I really don’t sit around and play games all day, but an occasional ten minutes away from programming is nice every now and then. As if Superman Returns wasn’t bad enough, here’s the paper airplane flight simulator. I’ve played it a long time ago, and it just recently showed its face again. My best is 68.7 meters. (Tip: get as close to the fan as possible, and the chimney is a good thing).
And if you haven’t seen this before, it’s worth looking at: Lego art. OK, I’m done for the day.
Everyone likes a five minute distraction every now and then, right? Here’s something that got my attention:
I scored a 95 the first time (from turning my head and running out of time on a couple). I’ve yet to try and do better than that. I only had one picture that was 9/10.
I’m a sucker for charts and graphs. I found something from IBM yesterday that kept me entertained for a few minutes: Many Eyes. It lets you submit data sets, then use their visualizations to see your (or someone else’s) data.
And while I’m at it, another interesting (but almost disturbing) visualization is BreathingEarth. It shows the CO~2 emissions from every country in the world, along with birth and death rates. And the data is in real-time. If I were into data analysis, I think it would be fun to come up with creative ways to present data (assuming I could write Java applets and Flash movies).
Sometimes flash development intrigues me. I’ve played with flash before, and I’ve found it to be fun but challenging. I know it does a lot of the (what seems to be difficult) fancy things for you, such as tweening and custom motion paths, but it’s still challenging. I’d like to watch someone work on a site such as http://www.thibaud.be/, just so I could see how difficult it truly is. I don’t think I’d ever consider flash for a site, but there’s a part of me that would like to be proficient at it. Proficient enough to build a basic site with good flash practices, at least.
This portfolio is clever and fun to look at. Try spinning one of the tags around. Or throwing one across your screen. Then open a couple, look through them, and close them. Notice how they go down to their respective spot in the line-up? I think that’s awesome. And I don’t know if you noticed, but if you happen to click on a tag that has an embedded flash movie, while the movie is loading, the preview image is wiped out. Cool stuff. You simply can’t do those kinds of things without flash.
I usually like non-Flash-based sites, but this one has me in awe. And it’s not even a complex or detailed Flash design… but I love it. It’s a site like this that makes me think there’s still a place for Flash in web development. And of course, it may have never gone anywhere, that’s just the impression I get these days. Anyway, check it out, it’s called Self Titled.
Oh, and make sure you don’t ignore that little menu on the left, where you can literally, sign the guestbook. I’m quite impressed.
2008 by Ryan Heath | Get In Touch
