Matt Guest

Software developer first and foremost, but I like the outdoors, staying as neutral as possible on politics and religion, and enjoy art, chiptunes, and whatever else is in front of me at the moment.

In addition to this site, I also maintain an iOS game development blog over at brokenplatypus.com, where I'm working on a couple of long term personal game projects.


Update to Pillows Live Wallpaper

I uploaded a new build last night of the Pillows in the Aether Android live wallpaper last night that includes:

  • Ability to span multiple home screens, so it’ll do that cool parallax scrolling thing that most Android wallpapers do when you slide between home screens.
  • An opacity setting to set how dark you want the wallpaper to be.
  • A couple of performance tweaks, including the ability to set a frame skip in the settings to sacrifice smoothness for overall phone performance.

V1.1.0 is available now in the marketplace:
market://details?id=com.mattguest.pillowsoftheaether

As of right now it’s gotten 727 downloads with a retain rate of 52% and a 4 out of 5 star rating. Not bad for a stupid little wallpaper. I don’t know how that compares with comparable apps in the market, but it’s better than I expected out of it.

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Silly little chiptune style song meant to be repeated in a loop. Don’t know if I’ll ever use it in anything or not, but was fun to make.

Made using Aria Maestosa to lay down a couple of midi tracks, then instruments were added in Garage Band using the Magical 8bit Plug.

Pillows in the Aether Android Live Wallpaper

Android Live Wallpaper - Pillows in the Aether

I’ve successfully created my first Android app and put it in the Market - a free live wallpaper titled “Pillows in the Aether” 

 If you’ve got an Android phone then give it a try. I’ve only tested it in the emulator and on my Droid Incredible, so I have no idea how it runs on any other device. So, if you put it on something else please let me know how it works out for you.

I have another live wallpaper coming in the next day or two, as well - “PixelWall.” I just have to add a few settings and publish it.

Overall the experience was fairly straightforward. Coding was easy once I got the hang of how layouts work in Android, and the settings screen turned out to be really simple to create once I accepted the XML layouts and let the SDK help me.

Here’s a link to the app in the market, which will only work if you’re on an android device: market://details?id=com.mattguest.pillowsoftheaether

The Walking Dead

I just got into The Walking Dead this past week. I had downloaded the first issue via Comixology on the iPad, and thought it was good, but then kind of forgot about it until my sister brought it up over the weekend. I mentioned that I liked the first issue and the next thing I know she’s handing over a grocery bag with all of the 11 trade paperback volumes that’ve come out so far. It’s taken less than a week for me to plow though the first 9 and I’ll be all caught up by the weekend.

“An epidemic of apocalyptic proportions has swept the globe, causing the dead to rise and feed on the living. In a matter of months, society has crumbled: There is no government, no grocery stores, no mail delivery, no cable TV. 
Rick Grimes finds himself one of the few survivors in this terrifying future. A couple months ago he was a small town cop who had never fired a shot and only ever saw one dead body. Separated from his family, he must now sort through all the death and confusion to try and find his wife and son. In a world ruled by the dead, we are forced to finally begin living.”

Holy crap. The Walking Dead is the best comic I’ve ever read, hands down. Ok, I’ll admit that I don’t read comics that often these days, but this thing really hits a sweet spot for me.

It may be because I have an undying (hehe) love of Romero-esque zombies, or it may be that Robert Kirkman has a real knack for making you feel the palpable desperation, fear, and just plain horribleness that would accompany a zombie epidemic.

This is one intense, depressing comic. Lots of people that you come to care about die, way before you think their stories are over - just as I suppose it would go down if the situation were real. I can’t think of anything else I’ve read that’s made me exclaim out loud “oh shit, no! I can’t believe they did that!” as many times as I have in reading this series. Every time you think things might actually start working out it all falls apart again, and Kirkman has a way of making you, or at least me, feel it. Like a kick in the gut.

AMC is making a series, set to premiere this October. I caught a phone camera capture of the trailer they showed at Comic-Con, and it looks really good, but I don’t know what they’re going to have to do to put this thing on the air, even on cable. I mean, this is some bleak, depressing, heart wrenching stuff. If they stay true to the story then it’ll be the most depressing and gory tv series I’ve ever seen.

In any case, from the footage and screens I’ve seen so far the zombie effects look awesome so I say bring it on. The trailer seemed pretty true to the first issue of the comic, so it may be that AMC is planning on sticking with the story line. If they do then I feel for all of the actors who think they are getting important leading roles only to last an episode or two. Oh well, that’s just how it goes when the dead walk the earth, I guess.

Moving over to Tumblr

My old site over at mattguest.com has been languishing for some time now. I think about posting there and then I think “ehh, maybe later.” I’ve decided to remedy this by getting rid of all the things I don’t enjoy about running that site.. keeping wordpress up to date, worrying about the design, thinking that anything worth posting has to come from hours of careful consideration and toiling over the keyboard. I’ve finally decided to trash the old site and start up a friendlier, easier to update web presence here on Tumblr.

I’ll be moving my mattguest.com domain over shortly, but first I want to get acquainted with this here new venture and figure out what exactly I want to do with it.

And with that, I’m off.