Adam Luptak :: Scratches

Feb

Trip Back to Math Class

A recent project had me trying to find the distance between a point and a line segment, and a coworker reminded me that the distance from a point to the line can be found from the line perpendicular to the line, which passes through the point. That means figuring out the linear equation that defines the line segment. That’s y=mx+b, if you remember your Algebra days. I was stumped for a little while – stuck on the concept of solving for two variables with Actionscript. Actually, I was stuck on the concept of solving for a single variable in Actionscript, because I was being dumb.

Then, last weekend, laying in bed, I cracked it. Didn’t get around to writing the code until Monday. I wrote a LinearEquation class – capable of being given two points, a point and a slope (m), a point and a y-intercept (b), or a slope and a y-intercept – and builds a linear equation from it, in a manner of speaking – you can give it an x value, and it will return the y value. You can give it a y value, and it will give you the x. You can get the y-intercept, the slope, or the inverse of the slope – which will be the slope of a line perpendicular to that one.

Most importantly, the LinearEquation class has a static function – following the model of Point.distance() – LinearEquation.intersection(). It takes two LinearEquations as params, and returns the point where they intersect.

So we create a line and a point – then we get the inverse slope of the line, and pass that along with the point in to get another line. Then we get the intersection of the two, and voila, we’ve the line segment that is the distance from the point and the line.

Unless of course, that intersection is outside of the first line segment – that’s why LinearEquation gets extended by another class, LineSegment. But I’m not going to tell you all my secrets all at once.

So check out the demo I’ve set up. [ Line Segment / Linear Equation AS3 demo ]

And the practical applications for this? Not really sure yet, but there have to be quite a few. Just to name one or two, perhaps making line-segment checkpoints in a racing game, or part of an AI system where an enemy is shooting at you.

Maybe I’ll share the source sometime soon – if so, you can look for it here.

Development :: Interactive

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Feb

FWA – LEGO CL!CK

We interrupt your regular non-existent programming for a bit of news – the LEGO CL!CK site (legoclick.com) that I’ve been working on at StruckAxiom was today’s FWA Site of the Day. Of course, LEGO is a sweet brand to work on, and the whole creative team – which included Jon, Jeff, Matt, Anson, as well as myself – was awesome to work with, as usual, and they all rocked it out (again, as usual).

While we’re at it, I’d like to direct you to the Deconstruck blog, where I wrote a behind-the-scenes post about one of the most popular features of the site – exploding block walls. There are code samples and explanatory goodness, so go check it out!

Interactive :: Struck

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Oct

Words About Words

A few weeks ago, I was seeing some chatter concerning a certain Absolut Vodka spot and its similarity to Stefan Sagmeister’s type experiments. There were definitely some loaded words thrown around, like “copy” and “rip-off” and such.

Now, creativity and credit are no small things to me, but I think this may be a case of people wanting to be outraged about something – not unlike the people complaining about the use of the music in such an awfully commercial way. Perhaps it is a case of “pure art” vs. commercialism – perhaps some object to Sagmeister’s “pure” concept being the inspiration for an ad peddling vodka – but in general I find this to be a waste of time, discussions of art vs. commercialism, “selling out,” etc.

We all find inspiration in great work, and Sagmeister’s original type experiments were great. Something I’ve seen before – and have certainly been guilty of myself – is trying to emulate your inspiration but falling short. This isn’t that, though. They took the same idea – making a statement – literally – through creating type from surroundings. However, where Sagmeister executed his vision with still photography, the Absolut spot is video throughout, which gives it a distinctly different feel. I also think the shots of artists crafting the words are particularly powerful. Overall, I feel like the Absolut spot has a bit more ‘polish.’

I mean no disrespect to Stefan Sagmeister – in fact, I think his work is amazing. By way of illustration, it’s like the difference between the initial groundbreaking work of developers on multitouch display tables and the later, more polished versions, like the Microsoft Surface. I don’t believe that the creators of the Absolut spot were stealing from Sagmeister. It is merely my opinion, but I feel that by executing well and bringing new touches to the table, they have seen further by standing on the shoulders of a giant.

Inspiration :: Soapbox

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Oct

Exodus Stories

Back in school, my friend Mike shared a DVD with me that he’d borrowed from somebody – Battlestar Galactica. I watched the miniseries that began the show, but never got further – at least, not until New Year’s Eve of this past year. This lead to Chantelle and I devouring the series over the course of nine months.

If you’ve never seen it, you totally should check it out – all the seasons are now out on DVD.

If you love science fiction, it is science fiction in top form. If you’re turned off by science fiction… you should give it a shot anyway, because it’s really good science fiction, so it’s about more than space ships and robots.

The story starts with profound human tragedy – the destruction of the vast majority of humanity – and follows the remnants of the human race as they try to evade their attackers and find a new home. It’s a story about people finding a way to go on when they’ve lost everything.

So why should you check it out? The writing and acting is awesome – the whole ensemble cast is amazing. It’s intense, and sometimes incredibly challenging. Not only are there space battles and insurrections, there are also meditations on faith, political order, occupation and terrorism, forgiveness, and ultimately the nature of humanity.

I don’t want to say too much else for fear of straying into spoiler territory. However, when one series can attract loyal followers from many ages and backgrounds, spawn discussion at the United Nations, win prestigious awards, and be recommended to the host of a radio program on religion and ethics by a Muslim scholar – it might just be worth checking out. I recommend that you do.

(Bonus: The Night Battlestar Galactica Took Over The U.N. – more detailed article, but caution – spoilers!)

Television

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Oct

People More Talented Than Me

Avengers by JPRart

Now, when I was little, I used to draw all the time. I mean, I know lots of kids are constantly drawing, but I kept at it a while. The drives to swim meets were interminably long to a child of 2nd or 3rd grade, so I would spend long portions of the rides drawing. I don’t know if I would go so far as to say I was good – I mean, I was a little kid, so short of being an illustrative prodigy, I’m not sure what passes for good, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

At some point, though, I just stopped drawing. Not really sure why, but I did. I took an art class in junior high, but I’m certainly not proud of any of the drawings I did in that class – I did a very nice pen & ink, and a passable scratchboard piece, but not so much with the drawing.

So I didn’t give much thought to drawing until I became interested in RIT, and I needed to submit a portfolio that would include 5 drawings. This was pretty terrifying for someone who hadn’t drawn much in recent years, and I think even then I was a bit naive about the level of competition I would have from people who could actually, you know – draw.

I got in to RIT, obviously – the admissions department recommended that I consider the IT program rather than design, but I knew where I wanted to be. Drawing class was an eye-opening experience, however – my first few critiques were painfully bad, and I had to labor long and hard over drawing projects that others would breeze through, getting better results in a fraction of the time. Just when I was starting to get the hang of something, it would seem, we’d be on to something different that would leave me scrambling.

And now, it’s a point of some embarrassment that I never really draw. I’m sure that with practice, I could be okay, but I just don’t. Being in a creative industry, I feel like I should doodle in my notebook at work, but I’ve never really gotten the hang of doodling – I just can’t think of anything to doodle. Which isn’t the point, I know, but that’s how I seem to work.

This brings me to what I actually meant to post about – people who are way more talented than I am.

Shootout Showdown by kheelan

A while back, my friend Jon shared a link to Abduzeedo, an art & design roundup blog. It’s always interesting, though I don’t always agree about how great some of the things he posts are. I’ve found that a lot of the stuff he posts are coming from deviantART.

The Trench by michaelkutsche

Back in the day, back before I went to RIT, or got a full-time job, some friends talked me into joining deviantART. I wound up posting mostly photos – I don’t know that I ever was really considering photography as a career path, but I suppose I fancied myself an amatuer photographer. (Looking back on it, even after a few years of design experience, I take fairly average photos.)

Once I got to RIT though, I stopped spending time on dA. It’s pretty common, I think, to hate on dA, so I won’t do that here.

Pirate Redo by bongoshock

When it comes down to it, there are some insanely talented people on deviantART. And by just visiting Abduzeedo, you just get exposed to people who are awesome.

The City by kerembeyit

Is a lot of it sort of nerdy? A lot of fantasy and scifi illustrations? Yes. But I’m okay with that, being a bit of a nerd myself.

The Kid’s Last Heist by imaginism

So, after all that jabbering, I just hope you enjoy some of the stuff I’ve posted up here, and maybe check out Abduzeedo if you want. Or not. Do what you want.

Into The Unknown by kerembeyit

Inspiration :: Life

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May

Go bother Leonard Cohen!

It’s possible that you know and love TED as much as I do – if not, I am honored to introduce you to it. I haven’t been watching TED Talks in the past few monts – lost sight of them and forgot, in the face of work, personal work, personal life, and the seemingly insane shortness of days, weeks, and months. Luckily, I ran out of new ‘All Things Considered’ content on my NPR app, and happened to remember TED.

So, tonight I wanted to watch a quick talk while I ate, before turning my attention to a project that needs very badly to be finished, lest I fall so far behind that the universe collapses. What I watched was, not only hilarious at moments, but the most interesting discussion of creativity that I’ve heard in a long time, if not ever. I hope you watch and enjoy.

Inspiration

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Apr

The Evolution of Beach Animals

If you’ve spoken to me during the past few weeks, I’ve no doubt told you about the project I’m on at work. That’s not what this post is about, however. For the project I’ve been on, we used the AS3 port of Box2D to manage our collision and physics. As I was working through figuring out how to use Box2D, I was checking out the demo file, and one of the demonstrations had this spidery walking machine, labeled as a “Theo Jansen Walker.” Of course, I couldn’t contain my curiousity, so to Google I went…>

Turns out that Theo Jansen is, quite simply, an evil genius. This guy is just throwing down some incredible stuff. It started, it seems, 21 years ago – Theo Jansen wrote a computer program that created virtual 4-legged walking machines that would race each other, and then emulate the winner, evolving towards increasingly faster machines. As a programmer, that is a cool enough concept for me, but he wasn’t satisfied – he decided to take the concept analog.

So he’s been building these multi-legged walking machines out of plastic tubing and cable ties. Let’s pause for a moment – he builds multi-legged machines. That walk. They capture the power of the wind, and they walk. How. Cool. Is. That.

STRANDBEESTEN from Alexander Schlichter on Vimeo.

And he keeps them evolving. He tries variations, and when something works, he takes that “dominant” gene and puts it into other machines. His ‘beach animals’ have even started to sprout wings, store compressed air into bottles for later use, or hammer themselves into the sand to ride out storms.

The cynic in me rolls my eyes a little at Mr. Jansen’s hope that someday his machines will be able to self-evolve, and that he’ll be able to turn them loose on the beach to live their own lives. But then again, with the strides he appears to be making, maybe he will be able to pull it off, at least a partial – beasts that can react to their surroundings well enough to go around obstacles and hardy enough to survive on their own. It’d really be quite something to see these things just crusing on a beach somewhere.

So check it out – it’s awesome. Not only is it awesome on a technical level, I really love the aesthetic of his beach animals.

Inspiration

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Feb

Quality Check

So… been working on a dev project at Struck, but ran into an a bit of a bug. Loading in images and then trying to apply smoothing to them:

var _bmp: Bitmap;
_bmp = _loader.content as Bitmap;
_bmp.smoothing = true;

However, when scaling the images down, it was clear that they simply weren’t smoothing. I asked around, and tried lots of things – cacheAsBitmap, everything everyone else could think of. Don’t know if it was because I’m building it as a ActionScript project in Flex Builder, don’t know if there was some setting somewhere that I messed up – really no clue.

Well, I have to say, still don’t fully understand what is wrong. Something strange is definitely going on. What I did discover, though, is this: while when I right clicked on the flash player, it told me that the quality was set at ‘High.’ However, if I manually reselected a ‘High’ quality level, poof, everything started smoothing!

So, while I’m still completely baffled by the bizarre quality bug, but if I set it using Actionscript, it works correctly! So in my base swf, I just include

stage.quality = StageQuality.BEST;

And, well, it works. And I think I’ll be using that all the time from now on – according to the Adobe AS3 docs, setting the quality to StageQuality.BEST will smooth everything automatically, and how many times have I heard the question “Why don’t images just smooth by default?”

Bugs :: Development

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Feb

Techfit props

Well, this morning, the Adidas Techfit site, the first of a series of microsites that Struck is building for Adidas, was given the FWA Site of the Day award. If you’re not quite sure what that means, suffice to say they’re a good thing to receive.

I didn’t really work on this one at all – I just want to give props to Tyler, Wes, and Thom for rockin’ the development of this bad boy, and of course Jeramy and Jon for the design. Well done, gentlement.

Interactive :: Struck

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Jan

History: Standing Room Only

Today, I joined a crowd of 2 million people on the National Mall to witness the Inauguration of President Obama. At the base of the Washington Monument, I watched what is, to be sure, a milestone – neither the beginning or end of a journey, but the beginning of a historic presidency, and an amazing moment.

President Obama delivers Inaugural Address

With friends from swimming at RIT, I journeyed out this cold morning to gather in anticipation of the Inauguration. It was a very cold morning, but every bit worth the experience.

With friends at the Inauguration

Watching on the Jumbotron and listening to the speakers, we watched the arrival of celebrities, politicians and dignitaries. We listened to prayers and beautiful music – the performance of “Simple Gifts” by Yo-Yo Ma, Anthony McGill, Gabriela Montero and Itzhak Perlman was amazing, and my breath caught in my throat.

The oath of office flew by. President Obama’s inaugural address was inspiring, moving. (I am still very cold and tired, as I didn’t sleep much last night, so you’ll have to bear with my limited vocabulary at the moment.) The speech was a perfect indication of why I believed Sen. Barack Obama should be president, why he inspired me and made me believe.

Crowd on the National Mall

He speaks of common purpose, of working hard, working together. When he spoke of our forefathers who came across the sea with few belongings to build a better life for their children, I was moved almost to tears, thinking in that moment of my own family – I am removed only far enough from that immigrant history that I’ve never met them, but it was only a precious few generations ago my father’s family came to this country, and I am always aware of how much we’ve come in so short a time.

At the base of the Washington Monument

Further, President Obama spoke not only of the challenges facing us in our country, which will require our best ingeniuty and hard work to overcome, but also challenges in the world that we face. We must recapture our place in this world by remembering that we are measured not by the most prosperous, but those who need the most, and in our behavior towards them. We must feed the hungry, work for peace and prosperity and justice in all the world, not just in our own backyard and not just where it is convenient. As long as any are enslaved, none of us can truly be free. I believe that President Obama eloquently pointed out that we have both national and personal obligations – it depends not on a “they,” but rather on “us.”

I believe in a hope that is more than a campaign slogan, and I saw it today. Hope for the future, for the future of all.

Life :: Politics :: Travel

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