benwatts.ca

An Embarrassing “Speech”

Ben — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 22:27:46 +0000

I just stumbled across something horrifying in my closet …

When I was in grade 6 — which was exactly 10 years ago (‘99-’00) I wrote a ’speech’ on what I then called ‘Web Building’. I’m going to have to ponder whether or not I post scans of it or transcribe it, because after reading it I feel like ENDING IT ALL. I’m glad we weren’t marked on the factual content of this speech, because I would have failed, had the teacher decided to go to “geocity.com”.

“H.T.M.L. is everything! Literally everything! Its the whole website!”

Perhaps more rich than the atrocious written speech (which I probably read, word for word) is the peer feedback forms that are attached to it. One surprising highlight:

Would you like to learn more about this subject? If so, what?
“Yes I would like to learn more about how you advertise your site.” – Kevin

I wonder if he does anything with Marketing now …

There was also an anti-drug poem in the binder containing grade six stuff. This thing will never see the light of day again. “Do you think smoking’s rad? / To think that you’ve got to be mad!”.

New Fav Book: The Visual Miscellaneum

Ben — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 20:03:12 +0000

If you are a fan of infographics, graphic design, or need a fun book for a coffee table — this is the book for you. Frankly if I saw this in the store and flipped through it I probably would have bought it right then and there based solely on the bright and fun colours inside.

There are a few instances where gutters appear to have been ignored, so you end up with illegible text or a graphic might be harder to read. This is a fairly minor issue in an otherwise fantastic book.

I give it five arbitrary stars!

More at http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/

Creating Instances from the Library with Strings

Ben — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 18:52:25 +0000

Problem: while working on an AS3 document you uncover an unusual situation in which you have a string class name that corresponds to something in the library. How does one do it?

I’ve come across this a number of times and found myself dropboxing this snippet so I would always have it with me …

import flash.utils.*;

/** 

 * Takes a string classname, returns an instance of that class, if it exists. 

 */

private function newInstanceFromString(className:String):*{

    try{ 

        var classRef:Class = getDefinitionByName(className) as Class; 

        return new classRef();

    } catch( e:ReferenceError ){

        trace('Error: there was a problem creating an instance of the "'+className+'" class. Check your library and linkage to ensure it\'s there.');

        trace(e+"\n"); 

    }

}

See the AS3 livedocs for more information about getDefinitionByName, the super helpful method that makes it all work.

Graphs

Ben — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 00:03:05 +0000

Context

Unleashing SecretSantaBot

Ben — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 20:36:18 +0000

About two years ago the occasion arose for a Secret Santa with people who, for whatever reason, couldn’t find themselves in the same room to draw names from a hat. Determined, I soldiered on and wrote a script to email all parties with a randomly selected name. It worked, it drives a slow trickle of traffic to the site every December.

I decided to give it a bit of an OOP makeover this year and go ALL-OUT and get in on the git action, too. What I have ended up with is bizarrely tacked-on front-end to an otherwise super straightforward SecretSantaBot class.

I’m going to set up a site in the future to forgo the need to have a web server in order to use the script. That’s not as fun, eh? For now, it’s targeted at the developer.

Source @ Github | Demo

Oh, I should mention that before you ream me — this is the first PHP class I’ve written, and I’m sure it’s not the most optimally written thing out there. That’s what forking is for! Forking and reaming in the same sentence …

Takedown

Ben — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:58:09 +0000

I’ve tried a couple times this year to participate in “Make Something Cool Every Day” (it’s pretty self-descriptive, flickr set here) but despite my best efforts I haven’t been able to do it successfully. There was a time back in February-April where I was getting close to making something every week, but even that slowly faded away. To help get around the issue I thought I’d challenge myself to a one-hour exercise: 30 minutes to sketch, 30 minutes in Illustrator. That didn’t quite work out, but the result was a tentacled monster taking down a ship. Yup.

Oh, I guess it should go without saying that I was largely unable to adhere to my rules. The sketch was done in under 10 minutes — so I shifted the other 20 minutes to Illustrator time. Then came 30 minutes of Photoshop time … which came about after my time in Illustrator was up and I wanted to keep going; I figure switching programs and setting a new time limit is fair, no?.

What can I say, the system isn’t perfect yet.
The process is too lengthy to do one per day. Balls. It’s got to fit into 30-45 minutes.