Tic Tac Tome

Tic Tac Tome
Author: Willy Yonkers
Publisher:
Total Pages: 1446
Release: 2014-06-10
Genre: Crafts & Hobbies
ISBN: 1594746877

"First published in the United States in 2011 by Think Geek, Inc."--Title page verso.

Rules of Play

Rules of Play
Author: Katie Salen Tekinbas
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 680
Release: 2003-09-25
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 9780262240451

An impassioned look at games and game design that offers the most ambitious framework for understanding them to date. As pop culture, games are as important as film or television—but game design has yet to develop a theoretical framework or critical vocabulary. In Rules of Play Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman present a much-needed primer for this emerging field. They offer a unified model for looking at all kinds of games, from board games and sports to computer and video games. As active participants in game culture, the authors have written Rules of Play as a catalyst for innovation, filled with new concepts, strategies, and methodologies for creating and understanding games. Building an aesthetics of interactive systems, Salen and Zimmerman define core concepts like "play," "design," and "interactivity." They look at games through a series of eighteen "game design schemas," or conceptual frameworks, including games as systems of emergence and information, as contexts for social play, as a storytelling medium, and as sites of cultural resistance. Written for game scholars, game developers, and interactive designers, Rules of Play is a textbook, reference book, and theoretical guide. It is the first comprehensive attempt to establish a solid theoretical framework for the emerging discipline of game design.

Kids Are Weird

Kids Are Weird
Author: Jeffrey Brown
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Total Pages: 114
Release: 2014-03-18
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1452137714

As he's shown in his previous hugely popular books, Jeffrey Brown has a real gift for finding humor in quirky yet universal truths. Now the bestselling author of Darth Vader and Son and Vader's Little Princess brings his witty comic observations to terrestrial parenting in this perceptive book celebrating the more surreal moments of raising a child. In charming colorful panels, Brown wryly illustrates his fiveyear- old son's take on the world around him, from watching TV ("Elton John looks pretty in that shirt") to playing with toys ("This truck can survive on very little water") to odd requests ("Don't feel happy at me"), capturing the sweetly weird times that mothers and fathers everywhere experience with their own curious, pure-minded kids.

It's All a Game

It's All a Game
Author: Tristan Donovan
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2017-05-30
Genre: Games & Activities
ISBN: 1250082730

“[A] timely book . . . a wonderfully entertaining trip around the board, through 4,000 years of game history.” —The Wall Street Journal Board games have been with us even longer than the written word. But what is it about this pastime that continues to captivate us well into the age of smartphones and instant gratification? In It’s All a Game, Tristan Donovan, British journalist and author of Replay: The History of Video Games, opens the box on the incredible and often surprising history and psychology of board games. He traces the evolution of the game across cultures, time periods, and continents, from the paranoid Chicago toy genius behind classics like Operation and Mouse Trap, to the role of Monopoly in helping prisoners of war escape the Nazis, and even the scientific use of board games today to teach artificial intelligence how to reason and how to win. With these compelling stories and characters, Donovan ultimately reveals why board games—from chess to Monopoly to Risk and more—have captured hearts and minds all over the world for generations. “Splendid . . . A quick and breezy read, it doesn’t just tell the fascinating stories of the (often struggling) individuals who created our favorite games. It also manages to convey the entire sweep of board game history, from the earliest forms of checkers to modern-day surprise hits like Settlers of Catan.” —Mashable “Artfully weaves together culture, business, and ways games impact society.” —Booklist “A fascinating and insightful discussion not only of games past, but the socioeconomic and historical factors that contributed to their popularity.” —Chicago Review of Books

A Robot in the Garden

A Robot in the Garden
Author: Deborah Install
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2016-05-10
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1492631272

For fans of THE ROSIE PROJECT and THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHTTIME, a broken man and his damaged robot build an unlikely friendship—with some assembly required. Ben's really great at failing at things—his job, being a husband, taking the garbage out. But then he finds a battered robot named Tang in his garden. And Tang needs Ben. More ornery and prone to tantrums than one would expect from something made of gears and springs, Tang desperately must be fixed—and he just might be the thing to fix what's broken in Ben. Together they will discover that friendship can rise up under the strangest of circumstances, and what it really means to be human. Funny, touching, charming, wise, and a bit unusual, A Robot in the Garden is a gem of a first novel, perfect for anyone who has ever found it difficult to connection with the world. "Our hero is a FANTASTIC and UNFORGETTABLE creation, and so is this absolute marvel of a novel."—Neil Smith, author of Bang Crunch and Boo "An inventive and utterly charming tale...heartwarming."—Booklist, Starred Review

Shifter

Shifter
Author: Willy Yonkers
Publisher:
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2019-08-17
Genre:
ISBN: 9781096898351

In the bleak alternate near future New York of 2025, Ellen, an over-educated, under employed delivery girl gets pulled into the mob controlled underworld of illicit SHIFT racing in the twisted maze of subway tunnels beneath the city. SHIFT technology allows for objects and people to pass through solid matter. In this future where, economic and environmental decline has worsened and the gap between rich and poor never been wider a single act of defiance against the corrupt protectionist thugs on her street leads down a path to understanding the nature of her city and its true masters. Her experience joyriding in stolen cars as a teenager becomes extremely useful as she enters a racing league where various conflicting underworld factions recreate the bloody Roman Circus Maximus using high-tech miniaturized aircraft in the tunnels of the city. In these tight confines and absurd speeds crashing is just a matter of time, but the mysterious SHIFT technology re-purposed from military stealth aircraft can land you on the right side of the razors edge between life and death.

Hello, Android

Hello, Android
Author: Ed Burnette
Publisher: Pragmatic Bookshelf
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2015-05-04
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1680503642

Google Android dominates the mobile market, and by targeting Android, your apps can run on most of the phones and tablets in the world. This new fourth edition of the #1 book for learning Android covers all modern Android versions from Android 4.1 through Android 5.0. Freshly added material covers new Android features such as Fragments and Google Play Services. Android is a platform you can't afford not to learn, and this book gets you started. Android is a software toolkit for mobile phones and tablets, created by Google. It's inside more than a billion devices, making Android the number one platform for application developers. Your own app could be running on all those devices! Getting started developing with Android is easy. You don't even need access to an Android phone, just a computer where you can install the Android SDK and the emulator that comes with it. Within minutes, Hello, Android gets you creating your first working application: Android's version of "Hello, World." From there, you'll build up a more substantial example: an Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe game. By gradually adding features to the game, you'll learn about many aspects of Android programming, such as creating animated user interfaces, playing music and sound effects, building location-based services (including GPS and cell-tower triangulation), and accessing web services. You'll also learn how to publish your applications to the Google Play Store. This fourth edition of the bestselling Android classic has been revised for Android 4.1-4.3 (Jelly Bean), 4.4 (KitKat), and Android 5.0 (Lollipop). Topics have been streamlined and simplified based on reader feedback, and every page and example has been reviewed and updated for compatibility with the latest versions of Android. If you'd rather be coding than reading about coding, this book is for you.