LetterLearn Launched!

If you look two posts down (yes, in April 2006, it's been a while) you'll see I posted about WordLearn, and that it had a webpage but needed a new name. Well it now has a new name and a whole new website. Introducing...

LetterLearn is educational software for teaching letter recognition and basic typing skills to preschoolers and children with disabilities. It started out as a project to help my younger brother who has downs syndrome. When I showed it to some teacher's aides and other parents of children with disabilities, they wanted to use it too, but it was too difficult for them to use at the time. Now that I've added features for managing the word lists and adding your own images, it's pretty much ready for others to benefit from it too.

I'm very excited about making LetterLearn available more widely. So far I've sold 2 licenses (to Glen Dhu Primary School) and I'll start an AdWords campaign just as soon as I'm happy enough with it. It's still in beta, afterall.

It's available for download right now (with no time limits!), not to mention purchase (for the low introductory price of only $19.95! Only until June 30, 2009). There's also a video that shows how it all works, so go check it out, and let me know what you think. :)

Take a look today at www.letterlearn.com.

Goodbye Scoretaker.com!

My scoretaker.com domain name expires in one month, and I'm going to let it die. I registered scoretaker.com while in college to be the home of a website for the Scoretaker software I was developing at the time. Scoretaker was going to be so much. It was going to do everything. It was going to be the best software for managing school sports carnivals. Ever.

Alas, as with so many promising software products, Scoretaker turned out to be nothing but Vapourware. The development process itself, however, taught me plenty about software development. It gave me a lot of practice in Visual Basic, taught me about relational database design, and of course, development timelines. ;)

So I bid thee fairwell, scoretaker.com. May you rest in peace.

(The content of scoretaker.com is actually hosted on my old ISP, and should still be accessible via www.southcom.com.au/~tgray/. Other scoretaker.com subdomains included: Millionaire, Smadd Morphs)

PS. This also means that my scoretaker.com email addresses will no longer work after the 29th July 07. If you want my new address (and I actually know you!) please email me at my old address and I'll give it to you.

WordLearn on the Web

A little software project I've been working on now has a webpage. :) The program is called WordLearn, though I'd like to change the name if I can think of something better... (suggestions, anyone?) It's a very simple game where the user types in the displayed word then a picture is displayed. Pretty much. OK, so a little bit more to it than that but that's the basic idea.

• Check it out at tgrayston.googlepages.com/wordlearn, and please leave your suggestions on what to rename the program to in a comment! :)

You may notice from the address that I'm also checking out google's new page creator - a simple online webpage creation thingy. Not too bad, though also not very flexible. ;) Page Creator is still in the early testing phase though, so I'll cut them some slack. :)

Update 18/06/2009: This software is now named LetterLearn and is available for download right now, see full post.

I Just Bought a Car!

It's a Toyota Camry Wagon, and I got it for $4500 - bargain!


Here's the original ad from the seller:
Toyota Camry Executive 1993 Wide body Wagon XV10 - Excellent car selling because we upgraded slightly - 252,000 kms - runs great, always looked after, all mechanically sound, cheap to run. Features - 2.2 litre DOHC engine, 5sp manual, power steering, power mirrors, air cond, remote central locking, immobiliser, cargo barrier, Alpine CD player, tinted windows, reg until July 06, an ideal cheap second car - $5,450 ono

Many thanks to Humphrey and Mark for helping me look at cars, and to Tas Engine Exchange for checking it out for free! - I highly recommend them, they know what they're doing. :)

So... anyone want an '84 Telstar with a dodgy clutch? ;)

St Joe's gig: Quadrant Mall for Crazy Day

Hey there. St Joe's will be playing in the Quadrant Mall opposite Will's 10am-1pm this Saturday 4th March. If you're in the area come and say hi. :)

On a Summerhill far away

There comes a time when everyone leaves the shelter of the home they've grown up in, and enters the real world. ...I've moved out of home! A little ironic (or something) that I'm now considerably further away from the uni than I was living with my family, but there are certain advantages. It should be a better study environment - at least, that's the reason I've moved out, as far as centrelink is concerned. ;)

So yeah, I'm now over in Summerhill, living with Humf and Matt. If you'd like the actual address and phone number you'll have to email me or call my mobile, as I'd rather not publish the address here. :P

In other news, the Oddsox Official Website is now at http://oddsox.blogspot.com/, so all those people who missed the "band" bit off the old address will actually find the right site now. ;)

Latest bits and pieces...

Haven't written on here for a little while, so here's some of what's been happening, and what's up next for me in 2006:

• The Oddsox tour went really well! Feels like it was ages ago though. We went and played the other day in Port Sorell - It was really great to get to play again. I think we were all having withdrawal symptoms from Oddsox. ;) See more over at oddsoxband.blogspot.com.
• Went to see Narnia recently. Saw it twice actually, it was that good! ;) Once at Village, Launceston and again at Cmax in Devonport. Narnia draws some parallels with the Bible that I hadn't completely realised before, I don't think. Most notably, that I am Edmund. Or rather, we are all Edmund - We are traitors to Jesus having turned away from him and thinking we don't need his love. The 'deep magic' means that we therefore belong to the devil (the white witch). Only Jesus (Aslan) dying on the cross (the stone table), a completely innocent individual sacrificing himself for another, can set us free from satan's grasp. I found the film to be worthy of C.S. Lewis' original story, and very much superior to the BBC version - which was, afterall, made as a TV series on a much lower budget. Ok, so there were some sketchy bits in terms of special effects, but overall it was an excellent rendition. If you haven't seen it, go check it out!
  
• I've been awarded an honours scholarship! They're paying all my uni and HECS fees for the year! Yahoo! Very stoked about that, as you might imagine. :D
• CMS Summerview 2006 is on next week, so I'll be away 16-20th Jan. I'm really looking forward to it - I've been involved with the children's program at CMS for years, but have therefore missed out on the actual content of the conference. This year I'm part of the music team, which is great cos I get to play with some other great musos, and participate in the actual conference too. :) Oh yeah, CMS is the Church Missionary Society, so the annual conference, which is held in Bicheno, is about Mission. While there's an emphasis on overseas mission, everyone has a mission field where they live. When Jesus said to Go Make Disciples, he was talking about everyone - those in faraway countries, and those at home or in the workplace. The conference is about equipping Christians to fulfil that calling, in whatever place God is calling them to.
  
• Uni starts for me Feb 6. I'm doing Advanced Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing as a Summerschool unit. I reckon it's gonna be pretty full on, being 13 weeks worth of content packed into only two weeks! Semester 1 then starts Feb 27
  

Thomas Grayston BComp

I've graduated!! I now have a little piece of paper that says I know how to use computers. ;) That doesn't always mean they do what I want them to, I should add... I just finished writing this entry when windows crashed and I lost it. :( Ho hum, I'll try again.

The procession was fun - thanks God for holding off the rain until we were all safely inside the Albert Hall. :) The photo is of Stu, Humf and I at Inveresk after the ceremony.

In related news, I got a phone call yesterday from the uni. They told me that I've been offered an honours scholarship!! Which means they'll be paying my HECS fees for the year!! :D Awesome!! I've applied for scholarships in other years to no avail, but I'd say it's been worth the wait. :) I'll know more when their letter arrives...

Graduation Parade

My Graduation Ceremony is this Saturday!! Launceston has a tradition that involves graduands processing through the streets of Launceston before the ceremony. If you're in town, look out for it. :)

At 10.30 a.m. the procession, with police escort and band, will move from Civic Square south along St John Street, east along Brisbane Street, and then through City Park, arriving at the Albert Hall at 10.45 a.m.

All the details here

Oddsox Tour

Just thought I should mention here that I'm currently on tour with Oddsox. Ok, so by 'on tour' what I really mean is that we have a lot of gigs all at once (ten of them, spread over 2-3 weeks), but still. I've also been spending a lot of time making the Oddsox Official Website look cool and trying to keep it (or get it) up to date! We now have a logo, too, though the exact colours of the letters may still change... How cool is it!! (guess who designed it! :P)

So yeah, check it out... Don't keep reading this. I said check it out! - Now! You're still reading!! :P

[out]

Exam Results 2005

Well, I'm pretty stoked about this. Didn't think I'd pull off such good results this time round, especially Paradigms, which I struggled with somewhat! So yeah, a very nice way to finish off the academic year. ...Now on to honours!! :D

Code	Unit Name	Sem	Mark	Code
FPM102	Aural & Ensemble 1A	1	88	HD
KXA351	Software Engineering Project A	1	80	HD
KXA358	Human-Computer Interaction	1	94	HD
KXA359	Knowledge-Based Systems	1	90	HD
KXA352	Software Engineering Project B	2	87	HD
KXA355	Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing	2	83	HD
KXA357	Programming Paradigms	2	80	HD
KXA362	Computer Security	2	85	HD

Template Accident!

Due to a little mishap whilst working on the Oddsox Official Website, which is also powered by blogger, I managed to lose the template for my blog. :( I accidentally pasted the oddsox template into my blog template, and I hadn't kept a backup. :(

So I applied the original "TicTac" template and have tried to edit it back to what I had before... I think it's just about there. If you see anything wrong, let me know! :)

Where is... The Geography Challenge

uh, well... it's here. ;)

Elly introduced me to the Geography Challenge, and as you can tell from my first attempt, I'm somewhat lacking in my geographical knowledge!
Yeah, so I got one right for ten points, and that's cos it asked where Australia was. :P The next go, it didn't ask where Australia was and I got zero. :O

After a little practice, however, I've improved somewhat. :)
I didn't cheat, honest! No outside help from maps or anything! ok, so I've been averaging 3/10, so 6/10 is a bit of a fluke, but still. :) As a friend of mine would say, "I feel like knowing about geography."

Test your skills in The Geography Challenge and let me know how you go in a comment. :)

St Joe's Concert Great Success

Well, I really couldn't be happier with how the concert went! It was great fun to play with St Joe's on a really nice instrument (a Steinbach Grand Piano) (even though some of the keys started sticking towards the end! :S ). We played pretty well, if I do say so myself. :D Photos were taken, so hopefully I can put some up soon!

For those of you who were there, please leave a comment, tell us what u think. :) The floor's open...

Oh, and, St Joe's 160th Anniversary CD, 23 Percy Street is now available. Get yours today for only $20! ;)

St Joe's: Final Reminder!

Final reminder: St Joe's is playing at the Princess Theatre this saturday!! Just finished designing the program handout. You like? If you're free and haven't got tickets yet, then there's still time! ;)