Nostalgia – you can almost smell them can’t you?
STOP PRESS:
OK, for one reason or another the film poster retail business didn’t work out. Frankly I just didn’t have enough capital to ride the poor sales. Ideally it would have been good to test the waters a little longer but my financial and domestic circumstances have scuppered the venture somewhat.
Anyway, onwards and upwards.
Lately my mind has been wondering about many aspects of my life and in the true spirit of procrastination I have diverted my attention in the following ways: reading classic literature, reading self improvement blogs, undertaking video filming and editing work, learning how to program animation – specifically using Flash and Actionscript 3.0.
I’ll expound upon each of these muses in no particular turn. My motivation for reading the classics is, well, it turns out they’re called the classics for a reason: they’re really pretty good. And you can pick them up for a song from the charity shops. (Incidentally I found in me a strong attraction to the old orange Penguin paperbacks which I have vowed to seize at any opportunity hereon). In a literal binge I quickly got through Madame Bovary, David Copperfield, Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Pride and Prejudice. I know, with the last choice I surprised even myself; surprise at having picked it, and even more surprise at thoroughly enjoying it. I’m currently in the middle of Henry James’ The Turning of the Screw but am struggling – not because it’s not enjoyable but my reading goes in binges, and I think I must have hit the hangover. By the way, if you stumble across a bunch of orange Penguin paperbacks somewhere (preferably south east UK) please let me know. I’ll have the lot of them!
For as long as I can remember I’ve always liked the idea of being able to simulate the laws of physics using a computer. I’ve dabbled with some programming languages but always found the development cycle excruciatingly tedious. Plus, the payoff was never good enough; hours and hours of iteration to read and display a record from some database. Yawn. So imagine the epiphany that Flash programming has brought – now I can actually see something on screen, moving! Here I am, 42, and still excited about some dots moving around on a screen.
Anyway the following attempts to model gravity, conservation of momentum and mass. The code is all courtesy of Paul Firth of wildbunny.co.uk where, incidentally you can find some excellent tutorials on game programming. He outlines the beginnings of a ‘physics engine’ there. I’m also reading Keith Peters Making Things Move – an accessible and excellent book on computer animation. So one day I’ll actually understand the code behind this:
(if you click on the animation you can use the up, left, right arrow keys to give the red ball thrust, just for fun)
I hope to extend this physics engine to accommodate some bounce and friction which it currently does not. Who knows perhaps it will become a game some day.
Really I must grow up one day. But why?
