visualcondition blog - flash & ruby on rails

iTunes 8 - Genius, Grid, and No More Cover Flow Lag

andrew — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 07:53:13 +0000

iTunes 8 has been out for about a day or so, and I’ve just decided to upgrade. It’s actually a pretty nice update.

I’ve played with the Genius feature a bit (in fact I’m using it now), and it seems pretty solid. I assume the more people use this, the better it’ll get, even in the upcoming weeks when most people will be upgrading and submitting their library information to Apple. There is a ton of information Apple will get, for both good and semi-evil purposes I reckon. I personally don’t care what Apple does with my media information; “oh noes! Apple knows what music I listen to and how much! It’s not like I use Last.fm or anything…” But I digress.

Grid view. Neat. Very iPhotoish. That’s about it. Oh, and that it keeps going back to grid even if I’m in the other 2. iTunes 8.0.1 anyone?

Now something less advertised, is that it seems the album artwork is now cached (thank god), and you no longer have to scroll through all your albums to load the cover art. I’ve only wanted this for, you know, ever. Now if only they’d do this will thumbnails throughout Leopard. Please?

Current Life Status Update

andrew — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 17:17:39 +0000

I’ll make this short and sweet.

My job in Orange County as a part time Senior Flash Developer is now over. The company was down-sizing, and me and a front end guy were the two to go. It happens. No biggie.

I have savings, so I should be fine as I pursue my other ventures, and maybe make something out of a few of the currently twelve(12) domains I now own. Three of which are actually actively being used, and some I’ve had for a few years with nothing done with them. Plans, plans, but no execution yet. Due time.My life is taking me in a new direction, less focused on Flash development. Whilst I love doing Flash work, I feel there’s bigger and better things out there than sitting in front of a computer 12 hours a day, in my room, with little interaction with the world. Sure sometimes I’m fine with that, but not for the rest of my life.

So now I’m going to be taking some drastically different courses for personal development type stuff. It’s the biggest monetary investment of my short life, but I have such a good deal, and it’s so valuable it doesn’t matter.

Needless to say, I still plan on doing development and web, just maybe not as Flash oriented, and more simple web apps of the Rails flavour.

I’ll be sure to keep you posted on the progress.

AndrewFitzgerald.com Registered

andrew — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:38:13 +0000

Whilst buying a new domain todoish.com, Godaddy oh-so-wonderfully let me know that (myname).com was available. Now normally these last minute checkout sales don’t interest me, but this was obviously a bit different. I was actually surprised to see this, as last time I checked, it was taken. Apparently some not-so bright Andrew Fitzgerald forgot to renew - nice.

That’s about it. Oh - thanks to a coupon for dotcom domains, I scored both for less than $15. Again, nice.

http://andrewfitzgerald.com/

500 Error in Rails Using Apache and mod_rails Passenger

andrew — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:29:40 +0000

So I just spent the good part of 4 hours trying to figure out why my fresh Ruby on Rails 2.1 apps was giving me a 500 error on my slice with mod_rails.

Permissions? No. Configurations? No. Etc etc.

I’ll just get straight to the point: apparently it was my database. Sure I ran:

rake db:migrate

..and it migrated fine, but yet still a 500 error like I tested many times. The fix?

rake db:migrate RAILS_ENV=”production”

Seems rake was stuck in the development environment. I’m not above saying it was just my ignorance of mod_rails environments, but why on earth would passenger default to development when it’s clearly made for production?

Flash Particle Effects Component Partigen 1.1 Released

andrew — Tue, 06 May 2008 18:16:24 +0000

The Desuade Partigen 1.1 update has been released, featuring numerous enhancements and tweaks, such as a much lower file size and optimized UI. This is the first update of Partigen since the initial release last summer, which attests to the stability of the product.

It also uses my very own Twease tweening engine in place of the weightier Fuse, dropping about 12k off the exported SWF size. Nice!

There’s a coupon for Partigen that’ll get you 11% off: pgpromo11

Hurry up and use it though, it’s only good for the next 11 days.

Adobe Open Screen Project for Flash and AIR

andrew — Sat, 03 May 2008 05:06:28 +0000

Wow some big news from Adobe. Seems like they’re ready to conquer the rich media world with Flash with this one. What the hell am I talking about? Good question.

It’s called the Open Screen Project.

Long story short, Adobe is opening up the safe on Flash, removing licensing restrictions, fees, and publishing protocols.

So what does this mean you ask? Well, that’s a good question. I’m no marketing or sales expert by any means, but I can tell you that Adobe sure didn’t acquire Macromedia for Fireworks.

Flash is getting huge, mostly due to it’s biggest asset of penetration: video. With sites like YouTube and Myspace, and the billion clones using Flash for video, Adobe has incredible reach across the computer world. This is great news for everyone (except maybe Microsoft, but who uses Silverlight anyways right?) since in the long run, it will mean a better experience for everyone.

Now what is the OSP al about? Well, direct from Adobe’s site:

–

The Open Screen Project is working to enable a consistent runtime environment – taking advantage of Adobe® Flash® Player and, in the future, Adobe AIR™ — that will remove barriers for developers and designers as they publish content and applications across desktops and consumer devices, including phones, mobile internet devices (MIDs), and set top boxes. The Open Screen Project will address potential technology fragmentation by allowing the runtime technology to be updated seamlessly over the air on mobile devices. The consistent runtime environment will provide optimal performance across a variety of operating systems and devices, and ultimately provide the best experience to consumers.

Specifically, this work will include:

Removing restrictions on use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications
Publishing the device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player
Publishing the Adobe Flash® Cast™ protocol and the AMF protocol for robust data services
Removing licensing fees – making next major releases of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices free

–

Wow, that’s a pretty big announcement. It’s really going to take Flash to so many platforms, and enable us developers to create content that reaches so many more people.

It’s not a small initiative either; there’s a lot of big names up on that list (no Apple? C’mon iPhone and Flash, we’re al waiting). I am a bit skeptical though, as this is not a short term goal. This is going to take YEARS to get done I’d imagine, since the amount of the devices and platforms involved are potentially infinite.

Even if their ultimate goal isn’t reached (I’m sure they’ll do a pretty damned good job though), this creates a whole new slew of Open Source opportunities, which can only mean good news us.

What do you guys think? Is this more of a dream, or do you think it’s actually possible?

Installing Red5 and Java on Slicehost Ubuntu Gusty 7.1

andrew — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 04:11:33 +0000

For those of you trying to install the Java 5 Runtime J2SE 1.5 on Ubuntu Linux Gusty on a fresh Slicehost install (or any Ubuntu box) that cant install it via aptitude, I may have a solution.

Upon downloading Red5 and trying to install the .deb, I was greeted with a dependency error. Great. So then, naturally, I tried to use aptitude and apt-get to install the Java runtime, but surprisingly enough, that did not work for me at all. So I figured I’d download the Java package myself and install it manually.

So here I am dpkging away, and I am greeted with even more dependency errors, which, by the way, where completely ridiculous. Oh you know, as in, sun-java-bin required sun-java-jre to be installed before itself could be, but oh! sun-java-jre needed sun-java-bin to be installed before IT could be installed.

Is it just me, or is that completely obnoxious?

So I remembered that on one of the dependency outputs, it required ia32-libs. So I was like “ok, well let’s try that one”. Bingo.

It installed and configured, not only that, but as well as the 2 Java debs.

So class, the command of the day is:

sudo aptitude install ia32-libs

Hope this helps any of you wondering why Java wont install for your fresh new server.

Update:

To make sun-java the default JVM, follow these steps:

$ sudo update-java-alternatives -s java-1.5.0-sun //this adds the new JVM

edit the file /etc/jvm

add the following line to the top: /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun

Run java -version, and you should see:

java version “1.5.0_15″ Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.0_15-b04) Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 1.5.0_15-b04, mixed mode)

Paradox AS3 Engine - 3D FPS for Flash

andrew — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 20:39:11 +0000

So I’ve came across this little gem of a demo, which isn’t exactly a new idea or concept by any means, but the execution is brilliant and runs silky smooth.

It’s pretty sick, I’m not even going to lie: Paradox Engine

I’d post pictures and a more detailed post on it, but the demo speaks for itself. Trust me.

Twease Now Comes in a New Flavor: AS3

andrew — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:36:18 +0000

So the wait is finally over: Twease is now available in both AS2 and AS3!

I just started learning AS3 Monday, and today I have finished porting Twease 2.0 Beta into AS3. To be honest, most of if it really didn’t need to be rewritten, but a lot of the new compiler requirements made the loose checking of the AS2 version give me nightmares. I mean really, so what if it’s undefined? Ugh, but I digress.

This port was just to get the engine functional. There are almost zero optimizations made in regards to new AS3 features, but even so, I’m positive it will run fine for your average uses.

As i look back on the old Twease code after getting into AS3, I see a lot of places where things should be totally redone. But it works. And it works the same on both sides, so I’ll be letting it be.

There’s really not much more to say, except that Twease is now Beta 2, and that you should head on over to Google Code to get your AS3 fix on.

Twease 2.0 Beta

andrew — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 11:13:26 +0000

When you create a class that makes other developer’s lives easier, and see something that you made help make something pretty rad, it’s truly a magical feeling. When I see Partigen being used in the real world, I get giddy like a school girl. Albeit Twease is a bit different, it’s still a nice feeling.

So that’s why I’ve been hard at work on version 2 of this compact, yet powerful and robust tweening engine, packing in more bang-for-your-bytes. Originally it was just going to be a minor upgrade with added color and simple bezier tweening, but it ended up so much more.

This beta is, in my opinion, fairly stable, and is being used in my own production projects. In fact, some of the features have been birthed due to necessity. I’d like to package this up nicely with docs et all, but first want to give it a test-drive with the public.

So without further adue, here’s what’s new with Twease 2.0 Beta (from the change log):

New Features

Tween startup performance boost eliminates staggered starting of simultaneous tweens
Twease core now has integrated mulit-point bezier tweening for any property
Twease.tween() rate property allows you to tween at a constant rate instead of a specific duration of time
Twease.tween() progress parameter allows you to start a tween at any point in its life 0(start) - 1(finished)
Extend methods and automation to extend core Twease methods and tweenable properties
Colors, Extras, and Texts classes that use new Extend class
Texts class lets you tween Object-strings (var mytext:Object = {text:”A”}) based on a given characterset
Colors class lets you tween color transformation objects such as tint, brightness and contrast
Twease.render() method allows manual rendering of non-engine managed tween objects
Twease.tween() 2nd parameter for sequence and single tween target-overrides
Twease.tween() 3rd parameter for non-managed tween, true makes a new object, passing an object uses that
Tween object has easeposition property that returns the position of a tween on an ease path (0-1)
Stack option in tween call to enable stacking on a per-tween basis
Cycles support for function-only calls including delays
Colors: static color functions: ’setColor’, ‘getColorObject’
Twease: baseprops array and compareInObject method

So a quick feature summary: mulit-point bezier tweening, run tween at a given rate, start tweens at a certain progress percent, tween colors and text, non-managed tween rendering, per-tween stacking, and a performance boost to boot.

The core Twease engine has been setup to interface with the Extend class, which lets non-essential methods and tweenable properties to be integrated seamlessly into the engine. Methods available in the extend class help automate integration, which can be seen with the Colors and Texts classes.

As you can imagine, this makes Twease the launching pad for any tweenable property imaginable. With it’s modularity, Twease lets you easily load only the features you use, keeping control over your file size.

Examples (ah.. finally the good stuf):

Example 1 - Multi-point bezier and color tween using rate instead of time (click to toggle pausing the tween)

Example 2 - This example shows the Texts extension tweening words in a textfield.

Download

Twease now is under version control, and has a home over at Google Code. You can use svn or browse the repository to download the files for now.

I will be making a new post going into detail on the biggest features, with syntax and code examples very soon, as to not clog up this entries arteries.