labs.andrewwalpole.com is up, and although it is nothing more than a few links and some blurry tree thing, it is where I will start to post some of my experiments and projects that don’t quite fit into my portfolio. I’ll give you a brief overview of what is up there right now.
First up is the project that spawned my idea to build my MixBoard AIR application. This is a much simpler version of what the application is today, it loads in a handful of looping mp3 files and allows you to mix them together on the board, pretty simple, instructions are even included.
Second is Commet, a school project I created using AS3, PHP and MySQL. It is my take on a flash-based social network. The entire premise is that you can access all portions of the service by either dragging objects or clicking them. Someday when I have a nice multitouch event system built I’ll spend a few minutes to hook it up to my multitouch screen.
Third is a quick little screensaver idea, I guess I was going for cells under a microscope. It makes extensive use of the Math.random() function and all the graphics are generated through the AS3 drawing API. I would really like to see Adobe pop out a nice little background-running AIR application to run flash-based screensavers – because I’m too busy right now to do it myself.
Finally, I present to you my award-winning widget, the ThumbPlay Ringtone Radio. I built this widget for the ThumbPlay Widget contest put on during FlashForward 2007. Even though my company was planning on forking over the conference money, they were pretty happy when they heard I had won all of my expenses paid, I was pretty stoked as well. If you are wondering why it’s not making any noise, that’s because it seems that ThumbPlay has removed their crossdomain.xml file. Maybe one day I will bug them to stick a new one up there. Total development time from start to finish: 6 hours (4 in Photoshop).
So that is my new laboratory. I’ll be sure to post my updates here and if there is any source code you want to peruse, just ask nicely.
-Andrew
Quick little BitmapData Experiment. I wish I had more time for this stuff.
Download and Enjoy
-Andrew
Well, it is not quite dead yet, but it seems inevitable after I was pointed in the direction of Phidgets. Check them out! If you are like me and absolutely drool over the idea of building your own USB device and then programming it through a Flex or Flash-based application please join me in signing over my soul to this company. Not only do they offer you an assortment of sensors, solder-less connections, affordable prices and a giant amount of documentation, they have also gone and written an extremely comprehensive Actionscript 3 API for it.
While attending FlashForward 2007 this past year I was fortunate enough to sit in on Craig Swann’s presentation about userfacing (directly interactive physical interfaces). It was one of the most inspiring talks I have ever attended, so much so that I set out to create my multitouch FTIR based screen just a few weeks later. As much as I do love the things you can do with code, especially Actionscript, you can’t touch it. Phidgets abstract the complications of building userfaces and promote the creative process. Sounds like a business model I’d like to see more companies wrap themselves around.
I’ll be sure to keep updating about my mad scientist Phidget experiements. First up I think will be the proximity-based magnetic interactive screen.
-Andrew