Software, Fitness, and Gaming – Jesse Warden

Blog

  • Timeline, Central SDK, & Target Hamper

    Driving back 8 hours is always easier with sleep… imagine that.

    <b>Timeline</b>
    Saw Timeline last night. Pretty good movie. Wasn’t a blockbuster, but I still say money well spent on a flic. I certainly enjoyed it. I’ve always liked the “bardic” qualities the character Marek (<a href=”http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0124930/”>Gerad Butler</a>) when he was in <a href=”http://video.movies.go.com/reignoffire/flash.html”>Reign of Fire</a>, so it was nice to have him in such a role in this one. Additionally, with all the schlack the French have been getting in the US, this was a great way for you to rally around the French, going, “Rock, the French kick ass!”.

    <b>Central SDK Thoughts</b>
    Curled up with my laptop on squishy couches and chairs amongst family animals at the in-laws with coffee & OJ, and read the Central SDK. Found some inconcistancies (getURL doesn’t use cached assets even though it said it did in one spot for example), but overall, very informative, and certainly brings up a lot of best practice questions. I couldn’t shake the feeling <a href=”http://www.markme.com/mesh/”>Mike Chambers</a> was sitting there pretty much reading me the docs verbatim. I mean, I don’t know if he even wrote them, but since he seems to be the front-man for it, it was just hard to get past. Didn’t complicate or slow the process, just once you have a face for a company, you personify that onto a lot of what you use from said company.

    At any rate, good stuff, and will have to correspond with my homey <a href=”http://www.darronschall.com/”>D</a> about how to go about putting our ideas in such an infrastucture. I guess my hypothetical question (which I’d love to have answered) is why Agents? Here’s what I mean: Although Agents, App, and Pod have no clue if either is initiated before he, nor does any of them guarentee it’ll still be running… then really why the push for Agents? I understand the server/client metaphor, but even though they are but a 3rd of the power in the triumvirate that is an app for Central, I don’t see why he has the Controller position for apps IF any of the other pieces need him to function correctly? Regardless, I’ll do what I always do and aim for what Macromedia suggests to do.

    Oh yeah, already have wish-lists for it: Agent wars. I have flashbacks to elementary school when the teacher would punish the whole class because one person acted up. The concept of one Agent’s script becomming too processor intensive shuts ALL agents down. BS. I mean, granted, I’ll naturally rally all the other Flashers to immediately travel to el developer’s house and promptly beat the living crap out of him, but still, that’s such a destructive way of enforcing good playing field rules. Still, at least give us a frikin’ event, like, “onSomeLosersAppHasShutdownAllAgents”. I mean, Agents are the integral piece of a Central app, and yet they are so fragile AND can be turned off. Heck, can you make it any harder? You know me, I love a challenge, but damn… We’ll figure it out, I’m sure, though. I’m really excited to figure out how Darron and my idea is going to work in it. Forgot my other wish, but it’ll come back.

    <b>Target Hamper</b>
    The lack of furniture meeting the highest standards known to women-kind has forced once again a Target binge. Found a laundry hamper in Virginia and put it together here in 5 minutes. Nice little thing, and fun to put together, but does not seem to be the <a href=”http://www.transportermovie.com/home.html”>Transporter</a> house style… but then, what is?

  • Star Wars Galaxies & The Real World: She Said “Yes” in Both!

    Sunday night I popped the question… in two different places. First, in SWG, and then immediately in the real world.

    First, I struggled to purchase a program online via PayPal that captures your computer screen activity and saves it into a video file for later viewing. …no dice, PayPal takes 2 to 3 days to validate, and I wanted to propose before we went up north (she would get a lot of love and praise from her family, and I wouldn’t get capped via a 22). I tried using her PayPal after much annoying running back and forth between the bedroom (her office where she plays SWG) and my office. Turns out, her PayPal default email was sent to a no longer valid email address. After purchasing the program, I had no way to download it. Contacting the geek who played geek games and made the geek program… I didn’t receive a response till Monday morning. I guess he has a life, but most geeks I know are on their comps on Sunday night.

    At any rate, in depression, I wallowed in self-pity at my failed plan. Then, I suddendly came up with the bright idea of using demo software. Found a link to a site a friend recommended a long time ago, downloaded their demo of HyperCam, and went to work tweaking my settings as low as they would go so I could get the best framerate. I ended up settling for 1 fps… Even after a fresh reformat and a screamin’ video card, my comp still could barely handle SWG and the capture going at the same time. So, I logged in, travelled to the planet my fiancee had moved to, and documented the journey.

    I’ve posted the footage. If you wish to cut to the chase, simply select “The Proposal” from the controls. Video of the real ring is at the end.

    …the least I can do, I believe, is to purchase HyperCam since they saved my arse. Don’t know what I am going to do with two video capture programs, though…

    SWG Proposal – Main (html) | Scalable (swf)

  • Loading Levels only for looks? Depends…

    Using 2004 to test loading some levels on this … *ahem*, “app” I’m working on. It seems that although the level does stream in via the bandwidth profiler, getBytesLoaded and getBytesTotal are returning the full values. Interestingly, if you hardcode the level, you get the correct results. Check it, this gives me the full bytes even though I’m “streaming” in Flash:
    <code>
    var mc = eval(“_level ” + this._parent.MOVIE_LEVEL);
    var l = mc.getBytesLoaded();
    var t = mc.getBytesTotal();
    </code>
    This gives me the correct streaming results:
    <code>
    var l = _level1.getBytesLoaded();
    var t = _level1.getBytesTotal();
    </code>

    Alllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll righty then.

  • Beatdown: 40 minute Scoring App

    Built this app in a burnt out fervor. Co-workers play Ping-Pong, and are pretty competitive, and like to keep score. I made a simple Flashcom app that keeps the score. Many would reason PHP and mySQL are pristine for this. I reply, “Sure, but not in 40 minutes.”

    Just make a folder on your flashcom server called “beatdown”, and replace the rtmp path, and uncomment the SO creation at the bottom.

    Beatdown – <a href=”https://www.jessewarden.com/downloads/beatdown.zip”>ZIP</a>