Dan Zen comes out of hypernation with a collection of advanced interface Birds – Birds? – for Flash.

FLASH FEATHERS

ROBIN – multiuser chat and realtime game classes with Flash and PHP
FALCON – easy data transfer between Flash and server scripts
HUMMINGBIRD – parallax effect with mouse movement for 3D menus
GOOSE – multitouch emulator with just Flash and Browsers
PENGUIN – tilt emulator and processor for tilt and translation apps
WOODPECKER – sound frequency and wave animation for MP3 and FLV
GOOSE – motion capture so a cursor follows your Web cam motion
DODO – blob detection of motion in a Web cam

Thousands of lines of code has gone into the Flash Feathers series so that designers and developers can create the functionality of each in a half dozen lines of code.  So… let anyone you know who works in Adobe Flash about the Flash Feathers site at:

http://flashfeathers.wordpress.com

If you are interested in advanced interfaces but do not code then you may still want to watch the video section of each bird site as we go through the examples.  All the working examples are in the zips.

Dan Zen will be performing Hula songs in Hawaii for the next while and may have some time for a feature later in the summer.

The Toronto WordCamp is May 8-10th and you can get your tickets for $50 – amazing price… $35 for students and $185 group rate for up to 7 employees.

http://phug.ca/wordcamptoronto/

WordPress is the most popular Web content admin system famous for its bloggers and open source community.  This blog is a WordPress blog

Sounds like a great event to get our students and friends out to and you can’t beat the price.  As a matter of fact… if we can we should try and sponsor the event.  I have put in a request to marketing and we will see what happens.

Hope to see you there – leave a comment if you and a group are coming.  Oh… I am giving a talk there from a content creator standpoint at least.

Dan – 09

An interactive valentine for the special one in my life

Happy holidays – you can drag the shapes around to make your own!

http://www.danzen.com/snowflake

Dan Zen

Cool – just reached 10,000 views…

~08~

Mood Mystery Party Games

Plots?!? Who needs a plot! Mood Mystery games let players feel like they are involved in mystery without that annoying plot! Make up characters and clues and act all mysterious and maybe some plotters will plot a plot as the hilarious game play plays.

Visit http://www.moodmystery.com to find out more!

Makes a perfect immediate gift for your hard to get friends or family!

~08~

Dan Zen was able to remain undefeated in the 2008 Sheridan Chess Tournament in Oakville Ontario.

“It was a great tournament although the highlight for me was the second place game which was a crazy back and forth battle!”

Dan Zen is the creator of the simple chess application called Flat Chess at http://www.flatchess.com.

Tilt Emulator Showing Front View Yaw Mode

Imagine we have a mobile device with hardware and software that can capture tilt (pitch, roll, yaw) and translation (x, y, z) motion.  An accelerometer can more readily find tilt but a camera can find tilt and translation.

If hardware and software can leave this information in the format of a TiltML (Tilt Mark-up Language – XML based) then front-end software such as Flash can make use of the information as interface.

A simple example would be to look down on the mobile device and tilt the device to roll a ball through a maze.

Here is an example Video:  Tilt for Mobile Devices Video

Tilt Emulator with Top View Tilt Mode

A device can be looked at in either horizontal or vertical orientations.  But there are a number of different ways these two orientations can be viewed.  We will call these ways, modes.  Here are six modes of interface:

MODE 1:  Top View Tilt
Looking down or up at the device and tilting in pitch and roll. Rolling a ball through a maze.

MODE 2:  Front View Tilt
Holding the device in front of you vertically and steering with yaw. A racing game  where the device is like a steering wheel.

MODE 3:  Top View Translation one Axis
Looking down and using one translation (y axis) as motion and tilt to steer. Walking or running creates motion in the game, pitch and roll or yaw to steer.

MODE 4:  Front View Translation one Axis
Looking forward and moving forward causes forward motion in game (z axis).  Walking, running or driving creates motion in game and then steering with yaw.

MODE 5:  Top View Translation all Axes
Looking down and mapping out two or three dimensional space with translation and yaw.  Finding virtual items in real space looking down (or up)

MODE 6:  Front View Translation all Axes
Looking forward and mapping translation z plus pitch or roll to map real space.  Avoiding obstacles or capturing items as you walk

Combining these modes leads to Full Space where the device acts as window to alternate virtual space in full 3D.  Putting these devices in front of your eyes is a form of mediated reality where you can diminish or augment reality.

Thee Gnostics were a psychedelic space rock garage band from Hamilton, Canada in the 90s.  Archives of video, sound, pictures along with descriptions can be found in The Tarken Files.

The Tarken Files shows any Web video, sound, pictures and text.  Thumbnails for the files are presented with rollover scrolling text beneath.  Click on any thumbnail or use the arrows to browse more files.  A viewer will appear with either video, audio, picture or text navigation.

The video navigation has a full screen button at the right.  Hit escape or the reduce screen button to exit.  The sound navigation has a reduce button at right that closes the pannel but keeps the sound playing in the background while you browse pictures or text.  If sound is playing in the background, you will see a sound icon on the right side of the video, picture and text viewers so that you can adjust the volume or go back to the sound.

There are tabs at the right of the viewer that open the ratings, comments and information panels. To rate, roll over the rating at the bottom and submit.  The comments and information panels (and the text viewer) have a scroller if necessary that lets you scroll through the text.  You can also single click through the pages or double click to go to the top or bottom page.  The information panel shows you the views as well.

The Tarken Files have been excavated from a Galaxy Long Long Ago yet seem to also span the future.

Agency Zen has launched its second facebook application.  Stick Aliens lets you use the Oracle to determine your alien tendencies.  To use the Oracle just drag the eye or any of its icons around and then the Oracle will provide a Stick Alien vision on your profile page.

Stick Aliens on facebook: http://apps.facebook.com/stickaliens/

The plan is also to launch Stick Aliens through Open Social and one day enhance the feature to solve mystical puzzles based on which aliens your friends have.  Enjoy!

Here is a post from ZenVlog that summarizes various interests in guroovity. Enjoy!

Click to View Vlog
or see: Part 1 | Part 2

The movie The Love Guru is coming out soon – looking forward to it!

All gurus of love psychedelic dance as one of their forms of exercise.

Dan Zen dances to The Garden – a social environmental Indian / Arabian / Persian sounding a Capella yodeling psychedelic song! Please see the video on YouTube. Or download the song from SoundClick. Or visit the Dan Zen page on facebook.

Dan Zen wears his San Francisco Groovy Guru robe. The one he wore for the International Groovy Day poster. Should we choose a day for that? Or should it just be any day? Oh… also check out the Love Mash – the robe shows up there too and it would be cool if some more people made Zen Mixes and maybe someone will make us a love mash!

Dan Zen also “starred” in a movie called the Guru Monster Movie. Some of that can be seen pictorially on Thee Gnostics mySpace page – more to come as TheeGnostics.com site happens.

In 1996, Dan Zen traveled to San Francisco and wore a guru robe – quite a beautiful traditional green robe with yellow embroidery. He was at the Macromedia Conference where Shockwave was unveiled. A flower lei held his festival pass. An Indian guard, after much deliberation, came up smiling and said, “You know… in my country… the women wear those robes”.

Get dancing people! Loosen up – no steps to follow – you can’t go wrong and it feels great – puts you in touch with your body and nobody has to know! Unless… you start vlogging it with Zen Mix!