Archive for July, 2009

The Boots Situation

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

Well still no luck getting my boots back from the guys at Small Planet in Queenstown. As I have said in a previous post, I dropped them in as they were a little worse for wear and they said they would bring them to a local boot repair shop somewhere in town. But it turns out that the bloke who works in the repair shop has gone to hospital and since he’s the only guy who works there the whole place has been shut down until further notice.  Not good for the relationship between me and snowboarding.

One of my housemates, remembered that there was a pair of boots hanging around somewhere in the house. She fished them out for me and they fit perfectly and they are a really nice pair of Burton boots, all I needed were some new laces. The guys in Small Planet hooked me up with a free pair of laces because I know them almost at a first name basis now as I’ve been in so many times asking about my boots! So at the end of the day, I now have boots and I can head up the mountain again! Plus my ribs are a lot better!

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Old College Project made with Macromedia Director

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

Back in 2002 – 2006 I studied Multimedia Programming/Multimedia Systems at the Institute of Art Design and Technology in Dun Laoghaire, Dublin,  Ireland. The course taught us how to use many multimedia applications, one relic being Macromedia Director. Oh where is it now? Well taken over by Adobe for a start :)

For my final year project, I studied the differences between 2D and 3D simulations. I had to write a pretty large paper and create an application to demonstrate my findings. The amount of hours I put into this project would be far too many to count. Its a pity nobody uses Director anymore!

traffic-simulation-project

For my project I decided to focus on traffic simulation and I created this little interactive application. You’ll most likely need to install Adobe Shockwave to get this running! You can view junctions in 3d or 2d ( which was just a top down 3D view ), increase traffic density, rotate camera view in 3D and increase building height.

Its flawed I know, the cars turn into each other sometimes and the 2D view isn’t even true 2D, but lets just put that all aside!

Does anybody use Director anymore? let me know and post any links to anything you’ve developed with it!

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My Ribs and My Boots

Monday, July 6th, 2009

On Saturday I spent most of my day up at Coronet Peak snowboarding. It was a bit cloudy now and again but the snow was great. I also noticed a slight pain early on on the day on my left ribs but I didn’t really do anything about it, I just ignored it and ploughed on! Me and my girlfriend Trish hung around for night ski too, so it was an extra long day! On the last few runs it was very sore to bend down and do up my bindings and by the time I was on the bus back to Queenstown I was in bits! Had to get some bandages from the pharmacy too, which really helped hold them together with a slight bit of pressure! I have been told that there is really nothing you can do except to take it easy when your ribs are sore. So I decided to do a MacGyver on it and take care of them myself and if the pain didn’t go away, then I’d see a doctor!

Now that a few days have past they are much better, still a little bit of pain but no where in comparison to Saturday evening! So I have decided to give it a rest for a good few days and sort out some other stuff!

My snowboarding boots have gotten a little worse for wear so I brought them back to Small Planet (the shop where i bought them in) and they were happy to send them to the repair shop free of charge. Two of the laces are almost broken and another fully broke, I just tied a knot to join it back together last week! Also the velcro strap on one of the snapped! Anyhoo, look forward to getting them back so I can head up to The Remarkables again, my last session up there was last Friday and it was brilliant!

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