Archive for January, 2008

How Long Have You Been Flashing?

I first started learning how to use Flash back in the year 2000, how about you? When did you start using Flash?

[poll id=”12″]

Nano Frost

This colorized scanning electron micrograph shows frost formed by a stream of silver iodide precipitate flash-freezing on a nano-scalar surface layer of C60 fullerenes…

Nano Frost Cropped


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How to Swing a Pendulum Arc

In my previous article explaining How to Draw an Arc with ActionScript a few readers asked how to simulate the swing of a pendulum or the swaying motion of a falling leaf. Hopefully this tutorial will add a little insight into that process. The technique I’ll be using won’t mimic the effects of gravity but will be more similar to the metered swing of a clock’s pendulum or a large carnival ride.

Observations
: Before we start writing any code, let’s make a few general observations. If you were to swing a pendulum from right to left, you could note the following:

  1. Once the pendulum is dropped or released, it begins to pick up speed as it approaches the bottom of its arc. This gradual acceleration is similar to “Easing In”.
  2. Once the pendulum passes the bottom of its arc, it begins to swing upward and consequently slows down which is similar to “Easing Out”.
  3. Once the pendulum reaches the top of its arc on the left, it begins to swing backwards from left to right. The swing from left to right is a mirror image of the previous swing from right to left.

Conventions: With those observations in mind we can start
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Feed Reading Options

After reading my last article, you might think that I’ve abandoned reading RSS feeds altogether due to my concern with “shadowy librarian spies” but that’s definitely not the case. In fact I have quick, easy and anonymous access to a comprehensive list of Flash feeds ready to read the very moment I feel the urge to monitor the Flash-O-Sphere’s heartbeat. All I have to do is Read Somebody Else’s Feeds. That particular feed list happens to belong to Neil Webb and I have to admit, it covers just about everything I’m interested in and a good deal more.

One of the best aspects of reading other people’s feeds is that you don’t even have to lift a finger to create or maintain the list and the web interface is so simple all you have to do is point and click, no tagging, sorting, or signing-up is required… simple and easy, the way the web was meant to be. 😉

Of course there is a downside
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Feed Reader Paranoia

In a previous article about PixelWit.com’s RSS feed list I mentioned the feed-readers BlogLines and GoogleReader but I failed to mention that I don’t use either of them due to concerns regarding privacy issues. If you’re industrious enough to actually read Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service you’ll notice a few key points.

  1. They have the right to edit content.
  2. They watch what you do.
  3. They record what you do.
  4. They share what you do.

How would you feel if you went to a public library to read about a topic and as soon as you entered the building the librarian started following you around with a pen and paper, constantly looking over your shoulder, crossing out all the naughty bits before you read them
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Three Amigos

1 good, 1 bad, and 1 ugly. Guess which is which.

Flash Rotation Bug (with Fix)

I recently ran into a nasty “little” bug in Flash that happened to eat up a “big” chunk of my time. I’m surprised I haven’t heard more about this particular bug since the conditions which cause it would seem fairly common.

Let’s say you’re using an onEnterFrame event to count frames as they pass with code like this:

//
//
var count = 0;
onEnterFrame = function(){
    count++;
}
//
//

Now let’s suppose we want to rotate an arrow 1 degree every time a frame passes. We could write code like the following:
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© Sean O'Shell 2007-2024