Category Archives: fun

Ozric’s Hole to China Rewrite

A few weeks after I completed the first draft of my children’s book, Ozric’s Hole to China, I started a first-person version just to see how it would compare. I completed three chapters and actually liked the result quite a bit. It still needs work (I’m an amateur writer, so this pretty much goes without saying) but I think it’s an improvement over the original.

If you happen to have read OHTC, or at least the first few chapters, I’d love to hear what you think of this version. I added it to the main Ozric page, and here is a direct link: Ozric Rewrite Ch. 1-3

Gravatar Created

I just set up a profile on Gravatar, which was easy since it made use of my existing WordPress.com account.

Gravatar is a service that automatically adds a profile photo any time you comment or post on a blog/website/forum that supports it. You create an account, register your e-mail address (or multiple addresses), and upload a photo. After that, your photo will appear whenever you use your e-mail address when commenting/posting. This includes sites (like mine) that require commenters to provide an e-mail address, but do not display it to the public.

Pretty cool!

My First Android App

I recently published my first app for the Android platform. My main goal was to get my feet wet with Android development, and the Assistant Coach app seemed like a fairly simple idea that, as far as I could tell, hadn’t been done before.

The whole process took me about a month, working part-time. I really enjoyed the process; the Android documentation is excellent, and the architecture is designed well. It had been a while since I did any Java development, but I fell back into it pretty easily (esp. thanks to Eclipse). I had a blast and am thinking about what to make next. Let me know if you have any ideas!

Fun With Linguistics

Been going through a great series of linguistics lectures by John McWhorter and I came across a pretty interesting tidbit about how we pronounce the letter ‘l’ differently, depending on whether it’s at the start of a word or not.

Here is a recording of me saying the word “oil” …

rob_saying_the_word_oil

… and here is that same recording played backwards …

backwards_version_of_rob_saying_the_word_oil

Incidentally, I recorded & saved both versions using the built-in Windows accessory called “Sound Recorder” and I converted the resulting WAV files to mp3 with a program called CDex.