THE PASZ.COM BLOG

Red Carpet Oscars Challenge

2008-02-21T07:00:00.001-08:00

Here's another project, my first for Facebook: http://apps.facebook.com/peopleredcarpet/ Pick your Oscar choices and compare results with your friends after the Oscars this weekend... You need to be logged into Facebook for this link to work.

2D Barcodes

2008-02-18T09:05:00.000-08:00

Here's a fun site I worked on for Sprint, that explains their 2D barcode technology. 2D barcodes can contain a lot more (n^2) information than a standard linear barcode. The neat thing is, you can scan the codes directly into your phone and access the data. I was the technical lead on the project, and also created the 3D Environment using Papervision. The concept was developed by Goodby,

A Happy Halloween Mix Tape from Fuzz

2007-10-31T17:04:00.001-07:00

Here's a custom tape created using the Deck-o-Rator we released last week on Fuzz.com. Nice work!

Mix Tape Creator at Fuzz.com

2007-10-22T12:59:00.000-07:00

A project I've been working on with Cog1 just went live today at fuzz.com and we got a nice write-up in the Tech section of today's San Francisco Chronicle. The site lets you create and share music "mix tapes" featuring artists from the Fuzz music library. The tape animations are created using the Papervision 3D library, which has been taking the Flash world by storm. The tape and case are

ActionScript Gotcha #345: Recursive Getter

2007-09-26T07:36:00.000-07:00

Here's a great way to create an infinite loop, and crash the Flash player with a stack overflow: public function get myVar(): MovieClip { return myVar; } Yes, that should be: public function get myVar(): MovieClip { return _myVar; } A single missing underscore leads to disaster!

Darkon Name Generator

2007-08-03T08:34:00.000-07:00

Here's one of a couple of projects I've been busy on lately. It's a Flash activity to promote the new film Darkon from IFC -- a documentary about live-action role playing gamers. It was coded for Flash 8, entirely using FlashDevelop. Art and animation were created by Cog1. Enjoy!

Comments

2007-06-24T14:30:00.000-07:00

I spent today reviewing my blog, and -- in addition to a bunch of comment spam -- there were a couple of interesting comments on some of my older posts. Thanks to search engines, it looks like old posts will sometimes bubble to the top and keep getting hits. I tried to go back and reply to questions where appropriate. I want to encourage people to comment, and I'll do my best to read them.

OmniGraffle, Where Have You Been All My Life?

2007-06-21T12:51:00.000-07:00

It's not often one opens an application and immediately falls in love with it. Finally having decided that I need to mhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifove on from GModeler, I started searching for a solid UML diagramming tool -- preferably a free one. Though OmniGraffle is not free, after playing around with it for less than an hour, I plunked down almost $150 on the professional version

Using FlexBuilder to Program for Flash CS3

2007-06-17T07:48:00.001-07:00

This is probably completely obvious to some people, but there's a scarcity of information out there about Flash/Flex workflow, so I thought I'd post. Here's the scenario: You've been hired to work with a design company that only uses the Flash CS3; they have no interest in learning Flex. However, you don't want to program in Flash CS3 or some other text editor because you're comfortable with

Some Ugly Flash Code

2007-06-14T22:32:00.000-07:00

This code truly encapsulates some of the worst features of the ActionScript 2 APIs. Guess what it does... var connection_nc:NetConnection = new NetConnection(); connection_nc.connect(null); var stream_ns:NetStream = new NetStream(connection_nc); video_1.attachVideo(stream_ns); stream_ns.play("1.flv"); attachAudio(stream_ns); var audio_sound:Sound = new Sound(this); audio_sound.setVolume(0);

Preloading Images in JavaScript

2007-06-14T06:55:00.000-07:00

Ok, this may be old news for some people, but since I'm working in Flash about 90% of the time these days, I'm always looking for tricks to make my life easier when I have to do JavaScript stuff. Here's a function that will preload an array of images: function imagePreLoad(images) { var image = new Array(); for (var i = 0; i < images.length; i++) { image[i] = new Image();

Improved Full Screen Mode in Flash 9

2007-06-11T08:18:00.000-07:00

There is certainly an abundance of riches on Adobe Labs this morning. But perhaps lost in the shuffle is news from the Flash Player team about an improved full screen mode that uses hardware acceleration to improve performance. Hopefully this will improve video performance in full screen mode. Perhaps it is also a small step toward getting 3D hardware acceleration into Flash. Kaourantin.net

Haxe, AS2 and AS3 all in one happy place...

2007-05-22T08:46:00.000-07:00

Okay, this to me is almost as exciting as the StarCraft 3 news. :) FlashDevelop 3 Alpha has been released. You can now create HaXe and AS3 projects without additional annoying configuration. And now that you can generate AS3 code from HaXe, and also generate AS3 code from AS2, the disparate worlds of the Flash development universe are really starting to converge! While this release is still

Battlecruiser Operational

2007-05-19T09:43:00.000-07:00

Blizzard has announced Starcraft 2. Geek fit in progress...

setInterval

2007-05-06T19:18:00.000-07:00

I often see questions about setInterval on flashcoders, so I thought I'd share my comments here. This applies to both Flash and JavaScript programming... Intervals are not a problem as long as you use them correctly. Just make sure for every setInterval() call you have a corresponding clearInterval() call. Usually the clearInterval() is within your interval event handler function, so once the

"It's not Raw, it's Rare"

2007-05-04T17:16:00.000-07:00

If you're at all interested in digital photography, I highly recommend listening to This Week in Media, episode 51, with guest Bill Crow from Microsoft. Know the difference between Raw and JPEG? Nikon Raw vs. Canon Raw? JPEG vs. JPEG 2000? JPEG vs. TIFF? Ever wondered about better ways to capture and convert analog image data? Check out this podcast, which is chock full of interesting info.

Adobe Bridge & Flash CS3 - Initial Impressions

2007-05-03T08:36:00.000-07:00

I received my Flash CS3 Upgrade (Windows version) in the mail yesterday. Unfortunately, I had dinner plans, so I only had time to install and play around with it a little bit. I'll post more detailed comments later. I'm especially interested to see how the Flash/Flex workflow goes... In addition to the install DVD, you get a CS3 Video Workshop disk, which has training videos (i.e. commercials)

No More Long-Winded Event Dispatching

2007-05-01T06:56:00.000-07:00

This is great. It always annoyed me that it took so much messy code to dispatch an event. I wish I'd thought of it. This more concise approach can be applied to other event-handling models as well, not just Cairngorm.

HTTPS + Flash + IE + Dynamic XML = Bug

2007-04-28T08:51:00.000-07:00

How was web development done before Google? A site we're releasing just got hit with this IE bug that occurs when you're running Flash through https. The full description of the problem can be found here. I was able to find a solution in about an hour. Before internet search it probably would have taken days to get to the bottom of the problem, and might even

Yahoo! ActionScript APIs

2007-04-26T10:33:00.000-07:00

I've been playing around with the Yahoo! ActionScript 3 APIs, which are pretty cool. You can access Maps, Search, and a number of other services. The documentation is so-so, and it took a bit of trial and error to get things working, but here's a simple search tool I created. The search is restricted to Pasz.com. You can right-click and do "View Source" to see the ActionScript and MXML code.

Samurai Kittens is an Award Winner

2007-04-23T11:46:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. Getting married has taken up a lot of my time. :) I'm told Samurai Kittens has picked up a couple of awards, including a Silver Addy award for interactive media. I can't believe it's been a year since we launched. That project was a blast!

One Thing I'm Loving About Apollo...

2007-03-28T22:42:00.000-07:00

Okay, this is not earth-shattering by any means, but Apollo has turned out to be a great testing platform. Though, eventually, I plan to release my application in a browser, during development, testing in a browser is annoying. Specifically, Apollo provides the following benefits: 1. I can leave my browser open in the background while testing, and not be distracted by multiple windows/tabs

Function Proxy for ActionScript 3

2007-03-21T07:54:00.000-07:00

In all my AS2 work, I depend heavily on Person 13's Proxy Class, which allows you to create a reference to a function and pass in a dynamic number of arguments. This technique is very useful for setting up event handlers and callback functions in situations where you don't want to deal with the overhead of setting up an event listener architecture for your application. As I'm transitioning to

Reporting from Apollo Camp

2007-03-16T18:11:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this in the middle of Kelly Lynch's keynote, jacked up on caffeine -- it's been a long week. He's going over a lot of stuff that was covered at Flex 360. The most exciting part is definitely getting my hands on the Apollo CD. Mike Chambers made it sound like they've really been burning the midnight oil to get this ready for today's event. Interesting that it's not up on Labs yet.

Flex Builder Tips

2007-03-09T18:23:00.000-08:00

A few notes I took during David Zuckerman's Flex Builder Secrets panel at 360 Flex. KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS ctrl-shift-P - Find matching bracectrl-shift-T - pop-up list of every type in projectctrl-click on a class to open and jump into the file for it.ctrl-o - brings up outline viewctrl-shift-o organize imports OTHER NEAT FEATURES Use the history arrows in the toolbar to navigate between files