ricardo cabello* blog*

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fiver2's new baby: debris April 9th 2007, trace

Didn't I say that this guy fackin rules?

Realtime version here
Video version here

Mindcandy 2 March 30th 2007, trace

Uh, long time since writting something here under trace' name ;) Well, just so you know, trace is still active and will keep releasing demos for a while, he needs to find some free time tho. I was planing to attend Assembly this year (no, no Breakpoint, not anymore). I have the tickets and the hostel reserved already. But because some recent events, I'm not sure if I'll be able to attend.

Anyway, yesterday I finally received my copy of Mindcandy 2 that I ordered some days ago to the old spanish scener poves (now living in uk).

Again, nice cover image done by fthr (although I think it's and old illustration). For some reason, the first thing I did was to watch the production notes part, and If you receive the DVD, I recomend you to watch that part first so you get the big picture of the DVD. Trixter explains everything that he had to do for being able to produce the DVD, ordering Amigas, testing, post processing.

I agree with the selection, right now I don't think any of my favorites is missing. Another nice bit are the commentaries, however, for this one I think not too many original authors did them, Trixter had to do a lot of them. I specially liked the one for Silkut which was done by one of the original authors. Nice jokes and 'tricks'.

So, in the end, nice DVD for having good fun. Get yours!

1 comment

Mr. Slip Up March 29th 2007, ricardo

I can't believe how can I be such a disaster. Years ago, when I went to open a bank account I realised I had my passport expired. As I may have said already, opening a bank account in UK is quite hard so imagine the situation, with a lot of documents, bills and stuff, and then with the passport expired. Luckily I had my driving license with me and the guy said that he would accept that as if it was the passport. That was the only time my driving license was useful in my whole life, that was 2 or 3 years after I got it and I never used it, never touch a car.

Well actually, when we went to Iceland I did drive a car, quite a lot of Km in fact, but guess what, I forgot my driving license in reykjavik. Well I though there wasn't going to be any problem as there aren't too many cars around there and we were using a automatic changes car. But then again, I forgot that the limit of these kind of roads were 90km/h, and I was drving at 130km/h when a cop car appeared, and as I didn't know the 90 limit, I didn't reduced... so 40km/h faster than I should, and without my driving license... Imagine the rest... Luckily the guy didn't fine me, but it's just that the roads there are too straigh and there aren't too many cars.. going at 90km/h is boring.
Going back to the passport, again, just after being back at home after reykjavik we obviously put some cloths in the washing machine. We had a lot so we (I) forgot to look on all the pockets. The result was this:

If you ever wondered how a passport will end up when you put it in to the washing machine (with drier program). Now you know. So, that happened 3 weeks ago or so, and then this week I was like, shit, I've to go to Spain now. Oh well, I have my spanish ID, that should be enough (although I may really need a new passport for next month :P). But then, I realised that my spanish ID expired 1 year ago. Yeeey!!!

Well, I went today to the spanish consulate and spend a bit of time there explaining all my problems. Now I have something called "Salvo Conducto" which is a paper that certifies that I'm a good person and that whenever I reach Spanish frontier, they should let me in. However, that paper won't be valid for going back to UK. So I guess I will have to renew my passport in Sevilla this week, and this week is easter, so I believe I'll end up missing the plane back and having to buy another ticket for the week after or something.

Funny, uh? I guess I just can't have *everything* under control. But I'll make sure to renew my passport as soon as it expires or I destroy it and I won't leave it for the last thing.

7 comments

So, what was in the box? March 26th 2007, mr.doob

Right, as some people asked what was in it, and there is almost no time to spoil the surprise to anyone else. Here it's the answer for you:

Inside the coloured box there was an invitation to a secret London place tomorrow. I would think it's for the release of the CS3 products.

The box itself its like on the video, although its not glowing of course. The box was split so you could open it and you would find a CD and if you opened to the other side you would find the invitation. It took me a while to see that you were able to open the in two ways :P.

Seems that the guys at good technology were behind the campaign, not sure how much they did of it tho. By the way, :gt is recruiting and looks like they have a lot of positions available and I know they are recruiting wisely (go Julian go! o/).

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First collab with rtxcite: Bombardearte March 26th 2007, mr.doob

Rtxcite is a quite good creative from Spain. He is one of those that does a bit of everything and you wonder where does he get the time to do all... It also has his own style which is something hard to get.

Some weeks ago he released a site or Sacha Sacket that I though was, again, really nice, but the code was maybe a bit slow. So as I had him on MSN I offered him to partner on this field, so he would design the site and I would code/make it move. He was totally up for the idea as coding wasn't really something he wanted to keep doing forever. So here we are, doing a couple of projects together that need to be released soon ;)

The first one was a semi-fast-one for a newschool decoration company. My part on it was optimising the whole site a bit code speed wise and loading times. Now the loading bar isn't really needed :)

Also it's the first site to have implemented my Phodoob on it for the gallery. Hope you like it! :)

Visit bombardearte's site

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[AS] Problems with myXML.load(url) and multiple GET vars. March 21st 2007, mr.doob

I was developing another little game, and I've been fighting with it for a couple of days, and after trying to locate the problem, seems like in the end it is just a limitation of the myXML.load() function.

A bit of detail about it:

I'm trying to send the scores to my .php at the same time I'm getting the updated list of scores in a XML format, something like:

myXML.load( "scores.php?action=submit_score &name=mr.doob &score=1000 &code=893493" );

So, the php will update the highscores table, and then It will give back the updated table in a XML format. However seems like this doesn't work. For some reason Flash doesn't ever do the call. I've debugged a lot this and this is what I've found:

myXML.load( "scores.php?action=submit_score" );
Works properly, Flash does the call, and it gets the XML back.

myXML.load( "scores.php?action=submit_score &name=mr.doob" );
Works properly, Flash does the call, and it gets the XML back.

myXML.load( "scores.php?action=submit_score &name=mr.doob &score=1000" );
Doesn't work!!

Seems like if you send more than 2 GET variables then flash won't do the call, and I know that it won't do the call because I've a logger on my php code that is saving all the calls that is getting on a .txt file.

Does anyone know if there is any workaround? I'll use a loadvars to send the scores and then get the XML again with a simple call.

2 comments

You're one of the top UK creatives hand picked by Adobe March 21st 2007, mr.doob

Yey!! Mr.doob is one of the top UK creatives!! haha! ;)

Which means that "the box" is on my way. Right, I better start speaking well from Adobe now ;) I'm still shocked tho :O!! and I wonder even more about what is in the box.

3 comments

Adobe Apollo!! No thanks... March 20th 2007, mr.doob

I just don't see the point. Is this another browser? Is this going to be like Internet explorer and its customizable scrollbars feature? If this is something else... then what happens with Macromedia Central?

Sorry, but I'm confused, by now I don't see why should I even take the time to download it. I believe there are too many Adobe fans out there ;)

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Useful? Not really... Fun? Absolutely! March 18th 2007, mr.doob

Long time ago, actually, 2 years ago I had the idea of developing an API for xplsv.tv, and it took like 1 year until I finally worked on it, I think it was something like 1 day of work and I did this:

It was my first experiment using the ZigoEngine so I didn't know very well what I was doing. This weekend I had a bit of spare time, and (more important) inspiration, so, with a little bit more of knowledge about the ZigoEngine and with some tricks that I learnt while doing phodoob v2 I did a simple mosaic, while improving the API a little bit.

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In an office finally March 15th 2007, ricardo

So, hopefully I'll go back sleeping at nigh like the rest of the humanity, and working from 9 to 18 or something like that. After all is my business so I'll see how much my boss (me) ask me to do.

Big thanks to the guys at Traffic Broker!!

2 comments