Recent Posts
Generating Images with the New Leonardo.Ai Character Reference Tool
Leonardo.Ai is one of the most powerful AI image generation tools around, and they recently released a new tool called Character Reference.
Chatting with Data (for Non-Coders and Coders with No Time)
I am a data-driven person. I know many data-driven people (would you like that statement graphed in a chart or analyzed in a table?). But I often find myself with mere minutes to answer a question that would take significant time investment to answer. Wouldn’t it be great if we could just retrieve the raw […]
The AI Critic: Crafting an AI Persona to Grade AI Personas
I am very intrigued by AI personas and the ability to shape the output created by ChatGPT and other generative AI platforms. But with the ability to generate so much content in the blink of an eye, how can we tell if the content is any good?Read my latest article to find out how!
Creating Real-World 3D Objects with ChatGPT
My son has been complaining that he needs something to help him stay focused in school, and most of the fidgets on the market aren’t allowed by his school. I have a side business creating personalized gifts, so I am the proud owner of two laser cutters, two 3D printers, and plenty of know-how. I […]
3D Printed Mask for Cloth Mask Chewers
Order Form Has Moved to Code4Kids One of my sons tends to chew on his cloth mask, so I modified a 3D printed surgical mask so he can no longer physically get the cloth mask into his mouth. Since creating this plastic mask, he has worn masks for therapy and in the community as needed […]
Star Wars Fleet – Free Online Game
What do you do when you have a week of vacation with built-in grandparent babysitting? You make a Star Wars video game, of course! The vast majority of this game was created during a one week coding blitz. I’ve done a lot of minor tweaking due to observations and bugs found while playing the game […]
A-MAZE-ing!!! Free Online Maze Game
My son loves mazes, so naturally I built him a maze game! He actually designed levels 2, 3, and 4. I tweaked them a little bit so that they make a little more sense, but the designs are his alone! We can add more levels to our heart’s content – it’s pretty easy now that […]
Faith-Quest! Active and Fun Faith Formation (play now for free!)
Faith-Quest is like a scavenger hunt. Each Quest comes with a series of special codes (called QR codes) that can be scanned by a free app on your phone or tablet. Each code takes you to a part of our website that shows you about the item you found and stores it for you. When […]
Dice Rolling Game – Single or Multiplayer – PLAY FOR FREE!
One of my sons loves to play a dice game where you keep rolling until all of your dice are the same value. Since we have family spread around the country, I decided to build it as an online multiplayer game so we could play together. It’s still a work in progress, but it works. […]
Relaxation Breathing App
Several years ago, I was tasked with creating a simple relaxation breathing app so a counselor’s clients could practice at home. At the time, I was using Corona SDK for some game projects, so I whipped the relaxation breathing app together pretty quickly. While this app is not available for download, I decided it would […]
Real Estate Investment AI
One of my most intricate projects (recently shut down) was an artificial intelligence program that identified potential real estate investment opportunities. At a high level, it combed through a particular MLS each day to look for properties that might be under-valued enough to warrant a flip. The parameters used by the application to identify potential […]
Hacktoberfest 2019
For Hacktoberfest 2019 I updated the Code4Kids Level 1 Camp source files. We learned quite a bit from our second go-around with this camp. Some of the projects were dropped because they were too complicated, so I replaced them with much more straightforward projects. I also dropped the concept of badges. I thought the students […]
Jabba the Hutt 3D-Printed Piggy Bank
My son loves Star Wars. That’s actually an understatement. My son LOVES Star Wars! I’ve only known one person who loves Star Wars as much as my son. Me! We’re teaching him about money and saving, so I found this Jabba the Hutt piggy bank on Thingiverse and printed it for him. I was worried […]
PyGamer Games in MakeCode and CircuitPython
My son and I built the PyGamer from Adafruit a couple of months ago. He loves Blaze and the Monster Machines, so we’ve been working on a racing game in MakeCode Arcade. It’s inspired by the old game Spy Hunter. Since he loves Super Wings as well, we made a simple flying game in MakeCode […]
Hacktoberfest 2018
For this year’s Hacktoberfest, I added the Code4Kids Level 1 Camp source files to GitHub. Hopefully some teachers will be able to learn from my experiences with the camp and integrate some of these ideas into their classrooms. I added solutions to all the Lightbot levels. Some of them are a bit tricky, so this […]
Sermon Story Extractor
Have you ever been in church, and the preacher starts telling one of their stories that you heard six months ago? I am terrified of doing that! But I also know that I have no chance of remembering when and where I told a particular story. So I wrote a simple Python program to comb […]