Excel Hero — where Accountants Rock Out
A client has just launched a game I developed, Excel Hero. This game tests your skill at Microsoft Excel keyboard shortcuts. Exciting, right? Well, if you’re a hardcore Excel user, this game is actually pretty fun. There’s a countdown timer and high score as well as a random selection of shortcuts to test your skill that get increasingly difficult. I executed all the flash development in partnership with a guy who came up with the idea and Matt Coffee, who designed/illustrated the sweet landing page.
The simplicity of the game (and the strange requirement to click in a field below the game) mask a ridiculous challenge that the game presented: capturing literally every keystroke. Of particular “joy” was the Alt (Option) key which Flash Plugin has no access to. Another fun thing that required significant hackery was the fact that your web browser thinks it should be in charge of common shortcuts like Print (Ctrl-P) and the like.
What made this all possible was leaving Javascript 100% in charge of blocking and capturing literally all keystrokes and then handing their keycodes off to Flash to interpret as they related to the current challenge. In the end, a triple-tag-team of Flash, Javascript and PHP ultimately provide a fairly seamless experience on both Firefox and IE. Rumor has it Chrome doesn’t play well. So it goes. Good times.
Pixel Farm Blog
Pixel Farm is a Minneapolis post-production company specializing in visual FX, video, audio, Blu-ray DVD, etc etc. It’s also where I work, the parent company to Pixel Farm Interactive. I made the Pixel Farm blog as part of their online rebranding effort. It is companion site to a new flash-based spot library site which is nearing completion. More on that later.
Cynthia Kraack website
A custom WordPress site I did for upcoming speculative fiction writer, Cynthia Kraack. She has completed her first book, Minnesota Cold, and is already working on a second. The site includes some of the client’s photography, excerpts from the book, and some audio recordings by the author herself. The client is now free to manage the site herself through WordPress’s slick CMS.
In building this template from scratch, I learned some nifty tricks that can be done easily using WordPress’s Template Tags and conditional logic…
Enpath Medical / Greatbatch eLearning
While the visual template is none of my doing, I did provide Technical Direction and some of the actionscript implementation for the development of 6 flash-based eLearning courses, including the skinning of the PFI LMS and the buildout of flash modules which track score and completion in the LMS. These interact with the LMS through a custom javascript API and the Flash ExternalInterface class.
Lowtech Records
Yet another independent record label, Lowtech Records, contracted me to help get them set up with a custom-designed WordPress site to promote their Illinois-based label and related annual festival. I did everything from design to site template customization to content insertion.
Draw Fire Records Website
Draw Fire Records is an artist-friendly collective that helps develop independent artists and promote their music through innovative marketing and old-fashioned networking.
I provided site setup services to help them get up and running with a templated WordPress site. From there they’ve blossomed the site into a blog with great bios about the collective and its various artists.
