charlescfenwick.com

Just so you know because this tripped me up.
When you are trying to get crypto to work by doing something as simple as erlang:sha_mac(Key, String) and erlang:md5(String) and getting nothing but a port_control/3 error. Don’t freak out, it’s just an error communicating with the call to the c library that is crypto. So before you freak out (like I did), recompile erlang 2 or 3 times trying different versions and configurations (hipe, smp etc like I did), go through the source (like I did), and waste hours(like I did), stop drop and remember erlang loves long running processes and just do.

  application:start(crypto)

Then palm to face (like I did).

This one can be pretty nifty. In my certain case I had a bunch of on screen items that I continually updating their alpha property but when there was a mouse over I didn’t want to update that property anymore and peg it right at 1 so it stood out. In this case it was a text field so here is a class with the not important parts taken out.

package{
	import flash.text.TextField;
	import flash.events.MouseEvent;
	public class Tag extends TextField{
		private var alpha_locked:Boolean;
		public function Tag():void{
			this.alpha_locked = false;
			this.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_OVER, mouse_over);
			this.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_OUT, mouse_out);
		}
		private function mouse_over(e:MouseEvent):void{
			this.alpha = 1;
			this.alpha_locked = true;
		}
		private function mouse_out(e:MouseEvent):void{
			this.alpha_locked = false;
		}
		override public function set alpha(a:Number):void{
			if(!alpha_locked) super.alpha = a;
		}
	}
}

The magic happens with the super.alpha, super which refers to the parent class that Tag inherits from. It checks the alpha_locked variable and if things are ok it sets it, otherwise it’s ignored. Then the alpha locked variable is controlled by the MouseOver and MouseOut events.

I’ve run into this problem a few times I want to rotate and object by an arbitrary point. First off actionscript doesn’t let you change you point from which you rotate when you change the rotation attribute of an object. By default when you rotate using the rotation attribute flash rotates the objects at it’s index point (0, 0). Simple solution move the object so it’s center point is at the index point of it’s container move clip then rotate it, then move it back it’s original position. To make things easier you can of course wrap this up in a function inside of an object or use this snippet.

	function rotate(item:DisplayObject, angle:Number, point:Point) {
		var matrix:Matrix = item.transform.matrix.clone();
		matrix.translate(-point.x, -point.y);
		matrix.rotate (angle*(Math.PI/180));
		matrix.translate(point.x, point.y);
		item.transform.matrix = matrix;
	}

Simple enough to use just pass the function the moveclip you want to rotate the angle just like you would with the rotation attribute and the point from the index point that you want to rotate your clip.

	rotate(thing, 90, new Point(50, 50));

wow time flies I totally forgot I even put this up. Since my last post I’ve since made a flash game and it’s currently on a commercial site, not really there yet so I’m not going to mention it.
Otherwise I started on yet another tower defense game with has been a learning experience. I’d say I’ll post it soon but I’d been lying so I’ll just post it next time I think about it.

I’ve always wanted to write a flash game. It’s been so intimidating not just the having to learn flash but the how do I make a fun and addictive game. Well the first hurdle I think I’ve gotten over. Recently I’ve had to opportunity to learn flex. It’s kind of like flash, well at least I know actionscript 3 fairly well. So l sat down last week and started playing around with things and let me say all the shit I talked about flash I take it back it’s pretty damn fun to program, like python there is a whole world of things you can do with it. I’ve made some fun little things with papervsion3d which in itself is just freaking amazing so more on that later. After playing with it[papervision] really got to wanting to build a sudo 3Dish flash game, I quickly learned that papervision was probably overkill for what the simple thing I want to do so instead I’ve decided to go with a simple Isometric view game based on sprites. I have no artistic ability. I did get my friend to do some artwork so I can thank him for the grass, dirt and little hut, but until I con someone into doing a whole lot of art for free I went with some free isometric sprites I found here.

So after roughly two days of fleshing out an isometric view type thing I’ve got this.

Click on the flash app then use the arrow keys to move the little dude around. I’m still very far from a game but this is a great start.

How are you? I’m ok things haven’t been going that well I’m burried under student loan debt, oh it’s my fault I know but I dpay you off lobby you in their best interest. So just for your reference here some things going on in the world and in the Untied State besides some copyright infringement. You can start with these things feel free to add more though.

Voting machines that don’t work, Global warming, alternative energy, dwindling oil supply, quality of education, highest proportion of citizens incarcerated in the world( 7 million), War in Iraq, coming war in iran, failing education system, obesity, health care cost, lack of funding for education, lobbyist, economy, inflation, rising food cost, federal reserve, human rights violations, Massive stealing accidental over billing of money by companies such as KBR and Haliburton(not to mention no bid contracts, and a certain man in a high position of power that was formerly employed by them)

Like I said feel free to add more I probably will.

Not much to say other than I’ve played with it and it’s the coolest thing ever. I’m thinking a crazy ec2 setup using these is in order. More later.

Credit cards are great you can cover some of your expenses if you come up a little short and as long as you can pay them off in a reasonable amount of time they are great deal.

If you use them in that way, on the other hand, you can use them to live beyond your means, you didn’t need that 52inch LCD 1080p 120hz TV but you sure as hell wanted it. I sure as hell wanted that LCD TV.

As a newly graduated college student I found how far my money really does go. It’s not that far. Especially when you have a credit card payment to pay, of course I could of just paid the minimums, but use the debt calculator and you can see how much of a bad idea that really is. Moral of the story if you can pay more than the minimums do it, even if it’s 5 bucks more do it. It makes a huge difference in the long run. Remember you’re borrowing money so they have to get a pay off for letting you borrow it, that’s where the interest comes in. Take for example if you have the average interest rate or 12.99% APR and you have a 10k balance, you are going to pay 108.25 in interest. That sucks.

I finally got mine paid off it was a huge relief of course now I have to pay off the student loans. That’s another story all together, I took out way more than I should of, I’ll pay for it. For the next 10 years.

In the mean time heres a quick calculator for your credit card debt it’s still beta so if you start playing with the numbers too much you can have it go into an infinite loop, which is no fun if that happens force quit/end task your browser and start again. I’ll work on the calculator more as I go along, as well has a nifty calculator for student loans and home mortgages since I’m hoping that I can build up my savings and get a house in the next few years.

Note: I’m not an accountant I made this tools for myself, it’s not going to be spot on but it should be pretty damn close.

I took a trip a few years back with my sister. She was living in Hong Kong at the time and I was at her place and she mentioned that she could take some time off and if I could go some place, where would I want to go? Some of the choices that were thrown out there where like Main Land China or New Zeland. Then it hit me…. Tibet.

So a few days later off we went to Tibet. It was a fun trip on the way there we had two layovers so I got to see some parts of Main Land China.

Tibet was beautiful the air smelled fresh all the time, you could get a coke and some M&Ms but there was not a McDonald’s in sight. Where else can you get an 80 degree temperature swing from day to night. It was beautiful but at 10,000+ feet above sea level breathing becomes a problem. Simple task such as walking up two stairs, not two flights but two stairs while carrying some luggage, was a like running a marathon, at the least it was the first night we got there. Eventually things got slightly easier. I did resist the urge to rent an oxygen tank, because they were available, but I didn’t want to hang on to that crutch the whole time I was there, plus what kind of jack ass would I look like walking around with that thing in tow.

The food was wonderful pretty much all meat there was yak. I really enjoyed yak and I figured, outside of coming back to Tibet I probably wouldn’t get that many chances to try yak, so I lived it up. Too bad I’m allergic to yak. Stomach pains constant feeling I’m going to vomit, and all my muscle were sore. For most normal people they might catch on after eating something that does this to them maybe after 2 or 3 times. Not me took me 5 miserable days of just toughing it out.

We saw a bunch of palaces met a bunch of cool people, had lots of rice tea. It was over all a wonderful experience, despite the constant feeling I’m suffocating and the yak meat making me want to vomit, I would do it all over again in a heart beat.

Heres some random pictures from around Lhasa, not that many I’ll post more, but I at least want to say something about each picture rather than just a mass post of all that I have.

Nothing new going algorithm wise here just used the closest color then segmented histograms and then the minimum distance methods to make these. They didn’t turn out as well as I hoped but I started with some crappy source images anyways I’m looking forward to trying more. But even more excited to get some Star Trek: The Next Generation mosaics going. You can never have enough Jean Luc Picard, the man with the most peculiar french accent in existence.

See them all in their Voyager goodness