from the fantastic patterns of dreams to the surrealistic behaving of reality

written in Dinglish (that's Germanic English)

N�rnberg, Mittelfranken, 2005-06-19 - 3:47 a.m.

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Resurrection of an old school clock

I wonder whether it works - today I want to put a flash animation in my diary, just to test whether it works, well not only - I did some flash animation & of course I want to show it to people, because what else you do an flash animation or movie for, than to show it to people.

On the other hand it's nothing so interesting, but at least it moves - & when you did it, you're proud of it, because you made it move - that's the creator feeling..

My friend Sandra has a 7 year old daughter, which last falls started her first school year - Sandra had just started a company for office services & wanted also to offer web design - but it was me, who should do the web design - I did some websites before - so she went to the principal of that school, her daughter was in & offered him, we would do the website for his school - for free - she told me, that we'd need a site to show to future customers as example - but it was me, who should do the site, she doesn't know anything about html or javascript or flash etc. - hesitatingly I agreed, for she had already promised to the principal & I'm in very friendish relations with her. But - argh - she doesn't know, what it means, to make a website for a school - that's an endless story - I knew at once, that there would be all the time a lot of changes to be done.

I told her so & we agreed, that for future changings, addings etc. would cost a monthly fee - for I wouldn't sign in an contract to eternity for nothing.

I went with her to that school to make some foto shootings - I fotographed from the outside, inside the 'Aula' etc. - & I detected an old big brass clock hanging there & made some shots of it too.

Later at home - when I had developed these pictures - of course I didn't develop them, because I have a digicam & just copied them to my PC & watched this school brass clock closer - hmm - what could I make out of it - the idea fascinated me, that maybe I could make it alive - make the hands of it move - oohm - hard work - maybe in flash? - the idea fascinated me for some days, but I could hardly figure out, how to do it - I'd need a timer function, that every second or minute would move each hand to a certain step of graduation degree - the good thing in flash is, that you can have independent layers of moveable items - so the crossing & moving of the hands about the background clock would be no problem - it was some grafik pixel fine work to cut out the single minute & hour hands & a picture of the clock without any hands at all as background - the clock in the school had no hand for seconds, so I made a copy of the minute pointer, made it smaller & put some red pixels in it - not too much, that it also looked old like the rest of the clock -

So the whole clock is nothing but the picture of the clock as background & the 3 hands as single pictures, totally centered, that move by a timer function in grades (of 360 - that's the full radius) of 5, because 360 degree divided by 60 seconds (or minutes) is 5. so after it wasn't too hard to acclompish - the hardest work was to find the functions I needed in flash, because I just started flash learning last summer, with long breaks between & am still an adept in flash.

But let's see, whether diaryland allows to embed my animated clock.







the funny thing was: when I went recently with Sandra to the school principal, to talk about the menues & contents, I noticed, that this old brass clock didn't work anymore - & the principal told me, since a long time.. - & I even gave it a second hand!

Aah it worked (I write this in re-editing) - you really can put flash in diaryland - & I'm proud of me - & you should slap me on my shoulders!

I wrote another flash thing, a little chess puzzle (the puzzle wasn't invented by me) you'll find on my future site www.byte-the-orange.de - here you can take the knight with your mouse & put it on a square of the chess field, then have to put it on every single square, without stepping on the same again & doing this exactly 64-times..

but this site is still under construction - the puzzle game should only be a small part of it..

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