Image from Wetsand.com’s surf forecaster. December 2009. The color indicates wave height, and the blobs indicate massive storms the size of the Australian continent.

I dont know if this is normal. But if global warming continues, I have a feeling these little red dots are only going to get bigger and bigger, and hurricane katrina was only the beginning.

Until then, surfs up.

This was the best gift I could have asked for. I perfected my matrix conversion function in R, now with dynamic variable assignment!! You can tell it works because it goes from FALSE to TRUE, as indicated by the screenshot. Sweet.

Been up all night workin on Dr. Marc Wittmann’s data. Sleepy.

Spent 2 hours today playing with Paulus site’s css. css can suck. Im compensating for its weaknesses with some javascripting.. 1 week in, and IT madness is going strong

Site:2 hours
Marc’s Data: 7 hours!

Whew! This is my first fully php website. Its way cleaner and more efficient to use php. Each page renders the entire “theme” (all the links, images, css, html) in only 5 lines!! Now thats lightweight coding. I need to make the flash part next.

http://research.davidderiso.com/paulusweb/index.php

Worked on it over the past 2 days, which is about 10 hours..

Woooooo hoooooo! Irrefutable proof that this site is useful. Sweet.

This is a video on how body parts are grown with stem cells. There are 2 strategies:

1. Build a part from scratch (using a mold)
2. Make the body regrow its own parts (with a chemical that fetuses use to regrow parts before birth)

I highly recommend watching this. It is the future of medicine as we know it.

Props to Robert Koehler for sharing this!

IT Madness continues.

Here, I have spent the day designing the feel of the new website. It looks bad ass.

The chemical structures are for methamphetamine, lorazepam, and cocaine. Sweet.

The font is Agrafa-hairline. Its free at myfonts.com

…hundreds of revisions. Simple is difficult to achieve.

13 hours!

Thats right, I stayed up all night. 839 lines of code later, I finished the php script that scores Zuckerman’s Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS). The SSS is a neat inventory that basically quantifies how gnarly you are. Zuckerman (1979) has a different percentile distribution because he had a different sample size, it was a different era, and he was in Europe. Dr. Paulus has resampled his inventory with 3000 people, in this era, and in California! So, the results that you get from this application are actually VERY good!!!!

Enjoy!

http://research.davidderiso.com/survey/SSS.html

By the way, I’m apparently off the deep end of Sensation Seeking, I am in the 99.4th percentile. Swweet!

Here’s my data:

This took 9 hours and knocks off the second project I have completed for IT Madness!!

This here script does what everybody’s been looking for. A simple flash webcam app that uploads images from your webcam to the web. It also lets you download the image you just took.

Here’s a working demo.

Here’s the source files.

Here’s how it works:

1. The flash code creates the camera and takes the picture as bitmapdata
2. This bitmapdata is fed into a jpeg encoder (in the flash app)
3. The encoded jpeg is then pushed out of flash into a php script on your server
4. The php script saves a copy on the server and then pops up a download link

Here is the code:

AS3:

	package  {

		import fl.controls.Button;
		import fl.controls.TextArea;
		import flash.display.LoaderInfo;
		import flash.display.BitmapData;
		import flash.display.Bitmap;
		import flash.display.MovieClip;
		import flash.display.Stage;
		import flash.display.StageAlign;
	        import flash.display.StageScaleMode;	
		import flash.events.MouseEvent;
		import flash.events.StatusEvent;
		import flash.geom.Matrix;
		import flash.media.Camera;
		import flash.media.Video;
		import flash.net.navigateToURL;
		import flash.net.URLRequest;
		import flash.net.URLLoader;
	        import flash.net.URLRequestHeader;
	        import flash.net.URLRequestMethod;
		import flash.utils.ByteArray;
		import com.adobe.images.JPGEncoder;


		public class WebCamUploader extends MovieClip {

			// public Properties:
			public var spinner:Spinner;
			public var video:Video;
			public var camera:Camera;
			public var bitmap:Bitmap;
			public var bitmapData:BitmapData;
			public var snapShot:BitmapData;
			public var xVar:Number;
			public var yVar:Number;
			public var inventoryName:String;

			public function WebCamUploader() { 
				configUI();
			}

			public function configUI():void {
				stage.scaleMode = StageScaleMode.NO_SCALE;
				stage.align = StageAlign.TOP_LEFT;

				inventoryName_txt.text = "enter part # here";

				spinner = new Spinner();
				spinner.x = 214 - spinner.width >> 1;
				spinner.y = 255 - spinner.height - 40 >> 1;

				uploadPic.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_UP, uploadPhoto, false, 0, true);
				deletePic.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_UP, deletePhoto, false, 0, true);
				takePic.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_UP, takeSnapShot, false, 0, true);

				connectCamera();
			}

			public function connectCamera():void {
				camera = Camera.getCamera();
				camera.setQuality(0, 100);
				camera.setMode(500, 500, 5, true);

				xVar = (500 - camera.width)/2;
				yVar = 26 + (500 - camera.width)/2;

				if (camera != null) {
	                video = new Video(camera.height, camera.width);
					video.attachCamera(camera);
					video.x = xVar;
					video.y = yVar;
					addChild(video);

					camera.addEventListener(StatusEvent.STATUS, onCameraStatus, false, 0, true);

					size_txt.text = "h: "+ camera.height + " w: " + camera.width + " fps: 5";
	            } else {
	                //handleError(false, "Error, You need a camera.");
	            }
			}

			public function onCameraStatus(p_event:StatusEvent):void {
				camera.removeEventListener(StatusEvent.STATUS, onCameraStatus);

				switch (p_event.code) {
					case "Camera.Muted":
						//handleError(false, "Error, Camera not found or denied. Unable to use Application. \nTo allow the Camera, reload the page.");
					case "Camera.Unmuted":
						// Camera accepted and Successfull;
						break;
				}
			}

			public function takeSnapShot(event:MouseEvent):void {

				snapShot = new BitmapData(video.width, video.height);
				snapShot.draw(video, new Matrix());
				bitmapData = snapShot;
				bitmap = new Bitmap(snapShot,"auto", true);

				bitmap.x = xVar;
				bitmap.y = yVar;

				addChild(bitmap);			
			}

			public function deletePhoto(event:MouseEvent):void {
				removeChild(bitmap);
			}

			public function uploadPhoto(event:MouseEvent):void {
				showSpinner(true);
				uploadPhotoPhp();
			}

			public function uploadPhotoPhp():void {

				var jpgEncoder:JPGEncoder = new JPGEncoder(85);
				var jpgStream:ByteArray = jpgEncoder.encode(bitmapData);
				var header:URLRequestHeader = new URLRequestHeader("Content-type", "application/octet-stream");

				if (inventoryName_txt.text == "enter part # here")
				{
					inventoryName = "part";
				}else
				{
					inventoryName = inventoryName_txt.text;
				}

				var jpgURLRequest:URLRequest = new URLRequest("jpg_encoder_download.php?name="+inventoryName+".jpg");

				jpgURLRequest.requestHeaders.push(header);
				jpgURLRequest.method = URLRequestMethod.POST;
				jpgURLRequest.data = jpgStream;
				navigateToURL(jpgURLRequest, "_blank");
				showSpinner(false);
				removeChild(bitmap);
			}

			public function showSpinner(p_loading:Boolean):void {
				if(p_loading) {
					addChild(spinner);
					spinner.play();
				} else {
					removeChild(spinner);
					spinner.stop();
				}
			}


		}
	}

PHP:

<?php

if ( isset ( $GLOBALS["HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA"] )) {
	
	date_default_timezone_set('PST');
	$today = date("M-j-Y-H-i-s");
	
	$filename = $_GET['name'];
	
	if ($filename == "part.jpg")
	{
		$filename = "part-".$today.".jpg";
	}
	
	$filepath = "../parts/".$filename;
	
	// get bytearray
	$im = $GLOBALS["HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA"];
	
	// add headers for download dialog-box
	header('Content-Type: image/jpeg');
	header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=".$filename);
	
	$fd = fopen($filepath,"w");
	fputs($fd,$im);
	fclose($fd);
	
	echo $im;
	
}  else echo 'An error occured.';

?> 

Credits:

Webcam AS3 code adapted from GK Sinner and Adobe: link

Encoding and passing the bitmap data to PHP for download adapted from Henry Jones: link

The rest was figured out by experimentation.

Sweeeeeeeet!!! Just fixed a ton of bugs and made it look awesomer.

Improvements:

1. Wrote a flash webcam image uploader that automatically save the image from your webcam to the proper item in the database (AS3 kicks ass!!). This addressed the issue of how to allow anyone to put images in the database. This is sustainable, so when Im gone, the next guy can keep the database strong
2. Resized columns, such as the Description column, so I can record more stuff, like IPs
3. Improved the database updater GUI so its more user friendly
4. Created an Iframe link on the lab’s site so people have access

Total of 13 hours!

Here’s the webcam uploader:

heres the actual database browser

heres the database updater (i designed it to look like a spreadsheet):