All a man needs out of life is a place to sit ‘n’ spit in the fire.

Author: Jim (Page 33 of 51)

Father of 4, Engineer, Social Worker, longtime blogger, #linux user. Opining on the internet? What else is it for?

My Fellow Americans…

No American president has ever said this, and no American president ever will.  Because I am impatient, I shall invent one who does. 

My fellow Americans, I stand before you today, not as your president, not as the Commander in Chief, but as your dear friend, your best friend who really cares about you and must tell you something you do not want to hear.  I will say it here today, because and only because I care deeply about America.

I stand here as someone who must remind us all today what it means to be American.  If you will permit me into your living rooms, I shall speak my piece and take the consequences as they may befall me.  I have kept quiet long enough.  It is time that we heard the truth about what it means to be an American.

But first, let me dispel some myths. 

It is NOT our language of English.  It is not our culture, whatever that means.  It not whiteness, blackness, latin-ness, chinese-ness, or any other -ness.  We are not American because we drive big cars or trucks.  We are not Americans because we love to buy.  We are most certainly NOT American because we shop at Wal-mart.  We are not American by virtue of keeping Mexicans from our shores, or waving the American flag, singing the national anthem, or pledging our allegiance.  I could go on.

Do I need to go on? 

The things that make us American are the intangibles, not how we look, or speak, nor what we have, acquire, or even what we build.   What makes us American, my fellow Americans, is the resolute fact that we have a willingness to fail, that we have the opportunity to fail.

To be an American means to risk failure, and to fail not once, or twice, but repeatedly.  Our failure rate, is directly proportional to our forward progress.  Show me someone adverse to risk and I will show you someone who has done nothing, and will never do anything.  He is happy, complacent, and content – content in his mediocrity.  He is a useless sort, and we do not want him here in America.

Unfortunately, we are beginning to grow more and more of these types right here on our own shores.  We are happy.  We have lots of nice things.  My fellow Americans, I have nice things.  You have nice things.   We enjoy a standard of living the far exceeds the majority of the world.  That is great and wonderful to be sure, but I see some slippage.  We, my fellow Americans, have become risk averse.  We ask that others assume the risk.  When others come and are willing to risk death, poverty, and discrimination, we malign them for they remind us of what we have lost.  It is our shame that causes us to call out to them, ‘Go home, you dirty immigrants,’  for we have forgotten our proud dirty immigrant past.  Shame on us.  Shame on me.

We shall not dishonor our ancestors in that fashion.  I shall not dishonor my ancestors in that fashion.

We Americans have lost the will to live, the hunger that made America great.   We have lost the willingness to put it all on the line.

What does this American president propose?  I will tell you.  I want immigrants that are fed up with tyranny, poverty, sickness, despots, corruption, death and mayhem to pack their bags and get to America.  Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.  Just get here.

And I do mean all of you.  No quotas, no limits, no restrictions.

I want these immigrants to come to our shores, for the opportunity to earn a living, working hard, and gaining a purpose in this life.  They are no longer cattle to be lead to a slaughter.  They are to be no longer seen as simply the listless masses upon whom tin-pot dictators reap their blessings in the form of death, persecution, and abject poverty.

We Americans see you, people of the world, as human capital.  Whereas others see you as drains on government pension funds, a lot to be taken care of or robbed or just a burden, we in America see your value.  You are not a drain, you are an asset. 

You are a national treasure.

And we have forgotten it, my fellow Americans, we have forgotten to treasure our immigrants.  I ask, can a person have too much treasure?

Every life that wants to produce, that wants to be useful, because that is all any of us could ever ask, shall have that opportunity right here, right here in this great immigrant land of ours.

I can hear it now, my fellow Americans, ‘They will bring down wages, they will subvert our way of life.  We cannot absorb so many.’ 

Historically Americans believed that economic progress and prosperity were a result of the free land to our west.  When things got tough, we opened up more land, and folks rolled up their sleeves, moved and worked that land to bring more riches to America.  The fact of free land was a compelling reason for Americans to believe our nation was wealthy.  I ask, however, what good is land without human hands to work it?  Franklin D. Roosevelt once said:

We are not able to invite the immigration from Europe to share our endless plenty. We are now providing a drab living for our own people.

Which is, of course, a logical fallacy and begs the question, why should we believe that immigrants come to share endless plenty.  That land could have lain bare for another thousand years without putting a single cent in a bank account, happily.   The immigrants were the source of that plenty during the years of westward expansion, for it was their hands that cultivated the soil, that shaped the landscape, and caused it to yield untold riches.  Immigrants come to create endless plenty.

It was immigrants, my fellow Americans.  They were the riches.

Let me address the former criticism of wages.  I hope immigrants do lower wages.  Lower wages get people off their couches.  Lower wages stimulate new thinking.  If we have to compete with lower wages, we have got to think of ways to cut costs, innovate, or fail. That’s the American way.  And two, I ask, what IS the American way if its not to re-purpose international assets to our benefit.   Let me paint a tiny picture of what I’m talking about. 

Say, I am an African dictator and I am robbing my people blind.  I am taxing what little they have to build myself palaces and buy cars and support my harems of women.  I am a small-minded fool and shall soon be parted from my wealth. 

Half my country then leaves.  They take up residence in America where that first generation works happily in menial labor jobs and earns more in a day than they did in a whole month or year in their country.  Fast forward to their children’s generation, educated, hard working, and born of a spirit that there are so many possibilities.  These people will take us to scientific greatness.  They will build better cars.  They will build better buildings.  They will become amazing educators, thinkers, business people, you name it.  They do not complain.  They do not whine.  They do not sue.  They are just thankful that they are not dying, starving in some nameless ditch in some forgotten land.  They wake up every day, thanking their god, that they have had this opportunity.  They revere their lives.  They revere our land.  They revere their kind neighbors.  This my friends, is paradise, an immigrant paradise.  All they need is a chance.

Meanwhile our little African dictator takes a peek from afar, sees the riches upon which he had sat and covered with excrement.  It was, in fact, a pile of gold, a pile of gold that far outstripped the production of even his biggest gold and diamond mines.  What was he thinking? A fool he is.

And what should we be thinking.  How can we NOT absorb such riches.  It is a windfall.  It is a boon.  We should dance and sing and make merry for our good fortune.  We seized half of a country’s riches and never had to fire a single bullet.  Genghis Khan would have been befuddled by such a brilliant scheme.

Is there ever too much good fortune?

So come here.  Come and bring to us your enthusiasm.  We will give you a chance to succeed.  We will give you a chance to fail.  But you can pick yourself up and try something else.  Because in America you make your own destiny as you see it.

And, my fellow Americans, they are going to make us uncomfortable.  Change is tough.  They will challenge our ideas.  I say then, we will get over it and we must stop whining.  We must learn from them – learn how we used to be and start taking risks, thankful for every single day that we have in this great land of ours.

I thank you for listening, my fellow Americans.

On Doubting Tomases

I’d like to lay it all out here.  Here it is in a nutshell, post Easter.  I’ve always been bugged by the whole scene in the Bible with Tomas the apostle, the poster-child of doubt and lack of faith.  I’ve always thought he got a bum rap.  My version would go like this:

"Dude, dude, we so totally saw Jesus today."

"What have you all been smoking.  And for Christ’s sake, take a bath, y’all smell."

"No, no, totally, Tom, we saw him, didn’t we Peter?"

"Yeah. And the girls saw him too."

"Hmm, okay.  Look, if it makes you feel better after having watched him be crucified and then locking yourselves in that room you call "the pad" for the last few weeks, that’s cool.  I’m glad you think you saw him or something."

"Aw, man, Tomas, thinks we’re lyin’.  He doesn’t BELIEVE.  He doesn’t believe.  He doesn’t believe."

"Now you’ve got too far, my brothers.  Look, whether he’s actually walking around or not is totally and in all ways irrelevant.  You all saw what he did.   You KNOW what he stood for.  He was the best.  We lived and studied and hung with him through thick and thin.  I KNOW who he is.  He’s right here.  I don’t need to see any bloody nail marks or spear wounds.  

I looked deep in my heart and I realized that I know him.  I know who he is.  I don’t need any more from him.  What more could I ask. 

You mistake my skepticism for lack of faith, but it’s not that.  It’s that I don’t really NEED anything more from him.  He already gave us everything.  He gave us purpose.  He showed us the way.  He died for us.  I know that man believed what he said – what he told us.  I know it.  I know him.  So don’t you assholes with your, ‘Oh, look Tomas doesn’t believe what his eyes don’t see,’ selves give me crap and ask for the Messiah to go around on your little puppet stings dancing through magic fairy dust for you to feel good about yourselves.  It is you who doubt.  It is you who look for magic signs and voices from the heavens and burning bushes.

Now, if I know Jesus, I know he just might oblige your puny minds with a heavy sigh.  ‘Oh, okay one more time for Peter’ and he’d wave his hand or something, but after, he probably ask you why you couldn’t be more like Tomas.  ‘Tomas didn’t make me do any miracles.  Tomas didn’t ask me to rise from the dead.  Y’all did, ’cause you needed it.’

A Deist’s Dream

Is it better to come upon a flower and to believe it was created for me, or to see the flower, know its blossom, and rejoice for I was there to see it.

Cookies are Capital

I: Jesus, my man, what do you have for us today?

J: I’m glad to see you’re loosening up a bit.  I’m just here during Holy Week to throw out a little bone for those of you into the whole worship thing.  While you’re all running around preparing for Good Friday and Easter, I’d like to reprise my last outing here.

I: The cookie one?

J: Yeah, the cookie one.  It seems that a few of you business types needed a change of vocabulary to get the cookie theme.  So I’m gonna hit from a different angle. 

Let pretend that cookies are capital.  I’m talking in economic terms now.  Cookies are capital.  I give you a cookie.  What are you going to do with it?

I: Um, eat it or share it?

J: Yes, but more to the point, you’re going to use the cookie for something.  The purpose of a cookie is easy to divine.  You are going to use the cookie for some purpose for which it was intended.  If it was a gift, you will say thank you and probably enjoy it.  You probably wouldn’t reply, ‘What the hell are you giving me this cookie for?  I didn’t ask for it.  What am I supposed to do with it?’  That’s just silly, right?

I: I guess.  That would be pretty stupid.  I mean, cookies are tasty.

J: Exactly what I’m saying!  Now what if you’re on a diet?  Do you have the right to get upset if I give you a cookie?

I: No, I think good manners would dictate that you would find something to do with the cookie if you weren’t going to eat it.

J: If you are a thoughtful person, you would show good manners. A gift is a gift.  You’re just not allowed to complain about gifts. 

So anyway, I hand you some capital.  I give you some money.  What are you going to do with it?  Bury it?  Hide it?  Preserve it in some way?  Make it last as long as possible?  If you know anything about money, you know it’s more valuable right now than it is in the future.  That’s why people pay interest rates to get it right now.  An interest rate represents the present value of future money.

People with a purpose for the dough will pay through the nose to get it right now so they can put it to good use and hopefully earn more than what they paid for it.

Now, say I just hand it to you.  I give you a non-taxable lump sum on the order of a couple million smackers.  What do you do with it?

I: Gosh, that’s such an improbable event, I’d not thought about it.

J: Not many people have, but I’ll tell you what; they should.  Capital is like your life.  If you don’t know what you’d do with it immediately, then you don’t know what you’re doing.  If you don’t know what you’re doing, then you’d better drop EVERYTHING and figure it out pretty damn quick.  Your investors are getting antsy ’cause you’re wasting the capital.  You’re wasting the cookie.  It’s getting moldy, and your capital is losing value to inflation.

Your life is a big pile of capital that needs to be used RIGHT NOW.  It’s most valuable RIGHT NOW.  It can only make a difference RIGHT NOW.

Notice a pattern?

I don’t think anyone would curse me for giving them a pile of capital.  Why do you think they get upset that they have a life? I know life is hard sometimes.  I really do know.  Yet, to have it is a blessing.  It is a grace bestowed for which you didn’t ask.  You don’t deserve it.  Whether you deserve the cookie, capital, or your life is irrelevant, totally and completely irrelevant.  What is relevant is that you’ve got something that few have, that few have the opportunity to use. There is a whole lot of life in the universe just busting to come out and live.  Not everyone has the opportunity you have right now. 

So, Mr. Business Guy, what is it gonna be?  Are you going to offend your biggest investor, ME?  Do you want put the capital to good use, or are you going to sit on it and fret.  Capital is not to be preserved, just as cookies are not to be kept under glass, and your life not lived in quiet seclusion far from danger.

Now get busy, Time is Money.  I don’t want to have to fire you. *wink*

DTOP Schenanegans Part Dos

The whole mess of fraudulent fines is blowing up here now.  The local paper is featuring the story and outrage on the front page.  Through the article, I learned that I can go online and check my driver’s record to see just what fines I supposedly owe.  Okay, cool, I’ll at least be able to see what they have fabricated for my fine-paying pleasure.

THEY DON’T EVEN SHOW THE SAME AMOUNT.

Let me repeat that.  The hard copy printed letter on paper, that had to come from somewhere, that had to be generated from something by someone, doesn’t even match what they have in their own database – not even close.

I knew criminals were stupid.

Supposedly, I was driving through red lights hours away in Mayaguez a week after 9/11.  DTOP shows a fine for $30 and no license plate number.  So apparently I was jogging through red lights on the other side of the Puerto Rico with my special jogging sneakers and super powers.  Luckily I had my license so that they could indicate the proper fine for flying through red lights with an invisible car or something.

BAH!  So where does the $120 come from?  I think they just made it up, pulled a number from their collective ass, and called out –

Hah, schenanegans on me.  You kidders you.

Gingerbread House

In orbit around the Earth, they were safe, safe and isolated from the depths of space by their craft, their suits, their technology.  They were safe from the vacuum, the cold, the radiation, and small chunks of debris. They were as safe and comfortable as in their kitchen sipping tea and reading the Times.  "Martha, will you fetch me some toast?  Thanks, you’re an angel."  Thanks to the wonderful technology of their deep space craft and its marvelous systems, designed by the finest minds of 22st century Earth and swaddled as they were in their cradles of poly-alloy something, they had not a care in the world.  Not a one.

"What was that?" Justin breathed into his helmet microphone.  "I think I heard something."

A voice responded.  It was helm control.  "I dunno," he whispered, as if asleep, "I think we’re approaching the outer atmosphere.  Sometimes the heat makes things creak."  At least it sounded like creak.  It could have been creep, or weak.  Justin couldn’t tell. 

"Um, okay."  It wasn’t important, he guessed.  The helmsman was a stout sort of fellow, predictable and faithful.  He always showed up on time, checked the craft, before launch.  He was a by-the-book sort not prone to imaginative thinking, but he did his job, which was good enough surely, and probably what you want in a helmsman.

Justin looked around at the relaxed forms of the other passengers.   They were scientists, like himself, but perhaps not like himself.  They were fascinated by things other than a little re-entry.  They obsessed over big problems or small problems, tiny little worlds or grand grandiose big big worlds.  Make the little worlds bigger, they’d say.  Make the big worlds smaller, would reply the others – two schools of thought, Justin reflected, two schools of thought that always end up in the same place.

Justin was awake now, and he couldn’t close his eyes.  The Earth was this big beautiful ball of blue, crystalline blue, shiny, reflective, shimmery, but calm, peaceful, enveloping.  It’s like you could just reach out and touch it, squeeze it, wrap it all around you, he thought, just roll around on it.  Man, he thought adjusting his poly-alloy something pants, been out here too long – getting turned on by this big blue ball in space.  Geez.

"Hey, Melinda," he whispered though the microphone, "did you get the data you were looking for?"

"Hmmm…  you talkin’ to me, Justin?  Yeah, yeah, I got what I was looking for.  Gracias a Dios. They were there just waiting for me.  I stepped around the corner and there they were as if they had chosen me.  The mission was un exito total." 

"I’m glad."  He had had no such luck.  His first opportunity out here had netted him nothing, nothing, and now that he thought about it, nothing.  Maybe when they got back, he’d see if maybe he could salvage at least something of this nothing of a trip.  "I’m glad for you Melinda.  Couldn’t have happened to a better person.  You know you’re the best."

"Thanks, Justin.  You’ll get something, soon, I’m sure."

There was that weak, creeping creak again, trickling over-head.  "There it is again?  Did you hear that?  What the hell is that sound?"

The whisper came again, "Look, it’s nothing to be worried about, the hull’s heating up.  It does that, uneven heating, causes uneven expansion, uneven compression.  It’s all taken care of.  Now, newbie, if you want to make yourself useful, lie back and close those big weepy eyes of yours.  I’ll get you back to your mama’s arms before you wet yourself, I promise." And he clicked off his mic.

To Justin, the break-up seemed almost in slow motion.  There was a shudder, and the pieces came off like big giant flakes of rust spinning out and away into the blackness their edges glowing faintly, discolored like the petals of a dying flower. 

And down they fell.

…to be continued

Screw Linux on the Desktop, I Used to be Productive

I don’t want my desktop all candified.  I don’t want media.  I don’t want games.  I don’t want music.  I don’t want VOIP.  I don’t want chat.  I don’t want digg, reddit, and slashdot.

ARRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHH!

I used to be productive.  Now I have MAME to emulate all my favorite standup video games from the eighties and nineties (endless hours of fun).   I now have instant messaging, every manner of music, video, and entertainment imaginable (not to mention all that P2P goodness and without the spyware).  MythTV handles the PVR functions and let me tell you, it’s great. 

It’s too great.

The problem is, I need to do some friggin’ work on this computer.  I remember when the desktop was austere.  I was forced to work, not goof off watching stupid video clips from video.google.com or www.youtube.com

HEY YOU MEATHEADS stop messing with the desktop.  It’s too good.  It’s too distracting.  Firefox is too good.  There are too many great extensions.  Mplayer is the best media player on the planet.  Stop it, now! 

I need to do some WORK!

Please make my desktop the non-functioning piece of utilitarian crap that it was five years ago, please please please?

 

I beg you. 

Puerto Rico Defrauds its Citizens

I got a letter in the mail, addressed to me, from the DTOP (Departamento de Transportación y Obras Públicas, Dept of Transportation and Public Works).  Weird, I thought, this is weird indeed.  What could they possibly want with me?  I quote (my thoughts in parenthesis)

Esteemed James, (ooo, I’m esteemed, that’s good, huh?)

I have good news for you (oh my goodness, good news, let me read more).  You can save $48.00.  (wow, how?  more more more!) Currently, our system reflects that you have pending traffic fines totaling $120.00 (WHAT!?)

Take advantage of this offer.  You have from March 3rd to May 1st to receive a 40% discount, a savings of $48.00. You can get out of all your fines by paying only $72.00. (WTF?)

This offer is for a limited time and will not be repeated.  Don’t waste time or money. Visit your closest local collecting office and pay your invoice.  You only have to bring this letter. (They wish)

Pay now and save.  Don’t wait until it is tool late. (or WHAT?)

Gabriel D Alcaraz Emmanuelli (Crook)
Secretario de Transportación y Obras Públicas

Okay, it looks like it came from DTOP, on official stationary.  They are not asking for a mailed check.  They ask that you go to the official government collections office to pay.  The letter is legitimately from DTOP, but it reads like a bad CompUSA rebate offer.  It just sounds like fraud, fraud disguised as a great offer.  Couple that with the fact that I just re-registered my car a week ago (so I was clear a week ago) and have never ever ever been pulled over let alone ticketed.  This is just false.  And the letter does not provide a phone number or any information to report an error.  Okay, I think to myself, I’ll have to deal with this.  What a pain.

I am reminded of a corollary to Arthur C. Clark’s "Any
sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" which
is "Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from
malice."  I love that quote.

Then I find out that Laura’s father, mother, and brother also got the same letter.

Okay, so that’s how it going to be, huh, naked malice.  There is speculation that the cover story is going to be a computer glitch, that if you drag your sorry ass into the collections office, wait all day for a useless government functionary to see you, you may have your "fines" removed.  Otherwise, if your time/job is worth more than the extortion demand, then you’ll just pay it and move on with your life.

I also find it weird that amount of the "fine" is suspiciously close to
the median daily income of the average worker.  It’s like the dollar
figure is perfectly calculated to match the cost of missing a day of work.  It’s probably a close race for the majority of Puerto Ricans
today.  It’s just too perfect an amount for my "fines."  It’s too
perfectly crafted.  Too high, everybody fights, Government gets no
money.  Too low, and most everybody pays it resulting in an increase in
revenue, but a loss on how much they could have actually gotten.  The
tone of the letter makes me believe they are doing me a favor, going
out on a limb, and the amount is just about right for the average joe.

This is just sick, sick, sick.  I have never heard of such a thing, government run extortion, fraud.  I mean, usually they just stick to back room graft and mismanagement.  How often do governments just come right out and say, "pay us this money, and there won’t be any problems,"  except in Cameroon?

Any lawyers out there want to take up a case against the Department of Transportation in Puerto Rico and Gabriel D Alcaraz Emmanuelli, alleged mastermind of this fraud?

Javier Ignacio’s 1st Birthday

Javier_1st_Birthday_0027.jpg

By the time he was done, he had cake in his hair, ears, and down his back.  He beamed, eyes twinkling, with true happiness as we all sang happy birthday to him.  He knew we were adoring him, and the little munchkin ate it up, along with the cake.

Javier_1st_Birthday_0030.jpg

It’s funny, Laura and I were reflecting on the night that Javier arrived.  We were up late watching Battlestar Galatica (great great show) and about half way through, Laura starting having contractions.  As with all pregnancies, you don’t know how much time you have, and this being our third child we could have easily had the little boy right there on the coffee table during the commercial break.  Laura, however, sci-fi chick that she is, sucked it up and said that it’d be fine, that we could finish Battlestar Galactica.  

"Are you sure?"  I asked.

"Yeah, I guess so."  

So little Javier, I just want to say on your 1st birthday, thanks for letting us watch our show.  You’re the best.   And Laura, you win the Sci-fi-chick-of-the year award.

sci_fi_chick.png 

Procedural Flash Animation in Linux

Pardon me while I geek out again. This particular article falls under the, "look Ma, no hands" category, a shameless play for adoration of my cleverness. What I’m about to show is neither new nor terribly beautiful, nor cost effective for most professional flash designers and/or web designers.

It’s just cool that it was done procedurally and entirely on Linux. First, another caveat; I absolutely do not get these animation tools with their tweening, paths and visual interactions for creation ­of animations. For some reason, when I animate my stupid brain sees a stack of cells, straight up and down. I see the frame changes like a flip book. If I try to­ abstract an object in the animation into some sort of mathematical formula, line, path, or whatever, my little pile of gray matter goes all slushy. Also, my brain likes to see things in text. I know, I know, what’s the matter with me? I don’t even see the code. All I see is blonde, brunette, red-head. Chuckle.

Here’s the finished product: www.og-consulting.com

The door scene modeled in POV-ray scene description language and is typical of Old San Juan, Puerto Rico Spanish Colonial architecture. The real doors are beautiful. If you ever get a chance to take a cruise from/to Puerto Rico, don’t miss the chance to walk around Old San Juan ­(El Viejo San Juan) and check them out. I rendered three frames with the doors rotated from 0 to 75 degrees to simulate… guess what? Opening doors. Clever, huh?

There’s a lot of POV code, here’s a little bit of what it looks like:

cylinder { <0, 0.5, 0>, <0, -0.5, 0>, 0.5
        texture {
        pigment { color rgb <0.6, 0, 0> }
        normal { granite 0.02 turbulence <0.5, 0.9, 0.2> scale 0.25 }
        finish { specular 0.1 reflection .1 }
    }
  }

It’s pretty simple. You place objects in an X-Y-Z space (Cartesian coordinates) like a sphere, cylinder, box or any other of the predefined primitives. You can merge them, subtract them, intersect them in creative ways. Finally, you apply some sort of texture which includes a pigment, a surface (normal), and a finish (reflections effects etc). There are easier ways to model, but sometimes POV-ray’s scene description language is just the most elegant and easiest way to model something.

The next step was to convert the png files to jpegs for inclusion in the flash animation. I used a little sprinkle of bash and a dash of kosher ImageMagick’s convert.

for file in *.png; do convert -quality 100 "$file" "${file%.png}.jpg"; done

For each png file, convert the png file to a 100 percent quality jpeg file. We use 100% quality because I’m going to let the swftools take care of the final compression. There’s no sense in lossy compressing then lossy compressing again. That’s just crazy talk.

We will now create the flash source file. Open a new file slideshow.sc. This is the textual language for the swftools Linux Flash toolkit. I have never ever ever looked at a flash source file from any Macromedia product, so I have no idea if this animation description method looks/acts/walks/talks in anyway shape or form like Macromedia’s products. Don’t know, don’t care.

.flash bbox=640x480 filename="slideshow.swf" version=6 fps=25 compress background=white

  .jpeg s1 "puerta_open03.jpg"
  .jpeg s2 "puerta_open02.jpg"
  .jpeg s3 "puerta_open01.jpg"
  .font font "gilc____.ttf"
  .font arial "arialbi.ttf"
  .text text1 text="Opening Doors" font=font
  .text text2 text="Opening Doors" font=font
  .text text3 text="Opening Doors" font=font
  .text text4 text="OG" font=arial
  .text text5 text="Experts in" font=font
  .text text6 text="Open Source" font=font

  .put s1 scalex=640 scaley=480 alpha=100%
  .put text1 scale=100% x=40 y=220 alpha=0%

  .frame 25
  .put s2 scalex=640 scaley=480 alpha=0%
  .change text1 alpha=100%
  .put text2 scale=100% x=40 y=220

  .frame 100
  .change s2 alpha=0%
  .change text1 alpha=100%
  .change text2 alpha=100%

  .frame 125
  .change text1 alpha=0%
  .change text2 alpha=100%
  .change s2 alpha=100%
  .put s3 scalex=640 scaley=480 alpha=0%
  .put text3 scale=100% x=40 y=220

And so on (that’s not the whole file, but the rest is just repetition. There are 71 total lines of code for that little flash animation. Is that a lot or a little? Seems pretty small to me anyway. Basically, with swftools you define an object (image, or text); you put it; then you change it. You can change its fade, size, location, and more. The swfc program will implement the change from the object’s last known state. Check out swftools for more examples (that’s where I got all the reference I needed to make my little flash thingie).

So there you have it. I walk through the frames, changing elements, putting, fading, growing, moving stuff around. It’s was all described from start to finish in a procedural language, from the POV-ray scene description language, to bash and ImageMagick for command line image manipulation, and finally to swftools flash scene language for the final animation. Pretty nifty, huh?

The neat thing about this is that once the procedure has been developed, you can reuse it for other clients, other looks, colors, messages, etc. In fact, you could directly render it on the server to update information on the fly via end user input. There’s no limit to what you can do with something like this.

Of course if you’re on Windows, you would probably just buy Macromedia’s software… but where’s the fun in that?

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