Today’s post is a departure from my usual writing, but it has math at its core. It’s not meant to be taken as a political statement, but you’re free to read into it what you choose. We’ll get back to more typical geeky topics next time.
As I right this, on Sunday morning, May 30, 2010, the world is learning the method known as top kill has not succeeded in stopping oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. I initially found out about the failure of... + read on
In a number of Flash projects we've done at JMX2 (shameless plug), I've run into the situation where I simply wanted to delay the actual execution of a function. Sometimes it was to tweak an animation so its pacing felt right. Often times I wanted to delay a sound clip by a few beats so that it gave the proper timing to the scene.
After writing the same code a number of times, I decided to encapsulate that whole process into a class called... + read on
If you make Flash banners that run across multiple media sites, the lack of a standard "clickTag" can be a huge pain. (What's a clickTag? Read here.) Some media sites use clickTag. The version with that is all lower-case except for a capital T seem seems to be the most common form, but there are sites that use clickTAG, clicktag, or CLICKTAG. What that means is that you can end up creating multiple versions of a banner just to deal with the... + read on
I have a function I end up using in nearly every Flash project I do. It's dead simple, but really useful. It's called getRandom and it takes 2 numbers, and it will return a random number between those values.
function getRandom(_min, _max):Number{
var tNumber:Number;
tNumber = Math.round(Math.random()*(_max-_min))+_min;
return tNumber;
}
Now go off and make beautiful random numbers. (Or at least the beautiful sudo random numbers, since... + read on
Back in 2007, I found some ice cube trays that were really cool to me. They made large spherical ice cubes. I wrote about them here at SuperGeekery in a post called A Geeky Spin Chilling a Cocktail - Round Ice Cubes. The term "round ice cubes" continues to be a top driver to this site. Who would have guessed there was a subculture that thought round ice cubes were as cool as I think they are?
For the round ice cube obsessed, there is bad... + read on
My posts on how to use Google Maps within Flash have been some of the most popular posts I've had on SuperGeekery. They've generated a lot of emails from people around the world and those questions from readers have helped me learn mapping even better.
I got an email recently about centering a map and it gave me the opportunity to use a new tool in the Labs area of Google Maps. I made a short video below on how the feature works. I like... + read on
Another SXSW Interactive ends. The “spring break for nerds” lived up to its unofficial title again. I had a wonderful time catching up with old friends and making new ones. SXSW is just as much making those connections as the panels you attend. Add the panels and the conversations that they inspire over drink and meals after each day's events and a picture of what's in store for the interactive world over the near future begins to... + read on
Today is day 4 of 5 of SXSW Interactive. It's a mixture of exhilaration and exhaustion. This morning reminds me of waking up on the Saturday morning of the last real weekend of summer. Everyone is a little sun burnt but there's a glow about everyone. Last night we were all out too late but we're up and ready to spend another day with our friends but the heat of the summer is going to be over soon and real life will begin again in just a few... + read on
During the rebuild of this site, I ended up doing a Movable Type Export from my old database and an reimportation into a new "clean" database. It worked decently, but I've still got cleaning up to do in some older posts. Doing a search and replace within my database seemed like the best way to fix the biggest offenders in my posts and that's how I cleaned up the most offending cruft that crept in.
Before you try any of this on your own... + read on
SuperGeekery was originally designed in one furious evening of designing in Photoshop and coding in Expression Engine version 1.something. The speedy design and development was a product of equal parts overbooked schedule and typical procrastination.
I had arrived in Las Vegas at my first CES in January 2007, a geeky badge of honor to me, and felt compelled to write about the experience, but I didn't have my site built yet. That gave me the... + read on
Today’s post is a departure from my usual writing, but it has math at its core. It’s not meant to be taken as a political statement, but you’re free to read into it what you choose. We’ll get back to more typical geeky topics next time.
As I right this, on Sunday morning, May 30, 2010, the world is learning the method known as top kill has not succeeded in stopping oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. I initially found out about the failure of... + read on
In a number of Flash projects we've done at JMX2 (shameless plug), I've run into the situation where I simply wanted to delay the actual execution of a function. Sometimes it was to tweak an animation so its pacing felt right. Often times I wanted to delay a sound clip by a few beats so that it gave the proper timing to the scene.
After writing the same code a number of times, I decided to encapsulate that whole process into a class called... + read on
If you make Flash banners that run across multiple media sites, the lack of a standard "clickTag" can be a huge pain. (What's a clickTag? Read here.) Some media sites use clickTag. The version with that is all lower-case except for a capital T seem seems to be the most common form, but there are sites that use clickTAG, clicktag, or CLICKTAG. What that means is that you can end up creating multiple versions of a banner just to deal with the... + read on
Back in 2007, I found some ice cube trays that were really cool to me. They made large spherical ice cubes. I wrote about them here at SuperGeekery in a post called A Geeky Spin Chilling a Cocktail - Round Ice Cubes. The term "round ice cubes" continues to be a top driver to this site. Who would have guessed there was a subculture that thought round ice cubes were as cool as I think they are?
For the round ice cube obsessed, there is bad... + read on
Today is day 4 of 5 of SXSW Interactive. It's a mixture of exhilaration and exhaustion. This morning reminds me of waking up on the Saturday morning of the last real weekend of summer. Everyone is a little sun burnt but there's a glow about everyone. Last night we were all out too late but we're up and ready to spend another day with our friends but the heat of the summer is going to be over soon and real life will begin again in just a few... + read on
SuperGeekery was originally designed in one furious evening of designing in Photoshop and coding in Expression Engine version 1.something. The speedy design and development was a product of equal parts overbooked schedule and typical procrastination.
I had arrived in Las Vegas at my first CES in January 2007, a geeky badge of honor to me, and felt compelled to write about the experience, but I didn't have my site built yet. That gave me the... + read on