If you're using 3ds max to try to do augmented reality using FlarToolKit  in flash you MAY have run into an error 126 when trying to install feeling softwares 3.05c version of ColladaMax

this error 126 where the DLE file fails to initialize has to do with the directX SDK not being installed. This will happen on the stock 32-bit version AND the modified 64-bit version.

There's not really any documentation that will let you know this, and you'll probably waste a few days trying to figure it. That's what I just did unfortunetly. 

Hopefully this will help. download the below 2 files and install them. After that collada export is smooth sailing.

the built in autodesk collada DAE export works OK, but it mostly sucks and gets texture mapping wrong.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=2da43d38-db71-4c1b-bc6a-9b6652cd92a3

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=200B2FD9-AE1A-4A14-984D-389C36F85647

Progress. Working with a screen now. Twittering without a computer.

A few weeks back I decided to try out the Arduino platform for working with micrcontrollers. I've been using pic's for the last few years (mostly the 16f628a) but I just haven't been impressed with the software or the community. Arduino is fully open source, and so the hardware and software are both free to use and edit. There's nothing like this in the world of PIC microcontrollers.

if I had to describe PIC's I'd say it's like walking into a room and everyone inside the room stops talking the second you walk in and they all start giving you sideways looks.

Whereas with arduino the second you walk into the room everyone jumps and cheers and shakes your hand and throws piles of code at you. Here here! Look what I've made! You should make it to! here's how!

It's a completely different way of working and I'm loving it.

ANYWAYS, yesterday I managed to get an arduino connected to the internet AND sending a twitter to my account, and I have to say, it was pretty easy. where something like that with a PIC had me pulling my hair, it took me all of an hour on the arduino.

I have at least 20 projects on paper I've wanted to have Ethernet for and now I finally do.

My tools are almost where I want them for my next series. Just a few more purchases.....

I've been experimenting a lot with hardware/software integration at work during downtime and one of my first experiments past simply pushing data was this!

My tweetbox! it sits in the corner of my cubicle so I can see the lastest twitter update of anyone in my feed.

PHP parses all the data from my account, and then feeds that to a Flash snippet I wrote, Flash then talks to a local server running on my laptop which handles talking over the usb port to a small microcontroller hooked up to the LCD. *phew! catch all that?

well it works...

a small red LED comes on when a tweet is new.

all emails originally sent to genpets.com also go to my database. (replies from me or them don't). November 2008 had 3017 emails alone. and I tried to reply to most of those!!

if you're stumbling accross this site and are curious, check out www.brandejs.ca/gp_emails.php

I unfortunately receive spam attempts to all of my email form systems, be it this website, a clients site, or especially genpets.com

blocking via keywords is nice, but nowadays spammers simply use groups of non coherent words.

here's a useful way to implement a block, depending on what sort of site you run it might work great.

generally no one sends me links via legitimate email on my forms, sometimes one or two. but never 5-7!

so it seems to make sense to count how many links are in a body of text, and then block the email if there's more than, in my case 5.

here's is the code below.

//check for link spam

preg_match_all("/http/i",$Message,$matches);

$cnt = count($matches[0]);

if($cnt >=5){$errors[] = "Email Spam detected! Please do not try again, your IP has been logged.";

}

obviously switch the IF to what you need, but I use an error array and only send if the array is empty.

this is not an end all be all approcah, but it should cut down on the amount coming through, and if combined with IP logging and keywords should be close to 100% successful.

News script online!

Ever wonder what sort of emails I get to Genpets.com? wonder no longer little one, I wrote a small email browser script. yes, now you can share in the fun of hate mail! Yay!

The script can be accessed via this link http://www.brandejs.ca/gp_emails.php (link)I haven't added it to the portfolio yet, I'll do that later.

Beyond just browsing emails sent to me, you can also mark them as either interesting or funny. sort of a cheap mans rating system.

By no means are all the emails in there, only about 1600 out of like 4000 (and no replies, etc), but it's more than anyone will ever read anyways.

What's a social experiment if you can't share the findings after all?

While updating the genpets.com site I decided I wanted to add a forum, of course, not a real one as I don't have enough free time to police it. So I needed to create and code something that would look real, which means it would have to update all by itself.

The first trick to that was date control, if all the dates are set for this week, that's not going to do me much good a year from now is it?

I started out writing some longer if statments but then as I read more about the date commands in PHP I realized it could subtract the dates (or add) all on it's own, without having to be told HOW. (IE september 3rd minus 5 days, we'd have to tell the system to update the month to august)

Here's a little snippet of code I used, it works great, so feel free to cut and paste.

// this simple code controls how the dates work on the page. it subtracts days to make it appear the site is always being updated.
//it is also 'smart' so if it subtracts say 5 days from october 2, it will make it september... cool eh?

$date = date('m/d/Y', strtotime("-0 days"));
$date3 = date('m/d/Y', strtotime("-3 days"));

$date10 = date('m/d/Y', strtotime("-10 days"));

$date1 = date('m/d/Y', strtotime("-1 days"));

you don't have to subtract days either, you could subtract a month or year, or whatever suits your fancy, yes it will compensate for leap year etc...

I ever so often skim over a forum or two, and many times the word 'hoax' comes up when referring to Genpets. Which I admit, I find amusing. Hoax, it would be if it sold something. But it does not, the word you’re looking for, if not art, is ‘spoof’ or 'satire', even 'parody' (if the intent was humour).

The spirit of art is to create an illusion. To call Genpets a hoax, would be like looking at paintings from a few hundred years ago and calling them a hoax, as they depicted people, that weren't actually there. Oh wait... people did say that. Calling something a hoax, as virgil wong pointed out to me in a recent email "also makes it sound purely malicious -- as opposed to an honest, humorous, or creative investigation of sometimes absurd possibilities".

Those paintings I speak of, that look pretty now, were also many times highly charged with political discourse, depending on who was standing in the painting, and where.

Hence we have politically charged art, whether it simply looks pretty to you now from the standpoint of a modern viewer.

So I find it amusing that the same thing still comes up now, art is here to push boundaries, but when it does, people get a little edgy. History does repeat itself. But that tells me I'm on the right track.

I also have to question why TV, film, and books can be regarded as forms of entertainment but art cannot. Perhaps it just hasn’t been done enough and it’s time to break that misconception?

(ps, thanks SJW on I-am bored. I noticed that). and Thanks to Snopes for doing such a nice writeup. (link)

Feel free to tell me I’m wrong, that’s what the comment system is there for.

Cuz I'm just that mental.

I haven't been keeping this site up to date lately, as I've been to busy working on everyone else's and sculpting. But this should allow me to update more often as it's much faster.

Why reinvent the wheel?
There are lots of blogging platforms after all. There's just something about having complete control, and knowing exactly how everything functions. Too many people are calling themselves web designers these days for doing nothing more than using moveable type (blog software) to create a website. Pet peeve of mine. Seeing someone charge $3000 to someone while all they did was use free software...
Plus this was just more fun, and it's the component of something larger I'm working on...

And as much as all me OCAD chums were like [huh?] it actually does have a lot to do with my sculpture. PHP (what this is written in) is based on C, and I'll be programming my next set of animatronics in C or C++ instead of basic. So the same basic theories behind the arrays that run this site, will make a future sculpture do motion tracking.

No it's not open source, but yes it will be used on other sites. Just need to make sure there's no bugs first. And clean up a few things.

The site will change looks once I have the engine running it looking good. I'm more worried about making everyone else's site look good and W3 Validated rather than my own.

What's new?
-Comments!! There are now over 150 journal entries and not a single darn comment on any. So I'll give ya $5 if you make one! Plus it's spiffy. I added cookies so it'll remember you and a java preview.
Also categories, and an RSS feed most notably.