posts

Words

Words come tumbling, rumbling like rapids from the mouth
So many, so different and still all remain so more the same

We define and describe and decapitate this truth, that truth, any truth
With words and sentences that congeal as horizontal lines of blood in human desperation

We fill the voids and crevices and dark places we fear so much
Till the canyons of our ignorance echo with the ring of our rhetoric

Dead just a moment ago and where has my now gone?
Fleeted into yester`s moment and nevermore

Shall scholar redact man`s mortal foe?
Shall poet transcend this our malignant woe?

The fool dances upon the god`s brow in mighty delight, ignorant
Our prison is now complete as our language grows

Welded from the same tools we attempt to fly with
To soar above this Earth and world and be apart As our Maker

We are bound to this one life, this one blood, this one love
Not in shackled isolation or desolation, though

See not the yester`s shadow creeping so long and black along our path
Blanket over the mountain yet formed and filling the canyon yet dug

For I am not the word
Even as I say it, “I am”

Kotoba Tweets Kanji Based on JLPT, Frequency

Kotoba will now be tweeting a few more kanji every day with the aim of better aiding Japanese learners. In particular, Kotoba will begin to tweet kanji based on their JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) level, 1 through 4. Hopefully this will prove itself useful to those who want to focus on characters more specific to their current level of study.

Additionally, Kotoba originally tweeted kanji randomly selected from its rather large database of said characters. While this could prove interesting for those wanting to stumble upon new Chinese characters, it could at times prove itself to border on useless expect for deep Japanophiles. In order to help better target the randomly selected characters, Kotoba now selects from a pre-filtered set of kanji that include frequency ranking. This frequency ranking is based on the number of occurrences the character appears in modern literature; the smaller the number the more it is used. Again, this will hopefully help refine the utility of our tweets for Japanese learners.

As always, you can still go to http://kotoba.wardosworld.com/character_of_moment to get a random character selected for you if you do not want to wait for the daily tweets.

API v0.8 Changes to Coloring Sprites

Luke Hatcher’s excellent write-up on coloring sprites is a bit out of date for the latest version (v0.8.0) of Cocos2D.

Some very minor changes are necessary to get the example to work.

Originally, the tutorial sets both the position and color with the following two lines, or:

[redSprite setPosition:cpv(200, 160)];
[redSprite setRGB:255 :0 :0];

We need to change cpv to ccp and setRGB:r :g :b to setColor:ccc3(r,g,b), or:

[redSprite setPosition:ccp(200, 160)];
[redSprite setColor:ccc3(255,0,0)];

That is it to get the example working.

Cocos2D

Not that I have ever developed anything other than most cursory of games, but development of a fantasy RPG has been a childhood dream.  Of course, what isn’t?  More to point, a game allows me to be both technical and creative simultaneously and be something I can develop entirely for myself and be content.

But if I ever do get something fun to play worth sharing and have an itch to make $0.99 then having an easy means of distribution would be the proverbial cherry on top.  Now, given the end-to-end ecosystem that Apple’s iTunes Store represents along with the fact that iPhone has arguably more horsepower than Nintendo’s Wii, iPhone as a game platform seems like a good place to head.  And getting back to my neophyte status as a game developer, I am happy to discover the Cocos2D API which provides a 2D gaming frameworks for iPhone and iPod Touch.

At this point I am still working through Monocle Studio’s SimpleGame example.  But it is fun to have something very simple to work on that actually works.

Kotoba Goes Radical

Kotoba’s base set of information is nearing another milestone: radicals （部首【ぶしゅ】or ‘bushu‘）. Radicals are the base components that can be used to describe an ideogram, often most strongly associated with Chinese characters （漢字【かんじ】or ‘kanji‘).

We have used the source from RadicalKanji to provide the relationships between our Japanese characters. This information allows us to more easily to discover kanji when we do not know one of its readings. The next step is to build a visual search that allows users to select radicals to the search until the desired kanji is found. Till then, discover the many interesting relationships between Japanese characters.