If you enjoy gaming or know someone that enjoys gaming I cant encourage you enough to watch this video. Its quite long but I strongly encourage you stick with it till the end!

If you liked Day[9]‘s quirky style of humor of  or are interested in watching some more of his casts you should checkout either his Youtube channel or his BlipTV archive.

Just made a quick little update to my chrome extension “Post To Tumblr”.

In this update I finally worked out how to catch bad username or password returns from the Tumbr API. Basically it just involved me using the ajax rather than the post jQuery function and using “async:false” like so:

Source code

$.ajax({
		  url: 'http://www.tumblr.com/api/write',
		  type: 'POST',
		  data:o,
		  async: false,
		  complete: function(transport)
		  {
				if(transport.status == 200 || transport.status == 201)
				{
					 postingNote.cancel();
					 var postedNote = webkitNotifications.createNotification('images/icon48.png', "Image Posted!", info.srcUrl);
					 setTimeout(function() { postedNote.cancel(); }, 5000);
					 postedNote.show();
				}
				else if(transport.status == 403)
				{
					postingNote.cancel();
					var errorNote = webkitNotifications.createNotification('images/icon48.png', "Posting Error!", "Bad email or password");
					setTimeout(function() { errorNote.cancel(); }, 5000);
					errorNote.show();
				}
 
			}
		 });

In addition I have added some notifications to indicate when the extension is doing something.

I have made a little demo video below to show this off:

Chrome should auto update for you. If you dont have the extension yet head over to the extension gallery to grab it now!

The timelapse was produced using 2300 ish screenshots, one taken every 60 seconds by Chronolapse.

Enjoy:

You can play the game here: http://mikecann.co.uk/ludum-dare/ludum-dare-hour-40-complete/#thegame

For those not in the know the demo scene or “scene” is where a team of people come together and compete to make a music video. Except that they arent videos in the traditional sense as its all generated using code and runs in realtime. This means that you have to be super efficient with your code. Some of the competitions are “64k” or even “4k” competitions which means that the whole demo must fit in 64kb or 4kb! The music is also produced by the groups and often excellent.

I have been checking out some of the demos produced by the teams this year and they are simply stunning. Every year they get better and better.

This one from CNCD and Fairlight particularly caught my eye as it has massive numbers of particles and a stunning soundtrack kinda reminiscent of glitchy Radiohead. Therefore I thought it essential I share it here.

Enjoy:

Oh while im at it check out this one from last year:

If you are interested in more demos from assembly you can get them all here: http://scene.org/newfiles.php?dayint=7&dir=/parties/2010/assembly10/

Oh I have also posted about the demoscene before here: http://mikecann.co.uk/art/andromeda-software-development-lifeforce-2007/

The issue is that when you have a Spark Rect GraphicsElement within a Spark Group it seems that the rollover event of the group is triggered even though the mouse doesn’t roll over the Rect.

Here is a video I made to explain my issue on Twitter:

The code in the video is as follows:

Source code

<s:WindowedApplication xmlns:fx="http://ns.adobe.com/mxml/2009"
   xmlns:s="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/spark"
   xmlns:mx="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/mx"> 
 
	<s:Group rollOver="trace('ya')">
		<s:Rect x="100" y="100" width="20" height="20">
			<s:fill>
				<s:SolidColor color="0x00ff00" />
			</s:fill>
		</s:Rect>
	</s:Group> 
 
</s:WindowedApplication>

It turns out (after posting the issue on the Adobe Forums) that I was simply missing the “mouseEnabledWhereTransparent” property on the Group. Setting it to false causes the mouse to perform a hit-test rather than a simple bounds check. Thank you Mr Shongrunden for pointing this out to me

So this now works:

Source code

<s:WindowedApplication xmlns:fx="http://ns.adobe.com/mxml/2009"
   xmlns:s="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/spark"
   xmlns:mx="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/mx"> 
 
	<s:Group rollOver="trace('ya')" mouseEnabledWhereTransparent="false">
		<s:Rect x="100" y="100" width="20" height="20">
			<s:fill>
				<s:SolidColor color="0x00ff00" />
			</s:fill>
		</s:Rect>
	</s:Group> 
 
</s:WindowedApplication>

I hope this helps someone else out!

Firstly its an impressive video showing how easy it is to intercept 80% of the worlds calls with just $1,500 worth of equipment. Also the source article over on Venture Beat says that he can also jam a band preventing calls just as easily which is quite scary.

The second reason why this video caught my eye is it appears that this brit-hacker is wearing high-heels throughout his presentation, check it out:

I used to spend hours and hours playing the custom maps released with Warcraft III, I still log in every now and then to check out how its going and am suprised every time to see people still making new maps. Some of the most popular game genres in existence today wouldn’t be around if it wasnt thanks to be map making community in WC3. Genres such as Tower Defence (TD) and Defence of The Ancients (DOTA) were born there.

So it made me extremely happy to see this video on YouTube showing that yes custom maps are possible in SC2 and yes you can make TDs with them, horaay!

Its a a physics engine called Lagoa and its by Thiago Costa, check it out:

Lagoa Multiphysics 1.0 – Teaser from Thiago Costa on Vimeo.