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DAE Cleaner for Papervision3D

At long last, I have posted version 1.0 of my DAECleaner Adobe AIR application, expressly designed to help you strip out the extraneous XML from within your Collada/DAE files. Continue reading...

Zipped DAE Class for Papervision3D

In my on-going quest to improve load times when dealing with Collada (DAE) models in Papervision3D, I decided to write a DAE file cleaner (or optimizer) in Adobe AIR that will remove extraneous information from the DAE file that Papervision3D ignores anyway. Continue reading...

Playing around with Adobe Social Beta

Just got around to checking out the new Adobe Social beta, and it's a pretty neat service. It will be interesting to see what they charge for it when it's released. Continue reading...

Nova Scotia Road Trip 2007

I'm pretty excited, I was going through some old folders on my computer last night, organizing things, and I found these pictures from when Heather and I drove to Nova Scotia in July 2007. Continue reading...

Papervision3D Shadowcaster Test

I put together a quick test of Andy Zupko's Papervision3D Shadowcaster class, seems to work pretty good, nice and fast at least in this trivial test. Continue reading...

Amsterdam / Belgium Trip 2009

Heather and I just got back from a week in Europe, we went to Amsterdam, checked some stuff out there, then went down to Belgium on a EuRail train to visit a friend. Continue reading...

Prototype "ExtendAD" for CTV Holiday Rewind

For my day job at CTV, we recently had a Holiday Rewind promotion, where we brought back old episodes of popular shows to our video player. Continue reading...

Papervision3D Racing Game

Was messing around with Papervision3D and JiglibFlash, and managed to build out this simple Formula 1 Racing game prototype. Continue reading...

Seasons Greetings 2009!

Just wanted to take a minute to say Happy Holidays to everyone out there, hope you enjoy the little christmas scene (left) that I put together this afternoon for the launch of the new site. Continue reading...

New and Improved Site!

Welcome to my newly redesigned and greatly improved website. After numerous revisions over too many years to count, I finally have a complete, SEO-friendly, Back-button loving, Flash accentuated website which should make updating things much easier in the long haul. Continue reading...

Replacing our dodgey fence with a hedge

We wanted to get rid of the ugly, rotting fence in front of our place, so we did some checking around and decided to get a cedar hedge put in, instead of another fence. Sure, they require maintenance and upkeep, but I think the benefits outweigh the work involved in keeping it up. It'll give us more privacy, cut down on road noise, and should stop a lot of garbage from accumulating in the previously unused corner of our lot. Continue reading...

AIR Follow-up: Daily Discovery Desktop Widget

Just a follow-up to my previous post regarding Adobe AIR, my first real application is being deployed by the Discovery Channel (Canada), check it out and let me know what you think! Continue reading...

What is the problem with wind power?

So they are trying to put up some devices which measure the wind (anemometer) in Lake Ontario just off of Scarborough, and the residents are apparently up in arms. I don't really understand what problems people have with wind power, but I'd like to address a couple of claims the naysayers have been using to prevent the development from going ahead. Continue reading...

Adobe AIR is great stuff!

Been diving into Adobe AIR pretty heavily lately, just for some personal projects which will be unveiled in a new few weeks, and I gotta say it's a great way to put together small desktop apps. Continue reading...

Spring House Photo!

The plants and shrubs are all coming into bloom, making for a pretty nice photo! Continue reading...

Creating h264 Video for Flash using Premiere Pro

Just a quick post to point you all to a new HOWTO I just posted, it's quick and dirty but shows you the settings you need to use in Premiere Pro to get valid h264 video for Flash 9+, using Premiere Pro CS3. Continue reading...

New Video Players released

Over here at my new gig at the CTV Digital Media Group, I'm working with the development team building out CTV's new online video players, which will get deployed across most of CTV's properties. Continue reading...

What the hell is "Progressive Progressing"?

So I got a promotional email from Amazon today, recommending some items they thought I should buy, which, you know, I really appreciate. Continue reading...

Canadian DMCA protest tomorrow!

I just read on BoingBoing that tomorrow (December 8th, 2007) is going to be pretty much our last chance as Canadians to avert the disaster that has become known as the "Canadian DMCA". Continue reading...

Changing it up - new house!

Heather and I just bought a new house! We close December 10th - more photos coming up! Continue reading...

NBC Direct Player in action

As most of you probably don't know, I was the front-end/UI developer behind the flash player that NBC ended up using for their beta NBC Direct service. Continue reading...

New Experiments

I've been working quite a bit on the site as of late, and have added a few experiements. Continue reading...

Early 2007 News and Updates

Wow, I can't believe a whole year has gone by without me doing a single update to my own site. How embarrassing! Continue reading...

Mustaches for Kids - update!

So far - two pledges, bring the pledged total to $35 - and a complete total of $70 with my matched contributions! Continue reading...

Mustaches for Kids

This year, it's fundraising for the kids! Continue reading...

Updates!!

Well, it's been awhile since I posted any news here, and when I realized that, I felt bad that I haven't been keeping you all updated (not like anyone actually reads this!). So, without further ado, here's the latest... Continue reading...

GBStv

So, I found this interesting community-based internet tv station via the awful forums the other day, and had to check it out, considering my own plans for Ross-O-Vision. Continue reading...

Mac OSX on x86

So, I finally managed to "acquire" the magical files to run Mac OSX on a PC. As an avid user of VMWare, the download I got worked well, since it was a straight virtual machine image out of VMWare v5. Continue reading...

Forum styled (finally!!)

So, I have been running a phpBB forum for about five years now, and I finally just got around to integrating it (style-wise) into my site. Continue reading...

Toronto Weather Flash Applet

Well, now that I have pretty much implemented this redesign, and gotten everything working, I had a chance to adapt the weather portion of the AKHBN to be a standalone weather forecast plug-in. Continue reading...

Javascript is the new black (again)!

So, after discovering FlashObject the other day, I've been realizing that in the past few years, while I've been completely ignoring Javascript, it's developed into a very powerful beast for building web applications, especially retrieving data from a server or otherwise changing the page without initiating a page refresh in the user's browser. Continue reading...

Need Some Sample Text?

If you're looking for some sample text to pad out a few paragraphs while doing some design, you may find a Lorem Ipsum paragraph generator handy. The following text was generated from their system. Continue reading...

Learning Flash!

For those of you out there who want to learn Flash, here's a few of my favourite resources (see related content). Continue reading...

Banner Images

Depending on what your browser supports, you may or may not realize all the interesting things about the banner graphics running on this site. Of course, you may have recognized them as small selection of photos I took during my time in New Zealand. Better than having ads up there! Continue reading...

Everyone Loves Robots!

A large team of oceanographers is again exploring 'Lost City,' an hydrothermal vent field located in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, which was discovered in 2000 and named like this because of the myth of Atlantis. But this time, the oceanographers are not on a ship. Most of them are in a room at the University of Washington in Seattle. Continue reading...

Your time? Not anymore!

The U.S. National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has ruled to ban off-duty worker 'fraternization,' at the employer's discretion. So getting together for a beer after work can now be prohibited by the boss. Continue reading...

First post!

Well, I guess this is the first post using this new content management system. I think the site is coming along pretty well - but if you notice any errors feel free to let me know via the contact form. Continue reading...

Christmas 2003

Here's a photo of our living room with the whole Christmas setup. You just need to imagine snow outside ;) Continue reading...

New Member of the Family

Well everyone, we have a new addition to our new family - no, Heather hasn't had a baby, take a deep breath! Aside from our two cute chattes, we have just purchased a car: we like to call her Little Suzie ;) Continue reading...

Wedding Pictures posted!

Alright folks, all our good wedding pictures have been posted in our Gallery. Click the "Gallery" link on the left, then choose the "Wedding" category! Continue reading...

Home at last!

Well, Heather and I made it back to New Zealand safely. We both had a great time with the wedding and wanted to thank everyone who helped make it such a great day. We have lots of pictures of the event, and even some movie footage which we can make available in DVD or VHS format for those that are interested. Continue reading...

First MCSE Exam passed!

Well I wrote my first MCSE exam last Monday - stressful but in the end passed no problem. I guess that shows that the secret to successful exam taking is lots of preparation! You can view the status of my MCSE certification on this page (in the Mark section). Continue reading...

Bridal Registry Online

I put up an online bridal registry for our wedding on the site. You can find it under the Wedding page or just click here! Continue reading...

New Stuff

Posted some new stuff under my section of the site - the status of my MCSE training and will be adding some other additions soon! Continue reading...

Info about the Gallery

The photo gallery we have going here has some features for registered users. Feel free to register for a user account - you can post comments about pictures, rate pictures, and even make e-cards to send to people! Continue reading...

Wedding Information

If you are interested in any of the information regarding our upcoming wedding, please check the information page under the "Wedding" link to the left. As we know more, there will be more information posted. Otherwise just email either Heather or myself if you need to know something specific! Continue reading...

New Site for a New Start

This is the newly updated version of Heather and my web site. There will be lots of updates specifically relating to the upcoming wedding (August 31st, 2003), and I have installed some software called the "4Images" gallery PHP scripts. It seems like a better gallery script than my old one (not hard), and it lets Heather update her own pictures and whatnot, so I figure I'll get all my old pictures, and Heather's new ones, imported into that in the next few days. Continue reading...

Getting there...

I seem to have gotten a pretty quick handle on PHP. It's not as bad as I expected, almost like inline C scripting. Anyways, I've got the Portfolio back online and also done some updates to my resume. The photo gallery needs quite a bit of work as I have to rebuild the entire database now that I'm using MySQL. At least the coding part is easy, even if the data entry sucks... Continue reading...

Site Badly Broken!

Well, I got busted for running a server on my ADSL connection by my ISP. Not something I can really complain about since I wasn't supposed to be running it anyways. Such is life. Anyways the site is really messed up right now because I couldn't find an ASP Host cheap enough, so I've got to go through everything and convert it to PHP...joy! :-/ Continue reading...

Woohoo!

Firstly, I guess I should take this moment to wish everyone who visits this site a Happy New Year. I hope you all had a fun and safe holiday season (whatever your faith). Continue reading...

FTP access enabled

I managed to get the bare minimum of the FTP access going. Right now it provides you with the ability to download all the files we had up there previously, and you can upload a single file at a time to the "Uploads" folder ;) Continue reading...

Portfolio Updated (again!)...

I added some more information under the Web Sites area, regarding some of the bigger projects I've done. Should be adding some more programming stuff soon, but I also have to get the interface for the FTP running ;) Continue reading...

Photo Gallery Updated (finally!)...

I went through all the pictures I have taken since my last big update and added all the outstanding pictures. I think I have about 200 photos in the gallery now. Have a look ;) Continue reading...

Portfolio updated...

I didn't quite get everything I wanted to finished with my e-mail notifier, but I figured I'd post it anyways and move on to some of the other things. I also added some information about my HTTP Leacher and dtDNS IP Updater. Continue reading...

Changing the FTP for the forum...

I'm also working on an all-new web-based interface for the FTP that we use to share files. This should prevent unauthorized access and ensure that everyone has access to everything ;) It'll come online, slowly but surely (as with everything else)... Continue reading...

Working on my e-mail notifier (again!)

Word up - I got the Tooltip Balloons thingy's worked out, so you just know this is gonna be a slick one! Continue reading...

Working on my e-mail notifier

This is just an update to note that I have almost completed the first programming related item for my portfolio. This one is going to be an e-mail notifier that sits in my task bar and checks my various e-mail accounts. Wish I knew how to make those lil yellow pop-up balloons that XP uses so frequently...*sigh* Talk more soon! Continue reading...

This whole thing is a lot of work...

I managed to get my resume almost completed, but I'll have another look at it again soon and hopefully get it all cleaned up and polished. I also managed to re-use my code from the last site in the Gallery section so that was pretty easy to get going as well. I have a huge bunch of more pictures to add to the gallery as well, so this whole project should take awhile. Continue reading...

New Site!

Well, this looks pretty much like it'll be the new version of the site. Still hafta add some stuff here and there but I'll be working on that over the coming weeks (heh, have "I" said that before?) Continue reading...

We're going places!

Actually, we've already gone! I moved this site over under my DellHost account (thanks again Dad!) so I don't have to run Windows 2000 and IIS and all that stuff and host the site on my machine locally. Continue reading...

This sucks!

I never thought I'd say this, but it's too goddamn hot here. I am actually looking forward to returning to Canada and frolicking in the snow! Continue reading...

The Toolbar

Yeah so I added a weak-lookin' toolbar (for now) up top there to link all my sites together. Continue reading...

Whew!!!

Ok you guys, I've been busting my balls over here getting things going, and what are you all doing? Just sitting in front of your computers! You should be ashamed of yourselves! ;) Continue reading...

New Web App Added!

I know this doesn't relate to my normal site news, but I'm almost finished coding up a new web-based shared bookmark list for members of a forum (http://hardforum.com/forumdisplay.php?forumid=13) I hang out in. Continue reading...

What a weekend!

I had a great weekend visiting with my grandmother. Don't worry I got lots of pics, close to 40 I think. I'll try and get them processed and posted as soon as I can, but I'm a little wrapped up with two other projects right now. Continue reading...

A visitor from home

Well, my grandmother has arrived for a two week visit in New Zealand. We picked her up at the airport on Thursday morning, and today she and I are going to Waiheke Island (just off Auckland) for a wine tour. Apparently they make some good wine out there, but I'll be the judge of that ;) Continue reading...

My apologies

Sorry for the lack of updates to the site but I've been really busy with "real-world" stuff and haven't had time to do much that's worth sharing on the site. Continue reading...

Site tweaks and new features

I've fixed the clock on the main page to properly display the time - it was missing zeroes before. Also it's based on the 24hour clock, FYI. Continue reading...

New thingamajig added (that's the technical term)

For those of you that are not in NZ (ie. most of the readers), I've added a little time function on the homepage underneath the menu to the left, that will tell you what time it is here where I am compared to your local time. Continue reading...

Whistle while we work

Well I'm working on Feature 5: Rossman Visits Cape Reinga, as that was the last long one I had on my old site. Hopefully it will be online by tomorrow! Continue reading...

Gallery Updated!

The gallery (and Ross-O-Vision) has been updated with my photos from my trip out to Rangitoto. Also tried to improve the performance a bit for dial-up users. Let me know if it helped! Continue reading...

Rangitoto or Bust!

Well it was the former rather than the latter. I made it out to Rangitoto today, and I think I got too much sun Prob will have a bad sunburn. That'll teach me to forget sunscreen. Continue reading...

Clarification!

After having some interesting discussions about the use of DeCSS with one of my readers, I would like to clarify my position for all. Continue reading...

First Feature Added!

The first feature has been added to the server. Sorry that it's not particularly thrilling and is picture-less, but I felt it was necessary to include it for completeness. Continue reading...

Whew - Pics all Imported and Gallery Finished!

Ok, got the rest of the old pics imported to the site. Was a bit of doing but it's done now. The gallery is done as well and will be working on the features this weekend (i hope). Continue reading...

Almost forgot?

Whoa!! I almost forgot to piss off the MPAA with a sweet link to DeCSS. Since I'm not in the USA I don't have to worry about their silly laws. Unless they extradite me from New Zealand. Oh well, I takes me chances - decrypt your DVD's with THIS. I've got the source as well if anyone's interested. Maybe this will teach 'em to lay off everyone's favourite folks. Continue reading...

Almost there...

On the final stretch of importing all the pics into the new site. Just have the last batch from Aug. 26th to process through Photoshop and I can work on some new content (read: going on more adventures). Continue reading...

Coming Soon to a Browser Near You

Coming soon, will be the New Zealand trip of all trips. Planning has begun for an extensive tour of the southern part of the North Island, continuing to the South Island, and should range all the way down as far south as you can get, Stewart Island. Continue reading...

Ross-O-Vision™ Fully Functional

The Ross-O-Vision™ is now fully functional - clicking the "Zoom" button under the pic will now open a new window and display the photo at a higher resolution (640x480). Full resolution (1600x1200) pics will be coming online at some stage, if there is demand ;) Continue reading...

Random Ross-O-Vision™ Pictures

You'll notice that the Ross-O-Vision™ system now displays random thumbnails of the pics I've taken. Hope this makes the page a bit more interesting for ya! Continue reading...

Database Driven News Items

The news items are all stored in a database, and are served up to you at no extra charge :) Continue reading...

Old News baby, It's Old News

All of the old news items have been archived for the time being, but they'll be making a comeback once appropriately massaged to work into the new site ;) Continue reading...