Webcam motion detection coolness

A few weeks ago I had to create an innovative way to scroll in a page. I have seen tons of scrollbars in Flash and I found it hard to create something completely new. At one point I wondered if I could wire the scrollbar to a webcam using Actionscript… So I started experimenting around…

When I first started I quickly ran into a problem: How the hell do I know if anything is moving? So I actually got stuck right in the beginning.
I went on a Google trip which led me to Koen’s post about motion detection. Koen was checking all the pixels (using nested loops) to calculate color values. I figured this generated way too much overhead. There had to be a better/simpeler way.

In his post Koen mentioned an article, written by Guy Watson, concerning an other way to get motion detection going. To make things simple: Guy just takes 2 pictures – one of the previous frame, one of the current – puts them on top of eachother, and applies the difference blend mode to the upper one: Tadaaa! There we go! The ‘unchanged’ pixels are blacked out. The remaining pixels are the difference in the picture… which reflects movement. Read the rest of this entry »

Wordpress Theme SuperMini reloaded

A long time ago Smashing Magazine listed 100 of the best Wordpress themes. That list totally kicked ass to be honest. At one point I decided to restyle my poetry site. I took a look at their list and when I found the SuperMini theme, my choice was immediately made.

After I downloaded the theme I realized a lot of features were missing: No searchbox, no searchresults page, no archives, no global archives, no blogroll support, no pages support, no 404 pages and a few design flaws…

I actually went on, and built those things myself. Later on I wanted to contact the orginal author (Patrick Behrend) of the theme to send him my updates but by the time I got to send my mail, his site was down and he completely dissappeared from the web. I never received an aswer regarding the theme updates I sent him.

By now the original download isn’t even online anymore, and Smashing Magazine disabled the link to the SuperMini theme (as it is a 404). So I recently decided to finish the theme, and translate it back to English and re-publish it. I thought the initial theme was awesome, and I figured it would be cool if other people would be able to actually use the completed theme. Read the rest of this entry »

Playr 2.0 is here!

It almost took me an eternity, but at last it’s there: Playr 2.0 is ready.
Playr is a Flash Actionscript 3 class built to take the heavy lifting off your hands when building any kind of music player appliction in Flash, Flex or AIR. I put a lot of work and time in this project, and I think the result is amazing: Playr is hands down the easiest way to do so!

I’m very happy to finally release this. A lot of people helped me test it and gave me feedback.
That helped me a lot, and changed a lot of features. Special thanks to all of you!

I’ve put up a dedicated site for Playr where all of the information, code examples, downloads are gathered.
Head over there to read more about it!

More info:
Playr site: Click
Download Playr 2.0: Click
Playr 2.0 documentation: Click

Flash on the beach mobile

Velen hebben mij de laatste weken hard bezig gezien op Twitter over mijn avonturen met Flash Lite. Dat was niet zozeer op experimentele basis zoals ik beweerde… Ik was in het geniep bezig aan een project dat ik in opdracht van MobileMinds mocht maken.

Een paar weken geleden contacteerde Dimitri van MobileMinds me, en vroeg me hoe ik het zag zitten om een Flash Lite applicatie te maken in opdracht van MobileMinds. Ik had al enkele keren met Flash Lite gespeeld, maar het wou precies nog niet helemaal lukken.

Toen Dimitri me het project beschreef klonk het allemaal wat ingewikkeld en zwaar. Ik wou hem een moment lang vertellen dat ik het niet wou doen. De deadline zat te dichtbij, en de toepassing op zich was van een niveau dat ik ongetwijfeld niet ging kunnen halen.
Dimitri leek verzekerd dat ik mezelf onderschatte, en kon mij overtuigen om er toch aan te beginnen…

Na 1 week hard werken, meer dan 1300 regels Actionscript 2, meer dan 70 bugfixes en een heel spannend leerproces presenteer ik met volle trots…

Je kunt de applicatie hier downloaden. Read the rest of this entry »

PlayrDiscovr update!

Ik heb enkele dagen geleden mijn eerste versie van de geautomatiseerde playlist.xml gemaakt, en online gezet. Gisteren heeft Ward Werbrouck (die wat meer verstand van PHP dan ik heeft) dit geoptimaliseerd en opgekuist.

Deze versie is volledig object oriented geschreven, en is vanaf nu PHP5-only.
Deze nieuwe versie kun je hier downloaden.

Thx Ward!