Author Archives: essiep

66 miles

Posted on by
Reply
2°C, windy & some rain
Cycling: started late after the time it takes to fit a new cassette. Even with new gears it doesn’t change gear that well. Sometimes it needs a double-click. Shimano gears have never worked well for me, not like Campagnolo which are always excellent.

Flash: testing Curious Labs Poser to see what swf files look like exported from there. It’s come out quite small at 210Kb. Even this seems to need a pre-loader; so if it seems to stick after you’ve pressed play- then just reload the page, it should be ok then. There must be some way of using templates to generate new Flash projects, that could include a standard preloader as well as credits at the end.

I’m very tired now, so it can have a preloader added tomorrow. It’s a nice kind of tiredness though, brought on by cycling up steep hills with icy cold air in my face.

Far Cry – finished

Posted on by
Reply
2°C, Snow.

Far Cry: finished it. I supppose if I’d bought this game ( it was a loan) then it would be good value for money. I’ve played it for nearly two months now, (installed on 2nd January 2006) so cost per hour is very good. I’m trying out previous routes because it’s a game with many alternative ways of completing levels.

Pacific Fighters: the new patch has fixed problems that were putting me off loading it up at all. Now it’s quite usable again.

Poor Charlotte

Posted on by
1
2°C, sleet & rain
Something odd happened at school today. There were police, other people who I’ve not seen before, and another clue was even more troubling ( in that Kafkaesque way). Overheard in a corridor , a few girls were having a conversation:
"Charlotte changed into a skirt at lunchtime"
anything else is hard to come by at this point in time. I hope she’s ok.

Pro Desktop tutorial

Posted on by
Reply
3°C, cold wind
Busy again in the world of the interweb. Uploaded a new CAD tutorial made at school, but I posted a copy on my site. Pro Desktop is a free CAD program which is quite popular in schools , made by the same people who do Pro Engineer.
Here is the tutorial: Pro Desktop Hinge
I usually upload my tutorials for proof-reading, it seems easier to spot errors when on line (don’t know why).

Post Secret

Posted on by
1
5°C, grey & cold again…

CDs: The Books: "Thought for Food"

Clogs: " Stick Music".

Also delivered was

Post Secrets, the book. A volume that’s much bigger than the expected post card size I’d assumed.

Frustration: getting that Flash pre-loader is not running smoothly. It just skips over the frame with the pre-loading animation even though there is a stop(); script in that frame. I don’t get it.

 

Nickel Creek

Posted on by
Reply
4°C, cold, grey & miserable
53 miles on the bike today, riding back was easy with a strong tailwind.

Nickel Creek: live at Warwick arts Centre this evening. I await.

Later:I really had no idea what to expect, but they put on a stunning performance. This is the third show in a row where I’ve been impressed with sheer musicianship. The Bits between singing were the most impressive, though vocal parts did not detract in any way. We could actually hear what was being played. Hear what I’m saying Kings of Leon? Take a hint!
Pee:Before the start, we wondered if there is a word for that last pee you have before an event. the first thing to come into my head was "pre-emptive", but then I hit on "pre-empty"! As in "I’m just off for a quick pre-empty"
Tell me if you think of a better one.
Far Cry: It’s nearly finished. Never would I have thought of liking this sort of thing. There is a sequel in production, which I surely must buy. The screen shots in the magazines look good anyway.

Flashing again…

Posted on by
1
4°C,
Flash: another update to my Flash movie file. You can see it here:
The preloader isn’t quite ready yet, if it seems stuck, you may find a button called End, press that then choose Start. that should fix it untill I finish the into.
Let me know if it works properly. It’s tricky testing from here, because the file is already loaded into my temporary cache, so it runs properly every time (apart from the first).

Here is another useful link to excellent Actionscript tutorials, and other good Flash methods. OPEN ( SHIFT click)

Scaled vectors.

Posted on by
Reply
6+°C
It’s a fixing things holiday. I break from work, supposedly for rest & recovery. My week has been filled with mending things. As soon as I’ve done here, I finish the skirting board. All the while I look forward to some cycling, finally I’m well enough to go.
Flash: Yesterday fixed up one of my animations & exported it as a Flash movie clip. It’s effective because it doesn’t matter how much you scale up the image size, it always remains smooth. The swf is just over 900KB, I will probably post it to my own website & remove something else to make room**. Flash 8 does crash sometimes, hopefully there will soon be a patch to prevent this.

Flash is still fiddly in places, and I could do with a good book on Actionscript 2.0.. This should be well worth genning-up on, I ought to learn one programming language, it’s this or Visual Basic.

**It’s annoying that Claranet won’t increase the amount of space allowed for a home page.

Happy Birthday Stuart!
See below for a few frames. Strangely, the export process has removed outlines, at least the files are small, only 11Kb each.

Right then, the flash video is uploaded. Let me know is there are any problems playing the video. If it redirects you to Macromedia’s website it’s possible that you have Flash Player 7 or older. The new version is free and is easy enough to install.

See here

Watch out though, it needs a preloader, which I haven’t done yet.

No smoke

Posted on by
Reply
9°C,+light showers
Interesting news: smoking in pubs is to get banned by the Gov’t. BBC. About time too! Just what I was hoping for when I used to go to pubs more often. there are still about 25% of the population who do smoke, though that figure is still falling.