For my first Flash assignment at work, a designer asked me if I could work up a version of the OS X Dashboard Widget effect, where the widget rotates in 3D around the y-axis, to reveal a set of controls or additional information on the “back”. The project turned out to be more difficult than I originally thought, especially since I wanted to make it easily reusable and customizable. But hey, what better way to learn?

Since I haven’t figured out yet how to embed Flash objects in WordPress (any tips? Please?), you can go here to check out my example. Just click on the little “i” icon to see it rotate.

http://www.bri-lance.net/Flash/WidgetFlip.html

An extremely large portion of this code, probably about 80%, was taken from this tutorial by Barbara Kaskosz at the wonderful website FlashandMath.com. So lots of credit goes to them.

I basically adapted their code, which works with bitmaps, to handle any group of Flash objects. At “spin time”, it copies those objects into a Bitmap, slices up the bitmap into 1-px wide vertical slices, and distorts those slices according to some neat equations that I got from their site. (This is necessary because you can’t do a free distort on Flash objects with ActionScript alone.)

I’m throwing out the code in hopes that it might be useful, or at least interesting, to someone else.
The ActionScript file can be found at http://www.bri-lance.net/Flash/WidgetFlip.as,
and the .fla that I used can be found at http://www.bri-lance.net/Flash/WidgetFlip.fla. Every line in the ActionScript that you might need to change to customize the file for your own use is marked with a comment beginning with //CHANGE, that explains what the line does and how you can customize it.

Some ideas for usage:

1) Display data on the front, configuration or customization controls on the back (this is what my example shows)
2) Charts and graphical data on the front, tabular data on the back
3) Summary information on the front, more in-depth information on the back
4) Two disparate views of the same data

Enjoy! (I know I am.)

Long time no post. I’ll explain why, soon.

In the meantime, I’ve been occupying myself by, among other things, learning how to program ActionScript3. (I’ve been using this excellent book as a reference.)

I used to implement Checkers whenever I was trying to learn a new GUI language, but I got bored with it. The new Checkers? Conway’s Game of Life.

Check it out! Click the mouse and move it around to “draw” a starting pattern. Then release the mouse button and watch it mutate.

Go to the Flash page.

Fragment from a Job Board, 2018

Local media firm seeks an experienced Playlist Creator with a demonstrable track record and a strong portfolio of playlists in support of different moods, seasons, and tasks. Contract position with competitive hourly wage, flexible hours, virtual commute. Must already have commercial licenses with all of the Big 5 music download catalogues. (Will reimburse weekly for a la carte tracks.)

Desired skills:
BA in Music, Psychology, or related field
3+ years of experience in Playlist Creation, preferably freelance or agency
Experience using BPM matchers, Logitech Brain Simulator, Microsoft Mix, and iTag
Fluent in Spanish and/or Chinese
Ability to communicate with clients and create necessary documentation (personas, sample galleries, mix/flow charts)
Must know the difference between J-Pop, C-Pop, K-Pop, and B-Pop, and have a well-defined opinion on the pros and cons of each

More short fiction things in the next couple of days. I have at least 2 in my brain right now.

So lately I’ve been trying to get better about money and budgeting and stuff. And I was thinking, one of the big things that gets people in trouble is that they use their credit card or debit card for everything (seriously, no one my age writes checks), and then lose track of how much they’ve spent. So I was thinking, wouldn’t it be nice to have a way to always be able to get an up-to-date view of your account balances? After all, the banks already have that information, and it’s available through any computer.

There are two ways that I could see it work. The first way is if some sort of small display were incorporated into the card itself, that displayed the balance and updated every time the card was used. The big advantage of this is that you wouldn’t have any separate thingy to lose, and you couldn’t avoid seeing the display every time you used your card. However, it also severely limits the display (if not making it entirely unfeasible) because the card still has to both fit into your wallet and be swipe-able with a current device.

The other way to do it is to have a device that’s separate from the card. I’m thinking, something like the keychain RSA token that I carry for work, so that I can access our systems from home. Something about that size, with a similar display, could easily display the balance of any credit card or bank account, or even toggle between multiple accounts. And it might be easier to integrate something like that with current systems, because you wouldn’t have to change all of the card readers or cards.

That way, it could start out by just working with people’s home computers, and then maybe spread to ATMs or merchants. (Merchants wouldn’t be as likely to offer it, in this case, unless some sort of incentive was built in, and right now I can’t really think of anything. On the other hand, ATMs would seem like a natural fit, as an extension of their current services.)

[EDIT: And smart phones/PDAs too. Yes.]

This would be a case in which design (of a product) could potentially affect people’s behavior, by making them more aware of their spending and less likely to go over budget or overdraw their account.

Just a thought that I had.

ACCIDENTALS

Don’t ask how he found her. He just did, okay?

It was the type of bar that you’d expect, and she was there. Sort of punk. He liked that. Went up to talk to her. She blew smoke in his face, and he bought her a beer.

He was in the mood for tragedy. He wanted something that he could sell, or inject. He had a guitar, blah de blah. Cliché. He didn’t care though, he just wanted to write a goddamn song about something and maybe get on with his life.

At first he thought they were flies. Those dark tracks on her arm. She looked away, and got up to leave. He saw then that they were music notes.

Her skin was a staff, with spidery lines wrapping around eighths and sixteenths. It was beautiful, a counterpoint trailing off onto the soft part of her inner arm. Scattered with accidentals.

All of a sudden, he couldn’t think. Asked if he could take a picture of her tattoo. It was so beautiful, like nothing he’d seen. She actually smiled, like the act was unfamiliar. She said it was okay, so he did.

He went home clutching his camera in his arms, a picture a song, alone. He didn’t need anything else.

Already forgotten her name. This would keep him distracted for awhile.

THE END

First short story in awhile. Did I delete words mercilessly enough?

I love the crazy light reflections off the keys.

She is weaving a blanket out of two threads.

One is thick and well-twisted, colored in all the colors of life: blue chasing green, yellow running after red. The other thread is much smaller — tiny in fact — and silver. It weaves in and out of the other like magic, like that mystery out of the corner of your eye that you can never full-on see.

When she is finished, it will be her life.

It was on the main terminal’s moving walkway that I first saw the dancing girl. There she leapt, pirouetted, arabesqued, right in between the Starbucks and the Hudson Valley News. Cell phones dropped to the ground, laptops flew, businessmen stood staring with their jaws unhinged.

Back on the ground in the broken City, walking home over broken glass, I saw a sudden flash of light and looked up. There she was for one moment again, flying more fragile than steel, hotter than jet fuel, lighter than all the birds in the sky.

Maybe love means finding someone you can’t not see.

Maybe she has eyes in the back of her head, on her back, on her arms and belly and legs. Maybe she watches with her entire self, with her entire body, whenever that one is around.

Watching, waiting. Maybe she’s looking for a clue, a key, an open space between the atoms where her gaze can pass through.

Spring is a dangerous season.

The floodwaters rise, like they do every year, and if you don’t watch out they’ll wash away everything in your life that isn’t weighty enough or bolted down. And then one day you’ll wake to find that you’ve divorced your husband and cut off all your hair, and you’re running half-naked through the streets of some strange city with a foreign woman holding your hand.

Mirrors aren’t much good, in Spring. They can only show what’s holding still, and what’s practically dead already: all of the unnecessary stuff, all of the stuff that has got to go.