Some example of concepts and projects that I was working on in 2006.
Quartz Composer
Is a visual programming environment on the Apple Mac. It is an effective and immediate way to do graphics in Open GL.
I have been building visualizations in it using RSS feeds as data sources.
And doing animation like animated snow using particle effects.
Ruby on Rails
Ruby is an object oriented programming language coming from Japan. Ruby on Rails is an application framework for building web -sites.I was looking at using Ruby on Rails for building a web moderation system for data stored in a SQL database for a visualisation idea.
Game Programming
I was doing some work in C++ using the PTK game development library from www.phelios.com/ptk
I had been working on creating my own game objects classes. At the moment, there are 3 characters on screen and pressing tab cycles through the characters. They can be moved around using the arrow keys on the keyboard. Pressing the space bar brings up a targeting line from the current game object to the mouse cursor.
And pressing space again will start a particle stream of bitmaps playing out. I obtained some examples code snippets of particle systems and modified them to work with the animation class and PTK library.
What I am going to do next is add support for reading in floor map descriptions for displaying the game levels.
Java
Prior to working on the C++ code; I had been doing some Java work with the aim gaining experience using the 2D graphics API. I created a simple banner applet that renders my name using the text capabilities of the API and displays some animations of some clouds using PNG files moving across the screen. Note: the gradient fill for the background.
Mobile phones and WAP
I have been doing some collaboration with Jayne Jordan a London based Jeweler.
I created a small WAP site as an example for her. Using a WAP browser go to the following URL
www.manjitbedi.com/JJJ
If you want to speak to Jayne about Jewelry; her email address is jaynejjeweller _at_ yahoo _._ com
Google Maps
One of the things that I have been interested in doing is adding maps to my travelogues and photo albums. I had been experimenting with web-sites that generate maps for you and also allow you to mark points with longitude and latitude coordinates.
A friend said to me to me the other day back in 2006 why don't I use Google Maps. I had a look and it was really quite straightforward to do. You do need to know some java script. On the map in this example, there are 3 markers and a line indicating the journey I took from Forli to Roma and then to Bari.
To try the map out for real click here. This will take you to another section of my web-site. Click on the "markers" and see what happens.
Very nifty indeed.