I am Seth Cottle

Build for Charity

Sun, 23 Dec 2012 02:37:00 -0500

On December 28th, we will be hosting our second Build for Charity event. Once again, we will be supporting Child’s Play Charity. We are inviting the Minecraft community to come join us on the 28th at 4:00 PM Eastern Standard Time.

We have already set the donation system up and donations will be going directly to Child’s Play Charity through their PayPal. You can donate from this post, or our website.

We would like to thank Prodigious Hosting Co. for providing us with a server for this event. Without their generosity, this wouldn’t be possible. We would also like to thank our other sponsors: Boost Gaming Network and The Daily Block.

We’re giving away limited edition Build for Charity Character Skins to the first 25 people who donate $10 USD or more to Child’s Play Charity. You can learn more about the Build for Charity Donor Skins.

We love having a little friendly competition! Any donor may participate and you will have the full 24 hours to build and submit your creations to us via e-mail (contact@buildforcharity.org). Please attach or send an album link to multiple photos of your build and attach proof of donation. The winner will be awarded a $25 Think Geek Gift Certificate courtesy of Boost Gaming Network.

The number one contributor will receive the Limited Edition Build for Charity Minecraft Skin, a thank you letter, and a $50 Think Geek Gift Certificate courtesy of Boost Gaming Network.

Remember to join us on December 28th at 4:00 PM Eastern Standard Time to play. You are not required to donate to play, however, it is appreciated. This event is in support for Child’s Play Charity. Found us on the web with the links below.

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Google Plus

We look forward to seeing you this upcoming Friday, please share and spread the word to your friends. Let’s help make a difference one block at a time.

Again, we would like to thank all of our sponsors.

Web Safe Fonts

Sun, 23 Dec 2012 00:29:00 -0500

Every computer has a specific set of fonts installed, most are manufacture default but users are also able to install custom font styles onto their systems.

While many fonts may look the same, there is a high chance they’re completely different. Different computers have sets upon sets of different fonts installed and there you have to keep this in mind when you are designing a website, if you use a font that your visitor does not have installed, the webpage will often render in a very unattractive font on their machine. There is only one way to make sure that your website can properly display on the largest number of computers out there, use web safe fonts.

Considering there are hundreds of thousands of fonts, there are quite a good chunk of web safe fonts. Here is a CSS rule that is very commonly followed for displaying fonts on a wide variety of machines.

Arial is available on a wide range of computers, so you can assume it will always show up safely on a visitors system when they visit your site. However, incase it does not, this CSS rules will then search for Helvetica, which is very similar to Arial. If it cannot find Helvetica on the system either, it will use “sans-serif” which is a fallback and will work properly on all browsers.

There are four font families that are considered web safe: serif, sans-serif, cursive, and monospace. Each of these families have their own fallback font, like mentioned above. You will find that nearly every CSS rule has one of these fonts listed last.

Here is a list of fonts in each category that are most popular. They are listed in CSS format so you can copy and paste.

Serif Web Safe Fonts

Bookman Old Style

font-family: ‘Bookman Old Style’, serif;

Garamond

font-family: Garamond, serif;

Georgia

font-family: Georgia, serif;

Palatino Linotype, Book Antiqua

font-family: ‘Palatino Linotype’, ‘Book Antiqua’, Palatino, serif;

Times New Roman, Times

font-family: ‘Times New Roman’, Times, serif;

Sans Serif Web Safe Fonts

Arial, Helvetica

font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;

Arial Black, Gadget

font-family: ‘Arial Black’, Gadget, sans-serif;

Impact, Charcoal

font-family: Impact, Charcoal, sans-serif;

MS Sans Serif, Geneva

font-family: ‘MS Sans Serif’, Geneva, sans-serif;

MS Serif, New York

font-family: ‘MS Serif’, ‘New York’, sans-serif;

Trebuchet MS, Helvetica

font-family: ‘Trebuchet MS’, Helvetica, sans-serif;

Verdana, Geneva

font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;

Lucida Sans Unicode, Lucida Grande

font-family: ‘Lucida Sans Unicode’, ‘Lucida Grande’, sans-serif;

Tahoma, Geneva

font-family: Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif;

Monospace Web Safe Fonts

Courier

font-family: Courier, monospace;

Courier New, Courier

font-family: ‘Courier New’, Courier, monospace;

Lucida Console, Monaco

font-family: ‘Lucida Console’, Monaco, monospace;

“Cursive” Web Safe Font

Comic Sans MS

font-family: ‘Comic Sans MS’, cursive;

Please avoid using Comic Sans for anything.

I hope you find some usefulness out of this post and let it serve as your guide to web design and web-based application design.

A Slice of Pi

Sat, 22 Dec 2012 18:28:00 -0500

I ordered a Raspberry Pi for Christmas, unfortunately, it won’t be here until early January due to the distributor I chose going on backorder. However, I’m completely okay with that. I couldn’t be more excited for this little thing to get here.

But, what exactly is the Raspberry Pi?

The Raspberry Pi is a small computer, almost the size of a credit card. It was developed by Ebon Upton and some of his colleagues at Cambridge University. The idea behind the Raspberry Pi was to get kids and teenagers into learning how to program and essentially become hobbyist programmers. The entire concept behind the Raspberry Pi Foundation is truly wonderful, as is their goals and story. I encourage you to read about the Raspberry Pi Foundation.

Let’s jump into the fun stuff. I ordered a Model B, soon a Model A version will be available While the Model B may use more power than the Model A, it still has its advantages, including built in LAN and two USB slots instead of one. The Model A will be ideal for robotics and when you need extremely low power consumption.

Here is a diagram of the Raspberry Pi.

It features an RCA Video output, if you’re still using an older television along with an Audio output for headphones or direct input into some speakers. It includes a GPIO to make expansion possible, such as adding displays and other accessories. The USB area consist of two slots, but you have to watch out and use low powered devices or buy a USB hub that has its own power supply. The LAN connector will allow you to access the Internet on your Raspberry Pi without having to purchase a wireless transmitter. The HDMI output will allow you to connect to an HDTV for 1080p playback and audio, this also makes the Raspberry Pi great as an affordable media center. The system itself features 512MB of ram, which is rather substantial for a board this size and price. It also has a snappy CPU and GPU. The SD Card slot is where you’ll toss in your SD Card that has an operating system pre-loaded onto it to boot on your Raspberry Pi. Here is a list of suggested operating systems.

This powerful little computer only cost $35, but that’s just for the unit itself. You’ll still need to grab up a power supply and some peripherals to go along with it. You can even get Raspberry Pi specific cases to house the unit in. This affordable computer is great to get any computer enthusiast into learning the basics of programming. If you’re already handy with programming, you will find that the possibilities and potential of the Raspberry Pi are endless.

The Raspberry Pi may not be able to change the world or fix all of the computing problems we face, but it will definitely be a catalyst to both.

Application of the Week 4

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 11:58:25 -0500

I just downloaded the Adblock Plus application for my Android smartphone. Adblock Plus runs constantly in the background and it even gives you a notification bar icon to tell you the status of the application. If you’re not doing anything, the icon with reveal it is waiting for traffic. I was worried that this may cause my phone to bog down a bit, however,I’m using the Motorola Photon 4G, and to say the least it is not a very snappy or powerful phone and it is still running just fine with ABP.

Adblock Plus is very impressive. It blocks ads in almost all of my free application, which I don’t have many of, if I find an application useful or enjoyable I buy it. It is also working on my built-in browser. I will be testing the Android 4.0 and Google Chrome support on my Sony Xperia Tablet S.

The only issue I encountered was that it does not start to block advertisements immediately. You have to do some configuring on your port and host in the advanced settings menu. However, Adblock Plus prompted me with a notification telling me what I should input. For the port, it asked me to input “26571” and for the host, it simply asked me to use “localhost”. After making these small adjustments, the application has been working fine on just about everything.

This is one application I definitely recommend. I love Adblock Plus and I started using it with its beginnings in FireFox and now with Google Chrome. It’s nice to finally have it for my Android device as well.

Adblock Plus for Android (Google Play Store)

The Google Logo

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 13:44:00 -0500

Were you able to remember the order the colors appear in? I’ll admit that I use Google everyday and that I use every Google product over every other product and I wasn’t able to recall the order.

Steam Giveaway

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 17:01:00 -0500

I haven’t blogged in quite sometime, I’m hoping I will be able to get back to it soon! But, I have a couple of Steam codes I would like to give out. They are first come first serve. Once they have been redeemed, no one else will be able to redeem the used codes.

Cogs (website)

Steam Key: ~~2HYP7-NLTXG-WGLCK~~Redeemed

Crayon Physics Deluxe (website)

Steam Key: ~~QYXNK-89CBG-PL9VY~~ Redeemed

Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP (website)

Steam Key: ~~3ZKXM-JJECP-KFDKP~~ Redeemed

This is a key for a bundle of games, the games included are:

Wizorb (website)
BIT.TRIP.RUNNER (website)
Gratuitous Space Battles (website)
Jamestown (website)

Steam Key: ~~X0W6Y-XBAJZ-LPG9I~~ Redeemed

Also, there is a multiplayer key for Gratuitous Space Battles: ~~D615-PP0H-248Q-L~~ Redeemed

I hope that you all enjoy these wonderful indie games!

"To Dungeons Deep and Caverns Old"

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 21:44:00 -0400

Like many of you, I am a huge fan of The Lord of the Rings. There are only a few movies on my must see list for the next two years, The Hobbit is definitely one of them. The stills from the movie look absolutely amazing and I am sure we will all be in awe once watching a movie using such a high frame rate it will hopefully give us a new quality standard for future high budget films.

Anyway, here is a link to “Misty Mountains” from one of the trailers released for the film. Go on, take a listen.

Listen Now

Application of the Week 3

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 03:11:00 -0400

I’m sorry I have not been doing this every single week, it is more of a when I have the time post.

Anyway, I just purchased the Sony Xperia Tablet S. I was looking for a new word processing application for not just my new tablet but also my phone. I have been using Quickoffice Pro for quite sometime, but it just wasn’t what I was looking for on my tablet. I remember seeing Kingsoft Office for Android while browsing the Play Store on my phone, that was ages ago though. At the time I didn’t like the feel or look of Kingsoft Office.

Recently, Kingsoft updated their office suite for Android with a complete overhaul of the interface. Not only is Kingsoft Office for Android extremely easy to use, it is very aesthetically pleasing. If you are looking for a free and amazing office suite for your android phone or tablet I would recommend checking out Kingsoft Office.

Kingsoft Office for Android (Google Play Store)

Kingsoft Office HD for Tablets (Kingsoft Product Page)

The Grey - Into The Fray

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 02:51:03 -0400

For those of you who have seen the movie The Grey, you probably enjoyed the entire movie. To begin with, I was angry with the ending after watching it in theater. After some contemplating, I decided I enjoyed the anti-cliche ending. The end became more touching and meaningful. Though many of you were probably near tears during the ending of the movie with Liam Neeson reciting the poem Once More Into the Fray, by the director of the film, Joe Carnahan.

The purpose of this post was to simply provide you with a link to the soundtrack for the end of the movie. The instrumental song itself is inspirational and touching, even without watching the film or hearing the poem with it. Here is The Grey Soundtrack Into The Fray / The City Surf [Extended Edition].

College-Ready Education

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 02:27:11 -0400

As a country we are not on the forefront of education, nor does the desire to reach the top of this ladder seem to be apparent.

We are becoming dependent on technology. For the most part this is a wonderful thing. It is helping shape our future and create constant innovation. Incorporating technology into our schools is vital. It is vital for the success of those preparing for college.

The Internet is what we can now consider Web 2.0. This refers to the Internet being more personalized and more interactive. We collaborate and share our knowledge. We use social media to inspire, inform, engage, and come together.

Why can schools not use this? Class rooms could be equipped with video recording equipment, making it possible to put lectures online and on DvD for students to access later for tests, refreshing, and to help them learn the concept outside the class room. Teachers can collaborate, point out what they believe they are doing well during their lectures and what they can improve on. Of course, this method would be exposing the less than suitable teachers. This would be one main reason many teachers would object to such a method.

Collaboration is important and learning leadership and teamwork skills is an important asset to have whilst in college and on the job. Communication and collaboration are key to making any team based project successful.

Using productivity software is something everyone should know, you are required to use it in most jobs and during school. High schools should be implementing more technology based classes, not only businesses computer classes teaching you the very basics of Microsoft Office. It is also important for schools to stay up-to-date with software, while it may be impossible to upgrade to the latest editions due to financial restraints on the school it is unacceptable for a school to be teaching students how to use Office 2003 when Office 2010 is nearing the end of its’ long lived carrer.

While it is important for school to begin focusing on using technology, it is still more important to focus on core subjects. With becoming relient on technology, our students are becoming relient on calculators for basic math calculations. Not only that, but math is not pushed hard enough in our education system. Math classes offered should be expanded, time spent in the classes should be extended, and more than four basic math classes should be mandatory.

Science in our schools needs to expand as well. Especially, math-based science. Though, science all-round is important. It is vital students are taught environmental and biological information. Chemistry is also an important part of science and basic and advanced chemistry courses should be mandated, not just offered.

English is also something we should focus heavily on, while it may not be the official language of the United States, it is recognized worldwide and used by many. My generation and the generations after us are beginning to forget the most basic concepts of english, maybe not so much in class but mostly online. Abbreviations and acronyms are beginning to take over as the new short hand english.

Overall, we see most high schools are not preparing their students with a “college-ready education”. In most part of our country, secondary schooling is a joke. It is not challenging and it is not pushing children and teenagers to raise their expectations and shoot for outstanding goals. It is causing young adults to struggle with higher education and in the work field.

There have been many ideas on how we can fix our education system, the issue is we simply cannot reform the system overnight. In due time, we can only hope the education system will begin its transformation by pushing core subjects, mandating higher levels of mathematics and sciences, and begin incorporating more technology into the schools.

Application of the Week 2

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 00:09:19 -0400

Admit it, you’re addicted to Reddit. There are a couple pretty good Reddit applications on the Google Play Store. I’ve tried most of them. My favorite by far is BaconReader. A recent update to BaconReader allowed it to sport a fancy new UI that is inspired by Android 4.0. The application itself gives a Redditor everything they could ask for in a mobile application.

There are two versions of the application. A free version that is supported by advertisements and a premium version that is free of those annoying advertisements. As a Redditor myself, I definitely recommend giving this application a try.

WVU Mobile 1.4

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 23:50:24 -0400

WVU Mobile received a manual update to 1.4 on September 2nd. The update itself was small, mostly internal fixes. This manual update added an interactive campus map. On September 3rd, I released an over-the-air update introducing Gmail integration.

So what are interactive campus maps?

They give users the power to view entire maps of the campus, labeling every street and important building and area of interest. Users can easily scroll across the map, search for places, zoom in and out, and adjust layer settings. This interactive map is powered by Google and is in a very early stage of testing. It will require many more updates to give it proper functionality.

What does the new Gmail integration do?

The university has migrated our MIX e-mail to Gmail, giving us more features and an overall better experience. The change within the application allows you to login using your MIX username and password to check your e-mail, calendar, documents, tasks, and access other various Google applications associated with Gmail.

What’s to come?

This is a questions I cannot exactly answer. I can tell you that within the next several months the interface will receive a massive overhaul making it more user friendly and adding more features. The aesthetic appeal of the application will be greatly improved.

Edit 1: Update 1.4 was supposed to patch WVU Mobile to work with Samsung Galaxy S III smartphones. Unfortunately, the bug was not resolved. I am waiting for a reply from Samsung to receive further information about how I can go about patching the issue.

Edit 2: The application is in a very early stage of alpha testing. It will require many more months of work to even reach beta. Please contact me if you would be interested in testing the application.

Gmail Migration

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 13:57:00 -0400

West Virginia University has finally made the leap to Gmail. This will give users more features and a more stable e-mail system. Users will need to sign into their MIX account in order to begin the migration process. Your will be put in queue and once your account has been migrated you will receive an e-mail upon completion.

With the introduction of Gmail, students will have access to all the Google Apps for Eduction has to offer. Students can visit the Google Apps for Eduction, click the “Sign in” text button at the top and enter “mix.wvu.edu” as the sign in. Do not put your e-mail address, use what I have put in the quotations.

Once you are logged in you can begin installing applications, taking advantage of your Google Drive storage, and use chat and video chat with fellow students and staff. Once you have signed in, visit the Marketplace.

Once I begin exploring the Google Apps for Education more and exploring additional features of using the new e-mail system I will make another blog post detailing some finds.

Application of the Week

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 15:43:54 -0400

Hotspots on your mobile devices are expensive. Carriers charge a pretty high rate to be able to share your mobile data with your other devices. I don’t use my hotspot very often, so why pay up to $60.00 a month to keep it incase I ever have to have it? With FoxFi, you can make a mobile hotspot on your phone free of charge. The best part is, you don’t even have to root your phone in order to use it.

If you have a carrier other than Sprint, you can download FoxFi from the Google Play Store. If you have Sprint as your mobile carrier, you have to download it from the FoxFi Bin.

If you want to learn more information about FoxFi, such as compatible devices, visit their official webpage at FoxFi.com.

Subdomain

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 12:37:00 -0400

I was finally able to get my subdomain setup to work with my Tumblr blog. It could take up to 72 hours to work on your end though. You can still access my blog from sethcottle.tumblr.com and I’m hoping you’ll be able to access it using blog.sethcottle.com within the next 24 hours instead of the next 72 hours.

Edit 1: The subdomain is up and running, you are able to access my blog using both domains. If you are using blog.sethcottle.com and encounter an error, try clearing your browser cache.

Xperia Tablet

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 12:02:00 -0400

Sony revealed the new Xperia Tablet S which will begin shipping in early September. A tablet has been on my wish list for a long time, but it is something I have never seriously looked into. With the announcement of this new tablet from Sony, it sparked my interest to do some more research on the current state of the tablet market.

At heart, I will always love Microsoft products (such as the Windows operating system). With that being said, I’ve done some serious research on the Microsoft Surface and other “tablets” that will be running one of the two new versions of Windows 8. While I would considering purchasing a Windows 8 device, I still feel like I should go with an Android based system. But maybe I should really look into an Apple iPad?

I own a MacBook Pro, but on another note I own a unstoppable Windows based desktop. Overall, I still enjoy using Windows more. I don’t want to bash my MacBook Pro, I do enjoy it and it has been a great connivence while on the college campus and the battery life is outstanding.

As far as smartphones go, I own the Motorola PHOTON 4G. After owning Android devices for three years, it has made me come to love the operating system and the direction Google is taking the operating system. It’s compatible with everything, sure I miss out on some nifty iOS applications every once in a while but that doesn’t bother me. I don’t use my phone for mobile gaming or very much multimedia, I use it for productivity purposes.

I’ve ventured to the far sides of the Internet researching tablets that have released in 2012 and tablets that are to come. I have come to the conclusion that the Apple iPad just isn’t for me, nor is the Microsoft Surface or any other varient of that tablet. I would like to invest into a tablet that runs the Android operating system. Not only have I grown to love it, Google is improving it every single day. Look back to the first release of Android and compare it to Jelly Bean, no other mobile operating system has made such a gigantic leap in such a short period of time.

The new Sony Xperia takes my number one spot for a tablet I am seriously considering purchasing. Sony’s custom software and interface enhancements give it a one up, not to mention it’s sleek design and snappy hardware. There is a multitude of accessories available for the tablet as well, making it more universal. Considering the tablet is due for release in early September, this may be on the birthday wish-list this year.

Google Currents Relaunch

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 22:27:00 -0400

Once I stopped using my Tumblr blog, I removed my Google Currents publication. This evening I took the time to republish my blog to Google Currents. If you are using Google Currents on your smartphone or tablet, simply lookup “SethCottle.com” to download my publication. You will be able to view my recent blog posts and view my Twitter feed.

I have a small animated .GIF of me using Google Currents on my phone to view my most recent blog post “Welcome Back, Sir”.

I believe Google Currents is a wonderful tool to read your favorite RSS Feeds. The application is so minimal, it’s just like reading a digital magazine of your favorite blogs and other publications. It works on all of your devices, from Android devices to Apple devices.

Welcome Back, Sir

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 12:55:00 -0400

I have finally decided to start using my Tumblr blog again. I will be using it for personal posts as a separate entity from my personal website, SethCottle.com. With the decision to start using Tumblr for blogging again, I have also decided to redesign my website (again). I launched two new versions of my website. A brand new layout and design style for the desktop version and for the first time ever I also launched a mobile version of my website to optimize the viewing experience for people using their smartphones or tablets.

The mobile site is is alpha phase. I have only created three mobile sites and all three of those have been this week. With that being said, I am not quite sure about all the aspects of mobile website design. It is more difficult than designing a standard website for me. In due time, I will be optimizing and adding to my mobile site as I continue to learn the basics of mobile design.

Hopefully, you will be seeing me on here more and more. I will also be adding a link from my website to my Tumblr blog. I tried to keep the design style of my Tumblr blog similar to that of my website, for aesthetic purposes. In the coming months, my Tumblr, personal website, and mobile site will all be worked on, optimized, and expanded upon.

I look forward to being able to engage with my users once again on a more person level. I will keep everyone up to date with events happening, my thoughts on subjects, and personal projects I am embarking on.

Cottle.Info

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 09:29:00 -0400

I would like to introduce you to web.cottle.info. The website itself is quite useful to users. It can help you learn how to protect yourself on the Internet and you are able to report suspicious website and links.

In addition to the main site, cottle.info will be used as the official sethcottle.com short URL. Instead of using bit.ly or t.co to shorten the links I post, you can be assured that each link has been verified when using the cottle.info short URL.

Here is an example. A recently made a post about Bit Breaker, a game a made in 2007. The original URL to get to that specific post is 49 characters long. If I use a bit.ly or t.co short URL it could take you anywhere, or maybe I didn’t even post it. By using cottle.info short URL you can have that piece of mind it was posted by me and it isn’t a scam or something of that nature. So, here is the cottle.info short URL for that post - cottle.info/H6XvRG. Tada, works like a charm!

The name, URL, and website are all temporary. I am working on a much more sophisticated website along with a shorter domain, and some other fun things!

EDIT: I apologize for the poorly designed website and logo associated with web.cottle.info.

EDIT 2: Twitter automatically converts any link to t.co on any third party. So, i’ll have to manually update my Facebook after I update my Twitter… Etc. Some things will have to remain t.co, such as the Twitter feed on my website.

Google launches Google Maps 8-Bit for April Fools! Go check it...

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 16:07:40 -0400

Google launches Google Maps 8-Bit for April Fools! Go check it out.
What can you do with Google Maps Quest…

View 8-bit landmarks
Be a hero, explore the world
Find hidden monsters
View 8-bit Street View