From the book I learned that the actual animal used for the model lived a sickly caged circus-type existence in New York City. Not exactly the symbol of adventure and wide-open prairies it evoked for me as a kid, but a perfect metaphor for the relationship bison had with North American settlers.

These are the output from a little Flash experiment.

There were 6 bays total and each one highlighted areas of cultural interest in the city. We installed 3 touchscreens behind a glass bay that included an interactive fireworks display and served as an information kiosk for activities available at the arch grounds.

Here is a video that shows a little bit of the preparation and the finished product. It was a really fun project!!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Did you ever notice that if you try to navigateToURL() from inside Flash in Safari it will refresh the Flash on the page? Here is a quick work around

You need to setup a JavaScript function that uses the DOM to fidget w/ the window.location.hash. It looks something like this;

function mapAnchor(anchor)
{
window.location.hash = anchor;
}

Then from ActionScript setup a navigateToURL() like this;

var _anchorlink:URLRequest = new URLRequest("javascript:mapAnchor('"+anchorname+"')");

where anchorname is your anchor.

So… I created a super-simple skinnable AS3 FLV player. It’s still got a few kinks, but might be a good starting point for anyone to add-on. Feel free to use as you see fit (pls don’t be a dick and try to go sell it somewhere).

Here is what it has:

• Play / Pause functionality
• Video Scrubbing
• Buffer display
• Jump To section

Here is what it does not have, but what could be extended w/ a little more effort:

• fullscreen
• time display
• sound controls

Link to AS3 Video Player Page
Download Assets

Behold, my very first generative comp. The image of a neon hot pink, scribbled, slightly-rotated square popped into my head one day. Maybe I’ve been listening to too much Justice. Made w/ Actionscript 3 and the Bezier curve fitting function built into Tweener.

Fit my curve!

In the same masochistic way I let a ping-pong sorting algorithim rule my life, I’ve been obsessing on how to draw elegant fluid curves in AS3 via Flash’s drawing API. This mostly started from being inspired by Erik Natzke’s work.

I started with the Flash drawing APIs generic “CurveTo” method, but it left “kink”s in the curves that passed through more than 2 points. Then I played with AS3’s built-in “BezierSegment” in the fl.motion package which produces a cubic bezier, which are similar to the curves in Illustrator.

I scoured the interwebs for the best curve fitting functions. Dug through old presentations of Rober Penner, The Father of Curves in Flash. Most of the math is way over my head but I did come across a few interesting ones:

• http://mike.teczno.com/notes/splines.html (AS2);
• http://www.paultondeur.com/2008/03/09/drawing-a-cubic-bezier-curve-using-actionscript-3/
• http://erikloyer.com/index.php/blog/cardinal_splines_in_actionscript/

These helped me better understand the differnt kinds of curves but ultimately what I wanted was a nice bezier curve fitting function. I wanted to say, “Here are 20 points, class. Now plot me a beautiful bezier curve based on them!”… And it was right under my nose the whole time. Tweener, which I use every day, has a built in Bezier curve fitting function that I somehow overlooked. Yowza!

In typical jacobmake fashion, I’ve spent an exuberent amount of time researching process without a pixel to show for it. Hopefully, I be able to present some rough generative sketches soon now that I’ve licked this curve addiction.

We’ll here it is.

This has been a silly and fun project. I got to revisit one of my favorite NES games and learned a little about ActionScript and APIs in the process. In hindsight this would’ve been just as easy to do w/ an RSS feed but it feels good to have this idea expunged and no longer rolling around in my head. On to the next project…

A semi-distant relative recently contacted me about one of my domains, heberlie.com. He said he’d always envisioned it being some kind of family history resource.

I’ve always been curious about my family history. I received an interesting document about the name history and derivation of the heberlie name.

I’m considering a flash family tree visualization tool as a potential project. Sites like genealogy.com make it easy to get the data. Coming up with an xml fed flash experience could be a fun way to browse the “tree”. Thoughts?

This is a project I’ve been wanting to tackle for a long time. My friends and I frequently discuss creating an online zombie multi-player game. Our ideas are grandiose, but for this to succeed it would obviously need more definition and possibly a scaled down phase 1.

Here is what I’m proposing for a possible phase 1 zombie game.

• A simple top-down scrolling map format.
• This would focus more on fun-factor and less on immersive experience.
• I’d like for it to be deployable for multi-user use.
• team death-match quick-play style.
• play as zombie after dead? control zombie “hord” after dead?

Has anyone tried hooking up AIR to SmartFox?

BRAINS……………