Blowing Through Lines

BP Oil Spill in Perspective

nilloc — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 18:14:52 +0000

Govt. Estimate of oil leak quoted in Wall Street Journal 6/9/2010
-------------------------------------------------------------
    642,994,775,000,000,000 gallons of water in the gulf (est).
                  1,800,000 gallons per day of oil leaking into gulf (govt. est).
                         50 days of leaking.
                 90,000,000 total gallons leaked so far (govt. est).
            0.0000000139970 % of the gulf—by volume—ruined so far.

NOAA Estimates of gulf oil leak
-------------------------------
                  4,200,000 gallons of oil per day (NOAA est).
                         50 days of leaking.
                210,000,000 total gallons leaked so far (NOAA est).
            0.0000000326597 % of the gulf—by volume—ruined so far.

Ocean-wide calculations
-----------------------
446,450,767,880,000,000,000 gallons of water in the world (est).
                  1,800,000 gallons per day of oil leaking into gulf (govt. est).
                         50 days of leaking.
                 90,000,000 total gallons leaked so far (govt. est).
            0.0000000000202 % of the world's ocean—by volume—ruined by the gulf leak so far (govt. est).

                  4,200,000 gallons of oil per day (NOAA est).
                         50 days of leaking.
                210,000,000 total gallons leaked so far (NOAA est).
            0.0000000000470 % of the world's ocean ruined by the gulf leak so far (NOAA est).

My personal estimates of how long it will take to stop the gulf oil leak
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                    180,000 Barrels of oil leaking per day.
                  7,560,000 gallons of oil per day (my estimate).
                      1,095 days of leaking (3 years).
              8,278,200,000 total gallons will leak (that's over 8 and a quarter billion).
            0.0000012874444 % of the gulf—by volume—will be ruined (not nearly as small a number as it looks).
            0.0000000018542 % of the world's oceans—by volume—will be ruined.

My reason for doing this.

The Gulf of Mexico oil leak awful, but humans are still pretty small part of the world&emdash;by volume. Not that we aren’t trying our damnedest to be a big part. This just sucks and I have a hard time believing we can do anything about it.

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Wear Your Mass Quantities of Code

niche — Tue, 25 May 2010 17:42:25 +0000

http://www.headlineshirts.net/mass-quantities-of-code.html

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Backup Apps From iPhone to iTunes (If the normal ways aren’t working)

nilloc — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:19:39 +0000

I finally just solved an annoying problem: I had downloaded an app on my wife’s iPhone that was no longer available on the App Store (ResistorCode, by Christopher Brown), but because of iPhone sync issues was unable to transfer it to iTunes from the phone.

Back Story

So my wife got the iPhone 3G when it first came out, and along the way it was synced with multiple computers, and upgraded to iPhone OS 3.0 (then 3.1, 3.1.2 etc.). This caused it to stop being able to transfer purchased apps from the phone to iTunes or the mac.

Since I didn’t have a phone yet and was interested in some apps for when I did finally get one, there were some applications that I downloaded on her phone and figured I’d be able to move to my phone later.

Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal, since the apps can be re-downloaded from the App Store free of charge as long as you use the same account. The problem is that for whatever reason this app is no longer available on the App Store. And all the other applications (free or not) don’t work as well as this one for the tasks I need.

Solution

Wife gets new iPhone 3GS, and I take old iPhone3G…

OOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRR

Enter PhoneView which is an OS X application that allows you to view SMS, Contact and the DCIM folder on the iPhone without any iPhone modifications (read “no jailbreaking needed”). When I loaded it up with her iPhone it contained a folder name ApplicationArchives (which is empty on my new phone btw), and appears to be leftover from some revision of iPhone OS 2.0-1. In this folder is a bunch of zip files with the application package names (ie. com.christopherbrown.resistorcode.zip), but not all apps on her phone interestingly. Downloading them and unzipping them only left me with a folder with iTunesArtwork, iTunesMetaData.plist, and a Payload folder.

Turns out that’s what in those .ipa files stored in the Mobile Applications folder by iTunes!!! And—how convenient—ipa’s are just renamed zip files! So I renamed the zip file from T4342SFMV3.com.christopherbrown.resistorcode.zip to ResistorCode.ipa and put it in ~/Music/iTunes/Mobile Applications withe the rest of the apps, and… wait… nothing’s showing up in iTunes.

Until I stumbled on this post (see message #7) and low and behold, all I had to do was double click the newly renamed ResistorCode.ipa file, and it was added to itunes and able to sync with my new iPhone 3GS!

Disclaimer

This likely only worked because we are both using the same iTunes account on computers that are both authorized on said account. The app was also a completely legitimate appstore download at the time it was purchased (though free), and is simply no longer available for download from iTunes.

This also doesn’t fundamentally solve the iPhone syncing problem with my wife’s phone, which appears to only be fixable by a factory reset, and manually syncing the apps back to the phone (you’ll find that restoring the phone after a factory reset also restores the syncing problem).

I’m going to download all the remaining apps from that ApplicationArchives folder when she gets home tonight, and at least have backups in iTunes, before we decide that it’s worth wiping out all that data from her phone (so many saved games and book lists to risk…)

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Tabs and Linefeeds (Newlines) in XML driven TextFields

nilloc — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 04:37:19 +0000

Man Flash can be annoying sometimes. So I’m showing some settings as a list, like
Item: value1 Item Two: value2 Item Three: value3

And the client asks if we can align the values vertically, and thinking like a programmer who likes to keep his code clean I’m thinking «Sure, that shouldn’t be a problem, I’ll just add some \t’s to the XML file and we should be all set,» but all that comes out is, “Sure, should only take a few minutes to add.”

So I add some \t’s to the XML and what does flash do with them, it prints out all literal backslashes and ts.

SO then what? Well I was being lazy and specifying xml.node not xml.node.text() to get the text values. Switching it does nothing. So then I start tracing things and looking around the Goog. Finally it becomes apparent that Flash is urlencoding the XML text in the background when processing it, and when it urldecodes it, some things are kept that shouldn’t be, like all escaped string characters that would normally not print.

Oh yeah, condenseWhite was false.

So I start with just doing a simple replace(/\\t/g, “!!!!”) to find out if I can even find the damn things, and I get no exclamation marks… or dirty words. Then a forum entry that was so buried I haven’t even found it again to link to, suggested using unescape(xml.node.text()) for a close, but ultimately unrelated problem.

To make a long story short here’s the solution:

^?View Code ACTIONSCRIPT

1
2
3

	var tabs:RegExp = /\\t/g;
	var newlines:RegExp = /\\n/g;
	txt.htmlText = unescape(wagerText).replace(tabs, "\t").replace(newlines, "\n");

Go figure right?

As always if anyone has a better solution I’m all ears, or at least all comment-reading… eventually.

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New Boom Box find.

nilloc — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 23:10:30 +0000

On our almost bi-weekly visit to the Goodwill store nearby, I found the Best Boombox yet. Feast your eyes on this:

That’s right, a Ghetto Blaster with a turntable!

It’s no SHARP VZ-2500, but still I only paid $7.99 for it (plus tax), and it’s even featured on Engadget. Anyway I’m working on a modular plan to add iPod functionality to it like some other boomboxes I’m working on, but not the tape adapter rout, something that connects directly to the amp IC. Details coming soon.

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Oh just pick a time

admin — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 15:00:50 +0000

So it’s a difficult problem when you’re designing a form that has a lot of time inputs (the one I’m thinking of has up to 4 including a time range). There is the usual, one time box, and an AM/PM dropdown, but that requires typing then clicking, and feels too tedious, especially the 3rd time.

Then there is the huge dropdown of times, which isn’t too bad for just hours, with which you end up with 24 options, but when you add quarter hours you get 100 items in a huge scrolling dropdown (scrolling dropdowns in themselves can be dubious to some users).

So I did some looking around and found the following options the first of which isn’t the fastest to use, and doesn’t require the least clicks, but was the most consistent with other elements on the page, and also seemed to have the most development behind it, and I ended up using in my current project.

http://pttimeselect.sourceforge.net/example/ (I think this is the cleanest, and works the best next to the date picker, because it looks the same. though it’s not the fastest or most efficient, but I think it’s the most developed.)
http://milesich.com/tpdemo/ (ok but a little overwhelming possibly to some people because of the + the done button that needs to be pressed)
http://labs.perifer.se/timedatepicker/ (this is probably the simplest option, but like I said, 100 might be a pain for some users)
http://haineault.com/media/jquery/ui-timepickr/page/ (while my wife used it fine on the first try, it wasn’t scientific because I didn’t give her a specific time to set.)
http://www.jnathanson.com/index.cfm?page=jquery/clockpick/ClockPick (OK but a little less intuitive than timepickr)
http://www.radoslavdimov.com/jquery-plugins/jquery-plugin-timepicker/ (kinda ok, like a time only version of the second option, but sideways, I’m not sure how well AM/PM works because there isn’t an example)
http://keith-wood.name/timeEntry.html (neat but totally hard to use until you realize its keyboard-arrow-key driven, oops I gave it away)

I think my dream selector would actually be more like this most excellent timer widget for OS X that I use almost every day called Minutes. You’d just grab it and spin around until you have the time you want, then let go to set. Anyway when I have a project with a better budget then I’ll maybe make that version…

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Using Those Old PS2 Mouses You Couldn’t Throw Out

nilloc — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 16:53:14 +0000

Sorry got totally distracted by a box in the basement with some PS2 Intellimouse parts in it this weekend. I’ll have those Box2D shortcuts updated soon, promise.

Anyway if you’d like to get a PS2 Microsoft Intellimouse with wheel fully working with a current (Diecimila or newer) Arduino here’s the corrected code:

^?View Code C

/**
 * Code is a mix of ps2mouse from the Arduino playground
 * and mousewheel code from "a world in dk" modified to
 * work with Arduino Decimilia and 0017, and run a PS2
 * Microsoft Intellimouse.
 * 
 * Collin Reidorf collin@paperclipped.com 
 * Repaired http://blowingthroughlines.com
 
 */
 
/*
 * an arduino sketch to interface with a ps/2 mouse.
 * Also uses serial protocol to talk back to the host
 * and report what it finds.
 */
 
/*
 * Pin 5 is the mouse data pin, pin 6 is the clock pin
 * Feel free to use whatever pins are convenient.
 */
#define MDATA 5
#define MCLK 6
 
/*
 * according to some code I saw, these functions will
 * correctly set the mouse clock and data pins for
 * various conditions.
 */
void gohi(int pin)
{
	pinMode(pin, INPUT);
	digitalWrite(pin, HIGH);
}
 
void golo(int pin)
{
	pinMode(pin, OUTPUT);
	digitalWrite(pin, LOW);
}
 
/* PRECONDITION : clock is HIGH */
/* sends a single bit and returns with clock high */
void sendBit(char bit)
{
	if (bit) {
		gohi(MDATA);
	} 
	else {
		golo(MDATA);
	}
	/* wait for clock cycle */
	while (digitalRead(MCLK) == LOW)
		;
	while (digitalRead(MCLK) == HIGH)
		;
}
 
/* reads a single bit and returns with clock low */
char readBit()
{
	char tmp = 0x00;
	while (digitalRead(MCLK) == HIGH)
		;
	if (digitalRead(MDATA) == HIGH) 
		tmp = 0x01;
 
	while (digitalRead(MCLK) == LOW)
		;
 
	return tmp;
}
 
void mouse_write(char data)
{
	char i;
	char parity = 1;
 
	/* put pins in output mode */
	gohi(MDATA);
	gohi(MCLK);
	delayMicroseconds(300);
	golo(MCLK);
	delayMicroseconds(300);
	golo(MDATA);
	delayMicroseconds(10);
	/* start bit */
	gohi(MCLK);
	/* wait for mouse to take control of clock); */
	sendBit(0);
 
	/* clock is low, and we are clear to send data */
	for (i=0; i < 8; i++) {
 
		sendBit(data & 0x01);
 
		parity = parity ^ (data & 0x01); // might not need this anymore but too lazy to test...
 
		data = data >> 1;
	}  
	/* parity */
	sendBit(parity);
 
	/* stop bit */
	sendBit(1);
 
	/* wait for mouse to switch modes */
	while ((digitalRead(MCLK) == LOW) || (digitalRead(MDATA) == LOW))
		;
	/* put a hold on the incoming data. */
	golo(MCLK);
}
 
/*
 * Get a byte of data from the mouse
 */
char mouse_read(void)
{
	char data = 0x00;
	int i;
	char bit = 0x01;
 
	//	Serial.print("reading byte from mouse\n");
	/* start the clock */
	gohi(MCLK);
	gohi(MDATA);
	delayMicroseconds(50);
	readBit();
 
	// delayMicroseconds(5);  /* not sure why */ // and not evidently needed
 
	for (i=0; i < 8; i++) { // read the bits
		data = data | (readBit()<<i);
	}
 
	/* eat parity bit, which we ignore */
	readBit();
 
	/* eat stop bit */
	readBit(); 
 
	/* put a hold on the incoming data. */
	golo(MCLK);
 
	return data;
}
 
// for the mousewheel
// #define verbose // for verbose output
unsigned char msInitSequence[7]; // should go up on top when ready
 
char writeAndGetResponse(char data) {
	// #ifdef verbose
		// Serial.print("sending :	 ");
		// Serial.print((unsigned char)data, HEX);
		// Serial.print("\t");
	// #endif	
 
	mouse_write( data );
	return response();
}
 
char response() {
	char data = mouse_read();
	// #ifdef verbose
		// Serial.print("echo ");
		// Serial.print((unsigned char)data, HEX);
		// Serial.print(" from mouse\n");
	// #endif
	return data;
}
// 
void msMode() {
	// sequence for ms mode (3 button + scroll)
	// this is a entering procedure and i guess it will
	// work with other mice/ICs as its problably stadard ps2
	// And using an array were just a quick way to handle them
	msInitSequence[0] =0xF3;
	msInitSequence[1] =0xC8;
	msInitSequence[2] =0xF3;
	msInitSequence[3] =0x64;
	msInitSequence[4] =0xF3;
	msInitSequence[5] =0x50;
	msInitSequence[6] =0xF2;
 
 
	int i;
	for(i=0;i<7;i++) 
		writeAndGetResponse(msInitSequence[i]);
}
 
// end of mousewheel stuff
 
 
void showMStat(char mstat)
{
	int i;
	char bit = 0x01;
	for(i = 0; i<8; i++)
	{
		if(mstat&bit)
		{
			Serial.print("\t");
			switch(i)
			{
				case 0:
					Serial.print("L");
					break;
				case 1:
					Serial.print("R");
					break;
				case 2:
					Serial.print("M");
					break;
				case 3:
					// Serial.print(" Reserve ...\t");
					break;
				case 4:
					// Serial.print(" X data negative \t");
					break;
				case 5:
					// Serial.print("Y data negative \t");
					break;
				case 6:
					Serial.print("X data overflow");
					break;
				case 7:
					Serial.print("Y data overflow");
					break;
			}
		}
		bit = bit<<1;
	} 
}
 
void mouse_init()
{
	gohi(MCLK);
	gohi(MDATA);
	//	Serial.print("Sending reset to mouse\n");
	mouse_write(0xff);
	mouse_read();  /* ack byte */
	//	Serial.print("Read ack byte1\n");
	mouse_read();  /* blank */
	mouse_read();  /* blank */
 
	msMode(); // mousewheel code
 
	//	Serial.print("Sending remote mode code\n");
	mouse_write(0xf0);	/* remote mode */
	mouse_read();  /* ack */
	//	Serial.print("Read ack byte2\n");
 
	delayMicroseconds(100);
}
 
void setup()
{
	Serial.begin(9600);
	mouse_init();
}
 
/*
 * get a reading from the mouse and report it back to the
 * host via the serial line.
 */
void loop()
{
	char mstat;
	char mx;
	char my;
	char mz;
 
	/* get a reading from the mouse */
	writeAndGetResponse(0xEB); /* give me data! */ 
 
	mstat = mouse_read();
	mx = mouse_read();
	my = mouse_read();
	mz = mouse_read();
 
	/* send the data back up */
 
	Serial.print("\tmouse status=");
	Serial.print(mstat, BIN);
	Serial.print("\tX=");
	Serial.print(mx, DEC);
	Serial.print("\tY=");
	Serial.print(my, DEC);
	Serial.print("\tZ=");
	Serial.print(mz, DEC);
	showMStat(mstat); // print buttons that are down
	Serial.println();
	delay(20);	/* twiddle */
}

Based on code from The Arduino Playground which also shows the pinouts (where the black and white drawing is the female connector’s pintout, the pins on the mouse itself are a mirror image, like in the blurry photo below) and more code from A world in dk(decay/denmark).

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External Interface Callbacks with Jquery

nilloc — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:59:07 +0000

So first off, NEVER use this most lazy of hacks to reference the flash object when calling a method in a flash file:

^?View Code JAVASCRIPT

// some code
function test() {
	flashID.ner("hello"); // BAAAAAAD!
}

For some reason it works… Some of the time. On Safari when testing running from Flex. On my Mac.

I was being lazy and not really thinking back to how things work in Javascript at the time, then having recently started using Jquery, I tried:

^?View Code JAVASCRIPT

// some code
function test() {
	var flashMovie = $('#flashID');
	flashMovie.ner("hello"); // ALSO BAAAAAAD!
}

Also doesn’t work, for some reason Jquery removes the methods associated with the embed tag that is written, and replaces them with only the Jquery methods. So in order for this to work the code needs to be simply:

^?View Code JAVASCRIPT

function test() {
	var flashMovie = document.getElementByID("flashID");
	flashMovie.ner("hello"); // FINALLY! It worked.
}

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Box2D Shortcuts (Round 1)

nilloc — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 18:02:35 +0000

Since leaving Hunt & Gather, I’ve been (besides relishing the peace and quiet a bit) playing around with some of those Flash libraries I hadn’t had time for. Most tantalizing of which is the Box2D library. I’d attempted to use it for this auto layout class for LDa Architects, but because of time constraints ended up settling for APE which as you can see is a bit out of date at this point. Anyway APE is fine if the number of bodies is small and you only need very basic simulation capabilities (boxes don’t rotate unless they are attached to 2 or more wheels for instance…), but once you wanna do more advanced things, like robots or buoyancy you’ll need a faster more complete engine.

Box2D seems to be the fastest and most current option out there, but it’s got kind of a funky API due in part to being a fairly direct port from C++. The complicated setup is in fact what had kept me from using it for so long, but some better documentation and turorial files available on the Box2D Wiki is making getting started easier. And to make things even simpler to play with, I’m creating a series of wrapper classes that reduce the amount of code needed to get things started.

World.world

^?View Code ACTIONSCRIPT

package com.paperclipped.physics
{
	import Box2D.Collision.b2AABB;
	import Box2D.Common.Math.b2Vec2;
	import Box2D.Dynamics.b2DebugDraw;
	import Box2D.Dynamics.b2World;
 
	import flash.display.Sprite;
 
	/**
	 * This is a container class to make the creation of Box2D World simpler.
	 * Box2D r47 or greater required.
	 * (c) 2009 Collin Reisdorf MIT License
	 * 
	 * @author Collin Reisodrf
	 */	
	public class World
	{
//-----------------------------------------Variables-----------------------------------------//
		private var _scale:Number;
		private var _world:b2World;
//-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------//
 
//------------------------------------------Getters------------------------------------------//
		/**
		 * @return Scale set by the user when the world is constructed.
		 */				
		public function get scale():Number		{ return _scale;	}
		/**
		 * @return The world object made by the constructor.
		 */		
		public function get world():b2World		{ return _world;	}
//-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------//
 
//----------------------------------------Constructor----------------------------------------//		
		public function World(width:uint, height:uint, debugSprite:Sprite=null, showCenterOfMass:Boolean=false, gravity:b2Vec2=null, scale:Number=30, padding:uint=1000, doSleep:Boolean=true)
		{
			var worldAABB:b2AABB = new b2AABB();
				worldAABB.lowerBound.Set(-padding, -padding);
				worldAABB.upperBound.Set(width+padding, width+padding);
 
			gravity = (gravity)? gravity:new b2Vec2(0, 10.0);
			_world = new b2World(worldAABB, gravity, doSleep);
 
			if(debugSprite)
			{
				var	debugDraw:b2DebugDraw = new b2DebugDraw();
					debugDraw.SetSprite(debugSprite);
					debugDraw.SetDrawScale(scale);
					debugDraw.SetFillAlpha(0.3);
					debugDraw.SetLineThickness(1.0);
					debugDraw.SetFlags(b2DebugDraw.e_shapeBit | b2DebugDraw.e_jointBit | uint((showCenterOfMass)? b2DebugDraw.e_centerOfMassBit:0));
				_world.SetDebugDraw(debugDraw);
			}
		}
//-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------//
 
//--------------------------------------Private Methods--------------------------------------//
//-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------//
 
//--------------------------------------Public  Methods--------------------------------------//
//-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------//
	}
}

Chain

^?View Code ACTIONSCRIPT

package com.paperclipped.physics
{
	import Box2D.Collision.Shapes.b2PolygonDef;
	import Box2D.Common.Math.b2Vec2;
	import Box2D.Dynamics.Joints.b2Joint;
	import Box2D.Dynamics.Joints.b2RevoluteJointDef;
	import Box2D.Dynamics.b2Body;
	import Box2D.Dynamics.b2BodyDef;
	import Box2D.Dynamics.b2World;
 
	/**
	 * This is a container class to make the creation of a chain simpler
	 * Box2D r47 or greater required.
	 * (c) 2009 Collin Reisdorf MIT License
	 * 
	 * @author Collin Reisodrf
	 */	
	public class Chain
	{
//-----------------------------------------Variables-----------------------------------------//
		public static const HORIZONTAL:String = 'h';
		public static const VERTICAL:String = 'v'; // not supported yet
 
		private var _bodies:Array;
		private var _joints:Array;
//		private var _parent:
		private var _world:b2World;
//-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------//
 
//------------------------------------------Getters------------------------------------------//
		public function get bodies():Array 	{ return _bodies;								}
		public function get end():b2Body 	{ return _bodies[_bodies.length-1] as b2Body;	}
		public function get joints():Array	{ return _joints;								}
		public function get start():b2Body	{ return _bodies[0] as b2Body;					}
//-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------//
 
//------------------------------------------Setters------------------------------------------//
//-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------//
 
//----------------------------------------Constructor----------------------------------------//
		public function Chain(world:b2World, numLinks:uint=3, anchorX:int=0, anchorY:int=0, direction:String="h", swingLimit:uint=0, /*parent=null,*/ scale:uint=30)
		{
			_world = world;
			_bodies = new Array();
			_joints = new Array();
//			_parent = parent; // not sure what/how to attach this to yet...
 
			var ground:b2Body = world.GetGroundBody();
			var i:int;
			var anchor:b2Vec2 = new b2Vec2();
			var body:b2Body;
			var joint:b2Joint;
 
			var sd:b2PolygonDef = new b2PolygonDef();
			sd.SetAsBox(24 / scale, 5 / scale);
			sd.density = 100.0;
			sd.friction = 0.8;
 
			var bd:b2BodyDef = new b2BodyDef();
 
			var jd:b2RevoluteJointDef = new b2RevoluteJointDef();
			if(swingLimit > 0)
			{
				jd.lowerAngle = -swingLimit / (180/Math.PI);
				jd.upperAngle = swingLimit / (180/Math.PI);
				jd.enableLimit = true;
			}else
			{
				jd.enableLimit = false;
			}
 
			var prevBody:b2Body = ground;
			for (i = 0; i < 3; ++i)
			{
//				if(i == 0)
//				{
//				trace("enabled motor damnit");
//					jd.enableMotor = true;
//					jd.motorSpeed = 1;
//					jd.maxMotorTorque = 100;
//				}else
//				{
//					jd.enableMotor = false;
//
//				}
 
				bd.position.Set((anchorX + 22 + 44 * i) / scale, anchorY / scale);
				body = world.CreateBody(bd);
				body.CreateShape(sd);
				body.SetMassFromShapes();
 
				anchor.Set((anchorX + 44 * i) / scale, anchorY / scale);
				jd.Initialize(prevBody, body, anchor);
				joint = world.CreateJoint(jd);
 
				prevBody = body;
				_bodies.push(body);
				_joints.push(joint);
			}
		}
//-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------//
 
//--------------------------------------Private Methods--------------------------------------//
//-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------//
 
//--------------------------------------Public  Methods--------------------------------------//
//-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------//
	}
}

Keep an eye out for more, I’m working on robot leg linkages next. And also trying to get a new job

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Enabling Scripts for IE 8+ and Firefox, Safari and Non-IE Browsers.

nilloc — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 23:15:12 +0000

So we had this weird bug, that we were likely the culprit of, but that we didn’t have time to properly find/fix involving SWFAddress, and some JSON and IE 6 & 7. Namely with anything less then IE 8 inclusion of the SWFAddress javascript file was killing the app when we removed it, things worked fine, albeit without deep link or browser history support.

So we needed to have a way for IE8, Firefox, Safari, Chrome (why not even Opera) load SWFAddress, but the rest not, behold:

^?View Code HTML

Clever eh? it’s the extra -->s that do it, so all browers but IE ignore the only the (otherwise standard) conditional code, but still use the script, like we just put a couple of regular old comments up in there. This has only been tested on a few machines so your milage may vary. Lemme know if things workout (or don’t).

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SWFAddress, if You Aren’t Using it for All Your Flash, Start to

nilloc — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 16:30:39 +0000

We’ve been using SWFAddress for a while now, and while I was cleaning old project files out of Flex I came across my first Flex Test using it. It’s simple, and in fact, SWFAddress has been improved a bunch since this test was made (mostly involving SEO, and fallback links + Google Analytics). Now we’re using it for running our entire navigation schemes for all Flash sites, mini-sites, components, and even in our pitches.

Check out my example (click anywhere to move the box, then use the back/forward buttons for undo/redo).

^?View Code ACTIONSCRIPT

package {
	import com.asual.swfaddress.SWFAddress;
	import com.asual.swfaddress.SWFAddressEvent;
 
	import flash.display.Shape;
	import flash.display.Sprite;
	import flash.events.MouseEvent;
 
	public class SWFAddress_test extends Sprite
	{
		private var _square:Shape;
 
		public function SWFAddress_test()
		{
			SWFAddress.addEventListener(SWFAddressEvent.INIT, init);
		}
 
		private function init(evt:SWFAddressEvent):void
		{
			SWFAddress.addEventListener(SWFAddressEvent.CHANGE, handleSWFAddressChange);
			stage.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, gotoAddress);
 
			_square = new Shape();
			_square.graphics.beginFill(0x0);
			_square.graphics.drawRect(0,0,50,50);
			this.addChild(_square);
		}
 
		private function handleSWFAddressChange(evt:SWFAddressEvent):void
		{
			trace(evt.path);
			var address:Array = evt.path.split("/", 3);
			var xLoc:Number = Number(address[1]);
			if(!isNaN(xLoc)) moveSquare(xLoc);
 
		}
 
		private function gotoAddress(evt:MouseEvent):void
		{
			SWFAddress.setValue(this.mouseX.toString());
		}
 
		private function moveSquare(loc:Number):void
		{
			_square.x = loc;
		}
	}
}

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Why we use the MIT license for all our work.

nilloc — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 03:02:30 +0000

(Please open the article to see the flash file or player.)

Plenty that’s been heard and said before, but with some good jokes, and relevant to the fans / obedient followers of Shepard Fairey and his arrest in Boston. (Glad I live in Somerville).

I still think his arrest has to do with the upcoming mayoral race.

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Flex Custom Validator Email Confirmation

jeff — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 18:18:16 +0000

Pretty simple stuff. This was driving me a bit crazy at the beginning of the day so I decided to just cut and paste my source code hoping this will help someone else out. Basically I just want to create a custom validator that makes sure one field is equal to another in flex. Pretty simple but if you are a noob you will find this task a bit sucky…. Her is the code

Actionscript Custom Validator.

^?View Code ACTIONSCRIPT

package com.flextradeshow.classes
{
	import flash.text.TextField;
 
	import mx.controls.TextInput;
	import mx.validators.ValidationResult;
	import mx.validators.Validator;
 
	public class EqualValidator extends Validator
	{
		private var results:Array;
 
		[Bindable]
		public var textbox:TextInput = new TextInput();
 
		public function EqualValidator()
		{
			super();
 
		}
		override protected function doValidation(value:Object):Array
		{
			results = [];
			results = super.doValidation(value);
			if(results.length > 0)
			{
				return results;
			}
			if(value!=textbox.text || !value)
			{
				results.push(new ValidationResult(true,null,"NaN","Not a matching value sorry"));
				return results;
			}
			return results;
		}
	}
}

This is the code you need in your view to use the validator.

^?View Code XML

 version="1.0" encoding="utf-8">
 xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" xmlns:tsclasses="com.flextradeshow.classes.*" >
	
		id="nameValidator"
		source="{_iname}"
		property="text"
		minLength="4"
	/>
	
		id="emailValidator"
		source="{_iemail}"
		property="text"
	/>
	
		id="emailConfirmationValidator"
		source="{_iconfirmemail}"
		property="text"
	/>
	 id="sameEmailValidator" source="{_iconfirmemail}" textbox="{_iemail}" property="text" />
 
	 labelWidth="100" width="302" height="100%" horizontalScrollPolicy="off">
		 label="Full Name" required="true">
			  id="_iname"/>
		>
		 label="Email" required="true">
			 id="_iemail"/>
		>
			 label="Confirm Email" required="true">
			 id="_iconfirmemail" />
		>
		 label="Birthday">
			  id="_ibirthday" />
		>
		 height="15"/>
		 text="Free mimoDesk Sample (Choose One)">>
		 paddingLeft="110">
			 id="freemimodesk"/>
			 label="Star Wars" groupName="freemimodesk" selected="true"/>
			 label="Tokidoki" groupName="freemimodesk"/>
			 label="Original Core Series" groupName="freemimodesk"/>
			 label="Not Interested" groupName="freemimodesk"/>
		>
		 height="15"/>
		 text="Subscribe to any of the following Newsletters">>
		 paddingLeft="110">
			 label="Consumer" selected="true"/>
			 label="Press"/>
			 label="Wholesale"/>
		>
		 horizontalAlign="right" width="100%">
			 label="Subscribe"/>
		>
	>
>

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Facebook Post Image Test

nilloc — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 17:58:28 +0000

Yeah old F1 Pics.

Some explanation: We’re working on a RSS feed that can be read by Facebook so it can add images to the newsfeed post automagically. Then we want to see if when we change it in the RSS feed, it updates on FB or not. Fingers Crossed.

Update: This worked out fine, but once the image is posted you’d have to replace the image on your webserver, with one of the same name, to change the one on FB (Since they externally load it each time).

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Quick Look for Actionscript (and most other c-like source-code)

nilloc — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 20:51:09 +0000

Stumbled across this Quick Look plugin the other day while learning Objective-C, and while it previewed and code colored my .h and .m files, it was a bit disappointing that it didn’t work on .as files.

So not quite as simple as adding .as to the info.plist—what I’ve done is add public.archive.applesingle to the list of UTI types. This is a bit of a hack, because Adobe doesn’t export a profile UTI with .as files. So if they do start doing that someday, this may cause problems, but in the meantime, it’s the simplest way to get quicklook working for .as files.

Download Quick Look with ActionScript Plugin

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Quick Look can do EPS too.

nilloc — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 08:15:44 +0000

Have to find the correct version of that logo to add to flash, but don’t want to load them all in the unbelievably slow preview app, or bother loading up Illustrator only to find out the designer sent you a photoshop eps without vector data? Sorry I’m venting a bit, but this plugin really saves me time—and it’s free.
EPS Quicklook Plugin

There’s actually a whole bunch of other plugins that are helpful too (beware: the zip one is pretty slow though).
List of Quick Look Plugins for Leopard

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FIVe3D Rocks, but name is hard to type fast…

nilloc — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 17:52:12 +0000

I don’t know where the capitalization came from, but it’s such a simple API for anyone who’s happy with AS3 (is there anyone who isn’t?) that FIVe3D worth the challenging finger-work. I made this demo in about 3 hours total, it draws bitmaps, and adds them to Sprite3Ds, and mimicks what we’ve been working on for 2 months in Papervision3D (I’ll definitly have a link to that when its fully launched).

For a great many simpler 3D applications, I think FIVe3D is the way-to-go, but Papervision3D still does have an edge in speed (when properly optimized that is) if dealing with more then 20 or so planes.

One quirk of FIVe3D that I initially didn’t get, was that the order of my addChild statements determines what shows up on top of what, not the Z value of the sprite, so included with this source is a handy depth sorter loop, that will work with any 53D setup.

(Please open the article to see the flash file or player.)
FIVe3D Test Source

Also modified it a little so that height and width could be stored in the sprite3D class, i know bad me, but until i get my head around Mathieu’s version of Matrix3D. That ugly blinking plane on the right side is actually a series of bitmapDatas, that are playing back (like cached animation) that I learned from John Grden a few weeks ago. I’m working on my own version of a class to automatically create bmp animations from a timeline swf, unless his goes open source…

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Some Flash Spring Physics

nilloc — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 16:45:14 +0000

Finally had an excuse to make some connected springs, ala the Visual Thesaurus. This was the last of the tests before realizing that the project would be simpler.

(Please open the article to see the flash file or player.)

Double-click a dot to add a child dot, or click and drag any dot to move it.

~~Some code will be on the way in a bit.~~

Update

Last edited by nilloc on Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Oh yeah, this is kinda late (my how the last 7 months flew by), but here’s the actual project in action:
Lil’ Wayne’s World

Oh yeah and here’s the source for the simple spring example above (AS2):
blowingthroughlinescom_spring_physics

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ruby on rails 2.1 upload music and read id3 tags before saving to amazon S3

jeff — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 01:29:06 +0000

Sorry it has been so long since my last post. I doubt anyone is reading this anyways. In this article i’m going to attempt to show you what you need to know in order to upload a file (music in this case) into your rails application and safely tuck it away on amazons simple storage solution. I realize this is a very specific application. However, it took me two days to get this working properly so I figured i’d share what I did in order to get this working. I’m assuming you are using rails 2.1 (but that may not be required) and have already created your application. if not you can create and application by issuing the typical rails application_nam command

If you are just planning to upload file to S3 and do not need to manipulate them else do anything to them before they end up on the server. Then I suggest you just use the plugin.

simply install

script/plugin install http://svn.techno-weenie.net/projects/plugins/attachment_fu/

after that just follow the instructions on http://clarkware.com/cgi/blosxom/2007/02/24 you should be up and running in no time with the help of this plugin

Lets assume you don’t want to use the plugin

But why would we not want to use the plugin:?

Way more code than you need for the task at hand
No simple way to manipulate the file or extract data from it before sending to S3

So now that we are going to perform this operation manually there are a few things you will need for this example. You will need to install the mp3info gem as root at command prompt.
gem install mp3info
gem install aws-s3
Say yes to any dependencies once those two gems successfully install you will have to restart your webserver and they will be ready to use in your application

I’m going to skip over a lot here because I don’t know how you want to configure your application however the steps are pretty simple create some scaffold. Make an upload form.
and then save the data. I’m only going to show you the model code. I believe everything is self explanatory from there. I will be happy to field any questions if anyone cares to ask. Enought chit chat show me the code

^?View Code RUBY

require "ftools"
require "aws/s3"
require "mp3info"
class Song < ActiveRecord::Base
   include AWS::S3
   belongs_to              :user
   has_one                 :song_metadata
   before_validation       :set_all_meta_data
   after_save              :write_file
   after_destroy           :delete_file
   before_create           :connect_to_amazon
   validates_inclusion_of  :mime_type, :in =>%w( audio/mpeg audio/mpg ), :message =>"The file you uploaded is not an mp3"
   validates_inclusion_of  :file_size, :in =>300.kilobytes..20.megabytes, :message=>"must be between 300k and 20mb"
   attr_accessor :id3tags
   def song=(file_data)
     @file_data = file_data
   end
   def write_file
     buckets = Service.buckets
     bucketexists=false
     buckets.each do |bucket|
       if bucket.name == AppConfig.ec2["bucket"]
         bucketexists=true
       end
     end
     if !bucketexists
       Bucket.create(AppConfig.ec2["bucket"])
     end
     @file_data.rewind
     if !S3Object.exists? get_file_url, AppConfig.ec2["bucket"]
      createsong_meta
      S3Object.store(get_file_url, @file_data.read, AppConfig.ec2["bucket"],:access => :public_read)
     end
   end
def createsong_meta
        m = SongMetadata.new
        self.song_metadata = m
        if id3tags.title
         m.title       = id3tags.title
        else
         m.title = "No song name set"
        end
        if id3tags.artist
          m.artist      = id3tags.artist
        else
          m.artist = "No artist name set"
        end
        if id3tags.album
          m.album = id3tags.album
        else
          m.album = "No album name set"
        end
        m.year        = id3tags.year
        m.track_number= id3tags.tracknum
        m.save!
   end
   def get_song
     self.connect_to_amazon
     S3Object.value mp3_url, AppConfig.ec2["bucket"]
   end
   def delete_file
     self.connect_to_amazon
     S3Object.delete mp3_url, AppConfig.ec2["bucket"]
   end
   def set_all_meta_data
     if @file_data!="" && @file_data
      @file_data.rewind
      self.mime_type = @file_data.content_type
      if self.mime_type == "audio/mpg" || self.mime_type=="audio/mpeg"
        tmplocal = "#{RAILS_ROOT}/tmp/musicfiles"
        tmpname = "#{Time.now}-#{@file_data.original_filename}"
        File.makedirs(tmplocal)
        File.open("#{tmplocal}/#{tmpname}", "w") { |file| file.write(@file_data.read) }
        mymp3 = Mp3Info.open("#{tmplocal}/#{tmpname}")        self.id3tags     = mymp3.tag
        self.bitrate     = mymp3.bitrate
        self.samplerate  = mymp3.samplerate
        self.samplerate  = mymp3.samplerate
        self.mpeg_version= mymp3.mpeg_version
        self.layer       = mymp3.layer
        self.length      = mymp3.length
        self.file_size   = @file_data.size
        mymp3.close
        File.delete("#{tmplocal}/#{tmpname}")
        self.mp3_url = get_file_url
      end
    end
   end
   def get_file_url
    "#{user_id}/xrays/#{id}/song/#{@file_data.original_filename}"
   end
   def connect_to_amazon
     Base.establish_connection!(:access_key_id=> AppConfig.ec2["access_key"], :secret_access_key => AppConfig.ec2["secret_key"])
   end
end

That is really the meat and potatoes. It is all hanging out in the model nicely tucked away. getting the data out of S3 is simple and is left as an exercise for the reader. Obviously you need to insert your own access_key and secret key. I’m not making any assumptions about the configuration of your application and thus this is entirely us to you the reader as well. Hope this helps someone..

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Fixed Opening FLAs in Flex 3 for OS X

nilloc — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 21:54:05 +0000

So we’ve been developing in Flex 3 for the last 3 months now, and I’m wondering why I didn’t switch earlier… Anyway a small annoyance that bothered me for the first couple weeks was the inability to double click any files that needed to be edited outside of Flex. It just throws this weird error:
Unable to open external editor…
(com.adobe.flexbuilder.ui.osx_3.0.194161)
Sort of more about the error hereâ€¦

With a little research it seems that this is a problem with the System Editor settings with Eclipse itself (which Flex Builder is based, for the noobs like I me).

So taking a bit of a shot in the dark I looked through com.adobe.flexbuilder.ui.osx_3.0.194161, and it didn’t seem to have anything other then commands to open system editable? files. So just deleted the package from the plugins folder (actually i moved it to a plugins-disabled folder in the main Flex directory), and holy crap it worked!

So far I and my co-developer Sean, and our intern Derek haven’t come across any other errors, or changes in performance, just the unfettered ability to double-click FLAs and watch them load in Flash.

Give it a try and lemme know if your results vary. Though I suppose you should be doing so at your own risk…

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Automatic Bending Joints in As3 (Simple Bones)

nilloc — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 22:32:40 +0000

This was part of a Rock’em Sock’em Robot game& 8212;for an internal sales project no less! At any rate the budget was good, but the timeline was a little tight, and I was still getting my head around AS3 and the new Flash 9 features.

So I had this idea:

I’m working with a bunch of designer’s who are really good with illustrator, and keyframe animating, but don’t have the time to animate all the movements (each head, body, upper arm x2 lower arm x2, legs, hands, feet… well you get the idea). So I needed a way to reduce the number of animations that the designers would be needed for, but also not create too many Tweeners or other hard coded animation solutions. I really needed bones, but those don’t seem to be arriving for a while, so the next best thing was automatically animated elbows (and knees). Fortunately for me the illustrator I was working with designed the robot’s arms and legs with even length upper and lower lengths so I could do some trig and get this:

^?View Code ACTIONSCRIPT

var theta:Number = Math.acos((distance/2)/limbL)*180/Math.PI;
 
this.limb.rotation =  baseRotation - theta;
this.omoLimb.rotation = theta * 2;

(Please open the article to see the flash file or player.)
Click and drag the hand or foot to see the automagic joint rotation

AS3 Joint class source file

Right now it’s limited to even length bones, but my little brother with the physics and math degrees, says he has a better equation, so as soon as I have time I’ll update the classes. A public SVN repository is in the works too, stay tuned.

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Rsyslogd man pages have a great sense of humor

jeff — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 17:08:43 +0000

During a day of red5 programming, in the hopes to get a true streaming solution for my flash projects I stumbled upon this little gem. I’ll post about my experiences with red5 at a later time. However, for now I think you should check out this excerpt from the rsyslogd man pages. We are using rsyslog in the hopes that we can log all the red5 events to a centralized server for easier reporting. Check back for updates on that. As always if you like this article please digg it and or leave a comment so we don’t feel like we are talking to ourselves…. Enjoy

At least the suggest violence as a last ditch effort. Hilarious open source world keep it up…

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Highlight selected navigation item in ruby on rails

jeff — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 15:54:30 +0000

For an example site where I used this technique please refer to www.howcuteismypet.com you’ll notice that when you click on best / worst or most recent it is highlighted with a black underline. This type of highlighting seems trivial. However to do it in rails in a nice elegant way is not obvious. So without further a do, I present my method. This method dis-involves the controller which makes for a cleaner more centralized place for managing your highlighted navigation.

The primary thing required is a method for creating navigation items. I choose to put my method / helper. in the app/helpers/application_helper.rb that way it will be available to all all of my views. The method I chose to use is

^?View Code RUBY

def nav_selected_no_span(hash_name, selectedkey )
                result =""
                hash_name.each do |item|
                        if(item[0].to_s== selectedkey)
                                result +=""+item[0].to_s.gsub(" ", "_").downcase+" selected">"+link_to(item[0].to_s,item[1].to_s)+"
"
                        else
                                result +=""+item[0].to_s.gsub(" ","_").downcase+" ns">"+link_to(item[0].to_s,item[1].to_s)+"
"
                        end
                  end
                  return result
        end

This function is fairly, simple what it allows you to do in your view is, make an unorded list of your navigation items. You would use this method most likely in your app/views/layout/application.rb. An example of the navigation from howcuteismypet.com is:

^?View Code RUBY

6
7
8

<ul>
     <%= nav_selected_no_span([["Vote On Pets",home_path],["Best / Worst",best_worst_path],["Most Recent",most_recent_path]], params[:location] ) %>
ul>

The important thing to notice is the params[:location] the function above says that if params[:location] matches one of the names like “Vote On Pets” then highlight that item. Pretty simple. Then in your css you can define the rules that make something selected. Now you may be wondering where params[:location] is set. And you would be correct to wonder that. That parameter is actually set in your routes file believe it or not. As an example i’ll show you the route for “Vote On Pets”. located in config/routes.rb your could do something like this.

map.home '', :controller => 'index', :action => 'index', :location=>'Vote On Pets'

if you wanted most recent you would do something like this

map.most_recent '/most_recent', :controller=>'index',:action=>'recent',:location=>'Most Recent'

The location parameter is sent to the helper and the correct items is selected. So I hope this helps you in your efforts to stay dry and much more organized.

Questions and comments are very welcome on this blog. We like to know we are not talking to ourselves, so if you would like further explanation please feel free to post a comment.

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Accordion Meets XML

nilloc — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 06:53:40 +0000

So a reader asked how to implement our accordion script using XML to populate it, and I think the results aren’t half bad. I’m not sure what he meant by a cervical shaped accordion though… Circular maybe? hopefully?

(Please open the article to see the flash file or player.)

source files for the xml’d accordion

^?View Code ACTIONSCRIPT

private function init()
{
	var request:URLRequest = new URLRequest("wp-content/xml/images.xml");
	loader = new URLLoader(request);
	loader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, loadComplete);
}
 
private function loadComplete(evt:Event)
{
	data = XML(evt.target.data);
	trace(data.panel.length());
 
	accord = new accordion(500, 400, data.panel.length(), 20);
 
	for(var i:int=0; i < data.panel.length(); i++)
	{
		var panel:MovieClip = new NavPanel(data.panel[i].name);
		var contents:MovieClip = new ImgHolder(data.panel[i].img);
		accord.addPanel(panel, contents);
	}
	addChild(accord);
	accord.openPanel(1);
}

^?View Code XML

 version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
>
	>
		>panel one>
		>img/1905143678_218d1aa13a.jpg>
	>
	>
		>panel zwei>
		>img/1904306625_fa9cf2cd33.jpg>
	>
	>
		>panel tre>
		>img/1904436509_2266d2daf2.jpg>
	>
	>
		>panel quattre>
		>img/1904437975_441fec52af.jpg>
	>
>

Tabs and Linefeeds (Newlines) in XML driven TextFields Man Flash can be annoying sometimes. So I’m showing some...

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Prototype javascript css Tabs

jeff — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 21:53:30 +0000

Recently I had to make tabs. Something that has been solved hundreds of times. However I didn’t want to fuck around with a special user interface framework like http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/. Since I use prototype on almost every project since its inception, I decided to just roll out my own solution using the prototype library as a base. It turns out that the implementation was incredibly simple. I have attached a working example for your copy and paste pleasure. The javascript is incredibly simple. The entire javascript programming was less than 25 lines.

^?View Code JAVASCRIPT

var tablinks = null;
var tabcontent = null;
function handletab(event){
	var element = event.element();
	for(i=0;i<tablinks.length;i++){
		var tabli = tablinks[i].up('li');
		if(tablinks[i]==element){
			tabcontent[i].show();
			tabli.removeClassName('deactivetab');
			tabli.addClassName('activetab');
		}else{
			tabcontent[i].hide();
			tabli.removeClassName('activetab');
			tabli.addClassName('deactivetab');
		}
	}
}
function homepageSetup(){
	tablinks = $$('a.tablink');
	tabcontent = $$('div.tabcontent');
	for(i=0;i<tablinks.length;i++){
		tablinks[i].observe('click',handletab);
		tablinks[i].onclick = function(){return false};
	}
}

Prototype javascript css tabs – blowingthroughlines.com

If you find this article and or code useful feel free to leave a comment. I’d love to hear what you think.

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Google maps state zoom and center code

jeff — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 22:56:00 +0000

This is exactly what you would think it is. I fucked around with getting these bounding values so you don’t have to. I think you will find this useful if a client says to you, “now how do I jump to a state”. You will need the prototype library for this to work. I use it for element selection. If you know how to get the element in other ways then you likely don’t need me to tell you how to change this code. If you would like to download prototype click here.

make sure you include the prototype library before the code for you map.

First the select box that you will need somewhere on your UI

The javascript you no doubt need, is the zoom to state code. It is basically a large switch statement with sensible latitudes and longitudes for zooming and centering. So here it is

^?View Code JAVASCRIPT

function zoomState(){
	var sw;
	var ne;
	switch($('state').value){
		case 'AL':
			sw=new GLatLng(29.11377539511439, -92.7685546875); ne = new GLatLng(35.96022296929667, -80.4638671875);
			break;
		case 'AK':
			sw=new GLatLng(58.17070248348609, -175.166015625); ne = new GLatLng(71.63599288330606, -125.94726562500001);
			break;
		case 'AZ':
			sw=new GLatLng(30.977609093348686, -117.421875); ne = new GLatLng(37.68382032669382, -105.1171875);
			break;
		case 'AR':
			sw=new GLatLng(31.409912194070973, -97.998046875); ne = new GLatLng(38.08268954483802, -85.693359375);
			break;
		case 'CA':
			sw=new GLatLng(30.14512718337613, -127.13378906250001); ne = new GLatLng(43.13306116240612, -102.5244140625);
			break;
		case 'CO':
			sw=new GLatLng(35.55010533588551, -111.6650390625); ne = new GLatLng(41.88592102814744, -99.3603515625);
			break;
		case 'CT':
			sw=new GLatLng(40.75557964275588, -74.24560546875); ne = new GLatLng(42.27730877423709, -71.16943359375);
			break;
		case 'DE':
			sw=new GLatLng(37.361425501905146, -78.321533203125); ne = new GLatLng(40.52215098562377, -72.169189453125);
			break;
		case 'DC':
			sw=new GLatLng(37.142803443716836, -80.101318359375); ne = new GLatLng(40.3130432088809, -73.948974609375);
			break;
		case 'FL':
			sw=new GLatLng(24.86650252692691, -89.4287109375); ne = new GLatLng(32.008075959291055, -77.1240234375);
			break;
		case 'GA':
			sw=new GLatLng(29.286398892934763, -89.296875); ne = new GLatLng(36.12012758978146, -76.9921875);
			break;
		case 'HI':
			sw=new GLatLng(18.656654486539995, -160.499267578125); ne = new GLatLng(22.46180203533398, -154.346923828125);
			break;
		case 'ID':
			sw=new GLatLng(39.061849134291535, -127.17773437499999); ne = new GLatLng(50.54136296522161, -102.568359375);
			break;
		case 'IL':
			sw=new GLatLng(36.79169061907076, -95.009765625); ne = new GLatLng(43.02071359427862, -82.705078125);
			break;
		case 'IN':
			sw=new GLatLng(36.84446074079564, -92.26318359375); ne = new GLatLng(43.068887774169625, -79.95849609375);
			break;
		case 'IA':
			sw=new GLatLng(38.99357205820944, -99.99755859375); ne = new GLatLng(45.02695045318543, -87.69287109375);
			break;
		case 'KS':
			sw=new GLatLng(35.28150065789119, -104.39208984375); ne = new GLatLng(41.64007838467891, -92.08740234375);
			break;
		case 'KY':
			sw=new GLatLng(34.488447837809304, -91.4501953125); ne = new GLatLng(40.91351257612757, -79.1455078125);
			break;
		case 'LA':
			sw=new GLatLng(27.955591004642528, -98.67919921875); ne = new GLatLng(34.88593094075315, -86.37451171875);
			break;
		case 'ME':
			sw=new GLatLng(42.212245162885814, -75.12451171875); ne = new GLatLng(47.945786463687185, -62.81982421875);
			break;
		case 'MD':
			sw=new GLatLng(37.509725842937485, -80.057373046875); ne = new GLatLng(40.66397287638688, -73.905029296875);
			break;
		case 'MA':
			sw=new GLatLng(40.6723059714534, -75.047607421875); ne = new GLatLng(43.683763524273346, -68.895263671875);
			break;
		case 'MI':
			sw=new GLatLng(40.38002840251183, -90.17578125); ne = new GLatLng(46.28622391806705, -77.87109375);
			break;
		case 'MN':
			sw=new GLatLng(40.58058466412761, -105.5126953125); ne = new GLatLng(51.781435604431195, -80.9033203125);
			break;
		case 'MS':
			sw=new GLatLng(29.24806324379655, -95.361328125); ne = new GLatLng(36.08462129606931, -83.056640625);
			break;
		case 'MO':
			sw=new GLatLng(35.40696093270201, -98.7451171875); ne = new GLatLng(41.75492216766298, -86.4404296875);
			break;
		case 'MT':
			sw=new GLatLng(40.58058466412761, -122.12402343749999); ne = new GLatLng(51.781435604431195, -97.5146484375);
			break;
		case 'NE':
			sw=new GLatLng(38.70265930723801, -106.23779296875); ne = new GLatLng(44.762336674810996, -93.93310546875);
			break;
		case 'NV':
			sw=new GLatLng(35.79999392988527, -122.80517578125); ne = new GLatLng(42.114523952464246, -110.50048828125);
			break;
		case 'NH':
			sw=new GLatLng(42.512601715736665, -74.77294921875); ne = new GLatLng(45.43700828867389, -68.62060546875);
			break;
		case 'NJ':
			sw=new GLatLng(37.86618078529668, -77.926025390625); ne = new GLatLng(41.004775422229464, -71.773681640625);
			break;
		case 'NM':
			sw=new GLatLng(30.902224705171417, -111.708984375); ne = new GLatLng(37.614231415424165, -99.404296875);
			break;
		case 'NY':
			sw=new GLatLng(40.212440718286466, -80.88134765625); ne = new GLatLng(46.13417004624326, -68.57666015625);
			break;
		case 'NC':
			sw=new GLatLng(31.9148675032762, -87.1435546875); ne = new GLatLng(38.54816542304656, -74.8388671875);
			break;
		case 'ND':
			sw=new GLatLng(44.49650533109345, -106.80908203125); ne = new GLatLng(50.00773901463685, -94.50439453125);
			break;
		case 'OH':
			sw=new GLatLng(37.35269280367273, -87.978515625); ne = new GLatLng(43.5326204268101, -75.673828125);
			break;
		case 'OK':
			sw=new GLatLng(31.877557643340015, -104.12841796875); ne = new GLatLng(38.51378825951165, -91.82373046875);
			break;
		case 'OR':
			sw=new GLatLng(41.21172151054787, -126.123046875); ne = new GLatLng(47.040182144806664, -113.818359375);
			break;
		case 'PA':
			sw=new GLatLng(37.63163475580643, -83.43017578125); ne = new GLatLng(43.78695837311561, -71.12548828125);
			break;
		case 'RI':
			sw=new GLatLng(41.3500103516271, -72.2186279296875); ne = new GLatLng(42.108411365705855, -70.6805419921875);
			break;
		case 'SC':
			sw=new GLatLng(32.01739159980399, -83.814697265625); ne = new GLatLng(35.398005947151056, -77.662353515625);
			break;
		case 'SD':
			sw=new GLatLng(41.73852846935917, -106.36962890625); ne = new GLatLng(47.517200697839414, -94.06494140625);
			break;
		case 'TN':
			sw=new GLatLng(32.287132632616355, -92.900390625); ne = new GLatLng(38.89103282648846, -80.595703125);
			break;
		case 'TX':
			sw=new GLatLng(24.5271348225978, -112.060546875); ne = new GLatLng(38.341656192795924, -87.451171875);
			break;
		case 'UT':
			sw=new GLatLng(36.29741818650808, -117.44384765625); ne = new GLatLng(42.56926437219384, -105.13916015625);
			break;
		case 'VT':
			sw=new GLatLng(42.36666166373274, -75.706787109375); ne = new GLatLng(45.29807513870794, -69.554443359375);
			break;
		case 'VA':
			sw=new GLatLng(34.397844946449844, -85.4736328125); ne = new GLatLng(40.83043687764923, -73.1689453125);
			break;
		case 'WA':
			sw=new GLatLng(44.99588261816546, -126.58447265624999); ne = new GLatLng(50.45750402042055, -114.27978515625);
			break;
		case 'WV':
			sw=new GLatLng(35.79999392988527, -86.41845703125); ne = new GLatLng(42.114523952464246, -74.11376953125);
			break;
		case 'WI':
			sw=new GLatLng(41.62365539068639, -95.80078125); ne = new GLatLng(47.41322033016902, -83.49609375);
			break;
		case 'WY':
			sw=new GLatLng(39.99395569397331, -113.8623046875); ne = new GLatLng(45.93587062119052, -101.5576171875);
			break;
		default:
			sw=new GLatLng(10.141931686131018, -145.1953125); ne = new GLatLng(59.88893689676585, -46.7578125);
			break;
 
	}
	bound = new GLatLngBounds(sw,ne);
	map.setZoom(map.getBoundsZoomLevel(bound));
	map.panTo(bound.getCenter());
}

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Flash Input Text Bug

nilloc — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 17:59:35 +0000

The other day I was throwing an email form together really quickly, and decided to lay it out on the stage. So added 4 input fields, for name, email, subject, and message, and used those names as the instance names. then i put some labels in them, since i was planning on doing some nice ON_FOCUS text relacement. but before going much farther i needed to check to see if the alignment was right, and tested the movie.
At which point I quite unexpectedly got this error:

Error: Error #2078: The name property of a Timeline-placed object cannot be modified.
	at flash.display::DisplayObject/set name()
	at flash.display::Sprite/flash.display:Sprite::constructChildren()
	at flash.display::Sprite$iinit()
	at flash.display::MovieClip$iinit()

And I hadn’t even imported the form class I had used a dozen times before…

Solution

The Flash IDE has some reserved instance names stored in it that will give you immediate warnings when you try to use them (try entering name txt) name isn’t one of the reserved words, but—at least for input text fields—it should be.
Seems like they could have saved users some time and frustration by reserving that word in the IDE so that it can’t be entered.

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Tweener Tips

nilloc — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 05:03:42 +0000

We’ve been using Tweener here for a few of our examples and while looking for info on Bezier Movement like the old MC_Tween used to support I came across one of Tweener’s co-creator’s blogs: labs.zeh.com.br
It has a really good post about how he decided on the syntax for the bezier Tween. It also includes a terrific example that applies it to a Papervision3D camera object.

Also:

For those not already familiar with Tweener there are some decent flas here.
And some pretty neat tricks (especially tip 3) for the more experienced Tweenerers here.

Happy Tweenering.

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E4X & XMLList fails when defined in a switch statement.

nilloc — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 01:01:58 +0000

This one had me REALLY confused, for a good bit of time, luckily a co-worker helped be go through a rather vigorous debugging session to pinpoint the problem. Apparently if you are attempting to access a piece of a larger XML object using the new E4X capabilities and you attempt to do it with a single line of code, it will return a null object instead of the expected XMLList object it should. After looking into it further, I discovered that if you define the variable, but don’t set it’s value on the same line, then it works fine… See wonky huh?

Example (Based on Adobes example documentation):

^?View Code ACTIONSCRIPT

package
{
import flash.display.Sprite;
 
public class XMLListExample extends Sprite
{
	private var books:XML;
 
	public function XMLListExample()
	{
		books =		<books>
			<book publisher="Addison-Wesley" name="Design Patterns" />
			<book publisher="Addison-Wesley" name="The Pragmatic Programmer" />
			<book publisher="Addison-Wesley" name="Test Driven Development" />
			<book publisher="Addison-Wesley" name="Refactoring to Patterns" />
			<book publisher="O'Reilly Media" name="The Cathedral & the Bazaar" />
			<book publisher="O'Reilly Media" name="Unit Test Frameworks" />
		books>;
 
		showBooksByPublisher();
	}
 
	private function showBooksByPublisher():void
	{
		var ner = "ren";
		switch(ner){
			case "ren":
			// the working code
			var results:XMLList;// = new XMLList();
			results = books.book.(@publisher == "Addison-Wesley");
			trace("results:\n"+results); // returns a the first 4 items (which contain "Adison...")
 
			// now for the fun!!!
			var otherResults:XMLList = books.book.(@publisher == "O'Reilly Media");
			trace("other results:\n"+otherResults); // returns null? (actually a null object)
 
			// just to see if oneline variable definitions work
			var test:String = 'ner';
			trace("test string: "+test);
 
			// seeing what else is a problem to do this way
			var objTest:Object = {ner:"ren"};
			trace('test object: '+objTest.ner); // yup works fine.
			//
			var xmlTest:XML = <ners>
			<ner>renner>
			ners>;
			trace('test xml:\n'+xmlTest); // no problem here either.
			//
			var numTest:Number = 45;
			trace('test number: '+numTest); // this is fine too.
			break;
		}
		if(ner == "ren")
		{
			var otherOtherResults:XMLList = books.book.(@publisher == "O'Reilly Media");
			trace("other other results:\n"+otherOtherResults); // works fine as well.
		}
	}
}// end of class
}

Download the code.

Tell your friends, I’m letting Adobe know. And please let us know if your testing shows differently.

External Interface Callbacks with Jquery So first off, NEVER use this most lazy of hacks...

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As3 event management

jeff — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 13:44:46 +0000

Recently while working on an as3 project the project manager of the project came over to me and asked that something happen automatically that was currently happening only on a mouse click. Normally I would have said fuck you that is impossible and get the hell out of my face. I was feeling confident today though with the event model of as3 so I said yeah I think we can make that happen. The logic was that at worst I would have to make a separate function based on the one I already had. So in a quest to solve this problem I offer you the most awesome kick ass thing you could ask for.

With as3 you quite literally fake an event. And you can do so very easily. All you need to do is import the events classes:

^?View Code ACTIONSCRIPT

1	import flash.events.*;

Then any time you have a button you can fake whatever event you want. You can fake all sorts of events not just button. But faking a click is often the most useful. The code for doing such a thing is as follows.

^?View Code ACTIONSCRIPT

// note you must make a symbol and link it in order to make an instance.
function init(){
	mybutton = new customSymbolIHaveLinked();
	mybutton.mouseChildren = false;
	mybutton.mouseEnabled = true;
 
	// this makes the button listen for the click event
	mybutton.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, functiontorun);
	// now if you would like to automatially run this event on start up to perhaps ensure the user is at a default
	// position you simply need to dispatch an event
 
	mybutton.dispatchEvent(new Event(MouseEvent.CLICK));
}
function functiontorun(evt:Event){
	trace("recieved event from "+evt.target);
}

That’s all there is to it really. I hope this has been helpful. It has been a lifesaver for me. Thanks again as3 for making life a hell of a lot easier…

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