Just a very quick post about a potentially useful code snippet that I recently wrote in ActionScript. I discovered, after attempting to Google my way through a small bit of development, that I couldn’t find the exact solution I was looking for.

I was attempting to find some code for making a rectangle using the AS3 graphics API which is filled with a background colour and some diagonal lines (illustrated above by the green and blue boxes). Fairly straightforward one would assume however most of the examples I found involved drawing the lines and using a mask to create the rectangular shape. Considering the overhead of using masks in Flash and the fact that within my application this box will be being rendered extremely regularly to simulate movement I decided to write a little utility using only the graphics API and some GCSE maths.

The code won’t format properly in the blog so I’ve uploaded the entire DrawingUtil.as class for download here.

I am taking part in a workshop this month involving the production of an artifact of some sort which is activated by only one button. The functional brief is only that simple; the object can do anything (within the realms of my own abilities to make things with electronics & arduino boards).

The workshop is put on by Openlab Workshops. There is more detail on my particular project on my blog. -> http://notfig.garethfoote.co.uk/one-button-workshop/

Any suggestions and comments are very welcome.

Due to our exceedingly long url and potential RSI of the fingers we thought we’d look into a secondary shorter url for UV^d. Naturally we wanted to get uvd.net or uvd.com but being a three letter top level domain it wasn’t going to come cheap.

Companies who in the past have gone through random combinations of letters and bulk bought the equivalent domain names whilst they were a bargain price are essentially in a process of domain name prospecting.

UPDATE: Kirsten has just informed me that this process is actually called Cybersquatting.

Below is the transcript from conversation between Patrick Hamann (PH) and an Anonymous Domain Name Prospector (ADNP):

ADNP:
Hi Patrick,
Thank you for contacting us about uvd.net.
The current asking price for uvd.net is $12888 USD.
As you may already be aware, the demand for and prices of domain names does vary. We periodically have discount promotions available on some of our names, feel free to email or call if you would like to inquire about possible discounts on this domain.

PH:
I'll give you a fiver

ADNP:
Hi Patrick,
What is a fiver?

- And this is where it all gets a bit Terry Tibbs, “Talk to me” -

PH:
Alright, you drive a hard bargain. I'll give you a tenner but thats my final offer.

ADNP:
How many zeros in a 'tenner'?

PH:
One

ADNP:
Let me know when you can add 5 more to that

PH:
How about this 10.00000 ?!

We have finished an enjoyable project for SPAR International, which involved creating an athletics game based around the button bashing classic, Daley Thomson’s Decathlon. When creating the graphics and style for this game we wanted to utilise the nostalgic bitmap effect which you see quite often in Flash games and in the graphic style of Pixel Art. From a development perspective this was very convenient because I have been looking for an excuse to try the Actionscript 3 game framework, Flixel, which I have seen lorded around the Internet as perfect for this purpose.

It has it’s own global render cycle which simplifies the process of adding bitmap graphics to the stage and creates a predictable fps independent game loop. Forum posts on the Flixel site state that this rendering process is more efficient than Flash player alone due to the fact that is purely geared toward low resolution bitmapped graphics. There where many elements which increased the speed of development such as the inclusion of the FlxObjects which are already set-up with simple motion facilities such as acceleration and velocity on both x and y axis which allow for the simulation of horizontal character movement and also vertical forces (i.e. gravity).

There are many other noteworthy features of the Flixel framework such as Sprites for Animation and the global/static FlxG control class which have been very well designed to make game development in Flash easier. I will, however, not go into detail about these because a concise post about Flixel from the Inside RIA blog has covered these. For those (developers mainly, I suspect) interested in understanding the affordances of using this framework over creating a game from scratch, reading this and also exploring the host of games and tutorials on the Flixel site will be worthwhile. Canabalt is a particular favourite game due to the intense screen shaking and accompanying music.

The game we created is called Beat Barni and is online now. Due to time constraints we created a pentathlon (5 events) rather than a decathlon, so feel free to challenge Barni to any of the following events; 100m, 400m Hurdles, Javelin, Pole-vault and Long Jump.

With the recent shock revelation that Mrs Kipling does actually exist and was once an actress in Corontation St we thought we should make sure that the exceedingly good cakes were as good as we remembered.

Safe to say that the despite the implications of some sort of power shift within the Mr Kipling marketing machine, the cakes are still high quality. Just take a look at Patrick’s face. He’s loving that Bakewell.

GOOD produces a website, videos, live events, and a print magazine. They seem to successfully mix an ethical ethos with good design throughout their projects.

I came across the results of a competition they have recently finished for the best infographic which would “highlight executive compensation (as in, how much CEOs etc. are paid) in an interesting way.”

It’s nice to see creative visualizations of mass data and these are very good examples of this.

One of the first blog posts on the UV^d blog was about Java application called Wordle which created pretty looking tag clouds based on word occurrences in blog RSS feeds, del.icio.us accounts or any block of supplied text.

It is quite interesting to see a peripheral snapshot of how a blogs content changes over time. Saves the trouble of reading it all as well.

We’re so close; I can smell it! Our new site is careering dangerously towards completion. One element of the homepage is a frivolous physics environment which I was kindly allowed the time to make in Flash using the Box2DFlash physics engine.

The engine has been ported from Eric Catto’s powerful C++ physics engine (Box2D). It took a little time to adjust to some of the coding conventions that have also found their way from the C++ version but after that initial steep learning curve the engine is fantastic to work with.

I’ve released this today before the site launch so that people can play with it and inevitably find the bugs which I’ve lovingly engineered into it. Feel free to put it through its paces!

edit: This is now on our homepage

One of the most beneficial and exciting parts of being a web developer in London is the welcoming and engaging community which exists here. There are continuous events and workshops being held (usually for free) on various technologies and topics relating to our industry. My expectations of these usually small scale and low key events were massively surpassed by the 1st Linked Data Meetup I attended last Wednesday. A large portion of the Linked Data community were present and some of the leading developers and thinkers in this field were there to showcase applications of Linked Data.

For those not acquainted with the phrase and its meaning it would be beneficial to watch Tim Berners-Lee’s introduction to Linked Data at the TED conference. But in brief it is one of the many possible methods of incorporating meaning (semantics) into the abundance of information that is available on the World Wide Web. Essentially Linked Data could bring us closer to a Semantic Web or as Tim Berners-Lee calls it the “Next Web”. His image is of a web where explicit URIs are used to represent things in the real world (people, places, events, objects, etc). Once this URI exists, as a representation of a concept or object, it can then be used as a reference point to be talked about or linked to by other sources of data; hence creating linked data.

I cannot begin to cover all of the information relayed during the half day event particularly that relating to the formal specifications of linked data. However one of the messages of the day was the importance of exemplifying the incredible potential of Linked Data by either blogging about it (tada!!!!) or by creating compelling applications which utilize it.

Firstly we will be endeavouring to use RDFa in our future web projects to embed rich metadata into our web documents and I strongly recommend that other agencies and developers do the same. Secondly I would like to draw attention to a couple of the projects which were illustrated at the event which exemplify the possibilities of Linked Data.

MusicBore
A project completed during the Music Hack Day in London which uses Linked Data to essentially remove the need for radio DJ’s. \o/

Data Incubator
Data Incubator is a project which is focussed around taking mass datasets from willing participants (NASA, Discogs, OpenLibrary) and opening them up for wider reuse. They do this by converting the data into accessible linked data and through a community of developers maintain the dataset with the intention of eventually giving it back to the original owners. As stated on their site; “the goal is not to steal, but to show that there is a better way.”

Sig.ma
An RDF search engine. If for example you typed your name into sig.ma, you will receive results from various different online sources which already embed RDF, RDFa or microformats into their sites. An impressive array of information will be returned which is eerily specific to you rather than any of your namesakes which you tend to find on Google.

On a personal note I am very proud of myself (and Marc who I attended with) for not screaming like girls and demanding the autograph of Tim Berners-Lee when he arrived at the conference and sat at the table with us! I wish I was wearing my I LOVE THE INTERNET tshirt!

I’d like to draw attention to some impressive new interfaces which seem to be bringing a Philip K Dick reality ever closer. Using various open source technologies it is possible for artists and programmers alike to experiment and innovate with things such as computer vision, augmented reality and tangible holographs.

Computer vision enables face detecting and motion tracking of live video footage meaning that a user can interact with software using gestures or that the software can autonomously react to user’s movement. The video below does not illustrate the practical potentials for openCV but is too pretty to not include here.

Gold demo from Memo Akten on Vimeo.

Amongst other things computer vision enables the process of Augmented Reality (AR); the fusion of computer graphics/text and live video imagery to ‘enhance’ the experience. This has become more popular on mobile devices of late and there are many AR applications for the iPhone on the horizon. Here is an illustration of mobile based AR:

Touch screen interfaces such as that of the iPhone have almost been absorbed into common use and understanding in their short existence. Despite this, one of the difficulties of using this type of interface is the lack of tangible feedback from the smooth screen apposed to pushing buttons on a phone or keyboard. This problem also applies when flailing around your arms whilst interactive with a gesture based computer vision interface. This almost seems like an impossible problem to overcome. Of course this is not the case as illustrated by this Tangible Hologram which responds to user interaction using small blasts of air or ‘Airborne Ultrasound Tactile Display’ (via). Amazing if not a little scary; love it!