April 2005 Archives
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implementation of AJAX using CherryPy and Jsolait
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Interesting comboapp - IM/RSS reader. Made with flash.
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a way to trickle mouse events through a tree of MCs
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Finite State Machines (FSMs) are a simple and efficient method to implement many game features. FSMs are an element of, or can solve in entirety, many of the problems encountered in game programming: AI, input handling, player handling, UI, and progressio
Conor, and his parents, have survived two birthday parties in 3 days. Both were excellent, although poor Conor didn't get to eat any of his cake on Saturday due to being terrified of the candles on the cake. I don't know where he got scared of fire, but he is. That was the only hiccup in an otherwise great night.
Today we had all the kid friends over, so with the 6 kids and parents, it was pretty crowded! I expected to be dealing with at least one kid-meltdown, but was very pleasantly surprised by how well they all got along. Score one for the kids! Everyone seemed to have a great time, although we ended up with far too many left-overs - i don't know how we are going to get though all the cup-cakes and cookies ;)
I will, really, promise, get more photos up soon. Hopefully this weekend.
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a scalable architecture for building oo user interfaces
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A nice 3d engine with python bindings. LGPL
I finally took the time today to start doing the tutorial for the TwistedMatrix framework. What is it? Its like an all in one tool for creating all kinds of network and web based applications in Python. And its quite amazing what you can do with it, tho it does require you take some time to figure it out.
This, of course, comes from my desire to do some multiuser flash stuff. I've been saying this for, like, years now, i know, but its still making slow head-way!
I also got the whole Eclipse-flashout-asdt-mtasc coding environment all setup, tho i haven't had any time to play with it yet. With swfmill and imageInjector, we are closer and closer to not needing the flash IDE. And the ActionStep project also looks like a amazing step forward to making "real" app's with flash. Exciting!
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Streaming Media Server thingie - for mobile devices. Can stream live tv from your home to remote locations. free
Its late, and i feel like talking. What about? Well games, of course! I've kind of faltered on the game design process (see my first and second posts). While i still like the idea of the Galactic scale space game, it gets caught up in comparisons. How is this game different from any other resource management style game, other then the wrapper of it being in space? What unique things does basing a game in space really bring to the game mechanics? I also have to wonder what kind of beings make it to a Galactic level of tech and still maintain an expansionist/violent psychology? I like to think that if we keep it together to make it that far, we will have shed some of our ego-centricity as a race, and perhaps learned to live together without killing each other. This extends to other races that have made the move to the galactic stage. Which kind of kills the 4x style of game for me a bit. After reading a bit of the history of the genera, i wonder if i should even been looking at this kind of game - i'm not really into micromanagement or spreadsheet style games. At one point i might have been, but now not so much.
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Plua is a port of Lua 4.0 (plus a small IDE) for the Palm Computing platform.
Conor is speaking up a storm lately. He has really had a 'burst' of language stuff going on, which is pretty fun. Also nice, it seems that finally, after four months, he is getting to like, or at least tolerate day-care! I wasn't sure we were all going to make it...
Did a late night last week with Humphries and Rui. It started at Terroni, and after that closed we wandered over to Czehoski. It was my first time in the place since it opened, and it does look quite nice. Pretty good tunes too, though loud (just that i'm getting old), and the crowd was actually not too much younger then myself. Much better dressed, of course, but i didn't feel like an ancient in there. But one crazy thing that was going on were these two women necking at one of the tables. I use the term "necking" very purposefully, as it was as if i were back at a high-school party, and everyone is making out on the couches. It was that kind of kissing. They were so obviously doing it to get attention, and while i'm not above watching two chicks making out, it was kind of funny more then sexy. Anyway, i'd go back, but FYI, the drinks are tres expensive - ten bucks a glass for wine.
What else... Some technical goodies going on under the hood with MovableType. A new upgrade and a nice new spam blocking plugin. So, i've re-enabled anonymous comments and trackbacks. I'll see how it goes.
I've also got lots and lots of photos that i keep meaning to post, but i just can't seem to get around to it. Sigh. This week. Really. Yes.
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So thinking about creating seperate threads for flash, i remembered somebody (ancient history) talking about emulating threads for flash. Since the source or article related to that wasn't anywhere to be found, i tried creating my own.... and surprise...
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site about gaming in the 'real world' using digital technologies. Arg meets larp meets flash-croud meets game. or something
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Has an Isometric tile engine for flash for sale
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nice way to queue method calls on not yet loaded MC's.
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Wow, something that will export your palm calendar to an iCal file on windows!
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Add a 'view source' menu item to your swf files
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eyond Role and Play is a collection of articles by researchers and role-playing game enthusiasts from seven countries, made for the Nordic role-playing convention Solmukohta 04. The book offers practical tools, analytical viewpoints, inspirational game re
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Nice text colourizer
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c# to swf compiler
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A tool to create swf's from XML. works nice with MTASC, for creating swfs with images which you can then call with attachMovie from MTASC.
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path finding stuff
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nice list of cool and useful bookmarklets
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classic game design article
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They host a game server, and you can program your own java-based games to run on their servers. They provide libs to help with all the pesky client-server stuff.
So. Dr. Who last night. I did enjoy it, tho even with the "updated" special effects, it still had that same cheeze factor that the older episodes have. I just hope that the stories get a bit better, now that the first introduction is done. Overall pretty fun, especially with 3 other geeks over to watch it at the same time!
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Mailing list for folks using Eclipse to write actionscript using ASDT
Well, the "spring air" i was talking about left in a hurry, and we are now dealing with snow and rain. Crappy blah weather. Of course, it is only going to last for the weekend, and be nice for the rest of the week. Typical.
Just trying out MindRetrieve, a "personal desktop search engine". This one, however, doesn't search documents on your computer, but indexes all the webpages you look at. Its like a google just for the stuff you have looked at. One of the really nice things about this, is that if a page you have viewed goes offline, or is removed, MindRetrieve keeps a copy of it locally. I'll run it for a while and see what i think about it.
Today is the first day that really felt like the end of winter. I've been out with Conor on the other nice, sunny warm days, but today was the first that the air didn't have that winter feel to it. Nice.
