Alex Fish

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itsfishy — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 15:44:01 +0000

PLEASE VISIT HTTP://WWW.RENDERROBOT.COM/BLOG FOR NEW BLOG LOCATION

Stage 1

itsfishy — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 21:36:23 +0000

I have come up with the simple parts of the application im trying to create, its all working apart from the shared aspect of it! which is the hard part. The design is very basic becasue it is a prototype.

http://mediahost.aib.ac.uk/fdashow08/fish/projects/two/broad/carrottop.swf

First Experiments

itsfishy — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 21:27:57 +0000

Trying to get this sharing of a drawing application to work is proving to be very hard thanks to my lack of actionscript knowledge at the start of this project, here is code i have come up which SHOULD work, i dont have access to the flash media serer to test it though which is annoying.

//

function initSharedObject() {

   main_nc = new NetConnection();

   main_nc.onStatus = function(info) {
   if (info.code == “NetConnection.Connect.Success”) {

   drawing_so = SharedObject.getRemote
   (“drawing”, main_nc.uri, true);

   drawing_so.onSync = function(list) {
   for (var n in list) {
   var line_obj = this.data[list[n].name];
   draw_mc.moveTo(line_obj.x1, line_obj.y1);
   draw_mc.lineTo(line_obj.x2, line_obj.y2);
   }
   };

   drawing_so.connect(main_nc);
   } else {
   trace(“ERROR: ” + info.code);
   }
   };

   main_nc.connect(“rtmp:/drawing”);
}
//

init();
stop();
//
function init() {
initDrawing();
initMouse();
}
//
function initDrawing() {
createEmptyMovieClip(“draw_mc”, 10);
draw_mc.lineStyle(3, 0xF70000);
createEmptyMovieClip(“temp_mc”, 20);
}
//
function initMouse() {
mouseMoveListener = new Object();
mouseMoveListener.onMouseMove = function() {
mouseMoveEvent();
};
//
mouseClickListener = new Object();
mouseClickListener.onMouseDown = function() {
mouseDownEvent();
};
mouseClickListener.onMouseUp = function() {
mouseUpEvent();
};
Mouse.addListener(mouseClickListener);
}
//
function mouseDownEvent() {
draw_mc.moveTo(_xmouse, _ymouse);
Mouse.addListener(mouseMoveListener);
}
//
function mouseUpEvent() {
   var line_obj = new Object();
   line_obj.x1 = startX;
   line_obj.y1 = startY;
   line_obj.x2 = _xmouse;
   line_obj.y2 = _ymouse;
   var slot = “line_” + startX + “-” + startY + “X” + _xmouse + “-” + _ymouse;
   drawing_so.data[slot] = line_obj;
   temp_mc.clear();
   Mouse.removeListener(mouseMoveListener);
}

//
function mouseMoveEvent() {
// Remove any previous drawing
temp_mc.clear();
// Draw dot at End Point
temp_mc.lineStyle(6, 0x00ff00);
temp_mc.moveTo(_xmouse, _ymouse);
temp_mc.lineTo(_xmouse + 0.5, _ymouse);
//
draw_mc.lineTo(_xmouse, _ymouse);
}

Ill try it out when i get back to uni on monday hopefully it will work if not its back to the drawing board.

Bee

itsfishy — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 21:09:14 +0000

I am using an desktop application called Bee which was developed in Adobe AIR to make this post!, i did not even have to open my browser i can post, edit and manage my blog from this simple application!

Interactive Pin!

itsfishy — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 19:29:08 +0000

This week we managed to make a pin to pop the balloon! i think we have actually got our heads around programming in director!

our next challenge is to get video involved and improve the motion sensors because they are pretty rubbish. Still though i think we are making good progress, me sam and matt are learning pretty useful skills with Liams help.

Flex

itsfishy — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 19:08:23 +0000

Adobe flex is an application i recently discovered, it allows for a wide range of “sharing” applications which run on the internet to be created. Heres what adobe say

“Adobe® Flex™ 2 is a cross-platform development framework for creating rich Internet applications (RIAs). Flex enables you to create expressive, high-performance applications that run identically on all major browsers and operating systems. Download the free Flex SDK to build and debug Flex apps. Flex Builder provides a rich set of tools to speed app creation.”

I think this is going to be widely used in the future of the internet because of the wide wide range of possibilities it creates, and opens up the world of internet application programing to the average joe at home. Here is a website showcasing applications produced in Flex. I will be downloading it and keeping an eye out for news and developments for this software.

Update

itsfishy — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 13:53:50 +0000

Today i had a word with Liam about my project and spoke to him about any improvements i could make to it, he gave me some good advice and because we still have a week until the project is due in i am going to make some alterations to my final render and hopefully improve it for the better. He suggested making the camera movements smoother and losing the frames which i have put in with the videos enclosed. Ill use this week to work on it before the crit on monday.

Shelf Stacking

itsfishy — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 17:08:26 +0000

As much as i hate my job of stacking shelves for ten hours through out the night every saturday night, missing everyones birthdays, all the good house partys, and generally anything fun and exciting. I have come to the conclusion that maybe shelf stacking isnt all that bad, as i have ten hours of mind numbing tasks like moving boxs from one place to another my mind tends to wonder and i think think think as i have nothing better todo. Recently though i have been putting my thinking to some good use, if im stumped for an idea for a uni project or like recently i need to think of a name for the website i want to set up, i just think think think at work. Eight times out of ten i actually manage to come up with a pretty good idea over the ten hour period and i make a little note on my phone which can remind me the next day. Maybe people who are stuck for ideas should take up mind numbing jobs or do boring repetitive tasks for long periods of time to help with there creative flow, who knows maybe one day it might just catch on. I have to look on the bright side and see work as a way of getting paid to think of ideas and run stuff through my head a million times until i got through with putting the idea into practice.

iLife

itsfishy — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 00:51:28 +0000

Nokia have recently released an anti-iPhone campaign which i think is pretty funny, its nice to see other companies bite back at Apple since there advertising campaign which attacked Microsoft.

Apple users seem to sit on an imaginary perch of “coolness” from which they look down on the commoners with there Windows and Linux computers which don’t come with a fancy case and a pretty box. Unaware they are slaves to Steve Jobs with his iron fist of locked software such as iTunes which hijacks all of your music, or the video iPod which required you to purchase Quicktime pro so that you could convert your videos into a format which would work on the thing. Luckily the PSP conversion software did the same trick for free. A good example of the Apple iron fist is when i had to install the latest iTunes update, which of course, you can only install if you install Quicktime as well. After it had all installed i decided to watch a film when i noticed every single video file no matter what format had been changed so that it defaulted to open in Quicktime, thanks Steve. And now Leopard has come along with its new finder

remind you of anything?

Now the iPhone has finally been released in England and everyone is buy buy buy, in a month the price will be dropped by £100 but people who bought it won’t notice because they will be too busy telling everyone how amazing they are, and in 2 Months a new one will come out with an extra feature that costs £200 more. Here’s a nice little news article caused by an angry iPhone customer, Apple sued over iPhone price cuts

Maddox Mission is an entertaining website which manages to point out the downfalls of Apple and the iPhone pretty well. So for now anyway im going to stick with my nerdy Windows and in a few years when i might need another graphics card or another 4gb of memory, i can buy it and put it in my computer, not have to go buy the latest iMac for £1500 or sendit off to Apple to get it made extra shiny and sparkly, and maybe when i feel the need to have a super duper sparkly phone ill go buy myself a Nokia which does everything in the world for a quarter of the price.

Interactive Balloon

itsfishy — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 18:03:28 +0000

With Liams help we made this awesome little interactive balloon, its only the start of what we can do with this but i think its pretty awesome. It really helps with expanding on ideas for how we are going to do our project and brings up some of the problems we might have along the way. Im a bit concerned about the coding involved but im also keen to learn this part of the proccess because it will come in handy when creating other projects and solving problems.