With the portage of this allmarsh.com blog to Flash via HTML Wrapper, I had to make some changes in the file structure, image and flash content as well as posted content and comments. While a few choice posts needed to be unpublished while in the development stage, there are still about 80 pages of this site indexed by Google. I am excited to see how well the optimization of this mostly text content published in a wordpress flash wrapper is ranked by google…
Knoxvillage.com Interactive 3D Sunsphere Panorama
Knoxvillage.com is a Knoxville, TN based Community website with an interactive panoramic 3D environment using Adobe Flash CS3 Actionscript 3 and Papervision 3D Open source engine running Papervision3D Beta 1.9 - PHUNKY (20.09.07) class list. This 800 x 600 framed 360 Degree View of Downtown Knoxville features full screen mode switching with future upgrades to include interactive hot spots with click able links.
The process began when 32 pictures were taken out of each of the main windows on the public observation level in the Sunsphere on Sunday July 15, 2007 at 4:00 pm. While I typically use a Canon DSLR with a 10-22mm lens, the camera I had available was a Canon SD850 IS which worked quite well. Using the 5.8mm focal length and an aperture value of F/2.8 I was able to maintain focus on the foreground and immediate architecture.
While shooting through the bronze colored tinted glass, Knoxville’s beautiful mountain views were heavily blurred and the shots turned out very green. This problem was overcome in post when the imaging was corrected in Photoshop CS3 following the photo’s merge. After merging and much color correction, brightening and balancing; the photos where then stitched on 5 of the 6 sides of a 1000 x 1000 x 1000 pixel cube with blended corners a top a Sunsphere graphic base with a #f5fcff color sky.
The images where then imported into Flash CS3 and wrapped with the Papervision3D Beta 1.9 - PHUNKY (20.09.07) actionscript 3 class list assigned on the document class: main.as. A full screen option was added with attention paid to the camera’s focus, zoom and placement on the X, Y and Z axes. The actionscript document that accompanies the sunsphere.swf is located at http://knoxvillage.com/sunsphere/main.as You can view the website here!
Posted in Flash, Out of doors, Papervision3D, Photography, Tutorials Tagged 3D, Actionscript 3, AS3, Flash, Knoxville, panoramic, Papervision3D, Sunsphere, tutorial Leave a comment
Forming CSS for the HTML Flash Wrapper Wordpress Template.
I am very happy with the functionality of Wrapper. It seems very powerful and I am really enjoying the customization. There are many things to consider when using this method, one of which is CSS. Wrapper uses CSS style sheets much like normal HTML but because Wrapper uses the Flash Player to render so you can also use anything that Flash/Flex/ActionScript can. Subsequently any plugins, widgets, comments or content that is malformed will render your post unreadable and thus will pull a blank page when called by the user. As a result all comments have been deleted or turned off and a few choice posts have been unpublished while this project is still in development. I should have all the content back up when this site is ready for deployment. Now on to the good stuff…
WordPress 2.6.3 Wrapper Flash Theme
Since upgrading to WordPress 2.6.3 I’ve lost most of the functionality that the 2.2.2 Flash integration from the Sajid Saiyed modification had. Fortunately, I came across the Flash HTML Wrapper that works well for the folks at Motion and Color. HTML Wrapper_Wordpress hides the rendered HTML page via swfobject and replaces it with an SWF that parses the CSS and then renders the page. There’s not a lot of documentation for the subversion, so here are the steps for a successful integration:
- First of course you’ll need Wordpress installed, I’ve got 2.6.3 running with out any major modifications.
- Second, download the motion and color wrapper_wordpress theme. Change the name to just “wrapper” and install it in the theme directory of your wordpress installation.
- Then you’ll want to customize your permalink structure by making sure it is in the default setting with all pages and posts residing in the root wp directory.
WOW! after much customization, I am highly impressed. There are many things I lament, but in time I can correct them. Some of the problems include:
- 1. Your posts in wordpress cannot contain any errors. The rendering is quite strict, so if you forgot to close an ordered list tag the whole post will be for not and you’ll pull up an empty page. All comments are prone to this problem, so a seemingly harmless malformed accolade can render an entire post invisible.
- 2. Not all characters are included in the fonts. For example the ‘apostrophe’ and the right and left carrot symbols are missing from the included exported font Rockwell. This can be fixed by upgrading the font or even creating a new one.
- 3. There isn’t much regard for margin or padding the way the swf parses the css, so you’ll have to add span tags to ensure spacing occurs as desired
- 4. While all tags must be closed in the wordpress posts they are all-so CASE SENSITIVE. This might come in handy when posting example scripts to render as plain text.
- 5. There are many formatting errors, did I mention img alignment, the ordered lists are not ordered. There is much to do to fix the css
Why Cant We Tickle Ourselves?
Ever wondered why you burst out laughing when tickled by others, but are usually unable to tickle yourself? Here’s the explanation!
If you just hold a feather, for example, and tickle yourself directly it’s not very ticklish and if someone else does it to you it is very ticklish. But you can do things in between: when someone else tickles you, you can’t predict perfectly when that sensory information is going to arrive. But when you tickle yourself you can predict with great accuracy the precise timing and magnitude of those sensations and we believe there are predictive mechanisms that cancel or attenuate the sensory information that is being produced by yourself. And it is a rather precise mechanism. All of these little things increase the ticklishness that you experience so as you break down the relationship between what your doing and the consequences of your actions then it becomes more difficult to predict and therefore more difficult to cancel the sensory information that is coming in.
Posted in Miscellaneous Leave a comment
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
So, in two seconds, away we went, a sliding down the river and it did seam so good to be free again and all by ourselves on the big river and nobody to bother us. Hiawassee River
Posted in Out of doors Leave a comment
Into The Wild
I read somewhere how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong, but to feel strong, to measure yourself at least once, to find yourself at least once in the most ancient of human conditions; that’s the way it is here.
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F-18s Flying Low and Fast in the Gulf of Thailand
Interesting video of a tight formation of F-18s in flight
“We had a swim call in the Gulf of Thailand on deployment and an F-18 from the Abe Lincoln flew right over us.”
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Porsche Cayman S Porsche Design Edition 1
This is a well designed static page, written in aspx, that loads a flash mini site. “Black on black has never looked so good. It’s no secret that the Porsche Design Studio makes some insanely awesome stuff. And you knew it was only a matter of time before they collaborated with their brothers at the car factory. The Porsche Cayman S Porsche Design Edition 1 will be limited edition only 777 are being made.” [via uncrate]
Posted in Automotive, Design, Flash, Javascript, Links Leave a comment
New OS installation
I’ve been using Vista on my PC as of late and it’s just not as fast as a well configured XP setup. So, I’m going to do a reinstallation of XP Professional and list all the steps involved. First I backup all documents, settings, bookmarks, contacts and accounts. Then deactivate and transfer all software licenses and check my email 1 last time.
Now we’re ready for a low level format. I reboot into a live linux distro to reformat the disk writing 1s and 0s over the boot sector of the hard drives. I also check the disk for errors, making sure they run like a top.
Time to set up the Raid Arrays. There are 4 SATA disks in this setup. 2 WD 36gb 10k rpm Raptors and 2 Samsung 500gb 16mb cache. The os is on a Raid1 mirror of only 34.5gb, while the documents will reside in a Raid0 striped array totaling 931.5gb. This is all done through the onboard intel raid controller.
I am installing Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 on this pc. The installation is pretty straight forward, istalling the additional raid driver at the beginning of the installation. After loading the driver. I create the partition and install the OS on the mirrored raid1 array. Setup the OS and install 77+ critical windows updates…
After Defragmenting the hard drives, I begin installing the software. Adobe Flex, Flash, Flashpaper, Quicktime Pro, Flash Video updater, Photoshop etc…
Now that the system is all updated I can rely on it for at least a couple months
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