ricardocabellov5.5

http://evil.hackademix.net/fullscreen/applet.html

Eeewww! I wonder how long will it take to the phishing / spammer professionals to use this "trick". Thanks for the tip Andre!

So, here I am, still finishing off a project I've been doing at Hi-ReS! for almost 4 months already. Doesn't matter how many time I look at it, I can't see where I spent all that time. I guess it has been all on research, file optimisations, fighting with Papervision3D 2.0... By the way... Andy and Tim, thanks a lot for the constant help! <3!

I could explain some tricks I've learn on this project, but I'll leave it for some other post... I'm already out of focus... The snippet of the day:

FLV to BitmapData Sequence

On the project there were some textures that were FLV animations. At first I had it as a bitmap sequence on the library and it was running quite well, but obviosly, that would be intraframe compression, which means BIG. So, .FLV needed to be used instead. And as it was interframe compression the filesize was much more smaller. But the problem then was that it was making the whole app almost 10fps slower. The decoding of the FLV plus (bad) looping was being very CPU expensive.

So, somehow I had to find a way to mix both best features, small filesize and low CPU usage, the easy answer was just, somehow, creating a bitmap array with each frame in the video (the video doesn't have sound btw). Tried it using the Video methods (seek() and stuff) but there was no way I could jump frame by frame. I guess using these methods you can only jump to the next keyframe. As having a keyframe per frame was going back again to the intraframe compression it was time to google a bit.

Unfortunately (and also fortunately) the only bit I found was this Seb's post, which thanks to Tink managed to find a decent approach for the issue.

Just as Tink suggested, create a .SWF with the .FLV embeded (which, somehow, stays at the same filesize). Having that you get the MovieClip's magic methods: gotoAndStop(), nextframe()...

So, the only thing you need is the small class I put together today:

BitmapDataSequence.as

It's the first version, so don't expect more than the basic stuff. Oh, and yes, it runs MUCH faster than the .FLV and it loops nicely oh, and you could easily change the FPS too.

I wisth they just used Bass and we had even .xm support, but... somehow, I don't think that will ever happen.

Actually, it would make sense if MOD files went back to life thanks to websites. MOD files are very small in size compared to a MP3, and produced by the right people they can sound really well.

http://www.ex7.org/entrevistas/mrdoob.html

It's in spanish tho... oh, and some links are still missing, Ernesto said they were going to fix that soon :)

From here...

".xap" files (pronounced "zap") use the standard .zip compression algorithm to minimize client download size. A "hello world" .NET Silverlight application (built using VB or C#) is about 4KB in size.

If a "hello world" takes 4KB already, what a real application would take? A "hello world" in AS3 seems to be 400bytes btw, a 10%.

Lots to do M$, lots to do...

While chatting with Iq yesterday, he came up with what I think its the perfect explanation for the issue.

People that moan about the demoscene dying coincidentally haven't released a serious production for a while, which means that somehow they lost the interest or the energies. Whether it's because personal issues, lack of time, lack of ideas, or just laziness, doesn't matter.

So, basically, the demoscene isn't dying, neither will ever die. If you think the demoscene is dying you better start working on your next demo, otherwise don't annoy the others with your pesimistic view :)

End of the story.

And now... for something completely different, a personal post.

I have to travel from St James Park tube station to Old Street tube station every day. The trip is about 20 minutes or so.

I have tried to read books on the time but there is no way I can remember what was I was reading on the previous trip, so I gave up on that. Also got tired of playing java games on my mobile.

So, as there is always a newspaper on a seat or the floor, I end up checking out a bit the sensationalist news of the day. On the morning there are mainly 2 newspapers: Metro (which is nasty, focusing on dead people and gossip) and City A.M (which never find). On the afternoon there is another newspaper which I usually find more interesting: TheLondonPaper.

I usually don't care about the news in the world, don't watch TV at all, as doing this lets me easily focus on my stuff. However, there is something I like from newspapers and are the comic strips. The fact that there is someone on the background everyone trying to think about something funny is admirable. Unfortunately the ones at Metro aren't really outstanding, don't even remember any now.

BUT, there is one comic strip that amazes me everyday, and it's the Em one. I find it funny how the author makes fun of male/female behaviours (specially the female ones). So, as like everyone, what I want is to be happy, every afternoon, on my way home, the first thing I do is to check her new cartoon. Then read the news of the day, and at the end of the trip I read the cartoon again.

I even wrote her to ask if she had an archive online with all the cartoons, and... good news, she does :)

http://www.emcartoons.com/

So yeah... Thanks Em! Keep it up! :D

By the way, the Omnipresent (the one on the top of hers in the newspaper is simple rubbish, I don't understand how he come it is still on top).

It was already released 10 days ago, but I wasn't able until today to really use this:

Contextual generators (Ctrl+Shift+1) for getter/setter, event listeners, override methods, interface implementation, unknown var/method

I don't know how could I done anything in this world without that!! ;D

Thanks!

http://hangar18.campus.luth.se/bitjam/bitjam_21.mp3

It sounds a little bit like Borat speaking, but if you can get the thought out of your mind and concentrate on what he says, it is a good explanation.