2007 January « Rhymes with Toaster

Jan 29 2007

Geekery

Funny Dancing Men!

I found this on [http://www.boingboing.net/2007/01/26/stickfigure_webtoy.html|Boing Boing] last week, and it’s been a blast with the kids.

[http://roxik.com/pictaps/|Pictaps] is a super-cool flash app written by Japanese web designer [http://roxik.com/|Masayuki Kido] that allows you to draw a character, then watch a multitude of them dance, cheer and jump around to the beat of funky music. The drawing tools are simple enough that my 6 and 3-year-olds were able to use them, but still sufficiently powerful to create some real artwork if you put some time into it.

Another cool aspect is the semi-social features of the app. When you create a character, you give it a name, and it is placed into a pool of all the characters that have been created, along the bottom of the screen. You can click on any of these other characters you can see their drawing process and then see them dance around. You can even keep a list of favorites to watch again when you return.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to vote for other characters or see how many have been favorited to see any sort of ranking of the best ones, but it’s still totally cool and a fun way to let the kids be creative.

I just found that you can embed a character in your own webpage with the “Put in Blog” feature. It keeps getting cooler. Here’s my first creation (the embedding doesn’t seem to grab all of the drawing, but you get the idea):

Tagged dancing, drawing, flash, fun, funny, pictaps, roxik

Jan 22 2007

AADL's Catalog Gets Social

I was going to write a quick blurb about [http://www.perceptivepixel.com|Perceptive Pixel's] new [http://fastcompany.com/video/general/perceptivepixel.html|Multi-touch Computer Demonstration] (which you should still totally check out), but I just have to write about the awesomeness that’s sitting in front of me. The [http://www.aadl.org/catalog|AADL catalog] has just been opened up to the public.

Basically, it allows users to add and share information about any item in our catalog using tagging ([http://www.aadl.org/|tag cloud]), reviews ([http://www.aadl.org/sopac/viewrev/?bnum=1277847|example review]), and even comments on reviews.

[http://www.blyberg.net/2007/01/21/aadlorg-goes-social/trackback/|John's got all the details and a screencast video to watch right here.]

Awesome stuff.

Tagged aadl, catalog, Personal, reviews, sopac, tagging, web2.0

Jan 16 2007

2 Comments

Geekery

Flickr as Local History

We had a magical sight outside yesterday: near freezing temperatures combined with a slow, steady rainfall had produced a thin layer of ice on everything. Tree branches, bushes, lampposts, street signs and even individual blades of grass were all transformed into china-shop glass treasures. Combine this with the recent warmer-than-usual weather and there were plenty of tree buds encased in shimmering ice. And the temperatures and rain continued all day, leaving plenty of opportunity to experience the sights all around town.

I was able to grab a snap of a maple tree in our yard with my cameraphone and upload it to flickr:

As I looked, I found that I was not the only flickr user around town that grabbed the moment. So, rather than trying to describe the scene, I could just show people all of the pictures on flickr. I searched for “Ann Arbor”, and then using advanced search restricted the dates of the photos to only Monday, January 15. Here’s just a few of what I found:

[http://flickr.com/search/?q=Ann+Arbor&s=int&d=taken-20070115-20070115&z=t|Here's the whole bunch, sorted by "interestingness", for you to see for yourself.]

Flickr is such a great tool. The day after a local event, I can do a quick, simple search, and be able to find tons of wonderful, artistic photos to remember and share with anyone else in the world.

Update:
I’m also finding some [http://vielmetti.typepad.com/vacuum/2007/01/michigan_power_.html|local] [http://www.mlive.com/aanews/latest/index.ssf?/mtlogs/mlive_aanewslive/archives/2007_01.html#225870|stories] of those upon which the [http://www.mlive.com/news/aanews/index.ssf?/base/news-21/116887580724340.xml&coll=2|weather] has had less pleasant [http://arborupdate.com/article/1367/a2-power-outages#c015494|effects]. I hope they were still able to find some [http://flickr.com/photos/murtasma/358870186/|sights to enjoy] in contrast.

Tagged annarbor, flickr, fun, icicles

Jan 11 2007

Youtubular

Here’s my first upload to [http://youtube.com|youtube]. Yeah, I know, welcome to 2005.

Tagged fun, lego, video, youtube

Jan 08 2007

1 Comment

Geekery

Embedding Yahoo Maps

While working on a site (powered by [http://drupal.org/|drupal], of course), I came to the location page, wherein I needed to place a map. I knew I could cut-n-paste a static image of the location, then link it to either Google or Yahoo maps for further activity, but I wanted something a little more interactive. So I checked out the [http://developer.yahoo.com/|Yahoo! Developer Network] for their [http://developer.yahoo.com/maps/|maps API], and sure enough, they had lots of cool tools for embedding their map software in your code. I’ve been drinking the Yahoo! kool-aid ever since I signed up for free email with them 8 years ago.

I wanted an interactive map, but I didn’t want to have to code up a separate flash or AJAX application and upload it. That’s when I found their [http://developer.yahoo.com/maps/flash/jsGettingStarted.html|JS-Flash API]. You call a little bit of javascript in your page, and it loads a flash application hosted by Yahoo! into a div on your page. It was perfect. All you have to do is sign up for a free [https://developer.yahoo.com/wsregapp/index.php|Yahoo Developer Application ID].

After playing around a little bit, I was able to embed all of the code that I needed right into a drupal page, no external module coding needed. So I could put a highly interactive and customized map into the page just by putting code into drupal’s web-based page creation form. No FTP, no SSH, no installing and configuring modules, just cut-n-paste into a form.

Here’s the code I came up with. The important thing is that you set your input format as “PHP” because we need to use a function to put a bit of javascript in the <head> section of the page. Also, make sure you replace the appid portion with your personal AppID.

<?php
drupal_set_html_head(‘

#mapContainer {
height: 400px;
width: 400px;
}
‘);
?>

// Create and display Map object at the address and with zoom level 3.
var map = new Map(“mapContainer”, “ejk_apps”,
“1201 S. Main, Ann Arbor, MI 48104″, 3);

// Add navigation and viewing tools
map.addTool( new PanTool(), true );
map.addWidget(new SatelliteControlWidget());
map.addWidget(new NavigatorWidget());

// Add the POI marker to the map and display it
marker1 = new CustomPOIMarker( ‘Michigan Stadium’, ”,
’1201 S. Main\nAnn Arbor, MI 48104′, ’0xFF0000′, ’0xFFFFFF’);
map.addMarkerByAddress( marker1, “1201 S. Main, Ann Arbor, MI 48104″);

And here’s what it looks like:

<?php
drupal_set_html_head('

#mapContainer {
height: 400px;
width: 400px;
}
‘);
?>

// Create and display Map object at the address and with zoom level 3.
var map = new Map(“mapContainer”, “ejk_apps”,
“1201 S. Main, Ann Arbor, MI 48104″, 3);

// Add navigation and viewing tools
map.addTool( new PanTool(), true );
map.addWidget(new SatelliteControlWidget());
map.addWidget(new NavigatorWidget());

I thought I should wrap some of this up into a module, but when I looked, [http://drupal.org/project/ymap|someone had already done it]. I’ll have to check it out.

Tagged dev, drupal, maps, yahoo

Jan 01 2007

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to everyone.

As my first post of 2007, I thought I would share a favorite video from youtube. This embodies everything that is good about web 2.0. It’s made by a guy in Norway that has either way too much time on his hands or he’s a prodigy. Either way, it’s an incredible demonstration of this new wave of communication, allowing worldwide connections. It’s great fun to watch.

The only problem is that for every gem like this on YouTube, there are 99999 lumps of coal. That’s why the rating systems and popularity tracking are so important.

Go Blue.

Tagged fun, happynewyear, video, youtube