Anyone who has had the experience of trying to time events for web via client side scripting before can readily appreciate the power and ease of using the robust Timer class in Actionscript 3. Similar to the idea of using JavaScript’s setTimout and/or setInterval methods, we can use this class to set a timer for [...]

Well, I suppose one might say this is long overdue — after all, I am a web developer, right? No matter how much work I’m able to get done, I seldom have time to actually add to my personal sites, so when I found out just how easily zenPhoto could be added to my site, [...]

So, I typically strive to avoid any political debates on here, but I got an email this morning that was just too good to pass up. I have often wondered how printing more money, further decreasing its inherent value, is supposed to stimulate the economy — well, let’s learn a lesson from Chuck:

Young Chuck in [...]

One of the most common questions I am asked is also one of the biggest problems I see in code as I read it: lack of optimization. I often have people asking questions about how they can consolidate the generic actions they want multiple objects to have access to perform without duplicating the code. In [...]

While flash photography to some may simply be that which causes red-eye, I have been trying to read and learn some of the nuances of lighting and flash usage in my pictures. My biggest difficulty has been the lack of a “real” flash, but I am happy to say that I was able to get [...]

One of my biggest gripes in Flash games to date is that of simulated motion that is by no means realistic. True, this may be acceptable for some games, but as a whole, there is something that just doesn’t feel right when your side scrolling shooter plane moves up one unit when you press UP, [...]

Continuing my personal studies on simulating true gravitational acceleration in Actionscript, a couple days ago I arrived at one of the more conceptually challenging tasks I have tackled to date: the pendulum. I say conceptually challenging, because I tried to create a realistic pendulum in Flash a year or so ago and gave up after [...]

So, I may have bitten off a bit more than I could chew in this post, but it is something that has been an intriguing thought to me for some time: how can I simulate the effect, or pull, of gravitational forces between different objects on my stage? Obviously, if you read my previous post, [...]

Well, it’s overdue, and I’ve been slacking with the software a bit, but I finally got around to upgrading the blog to use WordPress 2.7. The admin interface is a definite improvement over the last few upgrades, and once again, when I’ve done something right, it makes me wonder what took me so long to [...]

Isn’t it amazing how much we learn during tax season? It seems to me that, no matter how long I pay taxes, I always discover a new way to give the government more of my money each time this season rolls around. This year has proven no different. We made the move from Buffalo, NY [...]