Views from Verbatrix

Number Problems

This week has been a very frustrating one. I have had my coders working on finishing off what I am confident will be the best colour by number generator in the world. This is to be the final component to be added to the new release of GridForge Studio, and like every other component I want it to be as high a quality as possible, and if at all possible to go beyond anything else that is currently available. I knew we almost had it, we were so close. But it wasn't right. Every time I was given the component, I ended up rejecting it with the same plea - it is so close but not quite right. Eventually, a few days ago I reaised that the big problem we were hitting was actually insurmountable. If the processed picture includes a lot of detail then there will always be the need for a lot of colour index numbers because there will be lots of colourable regions. And because the regions are small there is not enough room to render a number label big enough to read comfortably. So clearly it was time for a pragmatic approach.

I decided we had to use a separate key whenever we use detailed areas when processing a picture. At least that wil be the recommended approach, as always GridForge Studio will offer lots of options, so the user is not stuck with what I decide. And not just a separate key but separate keys - we have included the ability to produce dedicated keys for the detailed areas so that the main key is not overwhelmed with information. What I will say is that this approach is working really well, and I am confident when I say that we now have the best, most powerful and most flexible colour by number or painting by number creator in existence. 

What do I mean when I say ' whenever we use detailed areas when processing a picture'? Well, we have developed a feature in which a simple mask can very quickly be applied to a source image to denote areas that are 'detailed', with the rest being treated as the background. And the detailed areas can have different processing settings than the background. So for example in a photograph of a person standing in front of the Sphinx, the person's face can be marked as the detail area, and the image can be processed so that the face comes out recognisable even though the Sphinx dominates the actual photograph. When we first got this feature working it was an absolute game changer in terms of creating high quality output without a ridiculous number of fiddly, tiny regions. Thsi is just one unique feature that we have, there are many more, and they will very soon be unveiled as the release of GridForge Studio version 1.1 is imminent, hopefully in the next week. Make sure you do not miss out on our unrepeatable launch offers.

Setbacks and Leaps Forward

The past few weeks have been very eventful here at Verbatrix, and not in a good way. We have repeatedly been hit with attacks on the website that even at one point necessitated the entire server having to be completely rebuilt, down to reformatting and fresh installation of the operating system. Everything is now sorted out and locked down! This work has had the knock-on effect of hindering the preparations for the release of version 1.1 of GridForge Studio but we have managed to keep improving it and adding even more features. We have taken the opportunity to revamp the website with a new look and new features, including this blog.

When I first had the idea for GridForge Studio the goal was to build a wordsearch puzzle creator that could give me much more control over the directions that words were placed rather than the usual random choice from a chosen set. As the application was developed I realised that there was potential to develop wordsearch puzzles in ways that no one seemed to have thought of before and my goal became to create the most powerful, feature packed and straightforward to use wordsearch creator in existance. A few months later I was certain that we had succeeded. So what next?

I wanted to provide more value for money. Sure, GridForge Studio was by far the best wordsearch maker in the world, whether looked at from an educational point of view or from a puzzle book creator's point of view, but in the end it was limited to creating wordsearch puzzles. Puzzles like no-one had ever seen before, but still wordsearch puzzles. So next I decided to give the Verbatrix treatment to cloze exercises, the new aim was to create the best cloze / gap fill exercise creator in the world. As we worked on this ideas came into my head, and we gradually added a host of features, many of which are, so far as I know, unique. This part of the project could be declared a success, GridForge Studio now included what is definitely the most advanced cloze generator in existance.

During the development of the cloze exercise maker one of my coders mentioned readability, so the next component I decided to add was a text analyser. There are several very good text analysers available, so my goal was modified a little from producing the best text analyser in the world to creating something that was the most useful, and the equal of anything else available. I am confident that we succeeded.