For over 3 years now, I’ve been employed as an “interaction developer” at Nascom, focused on – what else – developing for the Flash platform. Since some time, however, I’ve been growing increasingly restless. Introspection was unavoidable, leading to one resounding conclusion: it’s time for a change.

Fact is, what I found myself doing on a daily basis at work is not something I fully enjoy any more, and it was definitely not why I started programming a long time ago. This opposed to what I do in my free time, the result of which can be seen on this blog. Trying to do both has caused me doing little else than sit behind my computer screen, coding away for entire days. So, I’ve decided to leave Nascom to pursue a carreer as an independent developer starting mid-June. Focused on graphics programming, I can shift what I love to do to a healthier part of the day. Or at least, that’s the plan

It was great to be a part of Nascom and work alongside so many talented people. Both from a human and a technical perspective, I still believe it’s the best digital agency in Belgium. Thanks for having me, guys!

Ouch! My last post has almost been 5 months ago! Realizing this, I had two options: to feign my own death until the next update, or to give some sign of (what for me passes as) life. Let’s go with the second option and see if there’s anything useful I can pass on anyway.

Not having posted in such a long time doesn’t mean I’ve been slacking off, though. Quite the contrary; the past months have seen some of the most intense coding sessions I’ve went through in a long time. First a 3-month non-stop coding spree for Away3D, followed by continued development on Farbe. Hopefully, the result of both will be available in the (very?) near future, along with some other updates!

Now, instead of giving you demos or code, here’s some other things to help you develop.

(and no, I won’t be sharing any thoughts on the future of Flash)

Books!

Books form such an important part of my development process and knowledge, I’m a bit surprised myself that I haven’t really shared any titles here. Trying to ammend the situation, here’s some of the more influential ones I’ve read since I’ve started this blog (leaving out more general ones concerning design patterns etc):

• The Pragmatic Programmer, by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas: it’s a classic, and you should already have read it. So why am I still listing it? Because it often seems many Flash platform programmers stick to ActionScript/Flex-related books. Here’s a book that changes the way you think about your code, be it in form of design principles, tools or workflow. It’s a rather short read, so no excuses!
• Elements of Programming,  by Alexander Stepanov and Paul McJones: I found this one on a random trip to the bookstore. Approaching algorithms and data structures in a very formal and mathematical way, it forces you to – again - think differently about your code, but on a lower level (mainly concerning algorithms using data structures). What I love about this type of books is that you suddenly realize how differently you start tackling certain algorithmic problems. Perhaps not a book for everyone, but an interesting read nonetheless.
• 3D Game Engine Design, by David H. Eberly: (Thanks to Ralph for suggesting it way back ). “The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive 3D Technology” has quite a few good books, but to me, this is the most valuable. Of all books I had at the time, this one taught me most about many 3D engine concepts. During the development of Wick3d, I couldn’t do without it.

IDE – IntelliJ

I’ve recently started using IntelliJ IDEA 9 for ActionScript and Flex development, after hearing Joa and the Flash Bum raving about it. Coming from Eclipse (Flex Builder and FDT), it took a while to get used to, but now I have I can’t imagine returning to Eclipse at all. I have been raving about it in real life, much to the annoyance of my co-workers, so it would be wrong of me not to mention it here.  The refactoring, template and code generation support is simply unmatched, there’s a very useful and clean UML diagram view, properly integrated Maven support, … AND I get to annoy the Java/back-end team directly inside the IDE

To think I was once had to code C in MS-Dos Edit, how times have changed…

Edit: The Flashbum just wrote an article on InsideRIA about how to get started. Read all about it!

That’s about it. I hope this sign of life is useful to anyone after all! If not, I promise there will be more real updates soon!

The first post on this blog dates from May 4th, 2008, so I thought it fitting to look back at the year that has passed since then.

Over the time I’ve done some experiments/projects that, when I look back at them, make me think “What was I thinking?!”. On the other hand, there are luckily a few of which I’m actually proud, or at least content with how they turned out – whether they were practically useful or not (which is not exactly always my goal). A lot of the things I did, I did as a way to learn. As such there was Wick3d, a (now defunct) basic 3d engine to rehash my algebra (actually, I worked on it some more after the last update without comitting anything to svn). And of course Pixel Bender came along, giving me a whole new area to explore, as did Alchemy.

I do feel I learned quite a bit, but at the same time it seems with everything I learn, there’s twice as much I still need to study. Feels like a constant battle against ineptitude, especially when talking to those who actually seem to know what they’re talking about

Lastly, I’d like to pass some more updates on Farbe. I recently made some updates implementing oil paint and airbrush. There’s still so much work to do before it can go public, but soon it will be time to look for a Flex UI-designer/skin artist. If you know or are anyone with experience, send me a hoot with some examples! AS3/MXML/CSS experience is a must of course Just keep in mind, the project is free and will likely be open-sourced eventually (which is also a cheap way of saying: no money involved ). If you follow me on Twitter, you might have seen some demo pictures being tweeted. Those that haven’t: here’s some previews of Farbe simulating pencils (1, 2), oil paint and airbrush.

Off towards another year! Thanks to all you readers!

Last night, I had the idea to take part of the previous fluid solver, but instead of placing the “ink” in a grid, I’d replace it with particles and have those move according to the velocity grid. It would give a stronger impression of detail.

It didn’t look all that great from a realistic point of view, but I discovered that when I added permanent trails, things started to look more interesting, even tho I was moving further and further away from my initial idea. After some more experimentation, the result is some interesting pseudo-art (”pseudo” since I’m not an artist, and never will be ).

I like how some of them turned out, but that’s coming from a guy who likes to look at pictures of strange attractors and spends too much time staring at his cigaret smoke

All of these were generated in Flash using Alchemy.

On a rare occasion, instead of posting code and experiments, I like to post some things I’ve done at my job. Especially when it illustrates a practical use of some of my earlier experiments. So here we go!

For a project for the University of Ghent at Nascom (via Saatchi & Saatchi), I had to create a front-end application to be displayed on a big 12m² billboard, placed in Ghent. Without going into too much detail of the whole concept (which you can read at the official blogpost), it consisted out of a set of mini-applications allowing people to text mobile messages and interact with the display (show messages, a poll, …). being all booked up, I had to sacrifice some free time to be able to work on it. The reason I did was the same reason I decided to use Flash Player 10: a perfect excuse to work on the earlier 2D cloth simulation and turn it into stage curtains on a whopper public screen. Blatant self-exposure? Nah :p

Below, you can see a video recording showing it in action. The curtains open up after someone sends a text to the service, showing a random picture or video. Apologies for the low quality, all we had was a photo camera, and led lights don’t like to be filmed

Thanks to Jan Nikolaas Gijsen for editing the video! And I promise, this will be the last cloth-related post – at least for some time

After a long time of scepticism and critique, my colleagues have finally persuaded me to join Twitter. This phase of scepticism is pretty normal for me when it concerns the embarassingly public social side of the web [2.0 if you will]. As such, I still don’t have a Facebook account, that at least is still one of the few waning values to which I desperately cling.

Anyway, in this particular case, I’ve always considered Twitter a pointless and exhibitionistic medium. I still think it’s pretty pointless at times, but so far I must admit I’m having fun, and I guess that’s the point after all.

I’m out there. I’m prostituting myself. [ and annoying the hell out of people in the process. ]

In other news, battling a sleeping disorder can be pretty exhausting, and as a result I haven’t been able to be very productive in my spare time. Things are shaping up, however, and I’ve found some new inspiration for some experiments. I’ve pushed Wick3d to the back shelf for a bit, as it’s not the area I feel like exploring right now. Some more 2D dynamics/sims perhaps? …

I always told myself not to post anything unrelated to Actionscript or music, but this time I’ll just have to make an exception to that rule, because I’d like to introduce two new inhabitants of my apartment. Meet Flash and Bundy, the two feline hellraisers that have taken up residence with me and, in the process, are well on their way of destroying every single thing I own (Pictures below)

Cats aside, I’ve been working regularly on Wick3d since I got back from holidays and I hope I can post some interesting stuff soon. So keep an eye out for it

And while I’m updating, I might as well start plugging. Check out one of Nascom’s recent projects, for which I had to do the particle stream in the background: www.fullhd.be. Fun times