So what’s first? I’ve got the requirements down, so now I need to start translating that in to code.

The most basic thing I’ll need to build is a player. I like to use a simple MVC pattern for this. It’ll need to be a very scaled down version of my Ramen player so that should be easy enough.

The player/controller will have the model load an XML file that contains the information for the characters, the structure of the sim and some settings (ui, speed, don’t know at this point). Model will do a little parsing and then the view will take over and draw the UI. After we’re all set up, the player will show the first page.

Each page will be a movie clip in the library of the player. In ramen, each page is an external SWF, but I’d like to keep this player simple. Having everything in one place will make it easier to keep a consistent UI and make it easier to edit. The content for each page will be stored in an XML file. I’ll need a class for the page that handles loading the XML and then kicking off any interaction specific interaction code. So a base template class and a few subclasses for each specific type.

Also need to come up with a schema for the XML and keep it as human readable as possible. Keeping the structure separate from the content of the questions should help a little. But as the complexity of the simulation goes up so will the mark up. I’m not quite sure how the variables and evaluations of the dynamic state will even be defined yet.

All of that will probably take me a week or so to get though. I’ll have screen shots up as I make progress.

Wow, it’s really be a year since I posted here! I’ll have some new content up soon – I have a few ideas and Flash things to share.

Ok, break’s over. Time to start working again. Of course, if Gabe was sleeping better, it might be easier to stay up late and do something. (Would also help if I wasn’t being lazy.)

I haven’t created anything new in AS3 in a few months now. That’s not good.

I don’t get to use Photoshop for illustrations very often anymore, so it’s fun when I do. I created this little thing to replace some uglier images on the same theme in a WBT we’re working on. Origional is here.

I remembered that I had a Twitter account, so I decided to start using it. I installed AIR and the twhirl client, so that tweet while working. Hi ho, hi ho.

I found this blog a few weeks ago - designcharlotte.org. It’s a good way to showcase local design talent and connect people. And thank you Jak for adding a link to me!

No matter how rosy and happy they make it sound, there’s just something about having an airplane circle your head (3 times!) while spraying pesticide, when you’re walking in to work, that tells you: today is going to be a wonderful day.

Not been posting lately – it’s been pretty hectic at work.

My wife has a mix cd in on rotation in her car’s cd player and my daughter has become completely addicted to one of random songs on it – Butterfly by the techno/dance pop group Smile.dk. I suppose toddlers do this kind of thing – and I’m really starting to appreciate the complexity of the song. I just gets in to you, you know?

I heard the song The Audience by Matthew Herbert recently, and like the beat. Link goes to a live version.

I’ve about had it with all of the music on my iPod – it’s time to start listening to my Pandora stations again.

Adobe’s John Nack has a great post with links to a few physics based drawing programs. I’d love to be able to play with one of these. I hope that Sophie get’s to – this would make a wonderful edutainment product for kids (and parents!).

Also check out the game Crayon Physics. Casey and I spent over an hour playing the free version of this. It’s a great idea for a game.

It’s been one week and I’m still not over this damned cold! At least my fever isn’t 104F like Saturday. I’m getting tired of being tired.

Made my first political donation to Barack Obama on Thursday morning. I really hope he wins this.

I moved my Dell laptop back to Vista. I updated all of the drivers and picked a more stable nVidia driver. Now all my issues are gone! I had one outstanding issue with Flash CS3 running slow, but after switching it to run in “XP SP2 Compatibility mode,” it runs fine.

I also probably helps that I added 2gb more ram – for 4gb total. This thing is fast now!

I’m out of complaints for Vista. It took a year – but better late than never.

The experiences that I’ve had with Vista on my Dell Latitude have really turned me away from Windows. After all of the issues with poor driver performance (boo nVidia!), sleep issues (crashes when I close the lid 1 out of 5 times), and general weird things – I’ve decided to move to the Apple side of the fence.
We bought my brother’s G4 Powerbook for Casey to use as her main PC – aging but still does everything that she needs – mail, surfing, digital photos, etc. And we splurged and bought a new midrange iMac (with Leopard) for the “family” computer. I’ll have to keep the Latitude d820 until I can afford a MacBook, but I’m going to try to work on the iMac as often as I can – I work better on a desktop than a laptop anyway.

I setup BootCamp with XP on it. Installed all of my apps – works perfectly. When I was still at Hewitt, Citrix worked flawlessly on both the OS X side and the XP side.  The Adobe apps that I use work fine in Leopard. iTunes works better. The whole experience has just been wonderfully easy. Simple. Quiet.

I did have to find a utility to format my external harddrive (200gb) to FAT32 so that I could use it in OS X and Windows. OS X should really have the ability to write to a NTFS drive out of the box. That’s been the biggest pain in the whole “switch.”

I think that I’m going to like it over here.

Did another endo a few weeks ago on the Beech Springs trail. I was going a little too fast at the end of the longer the Gravity Cavity section and landed wrong on the little jump. Landed on my face, again, and slid what had to be a few feet on my chin. A wonderful evening at the ER and a few days in the bed later, I’m mostly back to normal. My chin is as hard as a rock (scar tissue I assume) and I can’t whistle.
The hospital charged my insurance over $10K for it all. What a scam! Sophie’s birth plus three days in the hospital for Casey was the same price.

Haven’t updated in a long time!

On October 5th I left the whole Hewitt/Wachovia mess and then started a new job at Bank of America on October 9th.  The full fancy title is “Enterprise Learning Senior Lead Technologist.” Short title is “Instructional Tech Designer.” I like the longer one better!

I’m doing pretty much the same work that I was doing at Hewitt – creating WBT templates, fixing the mistakes of vendors, troubleshooting WBT/LMS issues, working with offshore, etc.  But the environment is so much nicer! Less stress, more help from other internal teams – and  possible future. Hewitt was just a dead-end. I really hope that they do something about it for the  people that are still there!

Since I’m doing much less Flash programming at work, I’m really going to have to start practicing at home.

aM laboratory

I havn’t done anythine like a lab in a long time. Maybe I need to stop working on project all of the time and start playing around again?

I’ve been playing around with AS3 over the past few days, and now it’s time to try and do something meaningful with it. I’m going to redo my portfolio site. This outta be fun.

Since FuseKit doesn’t have an AS3 version, I’m going to use the Boost Animation System. It looks pretty full featured.

The hardest thing about AS3 for me now, is not typing an underscore before movieclip properties.  And the alpha property is now 0-1 instead of 0-100. I guess it makes more sense, but I’ve got years of learning to undo.

I think that I’ve found my perfect job posting. Sr. Flash Engineer at Yahoo. Would be nice if I qualified, however. Well, at least the qualifications fit with in my new “damn-I’m-out-of-touch-get-back-in-the-game-learning-plan.”

Found via the Zeus Labs blog. Which is a great Flash blog altogether.

This cartoon was passed around my office in email a few years ago, and I still have a print out pinned to my cube wall. I look at it every day and every day it seems more true.

There is a fully updated site for it now, with new panels and the ability to create your own with draggable panels and editable captions. Spiffy. You can also purchanse it on a t-shirt from CafePress.

Here’s an in-depth analysis of it. It’s all so clear now!

Growing tired of Aero, I bought and installed a copy of WindowBlinds yesterday. I picked out a good theme, turned off DWM and started my work day. My laptop seemed faster, Flash still worked, everything was fine.

Until I tried to connect to my XP machine via Remote Desktop. I have to do this since my employer’s Citrix security check won’t pass my laptop with Vista. It would connect and begin logging on, and then the connection would drop. My wireless connection even dropped a few times. I rebooted both computers and nothing would fix it. I even had DEP terminate a few processes.

Unloading WB completly fixed the problems. Crap. Well, back to Aero.

Update: Well, maybe that wasn’t it. I couldn’t get my laptop to stay connected to my network tonight. I had installed Parallels the day before WB to play around with Ubuntu, but apparently it’s virtual network driver doesn’t play nice with Intel’s wireless driver on Vista. Now that it’s gone, everything is normal.