Matt Shubert
First Photo Friday - Portland!!
First Photo Friday - Portland!!

Sneak Peak Sunday - Vaultology artwork

Thought I would take today to post some of the artwork from the upcoming Vaultology app.  We're really close to going into beta so if you haven't already, you should go check out the Vaultology Page and sign up for beta testing.  Right now, pretty much all the code is written.  We're just missing a little bit of code to save the moves, and then some of the technical vaulting terms.  Hopefully with spring break, we can get most of all of it finished up so we can move into beta by the end of this month.  So with that out of the way, check out some of the artwork we've got going on.

The main menu background image with the Vaultology logo

One of the options for the app icon

So that's all the artwork I really have for now.  I hope you liked it I hope you're as excited as we are about the release of Vaultology.

 

As always, thanks for reading,

-Matt.

iOS Games You Should Be Playing -- Disco Zoo

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I've basically become slightly obsessed with this game.  It was an editor's choice featured app on the App Store and Austin recommended it to me so I figured I would give it a try.  About a week later and I'm literally checking my phone for the sole purpose of playing this game.  The overall idea of the game is to rescue animals, and put them in your zoo.  The more animals you have, the more money you make and then the more animals you can go rescue.  But they've done something kinda cool to keep you coming back.

The animals in your zoo will eventually fall asleep and then you stop making money.  So you have to check back in the game and wake them up.  It doesn't help that the game will send you push notifications every 15 minutes to remind you your sheep fell asleep, but I eventually turned those off.  To rescue animals you go on rescue missions which cost a certain amount of coins and the price increases the more missions you go on.  When you do go on a mission you are given a five by five grid of tiles and you have to turn over all the tiles of one animal to rescue that animal.  Each animal has its own unique pattern, which makes the task a little easier if you have a good memory.

The disco part of Disco Zoo is actually kind of simple.  You can spend a disco buck (which are a little harder to come by) and all your animals will wake up and throw a party where you earn double the coins for a given time, depending on how many disco bucks you spent.

Overall the gameplay is pretty fun and there are lots of achievements and goals to work towards which keeps the game interesting.  The best part is that you get all this for free (sort of).  There are in-game purchases you can make which will help you out a lot, but you can also just watch an add and get a little extra help as well.  But if you have an extra dollar or two to spend I would make an in app purchase or two to help the two guys who made the app.

So the moral of the story is, if you don't have Disco Zoo you should go get it because it's a free app and you have nothing to loose really.  Until you become addicted to the game and start checking it every ten minutes in class to wake up your animals.  Then you might loose out on important information that's going to be on that midterm in a couple of days.  But at least it's not a dollar.

Anyways.  Go get Disco Zoo here if you don't have it already and have lots of fun with it.  As always I hope you enjoyed readings this and keep checking back for future posts.


Thanks for reading.

-Matt.

The Smart Watches are Coming

I think it all really started with the Pebble smart watch two or three years ago.  This company started out on kick starter with a watch that would pair with your phone and could send updates about your text messages, incoming calls, and other sorts of stuff.  Since then, it seems that everyone is coming out with a smart watch, even Apple.  Apple is rumored to be releasing an "iWatch" some time later this year so I thought I would give a list of some of the things I would like to see in a smart watch.

A conceptual mock up of an iWatch I found here: http://www.macrumors.com/roundup/iwatch/

A conceptual mock up of an iWatch I found here: http://www.macrumors.com/roundup/iwatch/

 

It has to be a stand alone device.  While you aren't going to get an entire phone on your wrist, the watch needs to be able to work with out a phone and need to be able to work with different kinds of phones (or different kinds of iPhones since it's an iWatch after all)

Some kind of built in iPod.  This kind of relates to the stand alone thing.  I think you could easily put in a couple of GB of music storage and basically have an iPod shuffle on your wrist.  Then you could either listen over bluetooth speakers/headphones, or even have a headphone jack in the watch.

Music control of your phone.  Basically it lets you brows your music library on your phone (or even your computer) and then select songs to play and do all the normal music control stuff.

Needs to be water proof.  That should be pretty obvious.  I don't want to have to put my watch in a bag of rice after every time I wash my hands.

Phone alerts.  So it basically tells you when you have a new text message or Facebook notification or anything else that currently send you a notification on your phone.

Responding to text messages.  I think putting siri on it (or a bridge to the siri on your phone) and letting you reply to text messages with your voice could be pretty cool and useful.

Health monitoring.  It would keep track of your heart rate and your activity levels and basically do everything the Nike fuel band and other fitness bands do right now (essentially putting them out of business, which is probably why there are a ton of Nike fuel band ads right now.  They're trying to sell as many as possible before everybody just buys and iWatch instead).

Battery life.  At the very, absolute least, it needs to last all day.  It would be even better if it could go a full week with out needing a charge.  It would also be cool to see some kind of induction charging so that you can just take it off and put it on a mat to let it charge over night.  Might make things simpler

 

That's all I can really think of at the moment.  It would also be really cool if it came with an open SDK so that other developers could design their own iWatch apps.

Anyways.

I hope you enjoyed that little read and as always, thanks for reading.

 

-Matt.  

Photo Friday - The Pure Heroine Collection

While I was walking back to my apartment one night I saw the tennis court illuminated by the street lights and it reminded me of the Lorde song "Tennis Court".  So I took a picture and then thought to my self, why stop there.  So I spent the next ten days taking photos that relate to each song off Lorde's new (ish) album "Pure Heroine" and posting a picture per song per day.  

Over the past ten days I've posted them all to my instagram (which you should all go follow) and now I've decided to put them all together in one location.  Anyways, I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed taking them.

-Matt.

 

1. Tennis Court: "Let's go down to the tennis court"

2. 400 Lux: "'Till the veins run red and blue"

3. Royals: "In a torn-up town"

4. Ribs: "We're reeling through the midnight streets"

5. Buzzcut Season: "But I live in a hologram with you"

6. Team: "A hundred jewels on throats"

7. Glory and Gore: "Dropping glasses just to hear them break"

8. Still Sane: "Riding around on the bikes we're still sane"

9. White Teeth Teens: "I am not a white teeth teen"

10. A World Alone: "Let 'em talk 'cause we're dancing in this world alone, world alone, we're alone"

Screaming Beta

I know its friday so it's supposed to kinda be a photo friday, but I have something in the works that won't be ready until next week, so hang on for that.  

 

In the meantime I have some exciting news.  Vaultology is getting close to a beta launch and we are looking for beta testers.  You can read more about Vaultology in one of my previous posts here, but the basic idea is that it's an app that helps equestrian vaulters think of more creative moves for their freestyles.

We are currently looking for a few people who would like to beta test the app and who wouldn't mind giving feedback after testing.  It can all be done over the internet so location shouldn't be an issue (I hope, I've never really done this before).  Anyways, If you're a vaulter and would like to help us out, you should head over to the official Vaultology page and read over some of the requirements.  If you fit all the requirement and think you'd be a good beta tester, feel free to fill out the beta tester registration form at the bottom of the page.

We are currently projecting a mid to late March 2014 beta launch and will contact selected beta testers with more information when that time comes closer.

 

So yeah, go check out the Vaultology Page and if you want to be a beta tester fill out the form.

 

As always, thanks for reading

-Matt.