Author Archives: Jay Shaffstall

Python Static Site Generators

So, I have this personal project I’m working on that involves having a static site with information about products, combined with a storefront. I don’t need the majority of the dynamic features of something like WordPress, so I wanted to … Continue reading

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A Python Physics Sandbox

One of the labs I give to my Intro to Computer Science students is writing an interesting physics simulation. I started using that lab when we were using the Calico IDE, an educational IDE that comes with some built in … Continue reading

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Wild West Themed Birthday LARP

For Amelia’s 11th birthday party we did a Wild West themed LARP. This is a pretty easy LARP to organize and run, and is good for younger kids who have trouble keeping character. We had all girls and the party … Continue reading

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Laravel 5.2’s Authentication

I recently started using Laravel 5 (after having written a fair amount in Laravel 4) and was excited to find authentication built into Laravel 5. Well, you do have to execute “artisan make:auth” after you create your project, but after … Continue reading

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Kivy Widget Colors

So, I’ve been playing a bit with using Kivy for programming mobile applications. I chose Kivy for a couple of reasons: 1) I like Python, and am always looking for an excuse to use it 2) Cross platform compiling is … Continue reading

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Running Mermaid Adventures

Mermaid Adventures is a roleplaying game of undersea adventure. The players play mermaids…in this case, the fish-tailed mermaids we all know from movies are only one type of mermaid available. There are also mermaids with the bottom half of a … Continue reading

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Lost In Time – A Kid’s Introduction to LARPing

At Origins this year, I’ll be running a kid’s LARP. Since the theme is time travel, I decided to do a LARP where the kids are modern day kids tossed back in time. They have to fix something that’s wrong … Continue reading

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Non-Combat Skyrim, Day 4

It turns out that the next instrument was near to Winterhold, not Windhelm. Who can keep these provincial cities straight? While in Windhelm, though, the East Empire Company asked me to look into the pirates that were plaguing them, to … Continue reading

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Non-Combat Skyrim, Day 3

At first I thought the bards of Solitude would be more to my liking than the rest of the city. And being a bard would be a great way to travel while waiting to make my way back to Cyrodiil. … Continue reading

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Non-Combat Skyrim, Day 2

[For those not in the know, this is an in-character account of my attempt to play a strictly non-combat character in Skyrim. I like a challenge, so my restriction is that my character never fights anything. I wanted to see … Continue reading

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