Newsletter for June 10th, 2010 - "Second Summer Winds"

1. Newsletter Editorial

Good evening and welcome to another edition of the DonationCoder.com newsletter -- brought to you from uncomfortably sunny Champaign Illinois.  We begin this edition of the newsletter with a recommendation to watch a wonderful student-created animation called "Second Wind" about a giant cat; I'm not sure what it means but I'd be interested in hearing your interpretation of it.

The FIFA Soccer World Cup begins this Friday, which is the only sports event I ever watch.  If you haven't checked out the Markov Chain Monte Carlo simulator and bet recommender that I wrote with DC member "Crono" in 2006, I hope you'll check it out -- it's been updated for 2010, and we're having a little contest to see who can come closest to predicting actual match scores.  Even if you don't care about sports and gambling, you can learn a little about the fantastic world of MCMC statistics and leveraging the power of computers to brute force complex probabilistic interactions.

I've also released updates to my Screenshot Captor and Clipboard Help+Spell applications that users of these programs will probably want to pick up.  Screenshot Captor got a nice new "Splice" tool, and Clipboard Help+Spell got the ability to set custom hotkeys for any group menu or formatter preset.  You'll find these updates and other software written by DC members in sections 5 and 6 below.

Lastly, from now until the end of the year, the newsletter will contain a NANY (New Apps for the New Year) update section.  This is part of our effort to really encourage friends and supporters of DonationCoder to get started early thinking up ideas for and starting planning of a great new application to release on January 1st, 2011.  I have a few ideas for programs that I've wanted to get started on for quite some time and I'm looking for collaborators -- so if you are a coder or know someone who is, please stop by the NANY section of the forum and get started early pledging to release some great new software program at the turn of the new year.  I'm also looking for a flash game coder collaborator to enter something in the JayIsGames flash game competition (see section 11 below) -- so don't be shy about saying hello on the forum if you are a coder but haven't yet taken the opportunity to post on the forum.