Obstacle course. Playing catch with Dad. Hotdogs. Peanuts. Four spoonfuls of dipping dots. Three wails about how he just had to have cotton candy. Two bites of cotton candy the people sitting next to us offered when their little guy didn't like it. Five minutes in the bounce house. Ten minutes of screaming when it was time to leave. One tired kid.

Procedural Inc. Ships New Urban Modeling Solution, CityEngine, Allowing Mass Creation of City Models 10 Times Faster for Film & TV Production, Game Development, Architecture and City Planning; Free Trial Version Available For Download

Zurich, Switzerland — July 21, 2008 — At this year’s SIGGRAPH, a spectacular 3D recreation of ancient Rome (A.D. 320) will be revealed where revolutionary graphics technology has been applied to reconstruct the extremely detailed virtual urban environment. It wasn’t until now that professional users could actually buy the software that made it possible, Procedural Inc.’s CityEngine®.

Procedural Inc., an innovative software company located in Zurich, Switzerland, is home to the world’s foremost procedural modeling technology. With the CityEngine, Procedural Inc.’s graphics experts have created a radically different 3D application that allows the modeling of cities up to 10 times faster than previous solutions, making automatic digital city creation possible for professional users. This makes it a compelling tool for the production of video games, feature films and television series, architectural visualizations and applications for the emerging 3D internet, where consumers expect richer, higher quality digital content for their dollar.

“Cities are huge, richly detailed artifacts that are often required in digital productions, and modeling them with existing tools can take several man years,” says Pascal Müller, CEO of Procedural Inc. “The CityEngine addresses these previously unsolved modeling problems by offering several procedural modeling tools for generating large-scale urban layouts, as well as a unique shape grammar for the efficient creation of detailed building models. With these tools, users not only experience a faster modeling experience, but one which allows them to create cityscapes that have never been seen before.”

As the core of the CityEngine, the shape grammar has been designed specifically for rule-based production of architectural content at arbitrary levels of detail. The procedurally generated 3D buildings can be exported in various file formats, allowing for a flexible and simple integration into existing production pipelines. In addition, the underlying procedural approach ensures the reusability of designs and is well suited for collaborative work environments.

“The CityEngine is a perfect match for the Rome Reborn project,” says Bernard Frischer, director of Rome Reborn. “Our project involves the complete virtual reconstruction of the city at its zenith under Emperor Constantine, when it had about one million residents. To build by hand the corresponding 7,000 apartment buildings, family houses, public buildings and temples would have taken us forever; but CityEngine's power and flexibility made the process amazingly quick without sacrificing detail or quality. This allowed us to concentrate on modeling the unique monuments. The CityEngine also helps to quickly change the model as new scholarship or discoveries warrant.”

“After the Rome building designs had been specified in the CityEngine, generating and exporting the entire city model took exactly 1 hour and 55 minutes,” continues Müller. “Thus, Rome actually WAS built in one day… or, at least its digital counterpart was.”

The release of CityEngine also marks the official debut of Procedural Inc. Founder and CEO Pascal Müller was formerly a researcher at ETH Zurich, where he pioneered the field of procedural urban modeling (with his series of SIGGRAPH publications about procedural urban modeling), which led to the creation of CityEngine. In just six months, the Procedural engineering team under CTO Simon Schubiger transformed the research into a powerful industry application.

Pricing and Availability
Priced at $6,950 per license, the CityEngine is now available for purchase via Procedural’s website, www.procedural.com, or by telephone order at +41 76 720 3303. A free 30-day trial version, including example scenes, is also available for download at www.procedural.com.

Recently I started to experiment with Sidekick development. All nice and fine, Danger Developer Zone provides reasonable documentation, nice SDK with a complete, cross-platform ant-based build system along with a decent emulator and a number of examples. That was the good part.

Now comes the bad part. To upload your software to real hardware you have to obtain a developer key from Danger. This is bad but the ridiculous part is that you have to send them your application to prove that you're in fact developing an application for Sidekick. I can understand that they think it's preventing piracy but requiring that they also hurt developer community. Because of their restrictions there's mostly commercial software developed for Sidekicks and I'm sure many companies don't like sharing information about their pending projects with anyone, Danger included (that's actually the case here) so they are forced to use tricks to get the developer keys without revealing their important projects.

What about software licensing mentioned in the title? It's the ugly part...

All software (ok, maybe except nuclear plant control applications ;) ) has bugs. Systems that software runs on can have wildly different configurations. What happens if some critical part of the toolchain doesn't work? If it's closed-source software -- you're screwed. Or at a mercy of a software vendor which basically means same thing. There's a tool in Sidekick SDK called htconsole which is used to interact with development-enabled devices. It happens htconsole just doesn't connect to Sidekicks on my system. I did all I could think of to make it work with no result. Of course I found a workaround -- use different machine to talk to the devices but that's obviously not an optimal solution. Should htconsole be free software I could examine its source code and fix the issue or at the very least identify the problem. All I can say right now is 'it doesn't work'. It's that simple.

http://www.iphonedevcentral.org/home.php

http://www.heise.de/ix/artikel/2008/02/038/

A rigorous public beta has put Houdini 9.5 through its paces and ensured a production-ready release. Side Effects thanks everyone who participated in the public beta program. The feedback received from the CG community has proven invaluable and helps make Houdini a better product in so many ways. Testing on the Mac started early and Mac beta customers have helped build a great first release on this platform.

Availability
Houdini 9.5 is available immediately for purchase through the Houdini Store. If you would like to speak with a sales representative, you can contact us at sales@sidefx.com . If you are interested in working with Houdini on personal projects, you can also get Houdini Apprentice 9.5 for free here, or purchase the watermark-free Houdini Apprentice HD here. Upgrades from Houdini Apprentice HD 9.1 are also available.

Updated Docs
Documentation in Houdini 9.5 sports an improved look and provides a valuable resource for learning Houdini. Artists will find an improved search function with boolean search, phrase searching, and spelling suggestions. A preview of the search results appears as you type, giving you feedback on the search and letting you select from the highest rated results more quickly. You can also filter search results to only the show the documentation you're interested in.

The tables of contents has been reorganized to clearly categorize documentation into levels such as "Getting started," "Next steps," and "Guru level." A new "how to" section has been added which should grow to include useful tips and recipes for achieving various effects in Houdini. And of course, many of the tools are accompanied by example files that can be quickly launched from the docs providing networks of nodes that can be explored and even re-purposed in your work.

Torque Game Engine Exporter
Houdini 9.5 also includes the ability to export to the Torque Game Engine by Garage Games. Independent game developers can now use Houdini Apprentice HD to create game art for Torque. Interested gamers can learn more here.

Feature List:
Houdini 9.5 includes an impressive list of new features that are explained in more detail in the What's New section of the docs.

Architecture
• Houdini now runs on Mac OS X.
• Many digital asset refinements, including the ability to specify editable nodes within a locked asset.
Interoperability
• FBX Export.
• FBX NURBS import.
• Quicktime output from MPlay to Mac/Linux/Win.
• Adobe Illustrator™ import.
• .MDD output
Environmental Effects
• RBD Fracture tools, such as break, shatter, and debris generation.
• Wave simulation tool: Whitecaps.
• River simulation tool: Sculpted particle fluid.
• New and improved fire and smoke.
• Adaptive and animated level-set solvers.
Character Effects
• Encapsulation of current fur workflow into easy to use fur tools.
• Auto-rig refinements.

UI
• Ramp Parameter VOP.
• Ramp Parameter vector and float.
• Better OpenGL2 support in the viewport.
• Support for GLSL shaders in SHOPs.
• Real-time shadows in the viewport.
• Advect Particles tool
• CVEX VOP context.

VEX
• Added arrays as a datatype in VEX.
• As part of the new language support for arrays, VEX now also supports accessing members of a vector using the same name[index] syntax as arrays.

New Surface nodes
• Assemble (must be inserted after one or more Break nodes)
• Bake Volume (bakes lighting onto a volume)
• Break
• Extrude Volume
• Finalize Waves
• Match Axis
• MDD
• Name
• Point Map
• Points From Volume
• Script (execute scripts in a geometry network)
• Shatter
• Volume Ramp
• Volume VOP
• Volume (utility node for manipulating volumes)
• Wave Velocity
• Waveform

New Render drivers
• FBX Export
• Torque Export
• MDD File Writer
• Wedge ]]> http://fixnum.wordpress.com/?p=3 Mon, 21 Jul 2008 19:51:17 +0000 nairda http://fixnum.wordpress.com/?p=3 Trying some development blog stuff. Stay tuned!

A
aatma ma timro baas cha........

Disclaimer: I do not work for SOE, and SOE does not endorse my views (openly, at least). ! ;)

Now that you've understood that, let's get to the fun stuff.

I am starting a new section. It's called Tool Time.

Here's how it works. As I am browsing, and I come across a post of monumental tool-ery-ness ... I will quote the best chunks here, and then make fun of the person.

As most of you may know, this kind of thing is forbidden on the SOE boards ... but I sure as hell can rip anyone a new ass here on my own personal space.

Here's the first one!

Today's entry comes from poster Rhymez (yes, spelled with a Z, isn't that clever? I bet he thought no one would ever get it!) on the SOE Brigand board.

This came in reply to Aeralik.

Part 1:

honestly how long did it take you even to design the Rouge epics ? it appears to me it was done 20min before lunch the epics dont like there was much effort put into them and for that we pay you every month for doing bascially nothing ?
youve shown alone taking the flurry proc idea from the brigand forum on flames that you totally lack creativity

Im still pissed that we were asked what wed like to have on our epics and then it ends up on someone else's

Part 2 (posted, in succession, as a second post immediately following the above):

I mean srly you either dont want to understand it or you dont understand it that a proc would suck considering when our proc tends to go off

and ifu think reducing cast and recovery with our AA to 0,2secs cast recovery would cut it then ur totally mistaken aswell dude

is it really that hard to grasp for you ? if yes roll a Brigand buff him to 80 run a raid and lets see how awesome it goes for you

and you are also aware of that haste comes out my [cant control my vocab] already in a guild that can obtain mythicals
all your current suggestions FAIL dude

I mean srly do you test stuff at all ? it appears to me you dont

...

WOW!

Okay, this is gonna be FUN! Let's take it blow by blow.

First of all, the word is spelled R-O-G-U-E. The G comes BEFORE the U. "Rouge" is a red make-up that women wear. Idiot.

Second, if you want someone to take your arguments "srsly" then try to spell out words properly.

Third, coherent sentences help. Spaces between your words. Pause. Breathe. Let your fingers rest. Try placing adjectives, adverbs, and nouns in their proper places. Use commas, apostrophes. If you didn't learn these things in the THIRD GRADE then maybe you ought to GO BACK. With your mentality, I'm sure you'd fit right in with the other 9-year olds.

Fourth. Go get a job. Get a girlfriend. Maybe a cat? At least then you'll have some kind of pussy. You can't possibly be getting any with the kind of attitude you currently exhibit. No really. Chicks dig guys who can't spell, are mean and nasty, have little education, and spend all day typing at their keyboard about "procs" and "stats". You'll be married in no time, man. Take a shower. Clearly your hands have been on your dick, and your head up your ass, a little too much, lately.

Fifth. Double posting? What, you got so mad and worked up over a few sentences that you just HAD to come back and spew out some more venom? It's a like a little kid who didn't get the balloon he wanted at that birthday party. "SRSLY" Grow the fuck up, little boy.

Lastly, while I'm sure it's of no concern whatsoever to a person of your great caliber, calling people names and insulting them is not ever going to get you anywhere. ((I hereby claim this segment and all future Tool Time segments EXEMPT from my own wisdom, such as "calling names never gets you anyhwere." While I personally am well aware of such wisdom, the Tool Time theme does not line up with such ideas.))  This is why it's so obvious you can't possibly hold a job. It may, however, get you ignored and ensure that your class gets less attention than others. Since you parse number 2, anyway, and were never intended to compete for the top DPS spots, I think you ought to count your chickens and take a nice big walk along the STFU path.

And that concludes the first installment of Ratwarlock's Tool Time.

Stay tuned! Same Rat time, same Rat channel!

London based Qube software has unveiled the first ‘point release’ of its revolutionary middleware solution ‘Q’, saying it highlights the ease and rapidity with which new features can be added.

Q 2.1 ships with enhanced scripting and a new, multi-threaded script debugger; both features designed to help developers get games to market quickly.

Although Q 2.1 is the engine’s first point release, it’s part of a programme of continuous improvement that has seen Q updated monthly since it was first made available to partner studios 18 months ago.

“The same architecture that makes Q the only true cross-studio solution also makes it quick and easy for us to add new features,” said Qube CEO Servan Keondjian, “because even major Q updates don’t break compatibility with code and data built on older versions.”

“What we’re doing is adding plug-ins using exactly the same process as studios use to build their own,” said Keondjian. “So Q is simply more responsive to clients’ needs than any other middleware on the market, whether that be through Qube adding new features or through studios doing it themselves.”

Q’s new scripting is a C++ / Java-like language with a multi-threaded script runtime. It offers access to the complete Q API and to developers’ own objects and native code from script, and allows script to be embedded within native code.

The integrated debugger offers a full-featured debugging environment with breakpoints, step-in/out, threads and watches.

Also included in the latest release are new shader and scene rendering plugins to expand Q’s existing rendering library.

“Not all developers have the time or the inclination to get deep into native code,” said Q Program Manager Jamie Fowlston. “Scripting and debugging, as well as the additional shaders, are all tools that make Q a better off-the-shelf solution as well as one that studios can customise to their hearts’ content.”

"Q has always supported arbitrary shaders and scene rendering algorithms,” said Fowlston. “Adding a new shader or scene rendering algorithm is easy with Q, so we'll continue to expand the library of rendering effects with future releases."

Q is presented as a series of modules arranged around a powerful and flexible framework. When Keondjian set out to build Q in the wake of creating Direct3D his aim was to develop a cross-platform and genre-agnostic game development solution that’s easy for studios to make their own.

At the heart of Q’s design is the principle that it should be possible to provide high-level engine functionality, while still being able to customize and add to it quickly and cleanly, thus avoiding many of the problems faced by developers using monolithic game engines who waste valuable time rebuilding large parts of it when they need to change or add features.

“One of Q’s core strengths is that it provides an excellent technical foundation that allows us to make consistent progress with each new release,” Fowlston said. “That same foundation allows developers to use Q as a cross-studio solution knowing that any custom features they add won’t be broken by future Q releases.”

At least we have fun trying!

Pwnage Tool fixes the following:

1. It auto-finds the bl39 and bl46 files better, if they're on your computer.
2. It creates the ~/Library/iTunes/Device Support/ folder if not present, which should help with some 1600 errors people have been having.
3. Many people have reported the PwnageTool not starting up at all (the icon never stops bouncing). This issue should be resolved now.
4. The sparkle AppleCast URL is fixed in this version, so automatic updates should work for future releases.

Click here to download.

GururBrahmaa Gururvishnuh Gururdevo Maheshwarah
GuruH Saakshaat Parabrahm tasmei shree Guruve namah

Note: This Arati mostly sung after the main Arati of the deity.

Visit www.eTirth.com for more information on Temples, Ashrams, Gurus, Festival and Daily Panchangam (Hindu ephemeris).

We love Sundays. We think you will to.

NOTE: Stay tuned for my video of Pwnage Tool 2.0.

Usually a mesh uses full texture image...

Now is where things start to get interesting...

So I thought I'll make a simple experiment and map mesh to an area near the center, but shifted a bit to the top...

Making long story short, I checked that the horizontal coordinates are fine but center of UV-mapped area is shifted in the wrong direction relative to the vertical center of an image.

It appears that the fix included computing vertical center of UV-mapped area and shifting it to the other part of texture. If vCenter is center of texture-mapped area new v coordinate should be calculated as: v' = v - ((0.5 - vCenter) * 2.0). No, don't ask me why it has to be that way but I verified it and it works :)

You can find excellent M3G exporter for Blender by Gerhard Voelkl at http://www.nelson-games.de/bl2m3g/

A link to patch fixing V coordinate generation: m3g_export_08_fix_v_coordinate

This text file is in .odt format since WordPress doesn't allow uploading of plain text files. Please save it as text and you should get a valid patch file.

Actually seems like we dont really have "game engine" in D. We do have sdl and opengl but they are not really engines and for sure not as easy to use as libtcod_d. Actually they are hard to setup and you would need to rely on its community since they use tango anyway. With libtcod_d all you need is the D compiler dmd.

Well get it while it is hawt at AY open source repo

Simply follow instructions at the wiki. But just so you know, all you need is to extract files and have fun. No setup at all (again).

Bye for now. I got bugs and experimentations to work on!

Kiev, Ukraine, 16 July 2008.

Deep Shadows, a well-known developer of next-gen PC and console products from the Ukraine, announced today that it successfully implemented full-fledged support for multi-core processor systems, based on Intel® Threading Building Blocks 2.0 (TBB).

After joining the Intel® Software Partner Program, Deep Shadows decided that their in-house Vital Engine and games created on its base should fully support multi-threading and the use of multi-core processors. This is especially important for Xbox360 products, which must use all 3 processor cores of the console. At the same time, Intel Corporation provided a convenient and easy-to-use option for the developer – Intel® TBB 2.0.

“Any current top-quality game engine must use all available cores for handling game worlds smoothly and efficiently” said Roman Lut, technical director of Deep Shadows. “We’ve researched the problem thoroughly and found out that Intel’s software libraries offer the most comprehensive and effective solution for performance scaling. Although we considered RapidMind and Jibu for our cross-platform multi-threading development we found that Intel® TBB offered the easiest programming model, extensive support including active forums and good documentation, and an open source code base; all backed by Intel. Because an open source version of TBB exists we were able to easily port it to Xbox360 and achieve scalability without reprogramming to take advantage of it three-core architecture. Now our games will work equally well both on Xbox360 and multi-core PCs with Intel® multi-core technology enabled.”

“TBB is the most effective solution for C++ developers targeting any multi-core processor platform including, thanks to Deep Shadows, game optimized PCs and game consoles,” said James Reinders, director, Intel Software Development Products. “Deep Shadows has the respect and thanks of the TBB community for their contributions.”

Due to the optimization of Vital Engine for Intel® multi-core technology, the FPS rate in both titles was raised by 40% and the background resource loading was made totally transparent. The support of Intel® Multi-core Technology in the projects of Deep Shadows allowed the developers to decrease the initial game loading time and the time of loading saved games.

Two things get me real mad with D but even more with C and C++: chars. chars are one of the most versatile datatypes and it does cause lots of issues. C and C++ gives us lots more issues with strings and array types and D does try to overcome them but it breaks years and years of past design. We must live with invariance when we are coding in D, which is good but gets in our nerves sometimes. I dont want to hack it up with mixins so I will try to best my solution individually.

Another thing is that one of C's coolest style of playing is: variadic functions. D does support them but it has a new set of rules for those which will mean lots of tedious typing for me.

As a side note, I started playing ragnarok online the other day (actually my cousin invited me so I couldnt really refuse) I got fast to level 35 with a ninpou ninja but then got quite bored with it. =P Then I made another ninja, this time togatana, but got it only to level 25. Its amazing the insane ammount of experience you can lose by dying to lured, high level monsters at city entrances. Cast off Cicada Skin Shed does save a ninja's ass but sometimes those monsters can be evil and cast those thunder magic which gives you instant 3000 damage. =P It was fun while it last but I will stay off ragnarok for a while. Specially since my cousin also got bored of it.

See you next.

Eastenders and Coronation Street suck massive donkey dick, this is not an opinion, it is fact.

That's not really what I'm going to write about however. I am, in fact, going to write about how I don't care if they stereotype ethnic minorities, and how you shouldn't either. Regardless of whether or not you're from an ethnic minority.

If Eastenders were to feature a grumpy, Irish, alcoholic who worked in the Docks, I wouldn't give a shit. I wouldn't take offence.

Why? Just because I'm Irish does not mean I go crying like a little bitch boy anytime somebody portrays an Irish man as being a drunk who sees leprechauns. I am a drunk, and quite often I drink to the point of seeing leprechauns, I find the stereotype itself hilarious enough for me to overlook the "racism."

And I only use the word "racism" here because I can think of no other word for what I see this as.

In reality I do not see this as racist, it is not racist to portray an Irish man as an alcoholic in a drama, nor is it racist to portray an Islamic fundamentalist as a gung ho terrorist trying to hijack a plane in a terrorist movie.

Why?

Because Islamic Fundamentalists do, on occasion, hijack planes and blow up American embassies, because Irish men do on occasion drink, because Indian men do, on occasion, own small corner shops, and because sometimes, it just so happens, that Jewish families, are really fucking wealthy.

So welcome to the real world you politically correct wanker.

In the real world, we do not gouge our eyes out before leaving the house in order to never know a man's skin colour, in the real world, I notice a black man in the street, as exactly that, a black man, I don't know what I should call him, black? coloured? negro? I don't know the terms, nor do I care, so I stick with black, because that's what he is, just like I'm white.

It's not racist to notice people's skin colour. It's not racist to portray certain races as having certain characteristics, because that's not what anybody in Eastenders was trying to do. There was no grand scheme plotted up by writers to portray ethnic minorities in a bad way, God knows there'd be a shit-storm if they did. It's not in their interests.

The most probable reason they've portrayed ethnic minorities in a "stereotyped fashion," is that they literally did not think about the fact that they were, for example, portraying a Jew as wealthy, or an English man as loud, or an Irish man as drunk... etc.

The people who make it an issue, i.e., those who decree, that BECAUSE this man is Indian, you have DELIBERATELY portrayed him as owning a corner shop, are the racists, you're the ones making that connection, when in reality, they cast an Indian man presumably because he was the best for the job. (I'm using this as an example of course, as I have no idea what goes on in Coronation Street or Eastenders, because both series are complete common pleb dirge.)

"It found that US imports have more credible representations of minorities, with viewers praising shows such as Heroes, Lost, ER and even the Simpsons."
here's a couple of short character biographies for the Simpsons.

Homer: stupid, fat, bald American. The perfect stereotype of an American man.

Ned Flanders, and the Flanders family: Typical ridiculously religious American family. Yet another lovely stereotype.

Apu Nahasapeemapetilon: An Indian man, who owns a convenience store, is in an arranged marriage, and has over five children... Yes, that's not an ethnic stereotype at all!

Groundskeeper Willy: Scottish, drunk, ginger and very angry.

Fat Tony: Italian mafia.

DR. Julius Hibbert and Bleeding Gums Murphey : The stereotypically thick voice of a black blues man.

The Muntz and Spuckler families: Rednecks

So far we have every American portrayed as religious zealots, rednecks, or fat and stupid. With the Italians all being Mafia members, the blacks all being in some way connected to blues, the Indians having convenience stores with lots of kids and arranged marriages, and the Scottish are drunks... Yea, the Simpsons totally doesn't use stereotypes at all!

The best part about this is, 1., stereotypes are used for comic value, the writers even stereotype their own races and religions, deal with it, 2., It's funny how those involved in the report picked up on none of this, showing just how unconnected with modern culture they really are, and most importantly 3., we can find stereotypes whether man-made, or coincidence everywhere. Just learn to fucking live with it, and shut the fuck up, please stop crying because somebody portrayed the Jews as rich, when you are a Jew, we all fucking know that not every Jew is rich!

"Viewers cited Asian corner shop owner Dev in Coronation Street and black single mother Denise, who had two children by two different fathers in Eastenders, as examples of stereotyping and tokenism in soaps."

Well, that's what happens when you have a fucking retarded audience. Do you know why they called Dev Asian, because not one fucking member of the idiot public knew where he was from, and they were inundated with mass mail of people taking wild guesses! You're essentially saying, "You just stereotyped Asiains", you realise how dumb that is?! You cann't not stereotype a geographical landmass that fucking big, it's too fucking vast, no matter how they portrayed the Asian man in this drama, they're bound to fucking hit at least one stereotype because of the vast wealth of different cultures that can be found in fucking Asia! So don't fucking complain that, "they stereotyped that Asian man Dev." It makes you look like a moron, since you've no idea where he's from and exactly how he's being steretyped. Learn where the fuck he's from first, then complain.

Jesus fucking Christ.

I hate the idiot public.

And as for Denise, yea, because when we think of black stereotypes, we think of sluttish women... That's really what we fucking think of. JUST FUCKING NO.

"Ethnic minority viewers accused all broadcasters of tokenism and stereotyping, screening exaggerated and extreme representations of minorities and failing to reflect modern ethnic minority culture."

Oh really?

Then go make your own fucking show, or buy fucking virgin, and order some fucking foreign channels. We cannot continually meet every ethnic demand, all the fucking time, it's just not economically viable, we just don't have the fucking time to make every fucking show on fucking TV. accurate in every fucking respect, nor should we ever fucking have to. I don't like English television, so guess what I do, and this is a really fuckin' novel idea, I don't fucking watch it, or I get RT-fucking-E.

Here's the bottom line, political correctness, was meant to make us appreciate our differences, and learn from one another and learn about other cultures. But instead it's turned into a ridiculous spray of judicial bullets being blindly fired into our nation. Learn to deal with the fact that every race carries with it specific stereotypes, ignore said stereotypes, and stop thinking about them.

Stop fucking looking for them at every corner you turn, nobody cares about you, or your race. Nobody actively tries to stereotype you, it's just that this PC bullshit has gone way too far, and now everybody ploughs into every aspect of our society they can in order to create division in the name of controversy...

Just fuck up, everyone. Regardless of what race you are, English, Indian, Pakistani, Irish, Scottish, if you whine about something not being politically correct, just fucking shoot yourself, get off my mortal fucking coil.

The full story can be found at :
http://uk.tv.yahoo.com/17072008/19/shows-criticised-stereotyping.html

The final version of Pwnage Tool 2.0 will support:

1. iPhone (1st Gen) - Activated, Unlocked & Jailbroken, (with support for third party apps)
2. iPod Touch with 2.0 - Activated & Jailbroken, (with support for third party apps)
3. iPhone (3G) with 2.0 - Activated, Jailbroken (with support for third party apps)

Although the iPhone 3G can be pwned and activated IT CAN NOT BE UNLOCKED.

The iPhone Dev Team tells us to "fasten our seatbelts" in preparation for the release. This is definitely good news for people with unlocked iPhones who want to upgrade to 2.0 (like me).

NOTE: I will be posting a video on my blog of me upgrading to the new 2.0 firmware. If you are not sure on how to pwn/unlock your phone (although it is an easy process) or just want to make sure you're doing it right, wait for my video posting. I will be making the video once Pwnage Tool is out so you don't have to wait that long.

The first component I worked on was the Slider (actually HSlider), because I think it's the component that can be used in numerous cases and also because most of the time it doesn't fit our my UI needs. Sorry to all the GREAT developers that worked on Flex UI components but the default Slider is just ugly...

Fortunately they add a cool feature that allow everyone to  customize the look and feel. (I think it's important to understand that some of the time it may be interesting to change the look but changing the feel is also really important.) I won't talk about the styles we can apply via CSS, but instead, how to use the sliderThumbClass and the trackSkin from the Slider Object.

Before jumping into the code, lets have a look to the result :

As you can see, no more default UI and a 'Tooltip' more useful. I used this Slider in one of my project where I had to navigate thru archives.

Ok so as I said I used sliderThumbClass to modify the ThumbSlider UI and the trackSkin in order to change the track of the slider.

The track skin:

This part is really easy, we just have to create a UIComponent with the desired shape. So just Create a new Class that extends UIComponent and override updateDisplayList function with your code that draws the shape you want.

[sourcecode language='java']
package com.GuN.UI.customUIComponent.slider
{
import mx.core.UIComponent;

public class SliderTrack extends UIComponent
{
override public function get height():Number{
return 20;
}

override protected function updateDisplayList(unscaledWidth:Number, unscaledHeight:Number):void{
super.updateDisplayList(unscaledWidth, unscaledHeight);

//create 2 circle that will act like round corners
this.graphics.beginFill(0xFFFFFF,1);
this.graphics.drawCircle(0,0,5);
this.graphics.drawCircle(unscaledWidth,0,5);
this.graphics.endFill();
//create the line that represents the track
this.graphics.moveTo(0,0);
this.graphics.lineStyle(10,0xFFFFFF);
this.graphics.lineTo(unscaledWidth,0);

}

}
}
[/sourcecode]

I could use a drawRoundRect() aswell, but I will explain that on an other component customization post.
Ok now the track is now done, let's have a look to the Thumb.

The slider Thumb

My Slider have a really simple thumb, it's actually just a black circle. Like what we've done for the the track, we'll do exactly the same for the Thumb. So create a class extends SliderThumb to inherit the behavior of a slider and override the updateDisplayList function.

[sourcecode language='java']
package com.GuN.UI.customUIComponent.slider
{
import mx.controls.sliderClasses.SliderThumb;

public class CSpSliderThumb extends SliderThumb
{

public function CSpSliderThumb()
{
super();
}

override protected function updateDisplayList(unscaledWidth:Number, unscaledHeight:Number):void{
super.updateDisplayList(unscaledWidth,unscaledHeight);
this.graphics.beginFill(0x000000,1);
this.graphics.drawCircle(2,-8,4);
this.graphics.endFill();
}
}
}
[/sourcecode]

At this point you have a new slider without any cool effect. You can still continue using the default datatooltip but you can also create your very own datatooltip UI. On my slider I added a Sprite beneath the Thumb to display the data while sliding.

Here is the code for the datatip container :

[sourcecode language='java']
package com.GuN.UI.customUIComponent.slider.sprites
{
import flash.display.Sprite;
import flash.text.TextField;
import flash.text.TextFieldAutoSize;
import flash.text.TextFormat;

public class CSpSprite extends Sprite
{
var lbl:TextField;
var bkgColor:uint = 0x000000;
var bkgAlpha:Number = .5;

var textColor:uint = 0xFFFFFF;

public function CSpSprite()
{
super();
lbl = new TextField();
drawShape();
drawText();

}

private function drawText():void{
lbl.x = -10;
lbl.y = 3;
lbl.autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.CENTER;
lbl.background = false;
lbl.border = false;

var format:TextFormat = new TextFormat();
format.font = "Verdana";
format.color = textColor;
format.size = 9;
format.underline = false;

lbl.defaultTextFormat = format;
addChild(lbl);
}

private function drawShape():void
{

this.graphics.beginFill(bkgColor,bkgAlpha);
this.graphics.lineTo(35,0);
this.graphics.lineTo(40,-9);
this.graphics.lineTo(45,0);
this.graphics.lineTo(80,0);
this.graphics.lineTo(80,25);
this.graphics.lineTo(0,25);
this.graphics.lineTo(0,0);
this.graphics.endFill();

//Create a white border
this.graphics.lineStyle(1, 0xFFFFFF, 1);
this.graphics.moveTo(-1,-1);
this.graphics.lineTo(34,-1);
this.graphics.lineTo(39,-10);
this.graphics.lineTo(44,-1);
this.graphics.lineTo(79,-1);
this.graphics.lineTo(79,24);
this.graphics.lineTo(-1,24);
this.graphics.lineTo(-1,-1);

}

public function setValue(v:String):void{
lbl.text = v;
}

}
}
[/sourcecode]

We can add our datatipcontainer to the SliderThumbClass we created before

[sourcecode language='java']
package com.GuN.UI.customUIComponent.slider
{
import mx.controls.sliderClasses.SliderThumb;

public class CSpSliderThumb extends SliderThumb
{

public function CSpSliderThumb()
{
super();
initSprite();
addChild(spr);

}

private function initSprite():void{
spr = new CSpSprite();
spr.x = -(spr.width/2)+4;
spr.y = 9;
}

override protected function updateDisplayList(unscaledWidth:Number, unscaledHeight:Number):void{
super.updateDisplayList(unscaledWidth,unscaledHeight);
this.graphics.beginFill(0x000000,1);
this.graphics.drawCircle(2,-8,4);
this.graphics.endFill();
}
}
}
[/sourcecode]

Now that our Slider is almost done, we can create the mxml that will house the custom slider. Like I said I used this slider to navigate thru archives so used an array of values that contains all the months that had to work with.

[sourcecode language='xml']



import com.GuN.UI.customUIComponent.slider.SliderTrack;
import com.GuN.UI.customUIComponent.slider.CSpSliderThumb;

var arrayValues:Array = ["null","January '08", "February '08", "March '08", "April '08", "May '08", "June '08", "July '08", "August '08",
"September '08", "October '08", "November '08", "December '08"];

]]>

id="s"
showDataTip="false"
values="{arrayValues}"
creationComplete="{s.value=1}"
snapInterval="1"
minimum="1"
maximum="{arrayValues.length-1}"
liveDragging="true"
trackSkin="{SliderTrack}"
sliderThumbClass="{CSpSliderThumb}"
width="502"/>

[/sourcecode]

For more details you can have look to the sources my work, as usual you can freely reuse/hack my code. 
By the way, if you wanna see cool effects check Chet Haase's 'Codedependent' Blog and especially the Spring is in the AIR? post which is really interesting.

I'm working on some code right now, fixing up some system changes, and I have come across lots of crap, but this one tops it all IMHO {

400 lines of undocumented code in one method!

Go figure... and here I was thinking I was a crappy programmer when I was 20 since I used to commonly put around 50 to a 100 lines of code in my methods.

}

Oh well... just one of those nuisances you know.

The Dev Team's new blog post provides some additional information on their progress of Pwnage Tool and where they stand on in development. They also go on to say that they have not released Pwnage Tool as of yet, as they want to make sure that Pwnage Tool is 100% safe for anyone using it and to make sure all the bugs are ironed out.

Pwnage Tool should be released soon. We don't know how soon... but soon.

It's been slow going recently; there were thunderstorms all last week. In between frantically unplugging every electronic device in the house and being bored listening to thunder and watching the lights flicker, I spent a lot of time using GDB looking for the source of a mysterious drawing glitch which turned out to be the margin of the first column drawing over all the other pages. Whoops. My debug-fu is still somewhat weak.

Here is le current running changelog for the past week or so, which is accompanied by rather meager source edits. (I hate it when that happens.)

• Smooth scrolling is disabled with multiple pages due to jerkiness.
  • It also fixes an auto-page-tiling bug, which I didn't actually know existed until I was seconds away from tweaking the line of code which corrected it. Convenient!
• Multiple horizontal pages should only show in VIEW_PRINT
• Margins now draw correctly, not over other pages. (I'm an idiot; took way, way too long to figure that out)
• Made FL_DocLayout::getHeight() slightly easier to read; the output is identical.
• Page height fixed. Again. No, seriously, it works this time. I think.

Stuff I need to fix:

• Scrolling is really messed up when in single page mode; it's all jerky and slow. I suppose I brought this upon myself by running all the multipage algorithms with "1" as the number of horizontal pages, but I didn't expect this huge of a slowdown. It popped up in my last SVN submission, so I should probably backtrack and see if there's yet another obvious thing I missed.
• Scrolling is funky. Stuff just isn't being drawn consistanly when you scroll up or down. Figuring this out is a rather high priority right now.
• The cursor jumps up a page when you use the up arrow key. IIRC what my mentor said, this is apparently being caused by a preexisting bug. The easy fix is to just duplicate the functionality of a particular function I'm calling. I don't much like this solution, but it'll work for now.
• No text is drawn on the 3rd+ rows. It's like this in all AbiWord builds, so while I'd like to fix it, I'm not going to sweat it too much if I don't locate the cause before things end.
• The pretty blue selection rectangle is not being shown on second+ row of pages, and on random letters on the first row.
• Auto page tiling doesn't update until _draw(...). This can be an issue as when the zoom is changed, the tiling doesn't update.
• Now that the page is approaching being drawn properly, the top ruler is starting to look tempting. I was overjoyed to discover that the left ruler requires no modification at all; I leave rulers turned off pretty much all the time. I wonder how much code is
• Left to right tiling. I haven't actually explicitly coded anything which sets this up (following the popular "get basic functionality first" philosophy), but it's been in the back of my mind while I've been coding. I don't anticipate having a really hard time with this
• After that, interface stuff to actually use this feature. Then it's over? Wow.

In conclusion, I have now drifted into Honolulu, lost all productivity, and should seriously consider sleeping. James out.