organizer I reduced it down to 3 single icons! Yay, my phone no longer looks like an iPhone and I get more space for widgets.

Task Manager

Task Manager is a task manager with an excellent “kill apps” functionality. You can add apps to an “auto-kill” list, and all apps in this list will automatically be killed when you press the power button to turn off the screen. Yes, I know Linux is good at memory handling and that Android eventually will shut down programs I don’t use, but it’s useful for killing all software that hogs your battery life if you’re far from a charger. You can also see which apps that are currently running, manage, start and uninstall apps from this app.

SMS Backup and Restore

SMS Backup and Restore is an app where, well, you can backup and restore your SMS messages. They are being saved as a XML file on your SD card. I also used this app to import my messages from my old Windows-mobile (I had to modify the XML file somewhat in order for this app to accept it). Now I regularily backup all my messages onto the SD card, and feel pretty safe that it’ll be able to keep my old messages throughout my next mobile phones (which I suspect will be Android based phones).

Nifty tools and widgets

Battery Widget

When changing from Windows Mobile to Android I missed the opportunity to see the remaining battery life in something more accurate than a tiny tiny icon in the upper right. Battery Widget does exactly this, it displays the remaining battery life in percent, but it’s even better than that. Clicking on the battery widget gives you a popup to enable/disable Wifi, Bluetooth and GPS. I restored three widget spaces with this app, since I didn’t need three different widgets for turning on and off each of the three networks. I find this app so awesome that it resides on my main home screen.

Android Agenda Widget

Android Agenda Widget is my favorite calendar widget. It displays current and all coming events from your chosen calendars and time ahead, complete with date, time, place, calendar color and pretty much everything is customizable. The great things is, you can choose any widget size (from 2×2 to 4×4). I have dedicated a full home screen for this app only, a 4×4 widget displaying coming events, appointments and birthdays, refreshed every 15 minutes. The only downside is that events spanning more than two lines gets cut off instead of giving the event more lines. But it’s no big deal, clicking on an event takes me to calendar view for that event.

Notes

Notes is a simple and basic notes app. I wanted a simple program where you can write a note, decide its title, sort all the notes after the title or date, and not much else. No fancy stuff, like syncing the notes with your computer or disturbing ads and backgrounds. I just need a notes app where I can jot down anything that comes to mind, and keep wish lists, stuff to remember and .. well, notes. I’ve tested several popular notes-apps, but this subtle named app appealed to me the most. Edit: Seems like the recent update is a little buggy – whenever you create a new note, it gets duplicated some times until you close the note. Just delete them all but one.

Google Goggles

Google Goggles is an app which tries to identify what you take pictures of by searching the web. You can take pictures of assorted products, logos, landmarks, artwork, barcodes (just like Barcode Scanner above) and assorted texts, and it does a pretty good job about identifying the object. Logos and barcodes works very well, and with the recent update you can access Google Translate when taking pictures of text. I’m planning to test landmarks as soon as I’m near something that’d count as a well-known landmark. I live in Norway, so that could be a challenge.

Led Light

Led Light is a handy widget that allows you to use your LED light/flash on your camera as a flashlight. It’s as simple as that. Useful when in dark places and you can’t bother to keep the screen activated by regurarily touching it. 1×1 intuitive widget for turning the light on and off. NB: Works on Desire only.

3G Watchdog

3G Watchdog is simply an app that run statistics on your mobile network data transfers. It doesn’t include Wifi use, there’s other apps for that. But this app is precisely what I wanted. I was worried I’d spend much money on mobile data, seeing as my phone syncs alot and seems to download almost constantly even when I’m not using it. The 3G Watchdog icon sits in the upper left corner, and you can at all times see how many Mb you’ve received or transmitted. Set a monthly quota and see how you fulfill or exceeds it. Simple and accurate.

EStrongs File Explorer

EStrongs File Explorer is the file explorer app. Not only you get a nice file explorer for you SD card, but it can read shared LAN folders, connect to FTP servers and transfer files on Bluetooth as well. Its display settings is customizable, and you can multi-select, see the phone’s root directories, search and copy/paste. But seriously, the ability to connect to LAN and FTP makes this app pretty awesome.

SMS Backup

SMS Backup is another “backup your SMS messages app”. I have both SMS Backup and Restore and this app in my phone. Whereas the previously mentioned app, SMS Backup and Restore, saves the messages as XML files on the SD card, SMS Backup backups messages as threaded mails in your Gmail account. It adds a label in your mail account and syncs automatically, so you have access to all SMS messages when logging onto your mail account. The downside is that you can’t restore them back into your phone.

Games

Being a gamer and wanting to develop my own Android games one day, I obviously checked the Android market for games. Keep in mind that I’m more of a “thinking game” girl than “shoot kill shoot kill aargh”. I’ve mostly been looking for games that can be played as quick time killers, like when riding the bus home.

I was very excited to finally be able to play my favourite puzzle game, Griddler, on my phone. But sadly it appears that the only Griddler app available, Nonogram, pretty much sucks. Seems like I have to go through with creating my own Android based Griddler. But as for now, try some of these games:

OpenSudoku

OpenSudoku is the Android based Sudoku game. It supports different modes of filling in numbers, is ad-free (so far), simple and works very well. The app comes with 90 puzzles, 30 easy, 30 medium and 30 hard ones. The best thing is that you can download no less than 400 more puzzles, also for free, 100 puzzles in each of four difficulty levels. I will never be bored while riding the bus or waiting for someone ever again.

Trap!

Trap! is an action game that requires quick reactions and some thinking ahead. The goal is to fill more then 75% of the board. You can draw lines and blocks in order to fill the area, but the thing is, there are balls bouncing around. You can’t have any one of the balls hit the lines while they are being placed (it takes a while to draw lines). As you progress, more balls are added in each board with varying speeds. Sounds simple? It isn’t. But I love it!

Bonsai Blast

Bonsai Blast is another action game. This is the most well-made games I’ve seen on Android phones, its music and graphics are great and the game works smoothly. The gameplay is basically like so: A line of marbles with random colors are being pushed on a certain track, and your job is to pair three or more marbles of the same color, before the line of marbles reach the end of the track. “You” as in some kind of marble rocket launcher. As you advance the game features bouncing the marbles on walls, shooting them into chutes and different types of bonuses to shoot at.

Air Hockey: EM

Air Hockey: EM is simply the arcade game Air Hockey on Android. Push the hockey puck into your opponent’s goal, and prevent the opponent from shooting it into yours. You can choose to play alone against AI, or have a friend play on your screen. Physics works very well and it’s pretty much as the real thing. With the exception of dragging your finger across a mobile phone screen. And the size of the board.

Sea Battle

Sea Battle is a clone of the board game Battleship. You play against the computer AI, and the goal is to find and sink all the enemy’s ships before the opponent sinks all yours. You both place several ships, which has different lenghts, onto a grid, and neither of you can see the enemy’s arrangement. Then you simply guess by clicking twice on a cell, taking turns. The app works very well, has good graphics and works great as a temporarily time killer.

Gem Miner

I haven’t played Gem Miner as much, but it seems to be a well-working and good-looking game. You play a miner whose goal is to earn money in order to buy more advanced mining equipment. You mine in a large underground maze, trying to find coal, gems and iron which you can sell for money at the surface. You need to place a bunch of ladders to navigate and get back up to the surface, and supports to prevent falling rocks. And you can only be underground for a certain amount of time before the miner get too exhausted or short of oxygen.

AcornArtwork blog launched

<Shameless self-promotion> … Engage:
A couple of days ago I launched a new blog on my portfolio-domain, Acorn Artwork, integrated seamlessly with its design. I did this mainly to separate content and post topics, making it clearer and easier for visitors to one place or the other. This blog remains a more personal blog including gaming topics, while all artwork, design, portfolio and related topics are posted in my AcornArtwork blog. This way Acorn Artwork becomes a centralized place for showing off my work with related blog posts that may be interesting for portfolio-visitors.

Since I’ve recently completed a long education and am currently looking for a job, I finally have time to do what I love: drawing and designing. I also plan to dive back into the world of 3D modeling and texturing, but I’m currently focusing on developing my web design skills since I’m looking for a job within that field. At the moment I have several projects going to keep my brain busy, for example creating a Griddler game using PHP, JavaScript and jQuery.

And so, if some of my few readers are more interested in artwork and design related topics, stay tuned on my AcornArtwork blog. I have a strong feeling I’ll post more frequently at AcornArtwork than I do here.
</Shameless self-promotion>

Finished Master’s thesis

My thesis is about computer games, more specifically to which degree a quest game with a linear story can support meaningful choices for players, using the Xbox 360-game Fable 2 as an example and subject for analysis. (One thing’s for sure, I will never play Fable 2 ever again!) It was quite a new experience writing a long theoretical analysis when I both am more practical and have studied in a much more practical way. I feel that most of the thesis’ work was done in the last few weeks, and that I could’ve done more. But I bet everybody who has written a thesis most likely feel the same way. I was lucky to have kind people to support me, proof read and in general calm my nerves. Especially Sindre has been remarkably patient with me and endured my stressful mood.

When the thesis’ hand-in day finally had passed, I was suddenly free to do (almost) anything I wanted. I spent some weeks catching up on sleep and life. I could finally dig up my dear Wacom tablet, which has been missing me so much that it whimpers for my attention hoping I’d surrender and scratch it behind its ear with the pen. It was a great feeling to finally have time to draw and design web sites again! I redesigned my (so far) modest and limited portfolio, AcornArtwork.com, and hope to expand it and improve my drawing skills. I also plan to teach myself more in web design, especially JavaScript, Ajax and perhaps .NET in order to get more meat on my bones when applying for a job.

I’m now in the process of looking for and applying for a job. A very exciting and unknown road lies ahead!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=72XAXiyXf-k

A most inspiring speech held by Jim Kakalios at the University of Minnesota (starts at 0:55). The video is subtitled, in English, luckily for us hard of hearing. Kakalios talks about how, and I quote, “You must be, simultaneously, a geek and a nerd” to be successful at the University and later on in life.

I almost wish I could attend the University of Minnesota, the University of Oslo is not half as inspiring.

Acorns, or oak nuts

Thus it was about time to get myself a new name to go by. I wanted a new domain for my portfolio, and needed a more professional name or label. After some doodling and thinking I arrived at “Acorn”. Acorn could simply mean the funny-looking nuts that grow of oak trees, but in my case there’s also a play on words. My first initial is A and my last name is (edit: was) Kern, which becomes “Akern” which is pronounced almost as “acorn”. So there it is. The domains “Acorn Design” and the like was already taken, so I decided for Acorn Artwork. I bought the domain, redesigned my portfolio, created a logo (yes, with an acorn in it) and moved it there. For now I plan to keep this blog and my CI blog at this domain, lillarosin.com.

Acorn Artwork logo (I predict it’ll be seriously
revamped in the future)

I’m also introducing web designs in my portfolio, after rediscovering website design a while ago. I have created web pages with HTML, PHP and CSS from the age of 14 or so, but lost interest a while. However in October I was asked to help design elements for Nesodden kommune (a municipality that lies south of Oslo) new web site. I gave some advice of design, and created the header image, portal buttons and digitalized the Nesodden logo. That reignited the old web design spark. With my current Photoshop skills creating web design became much more interesting. I have not done much web designs yet, especially original or noteworthy designs, but more to come when I have time.

Maybe one of you, my two blog readers, starts thinking: “hey, isn’t she supposed to finish her Master’s thesis, how come she spends time to do all this?” To answer that I do designs or draw in my breaks, inbetween writing, and little by little a little something emerges. My thesis is due February 1st 2010, but I am by no means relaxed about it or slacking. Currently I’m sitting at home with swine flu (oink oink), so spending my half-functioning brain and body on my new portfolio seemed like a good idea.

The jump was planned October 10th in the morning and we told our friends, a chauffeur was arranged, my parents calmed and my excitement built up. When the big day arrived, it rained. The jump was thus postponed to October 17th. Cue arranging, telling friends, calming down my folks and building up a greater load of excitement. To my delight that Saturday morning was a beautiful, sunny day with no visible clouds in the sky. I got up early (I hate that), did my morning routine, got dressed in warm clothes and a permanent grin started to develop on my face. Sindre made coffee to bring and packed his backpack with his camera to take pictures. About 20 minutes before our chauffeur, Kjell, was arriving we got a call. The jump was cancelled again because of too strong wind. *sigh*

Sad couple: Parachute jump cancelled again

We came to the conclusion that we had to postpone the jump to Spring next year, sometime during March or April. The winter’s coming in fast (well, it’s Norway) and it gets too cold to mess around at 10 000ft in November. But I am gonna get my jump!

People say a picture is saying more than 1 000 words. So here it is.

A typical level in Portal

The PC game “Portal”, developed by Valve software in 2007, is in my humble opinion one of the most ingenious game ever created. The concept is simple, but a bit hard to wrap your head around. You have device that can shoot (over distance) a portal entrance and a portal exit, but only on certain surfaces, be it walls, roof or floors. Once both portals have been placed you can walk through the portals either way, and physics count (e.g. “speedy thing goes in, speedy thing goes out”). You can only create two portal openings, and as you progress in the levels you need to figure out exactly how, where and when to place the portals in order to cross chasms, up or over obstacles, around automated turrets that fires at you, transport energy balls into their receivers and open doors by using certain cubes you can pick up in the game. It’s a game that requires thinking, and often challenges you to think completely outside the box.

Scribblings from previous test subjects: The cake is a lie

The gameplay itself makes a great game, even though the game is a bit short. But there’s more. Throughout the game you are accompanied by a computerized voice which speak to you (and watch you) as a “Aperture Science” test subject in “The Enrichment Center”. The voice comes with witty comments and statements which really gives the game personality.

Weighted Companion Cube

Throughout the levels you also encounter the “Weighted Companion Cube”, a cube with a heart, another bonus which adds to the game’s genius. You carry and use the cube while the computerized voice reminds you that it will never threaten to stab you, it cannot speak and in the event that it does speak, disregard its advice. In the end you are told that your beloved cube cannot accompany you through the rest of the tests and if it could speak it would tell you to go on without it because it would rather die in a fire than become a burden to you.

You are constantly being promised cake when you have completed all of the 19 levels. But once you reach there you are, apparently as every other test subjects, being terminated by transporting you into a pit of flames. But the game doesn’t end there. As you cleverly escape using portals, you navigate through the building to find the source: the computer that have been talking all along. While you find your way towards the computer voice, it inquires you to give up, come back for your cake, jokingly excuses for trying to kill you or lie to you and threatens to start cutting and eating the cake without you.

The computer (voice) behind it all

When you have reached the computer brain behind it all, you are engaged in an end boss fight while the voice constantly tries to discourage you with hilarious statements. Among others how unlikeable you are and that nobody would come to your party, or imitate how stupid you sound. I won’t reveal how the game ends, but after it’s finished you are played the infamous and witty song “I’m Alive”. You are also given the option of replaying some of the levels in advanced mode.

I recommend getting the game, it is included in Valve’s Orange box or can be bought singly through Steam. But if you are convinced it’s not worth buying, (you are totally missing out, fool!) there is a free online Flash-version of Portal. It contains no less than 40 challenging which features almost every feature the real game does. Personally I prefer the real thing. “Portal” and its “Weighted Companion Cube” will always have a special space in my heart.

“Today, my friend had to take my cat who has a tumor to be put down when I wasn’t home since I couldn’t bare to take him myself. I have two cats. He took the wrong one. FML”

“Today, I looked down to see a tiny spider crawling on the inside of my leg, very close to my crotch. When I tried to brush it off, it only flew a couple inches because it was making a web between my legs. Even a spider knew that it’s been awhile. FML”

“Today, my mother told me I should think about quitting school. She explained that the reason was because she didn’t want me to be more successful than my older sisters. FML”

“Today, my girlfriend of 8 years attempted to explain to me how the Egyptian pyramids were built by aliens from Mars. I have a BS in Biology and a MS in Anthropology and I am working on my Phd and she thinks I am being an irrational idiot for telling her she is wrong. FML”

“Today, I found out that 15 years ago my father threw out my college acceptance letters so that I could stay home and take over the family’s funeral home business. FML”

Luckily fmylife has two sister pages, mylifeisaverage (MLIA in short) and mylifeisg (mylifeisgreat or MLIG in short). All three sites combined seems to cover the whole span of people’s opinion of their lives, written in a humorous way. Obviously MLIA is a site where people post comments on why their life is average, and MLIG somewhere people post their comments on why their life is great. MLIA leaves you much lighter at heart than FML and is in my opinion the site where you are left less “messed up” compared to FML and MLIG. Below are some MLIA comments.

“Today, I realized that since switching from an avid FML reader to an avid MLIA reader, my life has seemed a lot less terrible, and a lot more average. Needless to say, I’m pleased with the trade-off. MLIA.”

“Today, my friend asked why I was so slow in replying on msn. I told her I was doing homework at the same time, but actually it’s just really hard to type when you’ve taped your hands up like a dinosaur. MLIA”

“Today, I was in the mood to hear a certain song, and when I put my iPod on shuffle it went straight to it. I said, “Whoa, iPod! Can you read my mind or something?” The next song was called ‘I Can.’ I am genuinely terrified. MLIA.”

“Today, my girlfriend and I just finished moving into our big new house that my grandparents gave us.There was one room left that we couldn’t find a use for. We filled it with pillows and foam swords for forts. I’m going to get an engagement ring tomorrow. MLIA”

Still, through the years I’ve come across a few free online games I really think deserves credit. Some of the games contain great (though simple) graphics which is crucial for me to even enjoy looking at something more than five seconds. Other games are more clever and good at keeping the challenges.. well.. challenging and fun.

“Oil Panic” – move and react fast!

A typical level of Oil Panic

It’s rare that I enjoy an arcade game, where time matters. “Oil Panic” is one. It’s a very old game and I’m suprised that it’s still active. It’s in Norwegian, but you don’t need to know more than using the arrowkeys to move left, right and down and Space bar to retreat the oil drill. The goal is to gather all blue drops (presumably oil drops) in the level. The challenge lies in the enemies (in form of flames, red stars or other things) that suddenly appears at the border’s edge and move horizontally. The only way to kill them is by hitting them with the drill head – if they hit your extended pipe you die. That means that even though the drill head is picking up drops way at the bottom, if an enemy appears in the upper rows, you need to climb all the way back up before it hits your pipe and then climb back down again. Special walls and items appear in the later levels, as well as faster enemies and shorter time to react.

“Shift” – think in black and white

A Shift 1 level with a reference to Portal

There are now four “Shift”(s?), but i prefer the first two, “Shift 1” and “Shift 2“. These games don’t consist of many levels, but have a clever gimmick. The game is in black and white for a reason, because pressing Shift inverts the board. Otherwise it appears as a platform-game where you move and jump your way to the exit door. Reaching keys, switches and avoiding spikes have never been as challenging as in “Shift”. The games got humor too, including several obvious references to the great game Portal. I haven’t played “Shift 3” or “Shift 4” as much mostly because the last game runs on a timer.

“Fragger” – ninjahunting with grenades!

A typical Fragger level

I recently discovered “Fragger“, which is basically the traditional Tank Wars dressed up as throwing grenades killing ninjas in a more “urban” setting. You can set your angle and velocity using your mouse, and click to throw a grenade. You only have a limited amount of grenades, but unlimited retries at all levels. “Fragger” consist of 30 creative and challenging levels, where not only adjusting the angle and velocity is crucial for completion. When you have completed all 30 levels, you can play them again using a harder difficulty level.

“Orisinal” games – just cute

A selection of Orisinal games

Games created at “Orisinal” is not really games per se. They are more pleasurable for the eye than actually providing you challenges. The site provides no less than 60 individual games, all in the same style. Each game consists of really just one simple challenge, e.g. stack pigs in order to reach floating muffins high up in the air, or control a squirrel hunting for apples. What really attracts me is their beautiful appearance. My favourite games are the jumping rabbit in “Winterbells” and stacking pigs in “These Little Pigs“.