Pete's Eats

I have adventure in my blood – always have had. Unfortunately, my adventures have remained (so far) on this side of tame and I have had to resort to reading about other people whilst they battle with their particular ‘mountain’.

In years gone by I have been an avid climber, snowboarder and mountaineer but since the interweb came along and I found myself with a ‘proper’ job those things have sadly taken a rather distant back-seat.

Anyway, Ben Saunders has taken on the mantel of pioneering British exploration and adventure in recent years and is now planning his next big one – walking from the edge of Antarctica to the South Pole and back again. In a superb move he is offering the opportunity for anyone to sponsor a mile and contribute to the expedition fund – in return you’ll get your name on the sled that he’ll be using plus a few other bits and bobs you can read about on his beautifully designed site. The expedition is being called SOUTH

Antarctica is one of the places I would love to visit someday so I shall be watching the progress of the planning and then execution of this exped with much interest.

Best of luck to Ben (both with the exped and the unique way of raising funds) and the rest of the SOUTH team…

Technorati Tags: SOUTH

I wanted to see just how much math and animation my 6680 could cope with (with Flash Lite) so I put together this file to work it out. It uses an old hit detection fla converted for Flash Lite use so fitted the bill perfectly.

4 bouncing balls at high quality are about the limits of acceptability I think. Obviously, if you drop the quality to medium or low then you could have more on the stage. There are sample Flash Lite files out there already that allow you to examine the handset capabilities but I prefer to be a bit hands-on and just try stuff out. Anyway, you can download the file by clicking on the link below:

I’m happy to email the .fla file to anyone who wants to play with this file. Email me and I’ll send it straight back to you…

UPDATE: After some discussion in the comments section of this entry I’ve produced a new version of the file with the fps calculator from the Flash Lite 1.1 CDK (which was originally converted from Colin’s fps calc file). Download the new version here.

On the 6680 I’m getting about 8.5 frames per second with it…

Technorati Tags: flash lite

Rawfish Software have produced a multiuser server product for Flash and Java. The best bit is that it supports the use of Flash Lite and J2ME. It comes in Mac OSX, Linux/Unix and Windows flavours too.

I’m going to install the 30 user free license on our server and have a play with it by building a Flash Lite chat app. I know there’s already one out there, but I just want to experiment around a bit with the Flash Lite API that ships with the server.

BTW, there’s a couple more simple Flash Lite apps I’m working on that I’ll post up here soon as well…

Technorati Tags: flash lite

Those of you who came to my session at the recent Flash Forward Conference in New York will have seen me bang a very basic Flash Lite game of “Rock, Paper, Scissors” together on stage. I think I said that I’d tart it up a bit and put it up on my site, but if I forgot in the heat of the moment then sorry! I should have… :!

You can download the swf on the link below, but please note it is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License England & Wales.

Also, please note you will need a copy of the Flash Lite player from Macromedia running on your compatible mobile handset in order to play the game.

The game is very basic and I welcome people remixing it as long as they observe the rules of the CC license. If you’d like to play around with it then please send me an email requesting the .fla file and I’ll send it back to you.

Download the game:

Technorati Tags: flash lite

Yay!, At last, there is a new version of iSync that allows syncing between your mac and your Nokia 6680. Version 2.1 was released yesterday or today and adds a number of new devices to the compatibility list…

On a separate note, this handset is awesome for Flash Lite development. My handset has the new version OS on it and runs Flash Lite apps like a dream. Animations and alpha fades don’t stutter at all.

Also, for those of you who asked for my presentation source at the recent Flash Forward NY, you can download a QT movie of it here. If I spoke to you at Flash Forward and you’ve mailed me since then please be assured I shall be in contact over the next few days…

Technorati Tags: flash lite

What a week. I left London on Tuesday for New York and woke on Thursday morning to the news that London had been the target of yet more terrorists. The outpouring of empathy on US television has bordered on maniacal and made it all a little surreal. America is genuinely shocked at what happened it seems. As someone in my mid-thirties I remember very clearly the IRA bombings of London in the 80’s and 90’s and this kind of cross-Atlantic bonding just wasn’t around back then – but then also, I guess the recent attacks weren’t majority funded by some US citizens which must help a bit.

Cynical you say? Me? You bet.

Anyway, Flash Forward has been a blast. My session on Flash Mobile 101 was as low key as a presentation at these things can be. I met some very nice people in the process and that’s always a good thing. Ben is here as is Andy Hood from AKQA (two other Brighton lads) and the $21 (!!) cocktails have been flowing at 44 – a nice Phillipe Starck designed hotel/bar on 44th Street between 5th and 6th. Well, it’s not everyday you get to hang out in NY with such inspiring people is it? Unless you live here of course…

Highlight of the week has to be a visit to see the Broadway show, Spamalot.

I’ve been very quiet in the online world of late and I suspect that this may continue for a while but things are afoot in the background and I shall be posting more info on that in due course…

Over and out (for now).