Multimedia « Hot Dorkage

Google Voice “Call Me” Widget

By Colleen, on September 17th, 2010%

One number to rule them all
I have just enabled Google Voice. So now you can call me without knowing my phone number. Now the benefits of being anonymous and invisible will truly come home to roost. Were I Scoble or somebody important, I could not post this widget in public because it would . . . → Read More: Google Voice “Call Me” Widget

Ms. Burrows’ Mapworks WordPress Plugin

By Colleen, on September 16th, 2010%

My friend Jillian Burrows just released a MapWorks plugin for wordpress and this is just me trying it out. I think it is just a question of shortcode and perhaps it installs a graphic in the public page to enable you to get more information. You can read the README just as well as . . . → Read More: Ms. Burrows’ Mapworks WordPress Plugin

How my jQuery Drag’n'Drop Jigsaw works

By Colleen, on June 6th, 2010%

I had a kind of implied request to talk about the code in this jquery jigsaw puzzle. I sort of figured you can Firebug it from hereif you like, but maybe a little expository prose will enable you to focus on the salient parts of the script. (Sorry the old link got broken when I restructured this blog.)
Continue reading How my jQuery Drag’n’Drop Jigsaw works

Random Fiber Arts Dorkage

By Colleen, on April 21st, 2010%

It’s funny how things confluence. A while back I did a post spreading the word about 2-D bar codes. Just recently I attended Beaver Bar Camp and went to an un-session titled Nerdlepoint by a woman from Portland OR named Julia (sorry, bar camps are so anarchistic that I couldn’t find . . . → Read More: Random Fiber Arts Dorkage

Adventures in Resource Mining

By Colleen, on April 19th, 2010%

In my previous post in this series, I described some ancient software that I wrote years ago that I would like to recycle for the web. This post focuses on massaging the existing resources so that they are web-ready. Boring, but critical, and not so easy, as it turned out!

AU-bg
Preparing the graphical assets:
The most obvious way that suggests itself to implement the puzzles on the web is to create a JQuery UI draggable div with a background graphic. We have a conversion to do. In Hypercard, assets are resources embedded in the runnable file (which was always a huge source of problems.)

To make things worse, my resources were embedded in a proprietary format created by a third party extension. The backdrops are split out separately, in the old fashioned PICT format. Everything is exactly the right size to sync up but nothing is the correct format. Redrawing all this stuff is not an option; however, there are plenty format converters. Getting the resources ready to move to the web is a two-part process:

Extracting the resources
Converting the resources to an up to date format.

Continue reading Adventures in Resource Mining

Hypercard What has thou wrought?

By Colleen, on April 18th, 2010%

This series of posts is planned to document of some my adventures trying to leverage an abandoned Hypercard opus I did a long time ago. It’s more of a narrative than a how to. A lot of different realms come into play here. So if you aren’t up for reading a long multi-part techno-novela, scamper along now and go look for clips of Megan Fox or something.

HyperCardTop

Continue reading Hypercard What has thou wrought?

Embed.ly: One API to rule them all

By Colleen, on April 3rd, 2010%

Something very very cool fell into my inbox today.

The back story
I had been researching OEmbed kind of as a background project to see if I could use it in my own stuff. Now what is OEmbed, you ask? It is a specification by which a simple link transforms itself into rich content. If . . . → Read More: Embed.ly: One API to rule them all

Tux Geekcraft Plarn Bag

By Colleen, on July 18th, 2009%

Remember my Tux mittens that I knitted last winter (which would have been summer if I had been in Australia then?) They are kewl but I don’t often have cause to wear mittens, and they don’t actually fit me on top of that–the assumption of the design was that geeks are MALE with male-sized hands. . . . → Read More: Tux Geekcraft Plarn Bag

Open Source Tux Geek Penguin Mittens

By Colleen, on March 15th, 2009%

Your faithful dork recently had to be hospitalized for surgery. Everything went well and full recovery is expected, but I did get a midline incision that incapacitated my core until it heals. You use your core for EVERYTHING, so that nasty little side effect could not clear up too soon!

While convalescing I knitted these geek mittens. I adapted a pattern created by flibbertigibbet bunny and graciously shared opensource style. Ain’t the internet amazing!!! If you are interested, the pattern is available on bunny’s blog, and I’ll only post it here if it ever becomes unavailable there. Bunny definitely deserves not only link luv, but a few clickthroughs from here as well. The blog is worth a perusal for some other interesting projects as well.
Continue reading Open Source Tux Geek Penguin Mittens

Right Brain or Left Brain or do you care?

By Colleen, on December 1st, 2008%

dancer I found this dancer somewhere. Look at her. Do you think she is going clockwise or anti-clockwise? Can you make it go either way? Can you do it at will? Or do you think the animation actually reverses (maybe even randomly with a bunch of tricky backend wizardry?) What it is supposed to mean: If your impression is that she is going clockwise, you are allegedly RIGHT BRAIN dominant. RIGHT BRAIN dominant folks are supposed to be emotional, creative, wholistic, and other stuff you probably know if you came here. If you see her going anti-clockwise, allegedly you are LEFT BRAIN dominant. LEFT BRAIN folks are supposed to be logical, linear, problem-solvers etc.
Continue reading Right Brain or Left Brain or do you care?

Hot Dorkage