Month: September 2002

Fuck

John Winkelman

Well, the lovely and talented R****** done r.u.n.n.o.f.t. So much for that.

In other news, I am sitting here watching the Gregory Peck version of Moby-Dick . This story has some interesting things to say about the nature of obsession, revenge, hatred, and self-destruction.

No. I want to discuss these things meaningfully, but right now…I’m just pissed.

Alone With My thoughts

John Winkelman

There is a particular freedom to being offline for a while. Writing becomes more personal as there is an implied distance from the audience, strengthened by the fact that I won’t be able to post this for at least eight more hours.

I have noticed little talk lately of the ironically named “citizen’s brigade”. There are two possibilities: either it exists, or it doesn’t exist. If it doesn’t exist, then has there been any pronouncement that it was, after all, a miserable and stupid idea? If it does exist, then has there been any official pronouncement that it has been created?

When I first heard this idea I discounted it as the slightly justified but paranoid reaction to the terrorist attacks of 2001. But still, a stupid idea. Anyone who agreed to this idea would be a traitor to the constitution, and anyone who disagreed, a traitor to the country.

So in a time when the government… no. Not the government. The administration. When the administration was trying to unite all Americans behind a common cause it introduced an idea which, if enacted, could very well have started a civil war: “Hey! You three million over there! Why don’t you keep an eye on everyone else and, if they do something a little more, you know, red, than white or blue, why don’t you tell us?”

Hitler committed suicide in a bunker. McCarthy died alone and insane. Ashcroft is trying to send us to war with Iraq.

The continued searching for demons on other soil is distracting us from problems on our own. The members of the Administration have enough reptilian-brain survival instinct to not openly advocate the revocation of the constitutional amendments but close attention will reveal that they are whittling at them, slowly paring them away until the letter and the spirit of the law are at odds with one another.

As with any other prison, the Big Bull has it’s bitches: The entertainment industry (RIAA!), in order to maintain it’s profitability, is happy to take white-out to the amendment that created it. To prevent us from copying music, they want us to not have access to it in the first place. Somehow, that makes sense.

The real danger of terrorism is not that another country will destroy us, but that we will destroy ourselves in order to deny our enemies that pleasure.

And the Administration would call this a victory.

Break Time!

John Winkelman

It has launched . And I did it for about half a year’s worth of free coffee. I love the barter system.

Next project: Battlefish!

I have this upcoming week off. I have no particular plans; I just need to not work for a week. I will read a lot, write a lot, sleep a lot… all the things I generally have so little time for. This may well be my only post for the week.

I R Ub3r 1337

John Winkelman

I have finally made it back into flash, And i have come up with an egregious hack for drawing a circle using the drawing API. Apparently using curveTo() is rather awkward for drawing a simple circle. This method uses the beginGradientFill() method:

_root.createEmptyMovieClip("grad",1);
 with (_root["grad"]) {
 colors = [0x000000,0x000000,0xffffff,0x000000,0x000000];
 alphas = [0,0,100,0,0];
 ratios = [0,124,128,132,255];
 /* adjust the 'spacing' of the middle three numbers to adjust line thickness */
 matrix = { matrixType:"box", x:0, y:0, w:400, h:400, r: (100/180)*Math.PI };
 beginGradientFill( "radial", colors, alphas, ratios, matrix );
 lineStyle(1,0x000000,100);
 moveTo(0,0);
 lineTo(400,0);
 lineTo(400,400);
 lineTo(0,400);
 lineTo(0,0);
 endFill();
 }

Put this code at the root level of your Flash file and run it. Nothing more need be done. Also, you can find a compiled version here . Sure, it’s not much to look at now, but just think of the possibilities!

Nothin’, I Tell Ya

John Winkelman

I was, perhaps, over-optimistic about my productivity level this past weekend. The Chesterton remains unreadable; the Pushkin is trapped in raw text. I, on the other hand, am well-rested. Never discount the value of ignoring personal responsibilities.

A possible opportunity has arisen for me to teach introductory web design at one of the local colleges. It probably won’t be anything too fancy; basic (X)HTML, a little Javascript and CSS, maybe touch on Flash. Nothing I haven’t done before. But the idea of teaching this thing has got me thinking about the industry as a whole, and I have some ideas where I think it could/should go.

First, development/programming is a skilled trade. As such I feel it could benefit from some sort of master/apprentice based teaching paradigm, rather than classroom-based teaching. After all, how many of the good web developers out there are self taught? Apparently college education is not germane to the coding world.

Second, the current incarnation of web development is young — five years old? — and therefore still, philosophically, at a very malleable stage. As part of the fallout from the internet boom/bust, with all of the wunderkind stories about 22-year-old self-taught millionaires, web development is chock-full of loud talk and mediocre skill-sets. Pundits like Jeffrey Zeldman and Jakob Nielsen complain about how bad the WWW is, and blame laziness and superficiality among developers. But are laziness and superficiality the fault of the player, or the fault of the game, which tolerates these traits? Certainly five years of explosive growth is not conducive to reflection.

Obviously there are serious implications to applying formal structure to the web developer community. A hierarchy of talent will suddenly be available, with clients able to pick and choose whatever level they feel appropriate. We coders will have to be honest about our skills. We will have “pedigrees”, wherein a guru can say, with authority, “This person can walk the walk. You have my word on that.” The internet tends toward self-regulation in that anything which is said in public can be critiqued and refuted in public.

How difficult would it be, then, to start an apprenticeship program, both on the ‘net and in the real world, to insure that anyone who wants to get into “the business” will be able to do so with proper guidance, and anyone who is looking for a developer will be able to find one who really knows how to do the work?

More on this topic when I have had more time to research it. In the meantime, here is a study which estimates the yearly global production of information. Hint: It’s a lot.