Tag: games

Do you have children who would benefit from mathematics, spelling or logic practice? I have an offer for Christmas, New Year and Spring 2022 and it is FREE!!

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I know everyone is offering Black Friday discounts, but I live in the UK and traditionally we had Boxing Day (the day after Christmas Day) sales. However, again 2021 has not been a normal year, and it is ending with worries for everyone, so yet again I’m offering free access to my Educational Games membership, but this time from now until 31Mar2022 for all applicants.

It is not really free, of course, as I’d like feedback about any of the 7 different educational web app games included in the package, but I’ll be happy to extend the free period by an extra month each time for anyone that sends me constructive comments about the games. I would like to develop these games further, so your comments will help to set the direction for my updates. See my blog post “A little more to help the children learn – no SAS involved!” for more details.

Note that Programming and Recruiter memberships are not compatible with the Educational Games membership, so if you have these membership levels, then I would strongly recommend that you create a new blog profile for this offer, and I will make sure that no marketing emails are sent to the new profiles from the blog site too.

Applications for free access until 31Mar2022 should be emailed to phil@hollandnumerics.org.uk from your blog profile email address.

Merry Christmas and a Safe, Healthy, Happy 2022 (in advance)!………..Phil

Do you have children who would benefit from mathematics, spelling or logic practice? I have an offer for Christmas and it is FREE!!

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I know everyone is offering Black Friday discounts, but I live in the UK and traditionally we had Boxing Day (the day after Christmas Day) sales. This year is not, of course, a normal year, so instead I’m offering free access to my Educational Games membership from now until Christmas New Year for the first 20 all applicants.

It is not really free, of course, as I’d like feedback about any of the 7 different educational web app games included in the package, but I’ll be happy to extend the free period for everyone that sends me constructive comments about the games. See my blog post “A little more to help the children learn – no SAS involved!” for more details.

Note that Programming and Recruiter memberships are not compatible with the Educational Games membership, so if you have these membership levels, then I would strongly recommend that you create a new blog profile for this offer, and I will make sure that no marketing emails are sent to the new profiles from the blog site too.

Applications for free access until Christmas New Year should be emailed to phil@hollandnumerics.org.uk from your blog profile email address.

Merry Christmas (in advance)!

A little more to help the children learn – no SAS involved!

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Since becoming a parent many years ago, I have had access to computers and written educational software for my children, and now for my grandchildren..

One of my original spelling programs now has a family nickname of “GIFAFFE”, due to a check I had failed to do while compiling the list of animals to spell! This program has been re-written (with completely correct spellings!) as a web app called SpiderWord, where a word must be correctly guessed to let the Bug escape from the Spider slowly descending on a thread with every incorrect letter. The currently available word lists now cover biology (Dinosaurs and Reptiles), spelling (Long Words (Things) and Long Words (Describing)), literature (Thomas the Tank Engine Character Names), geography (Countries) and sport (1-Word English Football Clubs).

If you would like me to include new word lists in this game, then please send them to me using the Contact Us link in the menu. Priority will be given to requests from Educational Games members.
Another of my interests is in mental arithmetic, and I have re-written some of my Chrome apps as browser-independent web apps covering multiplying (from x2 to x20), arithmetic (adding, subtracting, multiplying, and combinations using parentheses), decimal arithmetic (like the arithmetic app, but using decimals), detective (find the missing number in 13 different types of sequences) and fraction arithmetic (adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing).

Note that all of the web apps have time limits that can be changed to specific times per question between “No limit” and a probably impossible limit of “5 seconds”.

Also, only the local storage in your browser is used to store the past results, so the statistics are never shared, and can be cleared by you at any time!
I have recently added a logic-based game called Number Logic.

You can choose how many numbers can be used:

— 1 to 4 = 256 possible numbers
— 1 to 5 = 625 possible numbers
— 1 to 6 = 1,296 possible numbers

(1) The computer sets the numbers, you guess and the computer scores.
(2) You set the numbers, the computer guesses and you score.
(3) Can you guess the numbers quicker than the computer?

All of these web apps, and more as I develop further programs, can be accessed via a menu link called “Educational Games”, which will be seen after you have subscribed to this blog’s Educational Games membership, which is currently priced at GBP 5.00 for 3 months access.

Note that, if you already have Programming or Recruiter membership, then changing to the Educational Games membership will remove all of your current privileges, as they are not compatible!! I would, therefore, recommend creating a new blog profile for Educational Games membership, as it will then not be sent any of the SAS-related emails from the site, and will have exclusive access to the web apps.

Something to help the children learn – no SAS involved!

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This weekend marks to start of the half-term school holidays in most parts of the United Kingdom, although some schools have been encouraging learning-from-home since the beginning of the pandemic. Since becoming a parent many years ago, I have had access to computers and written educational software for my children.

One of my original spelling programs now has a family nickname of “GIFAFFE”, due to a check I had failed to do while compiling the list of animals to spell! This program has been re-written (with completely correct spellings!) as a web app called SpiderWord, where a word must be correctly guessed to let the Bug escape from the Spider slowly descending on a thread with every incorrect letter. The currently available word lists now cover biology (Dinosaurs and Reptiles), spelling (Long Words), literature (Thomas the Tank Engine Character Names), geography (Countries) and sport (1-Word English Football Clubs).

If you would like me to include new word lists in this game, then please send them to me using the Contact Us link in the menu. Priority will be given to requests from Educational Games members.
Another of my interests is in mental arithmetic, and I have re-written some of my Chrome apps as browser-independent web apps covering multiplying (from x2 to x20), arithmetic (adding, subtracting, multiplying, and combinations using parentheses), decimal arithmetic (like the arithmetic app, but using decimals), and fraction arithmetic (adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing).

Note that all of the web apps have time limits that can be changed to specific times per question between “No limit” and a probably impossible limit of “5 seconds”.

All of these web apps, and more as I develop further programs, can be accessed via a menu link called “Educational Games”, which will be seen after you have subscribed to this blog’s Educational Games membership, which is currently priced at GBP 5.00 for 3 months access.

Note that, if you already have Programming or Recruiter membership, then changing to the Educational Games membership will remove all of your current privileges, as they are not compatible!! I would, therefore, recommend creating a new blog profile for Educational Games membership, as it will then not be sent any of the SAS-related emails from the site, and will have exclusive access to the web apps.

Are you dreaming of an Android Christmas?

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Most of you will know that I have been a SAS programmer for over 30 years, but I also use other programming languages too. The first language I learnt was FORTRAN IV while I was an undergraduate at the University of York, with which I wrote the mark-up language that I used to format my thesis, and I also played with BASIC while I was at university. More recently I have developed functionality for my web sites in JavaScript, Java and Perl, and created Enterprise Guide Add-ins in VB.Net.

However, when I bought my first smartphone, a Palm Pre, in 2010, I discovered that I could write my own apps for its operating system webOS in JavaScript, and joining the webOS developer group was free. This gave me my first experience of selling apps for smartphones and tablets. Unfortunately webOS did not survive very long after HP bought Palm, so I branched out into writing apps in JavaScript for Chrome browsers, and for Android devices in Java. Now even the Chrome Web Store is no longer accepting new or updated apps, so I am left with just developing for Android devices.

My core Android apps are a series of what I call ebook apps focusing on SAS programming. They were originally developed in JavaScript for webOS, but have ported fairly well to Java, and each contains a collection of rich text “ebook” pages that display automatically scaled and formatted text and images to match your own device dimensions and orientation. You can also email out the code samples and ask new questions for future releases. The Google Play and Amazon Appstore functionality to update installed versions of these apps means that any new or updated pages are automatically sent to existing app users.

Every now and then I get “bright” ideas for games and educational apps. A number of my existing Chrome browser apps are about improving mental arithmetic, which I see as becoming a lost skill. There are 3 apps available in the Chrome Web Store called Arithmetic Brain Quest, Multiply Brain Quest and Fraction Brain Quest. Each game randomly generates 10 questions in the different categories, which must be answered correctly in the allotted to build a pile of blocks to reach the top of the screen, with a high score saved for each category.

There are also some Android puzzle solver and game apps which can be downloaded directly from my blog site, because the Google Play and Amazon Appstore functionality is not required when these apps are in their final versions. The puzzle solver apps are to help you develop or solve puzzles you may see in newspapers, magazines and on-line for Sudoku 6×6, Sujiko and Master Sujiko.

My most recent game apps are based on a board game created by Tri-Ang in 1970 called Check-Lines. The board had 11 holes joined by straight lines, and 2 players had 5 pieces each with the aim of placing them to form 2 straight lines of 3 pieces each, so 1 piece was part of both lines like an X, L, V or T. The game starts with an empty board and the players take turns to place their pieces in empty holes, and then, when all the pieces are on the board, moving one of their pieces along a straight line into the empty hole until 2 lines are created, or no move is possible. I have created 2 apps, one is a free “dumb” app Check-Lines Board which just enforces the rules, and the other app Play Check-Lines uses a simple AI to provide the 2nd player with hints, as shown in the screenshot.

Whatever you are doing at this time of the year I would like to wish everyone a very happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year!