Hey, just noticed my CoolerKreator tutorial is now available at ComputerArts.co.uk for download, along with all the source files. Go check it out!

FTA:

With numerous Flickr pools and other sites such as www.generatorx.no devoted to displaying generative art, this creative trend is gaining steam. With some of the more popular tools such as VVVV and Processing being easy enough to use, but a bit esoteric, you may feel left out as a Flash user.

With Adobe’s release of ActionScript 3.0, it’s possible to create beautiful generative pieces using tools you already have in your arsenal. Here, we’ll explore some basic tenets of generative art and you’ll learn how to augment your efforts using Adobe’s online kuler service.

Randomness, fantastic colour themes and some display filters will be employed to create one-of-a-kind compositions. The algorithms we’ll use are simple but effective and should serve as inspirational launching points for your own exploration of the field.

Each step of the tutorial, where appropriate, has an accompanying FLA file (found in the support files) with ActionScript 3 in it. If any of the text isn’t self-evident, open that step’s file and learn how it’s done from the code.

I’m happy to let everyone know that this coming Monday, Erik Natzke will be presenting at Bradley University in Peoria, IL. The multimedia program is sponsoring his presentation which will be taking place March 10th at 7PM in Baker Hall, Room B51. Everyone is welcome to attend. If you haven’t seen him present before, don’t miss this opportunity. You can find out more information about the event here. We’re happy to have him come and think this presents a wonderful chance for our students to see some truly groundbreaking work. Don’t miss it!

From DrupalCon 2008: Brian McMurray and Steve Merrill, the brains behind cascadingstyle.net just gave a great presentation to the crowd that was well received… Check it out at their site… The slides are available for download. Anyone who creates content managed sites with a need for Flash should definitely watch the development on this. Their technique is innovative and uses SWFAddress, SWFObject, AMF and Drupal services for a bang up job on making Flash search engine friendly and content manageable. Genius.

We develop a fair amount of touchscreen kiosks at work. So, we often have to hide the cursor for the final deliverable. This can cause issues when you need to debug the kiosk or set it up for final deployment, etc. To avoid confusion or prevent the need to constantly edit the movie turning the mouse visibility on and off via Actionscript again and again, try this. You can use this simple function to add a keyboard listener to your AS3 Flash file so that the mouse will be off by default, but you can toggle the visibility on and off by pressing the button of your choice… in this case I use “m” (but you could easily change this to “~” or something less common incase you need alphanumeric input for the application, etc).

One thing to keep in mind is that when testing the app in the IDE, sometimes the Flash IDE may intercept your keypress and switch the tool currently selected in the tools pallette instead of doing what think it should be doing. You can simply open the SWF in the standalone Flash player to see how it really should be behaving…. Anyway, take a look at this code:

import flash.ui.Mouse;
import flash.events.KeyboardEvent;
 
stage.addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_UP, reportKeyUp);
 
Mouse.hide();
 
var mouseVisible:Boolean = false;
 
function reportKeyUp(event:KeyboardEvent):void {
 
trace("Key Released: " + String.fromCharCode(event.charCode) + " (key code: " + event.keyCode + " character code: " + event.charCode + ")");
 
if (String.fromCharCode(event.charCode) == "m") {
     trace("m!");
     if (mouseVisible == true) {
         Mouse.hide()
         mouseVisible = false;
    } else {
         Mouse.show()
         mouseVisible = true;
    }
}
}

That’s all there is to it. I hope you find this one useful in your next kiosk project.

If so… please comment here. Just trying to get a sense for up take on it… I’m going to be watching my analytics closely in the coming weeks. Congrats to MS for moving so quickly on this. It’s a very good move… I’m excited, because, if for no reason, then that means even less IE6 users may be trolling the internets. Oh how I want to stop having to bug test and write conditional CSS for that piece.

What are you most excted about in IE8? Facebook or Ebay integration, improved AJAX, Livemaps?  Really want to hear your thoughts on this.

My wife and I came down with the brutal brutal flu this weekend. Simultaneously. Pure evil.
I am finally now upright. I don’t mean to be dramatic, but wow, was it bad. Fever, chills, cough, congestion, runny nose, SEVERE body aches… it was tremendous. We were so ill, Renee’s mother kindly took the kids for a day so we could rest. We slept something like 20 hours that day. And it wasn’t restful or good sleep. It felt like harpies were swarming around us gnawing on our appendages while we slumbered.

I finally got back to work today, though I’m certainly not 100%. I’ve been taking a cocktail of OTC drugs… varying from run of the mill stuff like Robitussin, Tylenol and Motrin, to the exotic Alka Seltzer Flu… I hate Alka Seltzer. The stuff says it’s “Honey Orange” flavored, but I swear it’s actually “Nasty McRancid Sauce” flavored. Here’s the deal, though, the Alka Seltzer works. She’s still pretty ill… But here’s the bonus… The kids are sick now, too. Awesome. You want some fun… try having two sick kids while you aren’t well either. So bad. Not sure how much I’ll be able to blog in the next couple days… but here’s a quick list on things I need to address… Check back soon:

• The “Intro to Flex” presentation I gave tonight at Bradley went well. Presentation notes and takeaways to come soon.
• The Iona Group has been awarded several local Addy awards… nothing major, but hey, still pretty cool.
• Erik Natzke will be speaking at Bradley University soon. (March 10th, 7PM, Baker Hall B51, to be exact) More details here.
• What to do when a website’s technology platform choice doesn’t go quite the way you want it to go… More details coming for sure, as they emerge. Maybe.
• A really cool social networking/dating site has recently come to my attention, not sure if many people who read this blog are using iminlikelikewithyou.com, but man, the Flash/Flex UI is slick, the games are fun and the attitude is just too funny.
• Aral Balkan has yet another project he’s busily working on… Pistach.io, a focused ad network based on the concept started by Coudal’s “The Deck“, it’s a great idea… reaching out to niche audiences through influencers has long been known in offline circles to be effective, it only makes sense that the same idea could work online.

Anyway… thanks for sticking through this. I hope my fevered brain hasn’t been too delirious here.

MFG, Ebay, AOL, etc… they ain’t got nothing on this… Who hasn’t been faced with this dilemma? You want to get your LOLCats delivered to you discretely… quietly, without needing a big ole’ browser window alerting everyone you like a little “Oh Hai” or “I see what you did there” every once in a while… Well here is your chance. “LolCats on AIR” allows you to see the 10 most recently added LolCats to Icanhazcheeseburger.com and even offers a click through to the original post. Download it and let me know what you think.

I could stand to have some additional niceties added, etc… but hey, what do you expect for a one evening “Hey can I do this?” kind of experiment. I do wish that ICHC had a more robust API, rather than just a RSS feed, but what can you do? I played around with using the AS3 syndication lib, etc from Google code, but a simple RPC service was smaller and E4X worked just fine… all in all only 332kb!

I do love Technorati. Without it, I wouldn’t see that a couple blogs (here and here) have recently posted about my CoolerKreator app, one of them actually making a clone (a very nice one, too)… probably using the source that was included in Computer Arts. It’s great to see people enjoying something you make.

I hope to have some more time to build a couple more mashups and AIR apps soon, though work has been time consuming and the school semester is in full swing. I also recently had to take a couple days off of work to attend a family funeral, so I have been out of the loop a bit… Here’s to hoping for a productive Spring!