Introducing the BlitClip!

Yeeesh, it's been about six months since my last post, I guess it's because of schoolwork and things, but anyway I wanted to come back with a bang and release a new class called BlitClip for Actionscript 3 developers.

Ahem, ever wanted to make a MovieClip but not been able to because you don't own the Flash IDE? Fear no more, the BlitClip class is here! 

The BlitClip class utilizes the pixel blitting technique described by 8bitrocket here:
http://www.8bitrocket.com/newsdisplay.aspx?newspage=13430

And creates a MovieClip-esque object by passing it a horizontal tile sheet, tile width, tile height, and optionally a registration point for the object (by default it's 0,0). If you wanted to center the registration point, pass in half the tile's width, and half the tile's height.

It behaves exactly like you would expect a MovieClip to behave with no scene support but frankly I never really viewed that as a needed feature ;)

The way it works is by using the tile sheet as frames, dividing it up by the tile width x tile height, and copypixeling one 'frame' of it to the main bitmap. If you're really interested you can take a peek at the source code, it's licensed under the GNU General Public License so you're free to do whatever you want (for the most part) as long as you post any modified versions under this license.

Here it is, source code, readme, and the license included:
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=110a73e50a15728fd2db6fb9a8902bda

Moving on to AS 3.0!

Finally took the courage to start migrating to Actionscript 3.0, and I have to say
it's pretty darn cool, here's one of my recent projects:
500 arrows given random colors and a blur filter, all generated dynamically.

EDIT: Due to lag and size issues here it is:
http://runaworld.110mb.com/Arrows.htm

Bleak Future....

It seems sadly that NCHYN is dying....
The redesign just took out half the achievements in Nonoba and the new acheivements aren't walkthroughable (if that's a word >_>)
It seems this will coincide with my metric shootload of homework.
Wish me luck everyone.
The future looks bleak. =

Progress Halted: For now.

I'm focusing all my attention on my team blog NCHYN for now, but don't worry, I'll pick up the pace on this blog eventually!

Woot! First Team Blog and Music Video.

So for those who don't know (which is probably 99.9% of everyone) I made a music video recently, my first one, using Windows Movie Maker. It's about Fancy Pants World 1 and 2.
Here it is in all it's infant glory:



I also created a team blog for Nonoba:
http://nchyn.blogspot.com

Look forward to more posts on both blogs soon!

Emoticion Encyclopedia.

:D :p :)

Emoticions are the souls of chatters.

Their very essence can be summed up with ":)" or ":".

They are simple, concise, and can be used when you're too lazy to type "That's funny" or "That's lame" but of course, those phrases are now considered awkward compared to the all-mighty emoticons.

Hail the emoticons! Hail!

The origin is over here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoticon#Creation_of_:.29_and_:.28.

But that's not what I wanted to demystify, I wanted to talk about the different variations and their connotations. You see, I eventually found out that emoticons like ":)" and "=)" have very very subtle differences, and unless someone documents them, they'll be lost forever!

So here's my Emoticon Encyclopedia (I'll edit this periodically as think of emoticons):

": - )" - The grandaddy of all emoticons, originally used to denote jokes has now since passed away, replaced by its more common variants, the "=)" and ":)".

":-(" - The grandmother of all emoticons, originally used to denote things that aren't jokes but serious. This emoticon has since also passed away and been replaced by its more common variants, the "=(" and ":(".

":)"- Used to denote happiness but to a lesser extent I believe that because of the short length of the 'eyes', this particular emoticon could be less powerful or have less influence than the "=)".
Originated from the ": - )".

"=)"- Used to denote happiness but also it creates an image of slit like eyes instead of classic round eyes to give an impression of increased attention.

":(" - Used to denote sadness. The round eyes here create an image of pinpoint lasers aiming at you, burning through you.

"=(" - Used to denote sadness. The slit-like eyes are like hollow tubes here, empty of emotion, making the reader fell worse.

(I'll try to add more as I have time)

Paradox of Cliches

At first glance there is no paradox, cliches are merely things that have been overdone to death, so they're no longer used, but that's the problem...

If cliches are overdone, they are no longer used, if they are no longer used they aren't overdone, so if they aren't overdone they aren't cliches!

So something can only be a cliche if it is used forever right? Wrong again, if something was used forever it wouldn't be overdone, it would never be done.

So what exactly is a cliche?

The thing is then calling something a cliche is anachronistic because at the time of the calling of a cliche it would either be no longer used or still in use, this seems confusing but it's one of the many confusing things about society...