Minor change to the previous experiment. This one, obviously, performs color substitution as it is rendering the 3d-ish version of the bitmap. Click to launch the Height Map.
Flash 8 Experiment: Topographic Map
[Requires the Flash 8 player. Click on the image to render the height map. Hit your browser’s “refresh” button to render it again]
During my oh-so-few free hours I have been playing around with the BitmapData object in the new Flash 8 player. This is what I have come up with most recently: A height map.
The possibilities for this kind of tool are quite exciting: 3d tiled terrain, height maps and data displays are just the beginning.
Right now the heightmap tool only works with grayscale images. I have a plan for performing real-time color substitution, but that will come with version 1.0. This is still a beta, somewhere around .6 or .7. When I feel comfortable with the completeness of this thing I will post some code. But first, a day or two without staring at this thing into the wee hours of the morning.
Books, Again
I haven’t written much lately about what has been going on in my world, book-wise. I haven’t been reading as much as usual, on account of all of the other stuff going on in my life.
A few weeks ago I picked up Rules of Play, a textbook covering many aspects of game design and game theory. Despite what some of the less-than-impressed reviewers have to say about the book, I am finding it to be an absolute treasure trove of ideas and observations about everything game related. It is very much a “think about this”, rather than a “do it this way” – type book, and as such is useful for a much wider variety of projects than would be a “Learn 3d lighting algorithms for animating hair in Maya for Doom XVIII” – type book, which is what the detractors seem to expect.
A little while before that I picked up Rainbow Stories by William Vollmann. I have read a few of his novels, and of course Rising Up and Rising Down (which Amazon.com is currently listing for $475!!!), but this is the first time I have read his smaller works. And they are brilliant. His characters are prostitutes and junkies and ancient Babylonian heroes and doctors and police and everyone in between. And though the stories can be ugly, the writing is beautiful and very much worth the effort.
Rewinding a little more brings us to The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson. This one had been hovering around the edges of my perception since I picked up Red Mars a couple of years ago. It is a speculative history novel which explores the idea, “what if the Black Plague wiped out 90 percent of Europe instead of 30 percent?”. Each chapter explores the world through the eyes of several characters who are continually reincarnated into interconnected lives, from the years of the plague up to roughly the year 2090. I have always enjoyed “what if?” – type books which explore the effects of single events on the cascade of history, and this book is one of the best of them.
Shortly before that I picked up 40 Signs of Rain, also by Kim Stanley Robinson, which follows members of the scientific community as they try to raise awareness in time to stem the disastrous results of global warming. This one is not as accessible as his other works, and sounds a little pedantic at times, but it is superbly researched and does a wonderful job of showing the day-to-day efforts of the scientists who, more than anyone else, understand what we are doing to the planet, and what it will take to counter those acts.
Just today, on the way home from work, I picked up Old Man’s War by John Scalzi. I am a little in to the second chapter, and I have to say this: Buy the book. Buy it now. I am impressed enough after 20 pages that I feel I can safely say that this will be one of the best books I read this year. And after so many years of reading science fiction, it takes a lot to impress me.
So there we are. Fitting in a little reading in the nooks and crannies of my insanely busy life; usually between 11:30 and whenever I finally drift off to sleep on any given weeknight.
Up next: Judas Unchained by Peter F. Hamilton; the sequel to Pandora’s Star, which was a rollicking good read, as are all of Hamilton’s books. It hits the shelves this upcoming Tuesday, and the week after that is spring break, which means an extra eight hours of reading time for me before the long slide into the final weeks of the semester. Eight more weeks before I am free from the insane schedule which I have inflicted upon myself.
Watch This
Portnoy, about whom I have written in the past, has just launched a new project: 3 Years in 3 Minutes, a music video-ish, slideshow-ish retrospective of the past three years of his life. The video is available in both low-res (27MB, embedded in the page) and hi-res(60MB, downloadable) versions. Well worth the download.
Practicing What I Preach
In line with my stated goals for the the Year of the Dog, I have given myself a couple of personal projects.
Every day this year, I will think up an idea for a game. Computer game, board game, card game, logic puzzle… all are fair game. Heh.
And every day this year, I will write a poem. Haiku, sonnet, blank verse, random gibberish…good or not, it will help me get my head back into the space it was many years ago, before I began spending so much time staring at computers.
If I come up with anything particularly interesting or good, I will post it here. And if one of my ideas turns into an actual game, I will also post it here.
Here is an example computer game which I came up with today:
You are stationed on an asteroid in space, in the middle of an ion cloud. Enemies are approaching! Your only defense is a (bottomless) crate of capacitors and a, uh, capacitor launcher. When the capacitor reaches a predetermined location, it discharges and electricity arcs between your base and the capacitor, frying anything which gets in the way.
Gameplay is as follows:
Your base is in the center of the screen.
Enemies drift around out in space, and occasionally spiral in to ram you.
Click the screen to launch a capacitor from your base to the area you just clicked.
When the capacitor reaches that point, electricity discharges in a straight line between the base and the capacitor.
Any Enemy touched by the electricity is destroyed.
Powerups are occasionally released by dead enemies, and drift toward your base.
If you shoot the powerup it is destroyed
Powerups include extra lives, shields, a faster-flying capacitor, improved rate of fire, multiple arcs, and possibly a smart-bomb type weapon.
I don’t think this game would be too difficult to program. I just need to sit down and program it.
The Year of the Dog
Happy New Year, everyone!
It is something of a tradition for those who Blog to post a year-end retrospective and prospective. This is mine; my fortunes seem to follow the Eastern New Year more closely than the Western, and the things in my life which are most important seem to align with the animal signs.
First, the past.
The Year of the Wood Rooster was very good to me. Here are some of the highlights, in roughly chronological order:
I quit a job which was fast making me very unhappy. I took a six-week break from working, then began freelancing with the people who eventually became my new co-workers.
The change in surroundings left me with much more physical, mental and emotional energy, which I turned toward reconnecting with the people around me. In particular I threw more energy into Master Lee’s class. The previous year or so of systemic depression made it exceedingly difficult to focus on the class to the extent it deserves, so I had a lot of ground there to regain.
For the first time in twenty years, I programmed some computer games: An arcade game, and a strategy game. Not the most complex things in the world, but the experience re-ignited in me the joy of programming which I had lost. Good thing, too, considering this is what I do for a living.
Somewhere in there I met a wonderful, beautiful woman. Though we were not together for very long the experience left me with a renewed self-confidence which I had once lost, somewhere along the way.
At the end of summer, in the middle of August, my brother and I took a week-long vacation to New Orleans to visit my father and step-mother. It turned out that my timing could hardly have been better. Hurricane Katrina happened the week after I returned home. Thanks in large part to work my brother and I did, helping the parents to organize their belongings, they had no trouble at all evacuating when the storm hit.
And probably the biggest change in my life, I bought a house.
My sign is the Earth Rooster. This is the year of the Fire Dog. It looks like it should be a pretty good year for me. Notice that the prediction for the Earth Rooster says “I will be much more sociable and communicative than usual”. At the western New Year I made a resolution to be less of a hermit. Looks like I chose wisely.
Now, what are my plans for the upcoming year?
Nothing too specific. This semester will be my last at Kendall College. Though I enjoy teaching, it is too much of a time commitment, and leaves me stretched too thin to devote the appropriate attention to the other things in my life which are so important. Also, it pretty much nixes my social life for eight months out of the year.
Once upon a time I wrote poetry and short stories every day, and filled hundreds of pages in journals every year. It is time to start doing that kind of thing again. Perhaps I will visit the UICA writers’ studio which I had a hand in starting, many years ago.
I would like to practice tai chi and kung fu more often and more regularly.
I would like to throw more energy into maintaining and improving Master Lee’s school.
I would like to create some more computer games.
I would like to meet another wonderful, beautiful woman. Or two. Hundred.
I would like to turn my house into the kind of comfortable, beautiful place that I and my friends can use to relax and re-connect with each other and the world at large.
But most of all, I want to be as happy as I was last year, and help my friends and family to have as wonderful a year as I hope to have.
Art Van Ripped My Flesh: Adventures in Furniture Shopping
If you look at the photos in my previous post you will see that my house is big and old and beautiful…and empty. So Christmas and the new year I made it my mission to do something I have never done before: buy furniture.
I don’t shop much. I’m a fella™, and as a fella™ I like to walk into a place already pretty much knowing what I will walk out with. Not so, buying furniture. When you buy furniture, apparently you are supposed to take into account the other furniture you own, if any, and how your old stuff will look with your new stuff, and vice versa, in a recursive shopping free-for-all. There are no hard-and-fast rules around the experience, but dammit! All I want is a couple of chairs!
This is how the week went:
On Monday I spent the whole day driving around looking at things. Sofas chairs tables futons desks rugs the whole shebang. I went home that night with one of the worst headaches of my life.
On Tuesday I repeated Monday, but with a more discerning eye.
On Wednesday I went to Art Van and ordered a split queen-sized foundation for my bed, on account of my old box-spring won’t fit up my stairs.
On Thursday I bought a dining-room table from Stone’s Throw, which was delivered Friday morning. Friday afternoon, I hijacked Bock and we headed to the north side of town to pick up my box-springs from the Art Van warehouse. Finally, after a month of sleeping on the floor, or on chopped-up particle-board, I had my bed back in working order.
Or so I thought.
“There you go, have a good ‘un”, said the 20-something fella as he threw my box-spring into Bock’s truck. “Hot dayum!” said I, and “Yee haw. Ummâ…where’s the other half?”
“Says here you ordered one split box spring.”
“That’s right. One box spring, split into two halves.”
“You know, I though it was kind of funny that there was only one. Most people order two.”
“What am I gonna do with half (30″ wide) of a box spring? Put it in the hold of my slave ship? Where’s the rest of it?”
“Let me call 28th Street.”
[time passes]
“They say you ordered one box spring. They can get you the other one, but they won’t give it to you for free.”
“Argh. Okay. When you order A Split Foundation, does that not imply two halves?”
“Well, yeah…” At this point the warehouse floor manager walked over. “What’s up?”
“Hey [manager] guess what? 28th Street is getting dumber again!” (note the “again”).
“Come on; don’t talk bad about our company.”
So the kid relayed the story and ended it with “That’s the most retarded thing I ever heard!”
“Right there with you,” said I, and “Cancel my order. For $500, a box spring had better service me when I lay down on it.”
So I went home, sans box spring. I immediately drove over to the store where I ordered the thing and said “I need to talk to a manager!” A manager came over and I told him the whole story, minus the editorializing of the warehouse crew. He said “Yeah. You ordered the wrong thing.”
“I told you what I needed. YOU ordered the wrong thing. And you only ordered half of it!”
“You said you needed a split foundation.”
“Yeah. A SPLIT foundation! A foundation SPLIT IN HALF.”
“A split foundation is half of a bed.”
“So I should have ordered TWO split foundations? That don’t make NO sense!”
“Sorry sir, if you want to order the RIGHT thing we can get it to you in a week for $300.00.”
“Forget it. Keep your damn bed, I’ll sleep on the bathroom floor.”
So here we are. Today I went out to RCD Direct and picked up what I needed in half an hour, and at half the price Art Van wanted for an inferior product. When I told the RCD fella my story he said “Yeah, if I had a dollar for each time I heard an Art Van story this week I’d have five dollars.”
I think I can safely say I am never doing business with Art Van again.
On the up side, I now have a bed that sits waist-height off the floor, so I can slide out of bed in the morning, rather than climb out of it.
And that’s all I ever wanted.
House Photos I
This is the first round of photos of my house. Enjoy!
My house, which sits on the North side of Innes street. It is hard to tell from the photo, but it sits pretty high up on a small hill. The floor of the basement is about even with the street.
The view west from my porch.
The view east from my porch.
The entryway. I didn’t paint the door.
Facing west into the living room. Note the absolutely beautiful trim and floors.
The dining room. The table came with the house. So did the chairs
The master bedroom. It is hard to get a shot of a large room from small doorway.
The bathroom. There is another one in the basement, which is actually a toilet sitting in a corner of the floor. Huh. Also, the bathroom currently does not have a door. I didn’t even notice until I had been living here for about a week.
Looking toward the south-east from my office.
Looking down on the garage from the north window of the library/second bedroom.
My attic. Those chairs are left over from two owners ago. And so is…
…the Swinging Disco Love Nook! This photo barely does the attic justice. The area around the dormer window has a built-in waterbed frame and its own lights and electric outlets. This photo is from me, laying on my back and shooting up at the ceiling above the waterbed frame.
And this is the view from the attic window, looking down at my car. It is hard to tell from the photo, but I the attic window is close to thirty feet above street level. I have a fantastic view.
So there you have it: The first round of photos. I am almost finished unpacking, and now I need to start Buying Stuff. Like furniture. I will continue to post photos as Chez Winkelman continues to evolve.
Flash 8 Stress Test
This is my most recent Flash 8 experiment. I used it to see what some of the possible limits of rendering might be; specifically, multiple levels of alpha transparency rendering over a complex background.
It works like this: A .jpg (the background) and a .png with alpha transparency (a Green Floating Chad Head) are loaded at runtime. I copy the .jpg and the Chad Head into Bitmap objects, then run a simple math algorithm to copy 100 instances of the Chad Head onto the background, then clone that bitmap onto the one which is displayed in the Flash player. This combines two concepts known as blitting and double buffering, which help to speed up otherwise lengthy and/or processor-intensive rendering jobs.
SkaBoom, 100 objects moving at a high rate of speed with, in effect, 100 levels of alpha transparency displayed at once. All combined into a single 480 pixel square bitmap.
Thanks to the folks over at Bit-101’s forums for help with some of the new functionality.
Last
Right now I am sitting in room 429 at Kendall College of Art and Design, waiting for my next appointment. The way it works is this: All of my students handed in their final projects at the end of the day this past Wednesday; it being the last day of classes for the semester. Over the weekend I graded those assignments, and today I am meeting individually with all of my students, telling them what their final grades are, why they got the grades they did, and offering advice for the upcoming semesters and years.
The lowest grade is a C, and the highest is an A, with the curve tending toward the higher end of the spectrum.
I should be home by 8:00.
This has been the busiest four months in recent memory. More than that: I don’t remember being this busy since the heady days of working at the bookstore during the Christmas season. It has been that long.
So I have a little free time for the next month. Time to work on the house. I still am not finished unpacking. I am stuck in the apartment-dweller’s mode of “I can’t unpack until I know where EVERYTHING goes”, which stems from having severely restricted living space. I actually have all kinds of room now, so I need to finish unpacking, and then worry about where everything goes.
And I am putting together the list of the items I need to buy, and the attributes of the house which I want to change. First thing: a new bed. The box-spring for my bed will not fit up the stairs. And I damaged the mattress in the process of moving. So instead of spending my first night in luxury in my new warm bedroom, I spent it sleeping on the floor on a pile of blankets.
Next: washer and dryer. Last time I went to a laundromat someone tried to sell me something he said was crack, but which turned out to be macadamia nuts. Where the hell did he get macadamia nuts in this town? Crack would have been cheaper.
And things to do to the house:
-eaves and drainpipes, to keep me from dying when I walk on an icy sidewalk
-replace the front (concrete) steps with something newer, which maybe has more right angles, and fewer slopes. For that matter, replace the whole of the sidewalk around my house.
-plant a tree
-finish the attic. Turn it into something like a large office/library.
-finish bricking my enemies into the wall of the basement.
Being a homeowner is nothing but workworkwork.