Fun with SWFAddress, Tweener, and animating the URL

I’ve been playing around with doing some animations in the URL and also the title bar. The very awesome SWFAddress makes it quite easy to play around with.

I started out with some very simple blinking, here

and after that, moved on to some simple animation loops,  here

and since that wasn’t enough, I began doing some work with Tweener in the address bar, which you can see here

after viewing a few of these you may think- hey, this is kind of cool!  and it is.  but if you tried using your back or forward buttons after you started one of the animations, you’ll notice that it only served to bring you back one frame!  how funny!

also, if you check your browser history (and you are NOT using Safari)  after starting one of the animations, you’ll see that it has been filled full of all the different frames of URL animation you saw. and with this comes some rather serious questions about how this could be used.

After registering the tweener based URL with google analytics, I was able to see this: If you tween the url, and it changes almost 100 times in an animation, the user’s browser thinks he or she has visited 100 different pages within your site.  I’m not exactly sure how this might affect seach engine page-rank stuff, but I would suspect it might present a false indication to them as to how deeply a user has browsed a page. a look at this screenshot verifies that google thinks you’ve gone to different pages in a site way more times than it should.

This might be very useful to some people who want to do really annoying SEO stuff, and I really hope people would never use it for that.You could instantly, or over time,  fake a user’s browser history, telling the search engines that they’ve navigated here or there without them actually having done so, in the same way in which you might animate a url. The back and forward buttons can also be rendered useless fairly easily.  You could probably do some funny stuff.

But then again, I don’t know how google works, exactly, so maybe it isn’t a very big deal.

Its fun to play with.

Posted in Papervision 2.0, actionscript 3, color, minneapolis, st. paul, thirdavedesign | 1 Comment »

Presentation for MNSWF Code Camp: Intro to Papervision3d

I’m pleased to announce a small collection of Papervision3D 2.0 demos and sources.

You may access these by using subversion to check out the following repository.

svn checkout http://modern-carpentry.com/svn/pv3d

Please note that you must also be using the effects branch of Papervision3D 2.0, and to compile these files you must change the build path in the .fla’s publish setting to your own.

I presented these in a small talk I gave about Papervision3D to mnswf’s code camp today.
Topics covered:
-Basic Hello World
-HelloWorld Extended (assigning mouse events, using different render layers)
-primitive object example (sphere, cube, cone, cylinder, plane)
-.dae (collada) example
-shaded materials example
-WOW Physics example
-360 Panorama example

These are, of course, topics that I have covered before here on this website. But it is nice to have a single, accessible collection of them. I hope they are useful!

It was a great event-I actually compiled my first AIR application within 15 minutes of arrival! I learned a lot throughout the day, and Danny Patterson’s ‘Slowing Down’ talk really gave me a good perspective on becoming a better developer.

I’m sorry I couldn’t provide a more Flex friendly presentation. I will be working on integrating my Papervision3D work with Flex as I begin to use it more and more.

You may also view my presentation notes here:

Thanks to everyone who put the event on, attended and participated. It was a wonderful day all around (this below is me being happy:) )

Posted in Papervision 2.0, Photography, Wow Physics, actionscript 3, flex, minneapolis, open source, panorama, papervision3D, personal | 1 Comment »

working with puny entertainment

I’ve accepted a full time job at PUNY Entertainment in north-east minneapolis. My tasks include, but are not limited to actionscript 3 design and devopment, petting Harvey the office dog, and growing up.

Here’s where we work, have a look around-

After working part time at PUNY for a couple of months, I have only good things to say about the kind of work, ideas, and community they’re making. Even better, the people at PUNY are great-

I especially like them for 2 reasons:
- their use of agile software development/scrum for a more modern approach to project management
-their desire to be content creators and owners, rather than just making websites

Because their vision for the web matches so closely with mine, and because I feel they have a handle on running a more modern kind of workplace, I look forward to a long and prosperous relationship between me and PUNY!

Posted in Papervision 2.0, Photography, actionscript 1, actionscript 3, minneapolis, panorama, papervision3D, personal | No Comments »

Short Circuits 2: a celebration of Richard Stallman’s birthday

I helped organize a fun event for yesterday.  You can get more specific information about it here  (when we finish editing the wiki about the event…)

Or you can just enjoy my recap of the event below:

who is richard stallman?

-bio

Stallman was born to Daniel Stallman and Alice Lippman in 1953 in New York City, New York. Hired by the IBM New York Scientific Center, Stallman spent the summer after his high-school graduation writing his first program, a preprocessor for the PL/I programming language on the IBM 360.

In June 1971, as a first year student at Harvard University, Stallman became a programmer at the AI Laboratory of MIT. There he became a regular in the hacker community, where he was usually known by his initials, “RMS” (which was the name of his computer accounts). In the first edition of the Hacker’s Dictionary, he wrote, “‘Richard Stallman’ is just my mundane name; you can call me ‘rms’.”[1] Stallman graduated from Harvard magna cum laude earning a BA in Physics in 1974.

Stallman then enrolled as a graduate student in physics at MIT, but abandoned his graduate studies while remaining a programmer at the MIT AI Laboratory. At the end of his first year in the graduate program, Stallman suffered a knee injury that ended the main joy in his life[6] - his participation in the folk dance troupe, and with it the opportunity it provided for socializing with the opposite sex.[7] Stallman’s ensuing despair culminated in social withdrawal from which he found solace in a heightened focus on the area in which his achievements made him most proud - programming. While his doctoral pursuits in physics became a casualty of this calling, however, Stallman has been awarded six honorary doctorates and two honorary professorships.

As a hacker in MIT’s AI laboratory, Stallman worked on software projects like TECO, Emacs, and the Lisp Machine Operating System. He would become an ardent critic of restricted computer access in the lab. When MIT’s Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) installed a password control system in 1977, Stallman found a way to decrypt the passwords and sent users messages containing their decoded password (to demonstrate that they were not increasing security, but only hindering free access to each other’s software and discouraging sharing it), with a suggestion to change it to the empty string (that is, no password) instead, to restore this free access. Around 20% of the users followed his advice. Although Stallman boasted of the success of his campaign for many years afterward, passwords ultimately prevailed.[10]

-up until the beginning of the 1980’s, programming and computer culture was, by default, very free and sharing.  people at academic and governmental institutions readily shared problems and solutions in a way very similar to how the open source community operates today.

-sometime around then, things changed as computer science became more corporatized.  suddenly, with software liscening, programmers were no longer able to share what they were working on with their friends and colleagues as they had been used to doing.

-However, he was the last of his generation of hackers at the lab. He rejected a future where he would have to sign non-disclosure agreements not to share source code or technical information with other software developers and perform other actions he considered betrayals of his principles. He chose instead to share his work with others in what he regarded as a classical spirit of collaboration. While Stallman did not participate in the 1960s era counterculture, he was inspired by its rejection of the pursuit of wealth as the primary goal of living.

-because of this, he started the gnu liscence and the free software foundation.

-gnu liscence

Nobody should be restricted by the software they use. There are four freedoms that every user should have:

* the freedom to use the software for any purpose,
* the freedom to share the software with your friends and neighbors,
* the freedom to change the software to suit your needs, and
* the freedom to share the changes you make.

When a program offers users all of these freedoms, we call it free software.

Developers who write software can release it under the terms of the GNU GPL. When they do, it will be free software and stay free software, no matter who changes or distributes the program. We call this copyleft: the software is copyrighted, but instead of using those rights to restrict users like proprietary software does, we use them to ensure that every user has freedom.

- this is a really nifty trick.  if you use any software licensed as GNU, you are inherently agreeing not to make it private.  in a sense, it guarantees that software made to be free remains free no matter who uses it

-/free software foundation
Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to distribute and modify computer software without restriction . The FSF is incorporated in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, United States of America.[1]

From its founding until the mid-1990s, FSF’s funds were mostly used to employ software developers to write free software for the GNU Project. Since the mid-1990s, the FSF’s employees and volunteers have mostly worked on legal and structural issues for the free software movement and the free software community.

Being consistent with its goals, only free software is used on all of the FSF’s computers.[2]

-birthday!

today is Richard Stallman’s birthday.  He is 54 years old.  We’ve got cake AND cupcakes!  Please enjoy them throughout the day.

I have written Mr. Stallman to inform him of this birthday party for him.  He agreed to attend in-absentia, and will be sitting in this chair throughout the day.

He expressed his desire to me that copies of the philosophy of his organization be distributed at this event.

Thanks to Brian (chair of the freegeek) for making copies.  Please check them out and read them.  The ideas expressed in his writing are very compelling.

I have been personally influenced by the attitude he has taken towards software development, and I make it an effort to make my work available for sharing, use, and extension.

Most of the time, my work is crap, but in the few cases I have written something useful, it is very fun to receive emails of appreciation from those who have used or extended what I have made.

Sharing perpetuates sharing, and we all benefit from that.  If I were to sum up today’s agenda into one thing, it would be simply: sharing of knowledge.

We owe much thanks to RMS for his ideas and effort over the last 30 years.  Software is powerful, software changes society and lives.

His efforts to make sure that the benefits we experience from software are shared have led to the wonderful phenomenon we know as open source or free software, and this day is, in part, an appreciation of his efforts and a celebration of that ideal.

Thanks to everyone who showed up at the event, it was awesome.  I look forward to the next one.

Also, craig’s poster for the event was awesome.  thanks very much to him for his work on it.

Posted in Drupal, Open Circuit, Photography, actionscript 3, color, for the kids, minneapolis, open source, personal | 2 Comments »

Animals at the Bell Museum of Natural History

Biked with amanda and alan to the Bell Museum of Natural History today, and enjoyed the many wonderful dioramas of animals. Most of them were native to Minnesota, but there were also others that were not.

You may download all the images at once, here.

These images are intended to help my young nieces and nephews learn about images. Please excuse the large fonts

a goat of some sort? Capricorn?

a flock of pretty birds

baby bear

a muskrat?

ring necked pheasant (my dad’s favorite!);

a falcon?

4 baby owls

a beaver

a bird that likes water?

a furry friend?

papa bear

an old white owl

a lynx

a bobcat

a bald eagle

a baby sheep

a red tailed hawk

Posted in Photography, color, for the kids, minneapolis, personal | 1 Comment »

Going through some changes.

the talk of modern carpentry will soon have a new look. until then, please bear with the development.

thank you-

Posted in color, minneapolis, personal | No Comments »

F1 Web challenge, TCOpenCircuit, and Doorstep Healthcare Services

I’ve just woken up from a crazy weekend at the f1 web challenge, hosted by sierra bravo. Thanks to all the sponsors, my awesome team from twin cities open circuit, and Shira from Doorstep Healthcare Services.

Also thanks to Kai from Sunday’s Energy for agreeing to host the site for the next year and for helping getting everything set up.  Joe was also very helpful in getting things running.

You can see our work (all done in < 30 hrs!) here.

It was really fun working with everyone- here they are as I hazily remember-

Shira-

craig

amanda

bryan

kristen

chach

crystal

bretton

and myself-

Posted in Drupal, Open Circuit, actionscript 3, color, open source, st. paul | No Comments »

WOW 3D Physics engine released!

Jerome Birembaut released his long awaited 3d physics engine, properly named “WOW”. Wow uses the Sandy 3d library to do the mathematical calculations for the objects, and I must say it runs pretty smoothly.

Team Wow up with the flash 3d library of your choice(mine is PV3D, of course) to render the visuals, and what else would a flash developer want!

3d physics and 3d rendering == too many possibilities to comprehend.

So, as soon as it was released I got to tying Wow together with PV3d, and here’s the result of my experiments.

I must say the code is put together awesomely, commented very well, and in general very easy to work with!

There’s still some things to get figured out, according to Jerome:

- edges
- quad face surface delimitation.
- Sphere real rotations.
- Forces evenments (based on explosion etc.)
- collisions, (it’s priority on his todolist)

Either way, its a cool engine, easy to implement with PV3D, and I look forward to working more with it!

A note to PV3D’ers-

I’m not quite sure on this, but I think the registration points of spheres in PV3D is offset from the registration point in Wow. So I added the radius of each sphere to their respective x, y, and z positions during render. I think it fixed my problems, but I’m not completely sure. I’d be glad to hear other people’s ideas-

I had to edit the WBoundArea.as in order to perform some rotations on it. You can get the edited file here.

And, as always, the project source.

Posted in Papervision 2.0, Wow Physics, actionscript 3, open source, papervision3D | No Comments »

tweening .flv frames

I’ve been working with some cool .flv stuff for awhile.

In light of joe turgeon’s work with stop motion photography, and its possible application to video, I have become very interested in manipulating every frame of a video mathematically.

click on any picture to check it out.

The linked example may take a while to load. It loads every frame of the video, so it is hefty.

The cool thing about .flv files is that they take a snapshot every 30 or so frames, and calculate the difference between each frame while the user is viewing a video. This saves a lot of bandwidth, and this is why .flv is the most prevalant form of video on the web.

The frameTween technique treats each frame of a video as a number which can be very easily manipulated and made to do cool things. Adding easing equations to the playback is pretty f’ing sweet, and I’m sure that if you check it out you’ll agree.

In the example, try using the scrubber to fast forward or reverse the video. You’ll notice that it Tweens each frame in a cool way. If you manipulate the Tween time, you can come up with some even cooler results.

I’d like to know about more efficient ways to do this on the web, but for now I’ll resort myself to using this tool to create some cool stuff offline.

For reference, the drummer is Paul Grill. He drums for the Hobo Nephews of Uncle Frank, and also a number of other bands. His skills are hot.

FrameTweening, though currently not very presentable on the webs, is pretty cool. I look forward to a place where it is technically/bandwidthably possible for everyone to enjoy on demand.

Posted in actionscript 3, minneapolis, personal, thirdavedesign | 3 Comments »

Invitation to DRUPAL DAY

Enough talk, back to the fun stuff:

I am very pleased to extend an invitation to the first annual Drupal Day at the Science Museum of Minnesota. It will be held from 10:00am to 5:00pm, and will be a good place to start learning Drupal if you haven’t.

If you have, there will also be some good advanced presentations for the crowd. I’m looking forward to talking about integrating the Drupal CMS with Flash to build SEO indexable websites which user or admin can easily update through the Drupal CMS.

I’m also looking forward to participating in a round-table discussion about the ethics, politics, and social dynamics of participation in an online or open source community.

Hope to see you there!
The future is open
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Posted in Drupal, Open Circuit, actionscript 3, open source, personal, st. paul, thirdavedesign | No Comments »