Video

Assembly 2010 – CNCD & Fairlight Demo

It was the massive annual Assembly gathering last week. Traditionally its a place for the demo scene to gather and present their demos and to hack out new ones.

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/

Flex 4 Spark & Rollover Group Containing Rect

Was working on my top-secret Flex-based project over the weekend when I discovered something I hadn’t come across before.

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:

<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:

<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!

Defcon 2010 – Hacker Intercepts GSM

I know I have been posting alot of videos lately but this one caught my eye for a couple of reasons this morning.

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:

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