Flash supports XML. Consultants and project managers support Excel. Have you ever wished that either Excel or any other spreadsheet application, or any other application for that matter, had a decent exporter for XML data? Not that proprietary-Microsoft-not-terribly-W3C-compliant-type, but real, simple, proper XML? Well I have, and instead of waiting for it I decided to create a small Flash application that certainly helps!
Not many desktop applications export XML at all, but make that CSV (Comma Separated …something) and quite a few do. A typical CSV export from an Excel spreadsheet could look like this:
Now wouldn’t you much rather have that data formatted a little more like this?
Nice and tidy - and best of all; Flash supports it natively!
No more talk. Head here: http://www.oyvindnordhagen.com/flashdev/csvtoxml/
Published on Thursday, November 22, 2007
in Flashdev and Mac.
Mølen is quite a special looking place. It is a sort of beach made of millions of round rocks that were dragged by ice from the mountains of Norway during the meltdown of the ice age. The lengthy process of getting the rocks here also shaped and polished them. The types of rock you can find here are of large variation, but they all share the same basic shape with few sharp corners if any. According to an information plate the area took shape around 300 million years ago when Norway was situated near Equator. Imagine that..
For any photographer this is a rewarding trip and I wish I could have spent even more time there today. The landscape is quite unique and on an overcast day like today, the light can be in your favor.
The images here were developed roughly by the same process. Because of the harsh skylight I duplicated the base layer twice and applied a mask for the highlight and shadow areas respectively. The shadow layer’s blend mode was set to “Lighten” and the highlight’s to “Multiply”. Then the base layer was duplicated once more and given a gaussian blur of 20px and that layer’s blend mode set to overlay. Image flattened and last exposure adjustments applied. The image at the top was left untouched from camera by the way. I wanted a totally honest one there to show you exactly how the place looks. EXIF was roughly the same for all images so I’ll include the data for the first one here:
EXIF, Model: NIKON D200
EXIF, Lens focal length: 10.0 mm
EXIF, Exposure time: 1/125 s
EXIF, ISO speed rating: 400EXIF, White balance: Cloudy
EXIF, Flash: Flash did not fire.
EXIF, Exposure program: Normal program
EXIF, Exposure method: Auto exposure
EXIF, Exposure bias: 0.0
EXIF, Metering mode: Pattern
EXIF, Date and time of original data generation: 2007:11:18 14:03:16
File Format: JPEG/JFIF Rotation corrected (EXIF tag)
…or «Yet another case of out of luck sleeping», or «The disadvantages of being inspired», oh and not to forget a really good album by Norwegian band Madrugada.
It’s the same for the 4000nd time; I’m in bed trying to fall asleep, but can’t because I keep thinking about all the things I want to be doing. So I put on a pair of baggy trousers, go downstairs and brew myself a cup of coffee (decaf of course, pointless product I know), put some piece of cloth under the keyboard to keep the misses happy and start browsing the interweb.
Mostly it’s about work because (un)luckily for me my work is also a hobby of mine. I’m sure many of you know what I’m on about; it’s the hours from 9pm-ish and onward that are the most mentally active for me when it comes to reflecting on the many possibilities that come with being a semi-pro Flash developer. Som much to learn, try and investigate. So much I could create that I haven’t tried. That new Built-in object in the freshest version of the Flash Player sure looks like fun, and maybe I should get that Mac Mini and install it by the TV to use as a Media Center. The possibilities of new knowledge to aquire are endless and the ideas keep coming. That’s when I turn from staring at the ceiling to stuffing my face in the pillow and back again for the tenth time and ultimately decide I should have gotten out of bed 45 minutes ago.
Specificly tonight I started thinking about stuff I want to write about on this blog. So here’s a list of things to expect in the future:
- A guide collecting all the experiences I’ve had trying to set up a Mac-based Media Center. Some time ago I published a tutorial of sort on mac1.no, but that might be getting outdated and it’s in Norwegian.
- An article about a framework for large Flash applications I’ve been working on.
- Some thoughts on the problem of explainig what I do for a living. I seem to be working «with computers and stuff» as people tend to put it.
- A tutorial on subscribing to RSS feeds so I can get faster into people’s heads with my blog posts
Some of this might never see the light of day, but fingers x’ed!
