Not magic, just a different kind of science.
Flex conditional compilation is kinda like a crappy, finicky version of preprocessor directives in the C family. Compiler constants can be defined and used at compile time to include (or exclude) specific code--or they can be used at run time like regular old consts (except you can't find them with any of the AS3 reflection […]
MoreNSSet and her sexy daughter, NSMutableSet are officially my two favorite Cocoa classes. They have reached previously unmeasured levels of exquisitude. Sure, they have their faults, like being finite (I was hoping to prove the continuum hypothesis with NSSet--that's a math joke), but what they lack in nonsensical mathematical jargon, they make up for in usefulitude. Enter Javascript. […]
MoreYears ago when I programmed networking applications in Perl, I decided I had mastered regular expressions. I hadn't, of course, but when your code looks like you accidentally opened up a .dll in notepad, you have to believe in something. Anyway, I wrote something called a vector space search engine (a topic I will probably […]
MoreI love coming up with names for my side projects. There was the Terramorphic Genesis Algorithms (yes, like that Magic card) awhile back. Before that I wrote a brilliantly slow physics engine dubbed ARCHAUSS (Archimedes + Gauss). Well now I'd like to keep it simple with a project called Einstein. It may prove to be my most […]
MoreFor being so narcissistic, AS3 is not great at reflection (yes, I really just made that joke). You can, however, make life a little easier with the little bit it does have. Awhile ago I was refactoring all our project's cursor code. We were embedding a bunch of PNGs and going through and initializing them […]
MoreThe web is, to put it mildly, a fierce and fickle mistress. As a development platform, it's like trying to ride a horse-sized stick of margarine and your reins are made of light-sabers. Seriously, I'm talking to you Mozilla, Opera, Google, and whoever shoveled IE together--quit "innovating" (I guess some people use Safari too, and that's […]
MoreAs boring as the title sounds (and it does sound boring), it's a worthwhile investment to get a good logging solution going on whatever platform you're developing on. I've been playing around with haXe lately and I discovered its trace() function to be severely lacking--that is, until I actually read the documentation (I'm a man, we […]
MoreMy fascination with the game Scorched Earth knows no bounds. One might say I am the Mother of All Scorched Earth Fans. One of my earliest fascinations with the game (keep in mind, I was like 10) was that I could play for hours and hours and never play the same level twice. The ground […]
MoreMaven is certainly a creature of *inner* beauty. You should not under any circumstances look directly at her. I am unsure how her creators can tinker under her voluminous skirt and come out alive. Unfortunately I looked into her eyes. I made a promise to Maven--but I broke my word. Now she need Closure. Setting […]
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