lab.lukesturgeon.co.uk

I have been using my R&D time recently to explore better ways of creating interactive video experiences, scrolling, dragging, scrubbing and interacting with video. This prototype breaks a video in to an image sequence of around 340 jpgs, loads the jpgs in and then allows the user to scrub through the image sequence rather than trying to scrub through a flv file. This has made the experience a lot smoother and instant rather than trying to scrub backwards through flash video which is a big ‘no no’ as it kills the flash player!

I’ve just checked on the gotoandlearn.com site and noticed another Papervision3D tutorial, as I’m really hoping to try and push my development in Papervision3D it made sense to try my hand at it. I may try and create some alternate versions of this over the next weekn and explore some more of the cool features that Papervision3D 2.0 has to offer.

Another great resource is the website I am currently working through the tutorials on, papervision2.com

I have finally found time to begin experimenting with Papervision3D and ActionScript 3.0 and I am very excited about the possibilities, especially after following the fantastic new tutorial on the gotoAndLearn website.

I have been working through the first chapter of the fantastic book Flash Math Creativity from Friends of Ed. Here are some happy accidents I created after spending some time swapping and changing values and experimenting with sin and cos curves.

Based on the classic childrens game hangman this flash game selects 250 random words from a MySQL database of over 20,000 and then allows you to reminisce those childhood memories of rainy afternoons stuck indoors at school playing hangman on the blackboard. Enjoy!

I’ve finally found a tiny bit of time between several large projects I am working on at the moment to have a small play with a particle experiment in Flash (Actionscript 3.0). It was far simpler than I expected thanks to a great tutorial in the latest issue of Computer Arts magazine by Seb Lee-Delisle.

This opened up my eyes to an exciting area of flash and mathematics which I have been excited about exploring for some time, it also prompted me to buy the Friends of Ed book, Flash Math Creativity vol2.

I have known about Processing for almost two years now and have been dying to try and designate some spare time to exploring and learning this programming language. Then I found out that the two responsible for Processing, Casey Reas and Ben Fry have been working on a Handbook for the language which was released about a month ago.

The book has filled me with excitement and I can’t seem to be able to close the cover. I am looking forward to working through the book, which gives an understanding of the core principles of the language it’s basic functions and how to write successful processing sketches. The book also includes interviews with well-respected members of the digital arts community, discussing programs that they have designed and developed and is written from an artistic perspective rather than the more traditional technical view point.

I’m looking forward to working through the book to develop an understanding of the language and then developing my experiments further concentrating on input from video capture devices such as webcams and the creation and interaction of sound within Processing.

Geek Chic is a story of their lengthly rise to power, it is split in to sections covering food, cars, TV, Sci-f, Science, Technology, Comics, Robots, Movies, Fashion, Pop, Gadgets, Computers, Hackers, Games, Internet and Cyberpunk. It also gives you
a geeky sense of pride when you realise you’ve seen most of the movies, read a lot
of the books and used or own most of the gadgets and games mentioned within
it’s pages.

‘There has never been a better time to be a geek. After decades, if not centuries, of persecution, ridicule and never, ever getting the girl, geeks are hot. They appear on the covers of magazines, win Oscars and Grammys, eat at the best tables in the best restaurants, and park their Ferraris in front of their million dollar mansions.’

I have finally found time between Christmas, New Year and breaks here and there to add some more items to the lab. I keep trying to remember all the things I want to try and learn, so I now have another list page http://lab.lukesturgeon.co.uk/to-do-list.

I have also updated the reading list to include a new section titled ’Culture’ which lists more traditional reading books instead of theory or practise books http://lab.lukesturgeon.co.uk/reading-list.

Loosely following Marc Stricklin’s tutorial from New Masters of Flash: 2002 Annual
I created this fun little experiment (upgrading his legacy code to Actionscript 2.0 Classes instead).