Category: Software

A Terraria Christmas Story: Hardmode Items from the North Pole

Chris Gerty

My 7-year-old son is really into an open-ended 2D sandbox game on his iPhone called Terraria. In fact, he is so into it that this Christmas season on the top of his list to Santa was “the best items in the game”. I honestly expressed to him my doubt that Santa could deliver, since most presents are made in the elves’ workshop, and that Terraria on the iPhone has no “creative mode” to add items at will. “No, daddy,” was the reply, “Santa can hack!” Oh yes, this was going to be interesting.

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CARROT Hunger: Lose Weight Like a Geek

Skip Owens3

Like any other middle-aged GeekDad, my metabolism is starting to slow down and the time I have available for exercise is decreasing. What is a geek to do? So, of course, I turned to technology and found a highly entertaining and abusive app called CARROT Hunger: Talking Calorie Counter and CARROT has been whipping me into shape ever since.

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Coding Adventures

Tynker: Visual Game Programming Tools For Kids

James Floyd Kelly5

I’m teaching a bunch of technology camps this summer, and one of the camps I’m most looking forward to is Beginning Game Programming. My goal is to introduce the students to the basic concepts of programming but also to give them hands-on time with as many game development platforms as we can fit into the week.

One of the tools that I’m definitely going to introduce to the students is Tynker. If you’re not familiar with it and have a student who is showing strong interesting in creating his or her own games, you’ll definitely want to check out their website.

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New Book Tuesday – ‘Teach Your Kids to Code’

James Floyd Kelly

Sometimes the timing of a new book release just seems magical. I’ve got a collection of tech camps that I’ll be teaching this summer, including a Beginning Game Programming camp for ages 8 to 13. I’ve got a lot of the curriculum already selected, but I’ve been specifically looking for a kid-friendly book on Python that doesn’t talk down to kids AND provides a logical and well-organized attack on programming theory that follows the handful of programming courses I took years ago. For some time now, my search hasn’t been going so well… there are some great Python books out there, but for one reason or another I just haven’t found a solid match.
When a press release for ‘Teach Your Kids To Code’ by Bryson Payne landed in my Inbox, I pounced.

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