blog-j: Symbolizing, Coding, Objectifying, Processing

The lovely thing about the way I’ve built these is that it’s very easy to “stack” visualizations, using either the same spectrum data or unique spectrum data instances (eg: one using the EQ data and one using the standard Spectrum data). You can hook up individual visualizations to these and have them render independently. In lieu of actually taking the PV3d version further (different shapes, cooler viz, textures, etc), I opted to very simply combine it with one of the 2d line implementations I have done previously. The results, I think you will agree, are more than the sum of their parts.

Hopefully once I’ve got some time where I’m not writing more of these (eg: tomorrow), I’ll do a quick write-up of how I modified the original files to get where I am with the structure.

Thought I’d try throwing Papervision into the mix (haha, pun not intended). More traditional, a bit cooler, have to add some textures in, but this’ll do for now.

Updated with new colours, blocks are bigger. Thanks for the input, Marc.

Ed. Fixed the bug with the flash movie not showing up. Auto meta plugin was fighting with Kimili. Bah.

Original after the fold…
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A bit more traditional this time, variations on a theme. Still not quite what I’d like to see from myself, but with limited time to devote to this, mainly scramblings on the subway, I’m not too disappointed.

They’re a bit hefty, and still no preloader, so hit the more link to see them (if you’re not there already…)

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Dayton over at Indus Blue is running a little contest for next week’s FlashInTO gathering. Given a template, build an audio visualizer in Flash.

I’ve got two so far. Nothing unbelievably special, just wanted to have some fun with it. Check ‘em out below. (Sadly, no preloader…give them a chance to load…)

ed. - there’s something weird going on in that if you both at the same time, you get a security sandbox violation. very strange. seems that SoundMixer goes across swfs. though they’re both on the same domain, so it makes less and less sense. for the time being, you can simply refresh the page or ignore the error when it pops up.

Visuals after the fold…
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I found myself needing to test for the ability to connect to a given Sql Server from a workstation today, without access to Enterprise Manager. Instead of simply installing it (or, come to think of it, simply attempting to connect through Visual Studio - ha! that would be too smart), I whipped up this handy .NET command line utility that will test for connectivity to a Sql Server. It’s written in C# and targets the .NET 1.1 runtime.

It’s quite simple to use - fire it up, and follow the instructions. Granted, in an environment where you have all the usual tools it’s completely useless, but you may occasionally find yourself with nothing but Notepad and an internet connection…and then you’ll thank me.

Download the bits:

• Sql Connection Tester
• Sql Connection Tester (Source)

TODO:

• Allow the user to choose the type of connection (Sql Server, ODBC, etc)
• Build a GUI (If more than 2 people use it. That means you.)

I’ve gotten a bit of a chance to play around with the Flex 2 Alpha, and I have to say - I’m pretty impressed. I like what Macromedia has done with it, and I’m sure it will get better as it gets closer to RTM. I’m cooking up something that will hopefully be pretty cool…probably just saying that has relegated it to NTBC status, but I’ve got my fingers crossed.

In the meanwhile, here’s something I’ve had kicking around for a bit: an AS 2.0 Base 64 Encoder. It’s ported more or less directly from Stephen Ostermiller’s Javascript Base 64 Encoder. I was using it to play around with Http Authentication in Flash, which requires username/passwords to be sent Base 64 encoded. The main port was pulling it from being a bunch of global functions into a class, encoding and decoding through Static methods.

Download below the fold…
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