Laid off :/

I was laid off yesterday. You can contact me at “johnlindquist -at- gmail -dot- com” if you have a full-time position with health insurance benefits available.

The rest of this post is my personal story, so you can stop reading now if you’re just here for tutorials and source code:

As of yesterday, I had been an employee of my previous employer for 14 months. I had the honor of working with a team of very talented developers. I tried my best to go above and beyond the call of duty of developing by preparing presentations on new technologies, teaching as often as possible, and serving as the go-to guy for everything open source. All of my fellow developers appreciated me and I always received excellent reviews.

Unfortunately, my previous employer is such a large agency that there’s no communication between upper management and the developers. No one contacted our team and asked if I was worth keeping or if there was anything else we could work out. The big wigs looked at the spreadsheet of employees and compared it to the upcoming projects. They saw my position, my billable hours, and my name and decided my position was expendable. Yesterday, without warning, I was told, “We’re eliminating your position.” I understand that. It sucks, but it’s business. I’ll just start looking for something new.

I’m married and have a 2-year-old son. Why is that relevant to getting laid off? Because my wife has type-1 (also known as “juvenile”) diabetes. Type-1 diabetes is where your pancreas shuts down and stops producing insulin (Type-2 is the more familiar form of diabetes that an overweight person can control with diet and exercise). My wife is in excellent physical condition (she even played college basketball and volleyball), but she still has to check her blood sugar throughout the day and give herself insulin injections to compensate for whatever she eats. That process requires quite a few medical supplies. Those supplies are very expensive.

Type-1 diabetes is also an “uninsurable” condition where I live. Even if I did freelance/contract work full-time, no health insurance company would accept my application. What this means is that I need a full-time position with benefits. I have many friends who encourage me to work for myself, but that’s just not an option for me. Besides, I enjoy working with a team and bouncing ideas off of each other to make new cool stuff. I honestly have no idea what I would do if I couldn’t find a job with health benefits.

I just wanted to say to all the people out there who have lost their job, “I feel your pain today.” It’s extremely stressful, it puts a lot of strain on you and your family, and it makes it hard to think clearly about where you’re going in life. I wish the best for anyone who has found themselves in this terrible situation.

Fortunately for me (I hope this doesn’t sound boastful), I’m not too concerned about finding a new job. I imagine I’ll get quite a few offers from the thousands of people who visit this blog every day. I have quite a few connections in the Flash world and I already have a couple positions in mind. I probably won’t post again until I’m hired somewhere. I’ll let you know what happens.

-John

Papervision3D in MXML

This falls under the “just because I can” category

Just copy and paste this code into any Flex project with the Papervision3D.swc in the libs and you’re good to go!

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<view:BasicView 
	xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" 
	xmlns:view="org.papervision3d.view.*" 
	xmlns:scenes="org.papervision3d.scenes.*" 
	xmlns:primitives="org.papervision3d.objects.primitives.*" 
	xmlns:materials="org.papervision3d.materials.*" 
	opaqueBackground="#ffffff"
	added="startRendering();"
	>
	<view:scene>
		<scenes:Scene3D>
			<scenes:objects>
				<primitives:Sphere x="300">
					<primitives:material>
						<materials:ColorMaterial fillColor="0xcc0000"/>
					</primitives:material>
				</primitives:Sphere>
			</scenes:objects>
		</scenes:Scene3D>
	</view:scene>
</view:BasicView>

Tags: flex, MXML

MXML without the Flex framework

This post might be a bit on the advanced side…

I was talking with Tyler earlier today and he brought up a neat little trick I hadn’t really thought of before: You can write MXML without the Flex framework. Of course you won’t get all the benefits of the Flex framework, but you’ll still be able to build out neat little MXML components with a little bit of work and, more importantly, you won’t have the ~130K of the Flex framework weighing down your app.

You’ll notice the size of the swf below is around 1K. Maybe if I get bored later this week I’ll write a demo Papervision3D app solely in MXML.

View .swf
source

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<root:ThisIsNotAUIComponent xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" xmlns:root="*">
	<mx:Metadata>
		[SWF(width="900", height="480", backgroundColor="#ffffff")]
	</mx:Metadata>
 
	<!-- you won't have to do this children node garbage in Flex 4 -->
	<root:children>
		<root:RandomShape/>
		<root:RandomShape>
			<root:RandomShape/>
			<root:RandomShape>
				<root:RandomShape/>
				<root:RandomShape/>
				<root:RandomShape/>
			</root:RandomShape>
		</root:RandomShape>
		<root:RandomShape/>
		<root:RandomShape/>
		<root:RandomShape/>
		<root:RandomShape/>
		<root:RandomShape/>
		<root:RandomShape/>
		<root:RandomShape/>
		<root:RandomShape/>
		<root:RandomShape/>
		<root:RandomShape/>
		<root:RandomShape/>
		<root:RandomShape/>
		<root:RandomShape/>
		<root:RandomShape/>
	</root:children>
</root:ThisIsNotAUIComponent>

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23

package
{
	import flash.display.DisplayObject;
	import flash.display.Sprite;
 
	[DefaultProperty("children")]
	public class ThisIsNotAUIComponent extends Sprite
	{
		[ArrayElementType("ThisIsNotAUIComponent")]
		public function get children():Array
		{
			return null;
		}
 
		public function set children(value:Array):void
		{
			for each(var child:ThisIsNotAUIComponent in value)
			{
				addChild(child);
			}			
		}		
	}
}

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19

package
{
	import flash.filters.DropShadowFilter;
 
	public class RandomShape extends ThisIsNotAUIComponent
	{
		public function RandomShape()
		{
			var randomColor:Number = Math.random() * 0xffffff;
			var randomX:Number = Math.random() * 900;
			var randomY:Number = Math.random() * 480;
			graphics.beginFill(randomColor);
			graphics.drawRect(randomX - 150, randomY - 150, 150, 150);
			graphics.endFill();
 
			filters = [new DropShadowFilter()];
		}
	}
}

Tags: flex, MXML

Augmented Reality – Recursive Webcam

This version is much faster with a much better marker:

1. Print this (here’s the .psd source) (also, this will be the official marker of our competition)
2. Open this for a live demo

If you don’t have a webcam, you can watch the video below:

Click to view the video in a pop-up.

Of special note before downloading the source: Seb Lee-Delisle helped me out by providing the threshold code in this demo which provides more accurate detection of the marker. He’s asked that you respect the Creative Commons 2.0 non-commercial share-alike license with the code related to the “threshold”: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Download Source

Tags: Augmented Reality, FLARToolKit