Category: Programming

Putting Away Childish Things

John Winkelman

Well, it’s official. I just put up a placeholder/redirect page at www.eccesignum.com , directing wayward surfers here. I had es.com for two years, through six major and numerous minor iterations. From Photoshop crimes through amazing cross-browser Javascript hacks, to building serious Cascading Style Sheet mojo, to Flash experiments, to this: a full dynamic website.

All that stuff is gone. I have a lot of it stored locally, but I doubt if I will post it, except perhaps in another year or so when I am feeling nostalgic.

In another year no-one will bother to browser-check for Netscape 4, except in the most rabidly conservative shops. If I were my own boss, providing NS4 compatibility would automatically raise the cost of a project by 25%. Just to make the page work. To make it look good would add another 25% to both the cost and the time necessary to complete the project. Dammit!

But that is all water under the bridge. My next two projects for es.o: a content management system, and a fully functioning Flash version, using the same XML you are currently viewing.

Once More Into the Breach

John Winkelman

Er, hello… I am so grateful to see so many of you have braved the weather to be here tonight. I have put a lot of work into the latest round of my site. Amusing and informing the public is the noblest of causes. Or was that True Love? No matter…

Why did I rebuild my site? Pure, bone-deep laziness. The less work I have to do to maintain this theng, the better. So I learned a little XML, and little XSL, a little PHP, and a little Javascript, and viola ! All I need to worry about is the words.

And why the change from .com to .org? No good reason, really. This site is a past-time… a pursuit… a hobby. A place to collect my thoughts and inflict them on the viewing public. I am a professional at work. Here… I am Your Host.

(sound of crickets chirping)

Hello?

Hunkering Down

John Winkelman

Me again. My life is still mad busy, and I am plugging away at the design for the new ECCESIGNUM, launching May 1, or thereabouts.

I got all I could out of the Memetics book. After the first six or so chapters it becomes Applied Memetics, which is less interesting to me than the concept of memetics. So I have set the book aside, just in time to dive into AI Game Programming Wisdom, which shipped today and should be here early next week. Yes, I want to program games.

Updates will (obviously) be infrequent until the relaunch.

Holograph

John Winkelman

Hello. I’ve missed you all.

Two important announcements: First, at the end of April…and possibly before… this site will be reborn as www.eccesignum.org . Don’t bother looking; there is nothing there yet. And second, I am playing around with Flash MX, and it is a super-duper wondrous geeky toy. So when (if?) I have any time, I will be posting new experiments.

I want to take a moment to give Mad Props to the ubermensch at Modwest , who will be hosting the new incarnation of this car-crash of a website.

Engine

John Winkelman

Just to prove that Flash is great for making 80’s style arcade games, here is a little thing I whipped up in about an hour this evening. Use the arrow keys to move, and the mouse to aim. If the arrow keys don’t do anything, click on the window to bring it into focus. I will add destructive ability when I figure out how to attach a #%*)%*#%# click event to the root level of a Flash movie.

Tools of the Trade

John Winkelman

Flash is sucking my time away faster than prime time television. No time to read, no time for fun stuff. Not that Flash isn’t fun.

I have a few development links for you, my three readers. First is this page , which has some extremely good tips for optimizing Javascript performance. It also includes benchmarks which show that the techniques actually do work.

Next is a Java development environment called NetBeans which is aimed at web developers. You will need the Java SDK in order to install NetBeans.

In other news, I have been listening to a great German band called Corvus Corax. Medieval music with bagpipes, with a distinct dark-ages feel, coupled with an overtone of punk. Good angry programming music. The problem is, the CDs appear to be nigh impossible to get here in the US. This is not really a problem as long as Audio Galaxy is around, but they are good enough that I want to have their music on CD. Original CD. Not burned copies.