My name is Evan Sims, and I'm a game designer and web jockey from the cornfields of Illinois. Excelsior!

Fresh Baked

Build Photoblog, Build!

A lot of time has gone by since I first posted my plans to build a photoblogging them, but I finally found the time (and will power) to get building it these last few weeks. You can check it out at http://photos.evansims.com.

I’m actually really pleased with how powerful the system is turning out. I’ve got geolocation support in (manual, or auto if you upload using the official WordPress apps from iPhone, Android etc.), EXIF processing (camera model used, time taken, etc.), “People in this photo” and optional visitor tagging (like Flickr!) and more is already in. It’s also structured entirely in HTML5, uses Canvas to render images smoothly, and uses some neat tricks to protect images from theft and hotlinking.

It’s still a work in progress, but it’s coming along nicely. I need to get the iPhone and Android mobile interfaces polished up, and implement a few more details into the system, but all in all it’s pretty much there.

I’ll take a month or two sampling the dog food here before I push out a beta release of the Theme for everyone to try.

Still Tasty

  • Kindle vs iPad? Not quite. What we're seeing here is a gold rush. Even if the iPad was a commercial failure (it won't be), the hype surrounding it has force fed the reality of ebooks in the faces of the mass market for the first time.

  • Bookmarklet: Share with Google Buzz All my blogging juice has been sapped by Google Buzz this week. I'm having way too much fun with it. It mashes everything I like about Google Reader up with FriendFeed. I'm especially digging the real time updates on shares and comment threads.

  • I’ve Gone and Made a Mess My Warcraft guild finally brought down Deathbringer Saurfang. We'd been stuck on him for a few weeks now, unable to get our raid's configuration just right to finish him off before the enrage timer wiped us. There was no magic bullet for it, really; it came down to a little luck and a lot of practice.

  • Review: Razer Naga MMOG Mouse The Razer Naga is a high performance 17 buttoned mouse geared specifically towards massively multiplayer gamers, works with any MMO, and supports PC and Mac.

  • Review: The Book of Eli I was psyched to see The Book of Eli. Who wouldn't be? A Fallout 3-esk post apocalyptic world with Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman fighting over a bible with machetes. That's a rock solid premise right there.

  • Security Tokens in MMOs Security tokens are growingly popular method of securing MMO accounts. How could we improve these devices, and what other steps could developers take to secure player's data?