Making Isometric Games Book

Posted by on Sep 12 2011

For those still interested in isometric games, O’Reilly Books has a new title called Making Isometric Social Real-Time Games with HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. The blurb on their website:

Walk through the process of designing and implementing from scratch an isometric real time game such as some of the most succesful Facebook Games. Applying HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript, this piece shows how to build games using isometric map making, sprite animations, networking, social network integration, high performance rendering and game design.

Using your browser as a game engine is interesting indeed – and shows that there is still a lot of life left in traditional 2D game concepts. For a list of isometric game engines, click here.

Understanding Radiation Dosage

Posted by on Jul 12 2011

Nuclear meltdowns/attacks have always been part of post apocalyptic yore, but now we have a nifty chart explaining radiation poisoning to the average bloke. Here’s a bit of perspective on radiation poisoning from iapptive.com (via mashable)

We encounter sources of radiation every day, from natural background radiation to bananas. (Yes, bananas emit gamma rays, but you’d have to eat 5 million bananas in one sitting to get any kind of radiation sickness.) The absorption of this radiation is measured in units called the sievert (Sv). As the chart explains, we absorb approximately 0.1 microsieverts (μSv) of radiation per day from eating a banana, 10 μSv from background radiation and 20 μSv from a chest x-ray. That’s more than the radiation you’ll absorb from living within 50 miles of a power plant (0.09 μSv). Even a coal power plant generates more radiation (0.3 μSv) because coal has trace amounts of uranium.

Here is the chart from http://xkcd.com/radiation/:

Apocalyptic Firesale – Get your bunkers on the cheap!

Posted by on Jul 09 2011

A few months ago, I posted about bunkers sales up by 1000%. Well, according to business insider they decided to let the common man in on their gig selling an economy model for only $9,950 USD (premium models start at $25,000).

Its guaranteed to keep you alive for 6 months and survive at 20 megaton blast – not too shabby:



Here is a bit about Terra Vivos (from their homepage):

Vivos is a privately funded venture, with no religious affiliations, building a global network of underground shelters, to accommodate thousands of people. Vivos will provide a life assurance solution for those that wish to be prepared to survive these potential events, whether they occur now, in 2012, or in decades to come. Co-own an equity share of the Vivos shelter closest to your home area.  Which side of the door do you want to be on?