Jonathan Miles

9 February 2008 - Fingerjig joins Facebook

You can now play Fingerjig on Facebook. The Fingerjig Facebook app has some cool new features:

• Your own personal score board.
• Check out your friends' scores easily via the friends' score board.
• Extra statistics about your typing for your profile.
• A streamlined game that only takes 3 minutes.

If you're interested just add the Fingerjig Facebook app to your Facebook account - if you don't have a Facebook account you'll need to sign up first. The Facebook app only supports English at the moment.

You can still play Fingerjig without Facebook if you prefer.

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5 January 2008 - Fingerjig 1.10

Fingerjig 1.10 is now available to play.

Happy New Year! I hope you had a great festive season. I spent a little time over the holiday working on Fingerjig but also managed to squeeze in some Guitar Hero 3 practise (in between falling into black holes in Super Mario Galaxy).

The latest version of Fingerjig has an interesting new feature. After each typing test you can now review a list of the words you have typed, allowing you to see exactly how many mistakes you made for each word. Furthermore, clicking a word in this list will open its dictionary definition in your web browser (only for the English game I'm afraid). Fingerjig is chock full of bizarre, obscure and esoteric words so you're bound to find something to add to your vocabulary.

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8 December 2007 - Fingerjig 1.9

Fingerjig 1.9 is now available to play.

Just when you think Fingerjig is complete, a new update comes along with one exciting new feature and a couple of small tweaks. Think of it as an early Christmas present:

• Fingerjig can now serve up words in Italian and Polish. Each language has its own set of score boards. From my experience Polish seems to provide the most difficult typing challenge; on my first attempt I scored 750,376. A respectable score but far lower than when I type English.
• The undulation of the words is now smoother and easier on the eye.
• The preloading has been improved. Previously the preloader may have been slow to start in some cases.

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11 November 2007 - Fingerjig 1.8

Fingerjig 1.8 is now available to play.

• Going forwards, your best score will be saved to your computer and displayed on the title screen.
• The game options you choose, such as text colour, will be remembered between sessions.
• After each test you now have the option to quit and start again from the beginning (useful if you don't get off to a good start).

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4 November 2007 - New York, New York

Just over a week ago I was on holiday in New York. It was my first trip to America and I had a lot of fun. Below you can see a panoramic photo I took from the top of the Empire State Building (click the picture to see the large version). It's a spectacular view, though you definitely need to get there early to avoid the queues. I went up before 9am on a Monday morning and it was relatively empty.

If you're ever on holiday in New York it's worth picking up a City Pass. Even if you skip a couple of the museums, like I did, it's still good value. I particularly liked the Circle Line Sightseeing cruise, which offers great views of the Lower Manhattan skyline. I went on the cruise back in October, so it was a bit cold at times when the wind swept across. I definitely should have taken a hat and scarf with me!

During my holiday I stayed in Hotel Pennsylvania. Its best feature is undoubtedly its location opposite Madison Square Garden and just a couple of blocks from the Empire State Building. The room I stayed in was nice, though I didn't spend a great deal of time there - it wasn't an especially long holiday so I had to try and do as much with each day as possible.

Now that I'm back in England work will resume on some small improvements to Fingerjig. I dare say that Fingerjig is almost at a point where I'll be prepared to call it finished.

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8 October 2007 - Fingerjig 1.7

Fingerjig 1.7 is now available to play. This version allows you to see the best scores that have been submitted for the current day. The game uses Eastern Standard Time (EST) to determine when each day begins. For reference, EST is 5 hours behind GMT.

Another, less exciting, improvement is the addition of caching "behind the scenes". The caching simply means that the web server is able to dish up words slightly quicker, by accessing the database less often. See, I told you that improvement wasn't as exciting.

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6 September 2007 - Fingerjig 1.6

Fingerjig 1.6 is now available to play. The colour of the typable text can now be changed to one of several colour schemes - if you're looking for high contrast and improved legibility, look no further than the black colour scheme. I've also taken this opportunity to move all the options onto one convenient screen. Enjoy!

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27 August 2007 - Fingerjig 1.5.1

Fingerjig 1.5.1 is now available to play. As you can probably tell from the version number, it's just a small change. The only difference is that you can now choose which text size you would like to use - great news if you preferred the old, smaller text size.

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24 August 2007 - Fingerjig 1.5

Fingerjig 1.5 is now available to play. It features larger text which you should find much easier to read.

Remember to share your Fingerjig feedback with me by sending an email. If you make a good suggestion then I'll try to implement it (assuming I can find the time!).

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5 August 2007 - Fingerjig 1.4

Fingerjig 1.4 is now available to play. The changes aren't radical but they should improve your Fingerjig experience nevertheless.

1. You can now mute the sound if you don't like it!
2. When you submit a score you are told what percentage of players scored lower than you.

Getting into the top 100 scores is tricky, so knowing what proportion of players you've managed to beat should help a lot. As always, if you have any Fingerjig feedback please feel free to send me an email.

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