Bug Fix in the Code Thumbnailer

It came to my attention that there was a bug in the Code Thumbnailer code that was up on my Shockwave 3D Developer's Guide page. It doubled-up the type names on the thumbnails, instead of showing it once, and then including the rest of the member name.

Anyway, it's been fixed on the thumbnailer page. The updated version will also be included in the next release of the MVC Framework which I'm working on.

Interesting Site Statistics

I've been tracking my site statistics using Google Analytics and StatCounter for quite a while now, and I sat down tonight to really look at some of the data. It's quite interesting. Here are some fun facts about the traffic my site receives:

• Microsoft ain't doing so well. Internet Explorer browsers only make up half of my pageviews, which is quite a bit lower market share than I had been led to believe. The other half is made up of Firefox at around 40%, and Safari taking the lion's share of the remainder.
• Moreover, MSN search yields the merest pittance of page referrals compared to Google and Yahoo. MSN referred about 1% of pages that came in via search engines. Google referred 80%, and Yahoo about 18%. Also, MSN appears to be the least able to connect people with relevant content, because MSN yielded the lowest pages viewed per referral out of all the major search engines. (For example, AltaVista, which referred about the same number of visitors to my site, generated over five page views per visitor on average, while MSN generated barely over one. In other words, AltaVista connected me to people who were actually interested in my content, while MSN connected me with people who immediately left.)
• If browser hits are to be believed, Mac is gaining market share. According to the browser agents, at least 12% of my traffic is coming from Macs. Granted, Mac types may be more attracted to the creative stuff featured on my site, but none of the listed incoming traffic keywords have anything to do with OS platform stuff except for searches that either list my domain (people typing my URL) or looking for software (Magic Mirror for Mac).
• Only 20% of my traffic comes from search engines, which means that the remaining 80% of traffic comes from direct links - either people actively bookmarking my site or clicking on a link on a web page somewhere. In fact, 25% of my site visitors have no referring link, which I am guessing means bookmarked locations or referred to from other sources, like an email client.
• My "depth of visit" statistics are odd. The graph looks like your typical falloff chart with a lot of one-page visitors, less two-page visitors, even less three-page visitors, etc. But I get a spike at the end of the chart with a lot of visitors visiting 20+ pages. Now, that's probably the effect of the "long tail" talking, but I also get a spike around 9 pages, and another spike around 16 pages. Somewhere on my site, there's about nine pages of content of interest to a group of people somewhere, and another set of sixteen pages of interest to another group of people. My guess offhand is that my ImaginEERIEing site is the sixteen, and my Shockwave3D Developer's Guide is the nine. (My home haunt page has about 30 subpages, half of which is tours of previous years and the other half being how-to's, and my Shockwave3D site has eight subpages.) I think that means that when someone finds my site who is interested in the content I offer, they consume all of it, but maybe that's reading too much into the data.
• However, the above assumption is supported by the fact that almost 6% of my visitors spend more than an hour reading my site when they come. That's good - it means that trying to have a detailed, content-rich site is worth the effort, because people are reading it.
• Finally, I have a pretty international audience. Only 70% of my traffic comes from the U.S. That surprised me, since I have a lot of content that is not only solely available in English, but also concerns a largely American holiday: Halloween. Still, I get a lot of hits from Asia on my Shockwave3D stuff, and I get hits from Europe on my Arkham Investigations stuff. (This latter content actually includes some localized content, thanks to the efforts of some fellow Arkham Horror fans.)

Anyway, hope you found some of these statistics interesting. I think other people who have their own web sites should share stuff like this. Do you have any interesting tidbits in your server logs to share?

New Arkham Investigations casebook: Whispers in Darkness

A new Arkham Investigations casebook is available on the Arkham Investigations web site.

Based on Lovecraft's story The Whisperer in Darkness, the case is called Whispers in Darkness. When a torrential rainstorm brings to light a deadly mystery, you will travel to the Vermont countryside to face otherworldly horrors that lurk around the Akeley farmhouse.

It was originally written in Italian by a fellow Arkham Horror fan named Jocularis. The English version is available from the casebook archive.

Winding down the "Double Creature Feature"

The "Double Creature Feature" ACE/NETC Conference has wound down, and boy, are we exhausted. Being the host state for a conference of about 500 communications professionals and the IT professionals who support them can wear you out! Despite the rather impressive battery of sessions available, I was only able to attend about three, since I was proctoring, monitoring, and troubleshooting for the rest of the conference. However, there were still many highlights:

• Awards Banquet - While we had a slow year in the ACE awards for projects, the New Mexico crowd picked up three of the Professional Skill awards. Me, my wife, and our former boss all came home with best-of-discipline achievement awards, and it felt pretty great to have the appreciation of your peers. (Our boss's award in particular was good, since his contribution to the ACE organization has been very high, and the excellence of everyone in our department that picked up awards is directly tied to his unceasing support for continued professional development. I don't believe he is going to get recognized for those accomplishments in his home state, but I think it speaks more coming from a professional organization, anyway.)
• Attendees - The attendees at ACE/NETC, almost to a person, were friendly, knowledgeable, clever, and sharp. I enjoyed almost every conversation I had with people, and that's saying something coming from an introvert like myself. And they all seemed to be having a great time - I often heard that this was the best ACE/NETC conference yet. It feels great to put on something that makes people happy and which they appreciate; it's the same feeling I get when we do Carnival of Souls.
• Sessions - I didn't get much time to just go to sessions and listen, but I did manage to see firsthand some great sessions. My clear favorite was presented by Alessandro A. Bellina, from University of Illinois Extension, speaking about AJAX. It's not that AJAX is this new thing to me, but the web crew from Illinois are one of the few web groups I've seen in ACE/NETC that really are doing some well-designed and well-thought-out stuff. They don't just mash tech together for the propeller-geekery of it, as certain groups that attend ACE/NETC appear to do, but instead are putting real thought into solving problems effectively. I saw them present on their custom CMS for the Illinois Cooperative Extension System years ago and was mightily impressed - in fact, their vision of a CMS solution has highly influenced some of the solutions I have built since then for NMSU. It was great to see what they were up to, and I'm gratified to discover that we're doing a lot of the same stuff now.
• El Pinto – The night we all went to El Pinto was nice. Great weather, great food, great music, and a chance to go visit where my wife and I tied the knot 10 years ago. It was fun.
• Hanging with the crew - I spent a lot of time sitting around talking with people from work at this conference, and it was a lot of fun. It was fun chatting with people between sessions or around the impromptu Guitar Hero party in the hotel atrium one night. It served as a powerful reminder that I work with some really awesome people, and it struck me (as it often does) what a value it is to truly enjoy the people you work with.

All in all, it was a success, and everyone seemed to enjoy it. We're off the hook for hosting now for about 40 years. Yay!

Introduction to 3D Game Scripting

I've added a twenty-three-page tutorial to my Shockwave3D Developer's Guide page called Introduction to 3D Game Scripting.

It takes the new or novice Lightwave user through the process of exporting Lightwave content to Shockwave3D format for use in Director, and using my Model-View-Controller Framework (below) to begin adding interactivity to 3D scenes.

This document was uploaded in preparation for my presentation on the development of Science Pirates at the ACE/NETC "Double Creature Feature" Conference we're hosting in Albuquerque this coming weekend. If you'd like to learn more about developing Shockwave3D games - or any other aspect of communications from web to print to video (see the massive list of sessions) - it's not too late to register and attend!

El Paso Times article on our games lab

The El Paso Times ran an article on NMSU's Learning Games Lab today.

Introduction to Low-Polygon Game Asset Texturing

I've added a fifteen-page tutorial to my Shockwave3D Developer's Guide page called Introduction to Low-Polygon Game Asset Texturing.

It takes the new or novice Lightwave user through the process of texturing 3D geometry, with a particular emphasis on UV mapping objects for 3D games built with Shockwave3D. You do not need to have Director to follow along with the tutorial, but you do need Lightwave.

This document was uploaded in preparation for my presentation on the development of Science Pirates at the ACE/NETC "Double Creature Feature" Conference we're hosting in Albuquerque this coming weekend. If you'd like to learn more about developing Shockwave3D games - or any other aspect of communications from web to print to video (see the massive list of sessions) - it's not too late to register and attend!

Scream in the Dark Updates

Scream in the Dark is hands-down the coolest of any home haunt projects I've seen. While it doesn't have budget, and most of the "scares" are apparently store-bought props, the cool factor comes from a lone guy building a an honest-to-god garage dark ride for his daughter and the neighbor kids. Today, I found out that since the original article was posted, he's sent in some updates and photos from subsequent years of Scream in the Dark.

If I had the energy and technical know-how, there would be one of these at Carnival of Souls.

Introduction to Low-Polygon 3D Modeling for Games

I've added a twelve-page tutorial to my Shockwave3D Developer's Guide page called Introduction to Low-Polygon 3D Modeling for Games.

It takes the new or novice Lightwave user through the process of creating 3D geometry, with a particular emphasis on creating objects for 3D games built with Shockwave3D. You do not need to have Director to follow along with the tutorial, but you do need Lightwave.

This document was uploaded in preparation for my presentation on the development of Science Pirates at the ACE/NETC "Double Creature Feature" Conference we're hosting in Albuquerque next weekend. If you'd like to learn more about developing Shockwave3D games - or any other aspect of communications from web to print to video (see the massive list of sessions) - it's not too late to register and attend.

George W. Bush as an Arkham Horror Investigator

In honor of the release of King in Yellow, I figured I'd go ahead and release a custom investigator I designed that is strangely appropriate for the occasion. Introducing George W. Bush as an Arkham Horror investigator:

Click to Enlarge

Note that you will need both expansions to play with ol' George here. (I guess there just wasn't enough evil in the base game to accommodate him as a character.)

I didn't write the back story because, well, I think we sadly all know the back story by now, eh?

The King in Yellow rises

Hastu...

Whoops, don't say his name.

The "King in Yellow" has arrived. According to the online store, anyway, the latest expansion for Arkham Horror is hitting the streets as we speak.

According to the prereleased rules, this expansion adds some cool new mechanics, such as heralds (sort of a sidekick for the Ancient One) and blight (a mechanic to add some real teeth to the Terror Track, something that's been needed for a while).

Overall, it looks like a sweet expansion which will add interesting new challenges to the core gameplay. I'll be picking this one up as soon as I see it on the shelves.