Everything else bar the book

So if you don't already know, I'm writing a book on making games using HTML5 canvas. It's awesome and all, but there are a whole bunch of other things that have happened over the last few weeks which I also feel deserve attention. I haven't lumped this all in the post about the book as I'm going to be keeping stuff about the book fairly separated on the blog – I'm hoping so people can easily follow it's progress.

Becoming a Microsoft Student Partner

A few weeks ago I heard news that I'd been accepted into the Microsoft Student Partner (MSP) programme. What is an MSP? I hear you ask. Well the general idea is that Microsoft select a few of the "brightest and most innovative" students (that's me, apparently) across the world each year and give them the support and opportunity to explore new technology and get to grips with Microsoft products. Another duty of being an MSP is to help others learn about new technology, something I already do. For example, I'm particularly excited about the chance to play with and teach others about HTML5 canvas. IE9 and it's hardware acceleration gives me a great opportunity to tie in my MSP work with my love for canvas.

There are definitely other reasons why it's cool to be an MSP, like getting a free 12-month MSDN subscription. Overall it's a great opportunity that not many students get to experience. I'm looking forward to seeing how it all goes.

Meetdraw 7: The Student Takeover

Last Thursday myself and a group of 8 other students put on the 7th Meetdraw event. For those who don't live around Bournemouth, Meetdraw is a quarterly event with the primary purpose of gathering like-minded digital creatives into the same place. Chuck in a bar and some good music and you've got yourself a pretty awesome event for digital animals. The whole event took weeks to organise and I'm incredibly proud of the whole team for what we managed to pull off – over 160 people turned up! There'll be some videos up soon of the games myself and Fran Pugh produced for the event, so keep an eye out on the Meetdraw website for that.

Awards, awards, and more awards

It seems October is the month for awards! Last week I found out that the ExplicitWeb team have been invited to the .net awards ceremony in London, which is pretty cool seeing as we've been shortlisted as podcast of the year! And today I found out that 2 projects I worked on at Redweb, ChromaCam and The Christmas Spirit, have been nominated for BIMA awards. I'd have been happy with just one of these nominations, but three? Very cool.

All that's left to do now is sit and wait until the ceremonies in November. I hope we win something!

Rawkes, (Web)Sockets, and rockets

As part of my final year at university (nearly finished!) I'm producing a big programming project. I've chosen to use HTML5 canvas and WebSockets as they are both technologies I'm pretty excited about at the moment. What I plan to make with them is a space-based game, of sorts, called Rawkets. So far it's in very early development (aka. buggy as hell) and doesn't really do much, but watch this space as I'll be putting updates on the blog as I progress. Also, keep an eye on my Twitter account (@robhawkes) as I'll periodically be asking for testers to help make sure the game actually works.

So, I think that's everything! It's been a pretty eventful few weeks and I can't wait to see how all the projects I'm working on progress.