Moving data from MySQL to Google Sheets with PHP

I recently needed to pull data from a database and add it to a google spreadsheet. Google provides an API for working with Sheets, but like many of their APIs, the documentation isn’t great. I’ve got my program working and figured I’d document my steps for future me and anyone else who needs it.
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Board game programming tutorial – Part 3

This is the third part in my tutorial for converting a board game for a touch table using Unity.

The first part covered all our reuse code and conventions, setup the project and created a main menu.

The second part built the UI for a very simple game called “No Thanks!”.

This part will write the events to control the game, add buttons to the UI for the players to use to play the game, and finally add animations to the game.

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Board game programming tutorial – Part 2

This is the second part in my tutorial for converting a board game for a touch table using unity.

The first part covered all our reuse code and conventions, setup the project and created a main menu.

This part will build the game and player UIs for a very simple game called “No Thanks!”.

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Board game programming tutorial

Now that I have created several board game conversions in Unity, I thought that it might be useful to create a tutorial that describes the process that I go through to make a game.

In this tutorial, I’ll start with a common set of code from prior games and some basic art. I’ll create a new Unity project, import all the reuse code and plugins that I use, and make a complete game.

There is a set of videos to go along with this post which show all the steps that I perform in the Unity game builder.

I’ve also saved my Unity project at a few points along the way so that you can skip ahead or make sure that your project matches mine.

In this post, I’m going to cover all the reuse code and the reasoning behind it. I’ll setup the project, import all the plugins, scripts and assets that I’ll need. Then I’ll build the main menu.

In the next post, I’ll build the UI for the game itself and create the scripts for modeling the game. In the third and final part, I’ll add game control events and animations. Continue reading “Board game programming tutorial”

Touch table Village

I’ve completed a touch-table version of the board game Village.

Village has an interesting mechanic where you manage the life and death of your workers. All your workers start as farmers and can be trained as specialists. Actions take “time” to perform, and when enough “time” has passed, a worker dies. A limited number of each type of worker is rewarded with fame and victory points upon death while the rest get an anonymous grave. The key is making the best use of your workers and their time while  trying to arrange a good death.

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Websocket server for remote connections to touch table games

I am considering creating a system for touch table games so that they can be played both by people sitting around the table and by individuals at their own computer.

This post will talk about what I’d like to do and show the steps that I’ve taken to setup a websocket server on my domain and to connect to it from Unity.

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Year in Review – 2016

Overall 2016 was a good year for us. We remain healthy and are enjoying making touch table games. We did less traveling than we did in 2015, but we made more games. We went to New York to visit my brother and his two kids. We also took a trip to San Carlos with our friend Doug. Between the two of us, we made 13 games for the touch table bringing our total to 62. I am still playing violin and got a new five string electric violin this year.

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50’s Era Hit Parader Magazine

I was going through some of my Grandmother’s old magazines and thought I’d scan a couple of issues of “Hit Parader” so that I could share them.

Hit Parader was a popular music magazine that was published from 1942 – 2008. In the 80’s they switched their focus to metal music.

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Age of Discovery and more about complexity

I’ve completed the touch-table version of Age of Discovery and this article compares this project to my previous project which was Medici.

ageofdiscoveryboardFor both being touch-table conversions of board games, they were very different projects. Medici was small and took less time than I expected it to. Age of Discovery was a large project, and it ended up being even longer than expected.

 

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Trip to San Carlos

We took a trip to San Carlos 10/26 – 11/2 with a friend of ours. To get there we flew into Phoenix and rented a car. It takes about 10 hours to drive from Phoenix. In town we did our standard neighborhood walks, beach time, and restaurants. We also did several geocaches. All of the caches were a bit of hike to get to and one was on an island that only has land access at low tide. On one of the cooler days we hiked the Nacapule canyon trail. The Nacapule canyon is a few miles north of town and part of a national park. We also went into Guyamas to check out a pearl factory and the Three Presidents square. It was a fun trip and I’ve put up a gallery of photos here.