Ban Van – Environmental Blog Launches to Encourage Re-thinking Vehicle Purchases

A reminder to consider the environment when making vehicle choices. Of course public transit, bicycles, etc. also work ;-). http://banvan.blogspot.com

-08-

Falcon – Adobe Flash 9 AS3 Data Class

Have you ever wondered how social network sites are built like facebook, YouTube, flickr, MySpace, etc. and sites like Ebay, Amazon, any forums, wikis, blogs, etc.? There is a front end that you see and a back end that sits on a server. To be able to share data and make elegant use of the Internet as a medium, we have to be able to pass data (in variable or XML or JSON, etc. format) from the front end to the back end and back again.

Falcon is an Adobe Flash custom class that lets you send and receive variables, text, XML or binary data. You can load XML or text from a file or send and receive variables or XML to and from a server script like PHP and then on to a database like MySQL. Falcon automatically makes a DataProvider if your variables are sequential so that it is easy to make a DataGrid (table in Flash).

The Flash scripting language, ActionScript 3.0 is now a complete Object Oriented Programming language that follows the ECMAScript standard as does JavaScript. In doing so, the language has become very internally consistent. For this consistency to work, the former classes (properties and functions) have been broken down into smaller or more precise classes. This means that to handle data, ActionScript 3 now has five classes that are used to load even just one variable! These are URLVariables, URLRequest, URLRequestMethod, URLLoader and URLLoaderDataFormat. This results in fifteen lines of code.

Falcon wraps or combines these native AS3 classes into one class. The class uses three active lines of code. This simplification makes it easier for designers and developers to provide important functionality of sharing information.

As an inventor of social games, tools and environments, I realize the importance of passing data to the server so that it can be shared. This technique is used in the following Darth Detector, Changing Mail, Chatnap, Baron Digbody’s Castle, Lady With Brooch, Danisms, Dens, Dan Zen Garden, Gorgolon, Grim Reaper’s Age Guesser, Gycopo, Hip Cats, Kula Pu Idol, Moustache Mysteries, Opartica, Pagoda Of Games, Password Paradox, Tapoll, Prediction Train, Rich Deck, Salamander, Save Earth, Spirogram, Spy-mail, Telepathy, Teleporters, Tilator, Tower Of Babel, Web Ouija, Utopia, Wannaget, Word Warp, Yesumno, Zen Deck, Zen Dots, Zen Mix, Zen Motto, Zen Pass, and Zen Picture Pan Zoom.

-08-

Interactive Multimedia Blog

The Interactive Multimedia blog has postings about new media including code and tutorials primarily in Adobe Flash. There are also events and pictures that relate to the Sheridan Interactive Multimedia one year post grad program where I teach.

Currently pictured on the front are some of the older works. An artist is using a touch screen wall display to draw with Mike Balder’s voice sensitive drawing application built in Flash. As she (or collaborators) make louder noises, the brush strokes get fatter or depending on the setting, more opaque. This picture is from the Interactive Interactive show. The picture on the right shows a music application by Kim Cullion that captures the users gesture motion with a $10 web cam. The Motion Cursor classes I made create a motion cursor which can be used to play notes on a musical staff.

If you are interested in multimedia or further information about our program, please visit:

• http://interactivemultimedia.wordpress.com (blog) or
• ttp://imm.sheridanc.on.ca (IMM site)

-08-

How is it? Environmental Song

How is it? An environmental song…

No War – Music Video – Protest Guitar Song

No war is an anti-war song I wrote a few years back. It has an interesting story – here is the background. I have written about 70 songs over the last 10-20 years but certainly have slowed down. I think the last song was Brown Study – perhaps it was a curse. Just before Brown Study was a fast mod number called Triangle Man – it had rapid bar cords and was about everyone living the life of a superhero balancing work, rest and play in the modern world. The song was a few years old and I was just playing it at easter in the living room when I smelled an easter lily. That seemed to slow me down and I wondered, what cords am I actually playing. These turned out to be a bunch of C’s, D’s, F’s, G’s and normal stuff. So I left the bar codes and slowed it down. The lyrics then became how the smell of lily can replace superheroes – and No War was created. If you get a chance, leave a note on YouTube 😉