Sold Out Activist

Posting to Twitter from Feedburner

2011-08-15T11:36:42Z

Feedburner is great, if only because you get to watch your subscriber numbers. I dare say if it wasn’t for that number (and that chart), the service would have significantly fewer users. Not because FB is bad in any way, mind you, but the best thing Microsoft ever did for Xbox Live was give people Gamer Scores.

FeedFlare are the extra links at the bottom of each feed post like “Share on Facebook,” “Digg,” and “Stumble It!” There’s a list of “flares” you can add on the FeedFlare page once you’ve activated the plugin from the Optimize page. That’s great and all, but Twitter’s not on the list. No longer!

Feedburner allows you to create your own flares, and I’m going to show you how to create your very own flare to let your feed readers share your posts on Twitter with a single click! Skadoosh.

Step 1: Create the XML file.

Somewhere on your site’s server, create a file [something].xml and paste in the following content:

<FeedFlareUnit>
  <Catalog>
    <Title>Share on Twitter (Static)</Title>
    <Description>Share this feed entry on Twitter.</Description>
  </Catalog>
  <FeedFlare>
    <Text>Share on Twitter (don't worry, Twitter shrinks the URL)</Text>
    <Link href="http://twitter.com/home?status=I enjoyed reading: ${title} ${link}" />
  </FeedFlare>
</FeedFlareUnit>

If you want to add hashtags, replace #’s with %23 or you’ll lose your hashtags.

Step 2: Add the plugin to FeedBurner.

Go back to the FeedFlare page and at the bottom of the list of available flares, there’s a textbox where you can input URLs of custom flares to add. Paste the link to your plugin (http://your-site.com/path/to/flare.xml?v=1) and hit Add New Flare.

After FB does its thing (and there weren’t errors), you’ll see your new flare at the bottom of the list. Click on the relevant checkboxes, then save your work. Finally, check your work by looking at your FB feed. Boom. Postable to twitter.

Step 3: Profit.

So easy, there’s not even a ??? step.

Review: Rango

2011-03-21T23:57:43Z

Rango will leave a bad taste in your mouth if you brought children to the theater. What could have been a great children’s movie ended up an average drama-comedy for western lovers. Though you should blame the advertising department, not the movie.

Everyone that’s seen the movie will first immediately mention the beautiful visuals, saying, “Best I’ve ever seen,” “puts Pixar to shame,” and other nuggets of over-compensation. If visuals could make movies better, then Sunshine would have won Oscars. Yes, the world of Rango was incredibly detailed, and the characters were lively and diverse. But all that gorgeous scenery falls flat as a backdrop to a dull story and rigid character development.

Rango’s story is an amalgamation of, and homage to, classic westerns. Many of the key story points are taken directly from popular westerns. For example, Rango isn’t the main character’s real name: he is the ‘Lizard With No Name.’ And he lies about being Rango, a notorious gunslinger, which is taken from another western– several, actually. Outside of the movie’s setting, there’s very little creativity and this will weigh on you if you aren’t a classic western fan.

To parents, a grain of salt-based caution: despite what uptight people will tell you, the movie does not make satanic references. Those lines are references to classic western dialogue. On the other hand, there are two mild curse words spoken in rapid succession near the end of the film.

Not that you should take your pre-teens to see this movie anyway. Let ‘em work through some Eastwood films first.

Review: Megamind

2011-03-22T00:01:44Z

On the surface, Megamind is about a super-villain, upon losing his super-hero, must become the hero to save the town and the woman he loves. But peel that away and you realize it’s about a deformed kid learning he can be anything he wants… after he kills Brad Pitt and creates a more evil super-villain than he himself ever was.

The storyline is suitably simple, but solid and, though predictable, enjoyable. It pokes the right amount of fun at the classical superhero comic world while maintaining its audience– that is, children. The jokes were wide-ranging, well paced, and rarely crude. There were a few scenes that felt dry or ill timed, but no film is perfect. The scenes where Ferrell and his co-stars improv are great, and because it is a kid’s movie, those scenes don’t descend into eye-rolling territory like his adult films often do. Most importantly, the characters were lively and memorable. Characters we’ll enjoy in at least one sequel, I’d imagine.

There are two and only two Will Ferrell movies I like and Megamind is one of them. I’m not one to gush philosophical over movies– my critical tone is right Ebenezer– but Megamind earned a spot in my top fifty, possibly top thirty movies. Complete with baby seal boots. (That’s a reference to the film, not a personal apparel preference.)

Review: The Cape — Bad. Really Bad. Extremely Not Good.

2011-01-18T15:50:33Z

Seriously. This is an awful show with zero plus zero redeeming qualities. It belongs in the after-school slot before the evening news. It reminds me of the show Mutant X. Not in terms of plot, but in quality and writing. That is: both suck ass and I would have watched them when I was a teenager.

The Good

The family. Loved the stuff with the main character’s family. The kid can’t act, but still, the family screen time was good stuff.

Summer Glau. She’s adorable. (And was fucking hot in that one episode of Chuck.)

The Bad

No more family. They aren’t dead, and we’re sure to see them in every episode. But now it’s a broken family so the good that I wrote about is gone.

In one episode, the mom might go on a date, and The Cape stalks her the entire episode until she decides she’s not ready. No actual reason, her date will be with a great, attractive man who’s nice with kids. And, you know, it’s been six months, and I still don’t have any evidence my husband is alive or not a serial killer–sure I don’t believe it, but six months is six months–and he surely ain’t around to trim to hedges. Buuuuuuuuuuuttttttttaaaaaaaaah, you should be moving on, Mr. Handsome-Man-Whose-Ain’t-Killing-Peoples. I just feel like my husband is watching from serial killer heaven and he wouldn’t approve.

And in a very special episode, The Cape will stalk his kid until he’s found out, but the kid will keep his father’s secret. Blah, blah, blah.

Summer Glau. Every show she’s been in has failed. Not saying she’s the problem, she’s more like the sign of the Plague, but not the Plague itself. Also, her character is obviously the daughter of the bad guy.

Plot holes that have plot holes. Which are enveloped by plot holes. Quick question: Do you know where the phrase, “Like shooting fish in a barrel” comes from? Answer: When you shoot into the barrel, the force from the shotgun blast distributed in the water kill the fish. So when the main character is touching the SUV that explodes from buildup pressure early in the first episode, he would have died before his body moved two inches. Even if he had been wearing full bomb disposal gear, the concussion blast would have squeezed his brains out his ears.

And I could look past that. One time. The man’s going to become a superhero, he needs that kind of luck. But don’t do it twice in one episode. Later, after he is framed for being the bad guy, he is ten foot under a gas explosion which would have forced super-heated air downward through the hole he had fallen through and cooked him while he protected himself with a corrugated tin slate.

He worked for ARK like thirty seconds, but had an all-access pass. “Oh, here’s a keycard that will work on every door we’ve got. Including the banks, which, you know, aren’t your department, really. But we trust you, Person We Just Hired. Yeah.”

The all-access pass wasn’t deactivated after the first robbery. For a billion-dollar company where the city’s bad guy is the CEO, you have to wonder about his intelligence if he doesn’t think or employ someone who thinks TO DEACTIVE THE FUCKING KEYCARD USED TO ROB HIS BANKS. Christ.

Everyone at ARK somehow missed the fact the all-access pass belonged to the main character. I mean, in every company I’ve worked for that gave out ID cards like that, the cards were identity-locked. That was the purpose of the goddamn thing. So from the very first robbery, the CEO would have known that so-and-so wasn’t dead. This could have lead to a much better pilot episode where the bad guy kidnaps The Cape’s family and The Cape saves them, gets himself revealed to them, and the wife and son aren’t left believing the man is a criminal serial killer. That’s real camp. And good.

Scene with kid at end was awful. So the main character as The Cape visits his son to give him a message from the kid’s father– that is, himself. And he’s twenty feet away, with his face fully visible to any retard. I was expecting a nice stoic child moment where The Cape disappears and the kid goes, “Okay, dad.” If you’re going to have a campy show–which The Cape is a shitty depiction of camp– give us those awfully awesome campy moments.

THE CARNIVAL ANGLE IS A BUCKET OF CRAP. Doubt suspension is a bond of trust. Which the writers of The Cape rape, videotape, and share on the internet. I would rather the cape be an cape-version of KITT from Knight Rider than some set of carny tricks and an old metal breastplate. Which I’m 100% sure was invented before armor-piercing bullets. But no, in less than a week– any longer and it doesn’t matter to anyone in that world– he learns all the trickery he needs to fight crime as a caped crusader.

In the first 60 seconds of his first fight, The Cape gets his ass kicked. That’s a big one. One problem was that the writers put him up against what’s to become a recurring villian at the onset. That’s like a Bond villian inviting James to a one-on-one fight in the first minutes of a film.

The Cape is taught tricks he doesn’t use. The average viewer will say, “Oh, but I liked watching the part where he makes the hypnotist wear a bra.” And I say, yes, it was a good scene. But. Going back to Bond, showing the hypnotize skill being learned and then not using it in this episode is like showing a gadget in a Bond film, but using it in another film. In the future, when The Cape does hypnotize people, a couple of things will happen: 1) we’ll be reminded he can hypnotize people in the “previously on” intro, 2) he’ll have to hypnotize someone in front of another person and say, “Trick I picked up.” Or 3) we won’t remember that he can do it, they don’t remind us he can do it, and we go, “Uh, since when can he hypnotize people?” Destroying what little doubt suspension invested thus far. The scene would have been better as an opener to some other episode where he actually uses the trick.

The Crux

Won’t watch again. When Heroes went bad– every second after the climax of the first season– I continued to watch and live tweet my despair. But I have no investment in The Cape. The show has ass writers. I envision them literally rubbing their asses on script pages. The stink just rises off the screen.

Review: Harry’s Law — Paltry, but enjoyable

2011-01-18T14:45:48Z

Harry’s Law finds a veteran patent lawyer at her wit’s end with the suffocatingly dull world of patent law. On the same day she’s fired, Harry becomes the mattress of a suicide jumper and lands on a mattress after being hit by a car driven by what becomes the first associate at her new law-firm-slash-shoe-store set in a troubled neighborhood. Whew, that’s a mouthful. I can’t imagine the elevator pitch for that being too short. Still, beyond the terrible setting, woefully lacking character depth, and poor plot design is a series that might go somewhere. Probably to ABC Family.

The Good

Good cast. The four main characters play well together on screen. And now that the black kid’s drug problem is cleared up– probably the worst TV legal case ever– he’ll make a good pitch hitter for emotion, bringing in the local flavor from the neighborhood Harry’s new practice resides.

The junior associate’s opening statements. Channeling some Boston Legal enthusiasm, the lawyer’s assault on the court was a damn good scene.

Good court case payoff. Very important for a law procedural. If we the viewer wade through the lawyer speak and trial proceedings only to suffer a flat climax, that’s all she wrote for a law show that isn’t “ripped from the headlines” or Boston Legal. Harry’s Law, though predictable, punched that ticket well enough for me. Harry’s case was awful with a good ending. But the junior associate’s case was good through and through.

If the future episodes can continue to end court cases with the same impact, the series might survive long enough for the writers to get better or be replaced by better stock. Seriously, the moments after verdict, the camera locks on Harry, and I don’t know if it was in the script, or from the director, or the actress took it upon herself. But as you watch, you can see in her face that she discovered why exactly she quit her job and opened a law firm in a bad neighborhood. Like a bubble hiding under her heart rising to the surface saying “told you so.” That was a good bit of TV. But I’m calling it an accident since zero percent of what came before foreshadowed it.

The Bad

Only three of the four main characters make sense. The fourth, the patent lawyer that quits his job to work with/for/around Harry– after running her over– doesn’t have a good enough reason to be there from the start. He wasn’t blackmailed to help, he wasn’t facing a personal crisis, nor any other reason besides filling out the foursome. Now, after the first episode, having experienced the joy of helping someone in need, he has a great reason to give up his promising legal career path for a low-pay nothing-but-for-the-soul job at Harry’s law firm. It just happened an hour too late. It’s not an issue after the first episode, but still. Irksome.

So-so acting. It’s this area that really makes me think this was an ABC Family show that somehow made it through the NBC pitch screen. But then NBC has made many big budget failures in the last few seasons, they could risk some low budgets. Given time, the acting will improve from the secondary cast. The three principle characters (Harry, secretary, and the junior associate) have suitable acting abilities. And if the producers could get ahold of even one ex-Boston Legal writers, the show would dramatically increase in quality.

Poor exposition. This series used straight comedy to alleviate their exposition problem when the show isn’t a comedy, but only tease at absurdity. Harry is hit by a suicide jumper who first bounced off an awning from a six-story fall, then a minute later, Harry is hit by a car head on with enough force to throw her fifteen feet. In neither incident does Harriet suffer any injury other than jaw pain, of all things. The writers had to include a doctor repeatedly saying she was fine. (In the writing business, that’s called a plot hole!) In a show that’s going to make pseudo-points about the value of life, honor, love, blah and blah, it doesn’t do to have an immortal main character. It cheapens every line she’ll ever utter to another client or character about the value of life, honor, love, blah and blah.

A better solution would have been to start the show at Harry’s first criminal trial and use flashbacks throughout the episode to explain the situation, providing both timely pacing and allow for a deeper explanation of Harry’s past (and maybe why her secretary decided to quit her job and follow Harry). Plus, simply: don’t hit her with a damn car. Just have the guy almost hit her. Good enough.

Character reversals are too strong. The junior associate’s trial involves a man who runs an illegal protection service for the local businesses. He offers his services to Harry and is reversed conned into protecting her for free garnering free legal aid, which is utilized the same day. The character is first introduced as a thug, and indeed shoots someone, but the writers spin his character on a dime to portray him as a protector of the people. In the end, it worked out, and we’re touched and such. But the reversal was a big pill to swallow. The thug’s first impressions should have been less cut and dry, and the reversal tainted by his portrayal of someone playing both sides to keep people safe. With the completion of his reversal shown through the people who speak on his behalf (no one did in the show, I’m saying it would have worked better). In other words: don’t tell us, show us. Plus, that would’ve hit home the trial’s point that everyone deserve a protector, even if it’s a criminal. In short, the writer’s are weak.

The Crux

I’ll watch again. I went so far as to subscribe to the new episodes on Hulu. I can feel the quality hiding under a salty layer of first-time or just bad writers. At least one of the writers can write decent scripts, but so far none of them can pull decent plot out of their collective ass.

Does you like Sudoku like I do?

2011-01-16T11:31:04Z

What? Sometimes bad grammar is dirty fun to a writer. Like sex in the shower. Don’t judge me. I saw you take two pieces of candy when the lady said you could only take one. You know what I’m talking about. We were eight. And you didn’t know me. But I knew. I always knew.

Anyway, I made a sudoku game I call, Sudoku Falls. If you like sudoku, give it a try. And maybe I won’t tell the old lady about the candy.

Relax, it’s just a naming scheme

2011-01-15T09:26:26Z

Programming naming schemes are as uniform as a fashion parade. The farther from the the source of your programming hobby/career, the most personalized your scheme becomes. Mine varies with each project, but tends to follow suit with the language I’m using. ECMAScripts, as in Java- or Action-, get the lowerCaseAndSoOn approach, while C languages get the underscore treatment. The last couple months, I’ve been doing Actionscript programming almost exclusively. And the following scheme has emerged:

A public variable or accessor (g/setter) have no prefix
If an accessor has an associated private variable, it gets the time-honored underscore prefix
A variable holding a DisolayObject is prefixed u as in UI
A private variable is prefixed d as in Direct
Variables created within methods are prefixed m
Method parameters are prefixed p (and have been for years, actually)

This system works for me because it allows me to see variable scope and purpose at a glance. I never liked the typical three-letter prefix (obj, num, int, etc) because when you start to go that far, you eventually overlap prefixes in a large project. Is sxi the prefix for my object or sxk? Oh, that’s right, yrt. When you spend time pondering what you’re typing, you’re wasting time. Besides, the variable name should explain its function which in turn should denote its object. If you’re a good programmer.

More Bezier Fun… Interactive Fun!

2010-12-02T18:57:33Z

Earlier today, I posted a Bezier curve demo. And now I’m done with what I started out to do: an interactive Bezier curve generator! Take a gander after the jump.

For my game, I’ll be using a lot of Bezier curves for particles effects, alpha fades, and of course, sprite movement. But building a nice B-curve can be difficult in just numbers, so I built this interactive movie to help construct curves visually. My version of this movie traces out numbers I can use to represent the curve programmatically.

How to use: Click adds a control point where you clicked. Shift-click a control point to remove it. Finally, click and drag on a control point to move it.

Remember, you need the latest version of flash installed!

Good ‘ol Bezier Curve Drawing

2010-12-02T18:37:47Z

Bezier curves are wonderful and add a desirable realism to game movement (and fading and scaling and volume and panning and RPG XP levels and… and…!). But constructing the right curve for your task can be difficult. After the jump is a quick example of Bezier curves and what makes them tick.

A 3-point Bezier curve is straight forward. Move from Point0 to Point2 bending toward Point1 along the way. The situation becomes more complicated when you add extra points between the 1st and last. Those control points fight for domination over the path, sometimes cancelling each other out, or worse, complimenting each other to the deterioration of your desired curve.

The following movie creates a Bezier curve with a random number of random points of at least 3 points (no more than 6). The red line is the Bezier curve itself, and the grey polygon is the path’s control. After a ball traverses the path, the curve is randomized.

Click the movie to toggle visibility of the lines so you can enjoy the ball moving on its own. It’s eerie how natural the movement looks.

Update: A bug in the Bezier algorithm was fixed.
Update 2: Optimized algorithm.

Remember, you need the latest version of flash installed!

I’ll post source later on.

Fun Match 3 Flash Prototype Is Fun Redux

2010-12-05T21:07:16Z

Last week, I debuted a Match 3 (Bejeweled) prototype and commented on how fun the core mechanic is without the frills of a full-fledged game. Since that post, I’ve moved forward and now I’ve got a much more polished, almost complete version of the prototype. It looks and acts quite a bit like the Match 3 mechanic we know and love. Take a look after the jump.

If you match 5 gems, you’ll receive the Pearl. When you swap the Pearl for another gem, all gems of that color are removed. Unlike Bejeweled, when you match 4 gems, you’ll only receive more points. The 3×3 grid explosion doesn’t occur. It may at some point, though.

Try to get an Epic Cascade by causing 5 matches in a row.

Update: Instruction on how to play below the game.

Update: Updated version of this game is here.

Remember, you need the latest version of flash installed!

So there are people who’ve not played Bejeweled… Anyway, the purpose is to match 3 or more gems of the same color. Hold your mouse down on the desired gem and move your mouse in the direction of the gem you want to swap. Rinse, repeat.