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I just got a Dreamhost account to host my stuff. The transfer of my posts and data went fine, except I had to input all my links again unless I missed something when I was transferring it. Anyways, please update you’re RSS feed to http://feeds2.feedburner.com/eccheung4. If you’re interested in getting a Dreamhost account as well, you can use my promo code (ECCHEUNG4) and you’ll get $50 off.

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Quaternion Tracer

Quaternion Tracer Video on vimeo.

Found this video while looking for a old Transformer game I worked on back in college. I worked on this interactive program with another person that explores 4-D fractals using quaternions. Changing parameters here and there, we produced these visualizations and made a video. The project was based on the paper, “Ray Tracing Deterministic 3-D Fractals (PDF)” (Computer Graphics, Volume 23, Number 3, July 1989)

I added the music by Bennie K – Sunrise to the file using AfterEffects. I probably could have just used any movie program, but I’m learning to use AfterEffects at www.lynda.com. A pretty good video tutorial service by the way, considering the amount of content they have and the price. I didn’t add any special effects to this video, but I found another video that I may play around with using AfterEffects. I can’t seem to find the files for that project though, just the final video.

Happy Holidays!

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! I’m looking forward to exploring some ideas during the time off.

Anyways, here are the gifts I bought my family for Christmas from Amazon:

Pinzon Luxury Towels – I always get the nice cheap towels from target on sale, but I thought these would be nice for the parents. The reviews seemed pretty good. I’ll have to see if the parents like them, if so, I may need to invest in one for myself. If you know of any even better quality towels, please let me know.

Apple iPod nano 16 GB Pink (4th Generation), Apple Nike + iPod Sport Kit, Shoe Pouch for Nike+ iPod Sport Kit – These are stuff I got my sister to help her get into running some more. I’ve been into running the past 1-2 years and the Nike+ Ipod Sport Kit has been pretty good with tracking my running and pacing me as I run. The shoe pouch is good if you don’t use Nike+ shoes, personally I like Asics running shoes. (A good site to buy running shoes Kelly’s Running Warehouse, recommended by a friend, but I’m haven’t tried it yet, still on my first pair of running shoes)

AdvancED ActionScript 3.0 Animation by Keith Peters – I haven’t gotten this yet, but I thought it’d be a nice Christmas gift for myself.

Amazon Associates Program

I just joined the Amazon Associates Program. I wish I had joined it sooner before the holidays because I could have earned a few bucks. I bought pretty much all my gifts from Amazon too, simply because it was cheap with no tax and free shipping. I found out about it after I came across this blog by Darren Rowse on Problogger.net. Anyways, if you’re still thinking of buying stuff from amazon be sure to click on this amazon link to earn me some money. =) If you’re a blogger as well or have a website, might well join Amazon Associates program as well to earn some money.

I’ll be sure to post the stuff I bought during the holidays after Christmas of course so people don’t know what I bought before Christmas.

http://www.amazon.com

thearmyexperience

Here is the project I’ve been working on for Ignited that just pushed its next build live http://www.thearmyexperience.com. I mainly worked on the photo gallery, but I also helped fixed many other bugs through out the site. The only 3 major problems I had trouble figuring out was the OBJECT_CLICK event from the previous post, a good way to loop the gallery pictures, and this MOUSE_MOVE event with event.target and event.current target == stage that started popping up after I created the 3d gallery.

The Army Experience Center looks like a pretty awesome place to go if you are ever in the area.

OBJECT_CLICK Event bug in Papervision3d

I was working on a project for work when I came across this bug. The OBJECT_CLICK event stopped working when I set useOwnContainer = true for a plane because I wanted to use a drop shadow filter. Funny thing was that OBJECT_OVER and OBJECT_OUT was working just fine. So I came across this thread about the problem. I didn’t get it to work with their papervision source code using OBJECT_CLICK, but using OBJECT_PRESS instead of OBJECT_CLICK solved the problem.

A good thing that came out of this problem is discovering the PanoSalado project, a open source panorama player/viewer. Another thing added to my list of things to check out.

Google Analytics for flash

I recently started working at Ignited as a freelancer. Whats funny is that just today I was asked to look into using Google Analytics for the flash project we were working on and Jesse Warden, a blogger I follow, posted a blog about Google Analytics. He also has a great series on his Agile Development Process experience. This one in particular was interesting because he named a few tools he used that I knew about and some I didn’t.

Back to Google Analytics, after looking briefly into it, its going to be very easy to track stuff in flash and its free. At my previous company we tracked stuff ourselves using amfphp and a mysql database. With Google Analytics, this simplifies it greatly and once we can access that data with an API, it will be easy to display the data in any form that we want even though Google already does a pretty good job. (I heard about being able to access the Google Analytics data in the future, from an old coworker that attended a Google Analytics session at Adobe Max). The more I think about it, the more I’m skeptical about it because then Google Analytics could be used for various other reasons and its free….or maybe not in the future.

Finally got a Macbook Pro

After looking through many reviews, I decided on the old Macbook Pro instead of the new Macbook Pro and got a great deal at amazon for $1599 after the rebate and 4GB Ram for about $60. It was pretty simple to install the ram, the hard part was finding a screw driver small enough to take out the screws. I’ve been a PC user forever, but I’m loving my new macbook so far. My main reasons choosing the old Macbook Pro was the cheaper price, matte screen (didn’t think I’d get used to the glossy screen), DVI connector, and Firewire 400. Now that I’ve got my MacBook Pro setup, I can finally start using Adobe CS4. I’ll be looking into Adobe AIR, After Effects, Flex Builder and haXe (my friend Don got me into it). Actually, I have tons of stuff I want to look into after Adobe Max.

Adobe Max 2008

My first Adobe Max was awesome! I learned tons of stuff and had a great time. I’m glad it was only 3 days cause my brain was fried by the end of the third day. Luckily they’ll have all the sessions online later so I can watch the sessions that I missed. I found myself going to most of the flex sessions and the 360|flex unconference sessions. The sneak peaks of whats in the works in their labs was awesome! Just to name a few: Alchemy (Using C/C++ in Flash), Cocomo (Real Time Social Capabilities), RTMFP, Meer Meer (comparing sites in different browsers side by side and overlapping in DreamWeaver), Photoshop plugin (forgot what they called it, but it extracts an object from a layer by creating a selection around it and then it blends with the background seamlessly), Exporing images (somewhat like google street view and photosynth from microsoft except you can explore more seamlessly by zooming, panning, etc), and many others that I can’t remember at the moment. Can’t wait for the next Adobe Max.

Cairngorm

After reading about the poll from insideRIA about what frameworks people use for Flex, I decided to look into Cairngorm a little more and now have a better understanding after going through a series about Cairngorm over at the Adobe Flex Developer Center. It gives a pretty good overview of Cairngorm and how it is used to build some e-commerce application. I went through it in about a day and have a pretty good understanding of Cairngorm now. Now I’ll need to look into the other frameworks….maybe after I try Cairngorm out on a project.