An archive of our old posts.
A simple update to the widget I made for the Category Tagging plugin: you now specify the parameters for the tag cloud in the widget control. Download the widget.
Technorati Tags:
developing, php, wordpress, widgets
Real quick post for really quickly knocked up widget. So I decided to stop using categories as categories and use them as tags; much more straightforward. I'm using the Category Tagging plugin which is really neat and works really well. However, I wanted to use it a widget. So here is my first widget: all it does is grab the cloud from the Category Tagging plugin and display it. It needs all the Category Tagging plugin options connecting to the widget control interface rather than being hard coded; but it works! Here is the CSS I used (I put it at the bottom of the stylesheet)
[CSS]
padding: 0;
margin: 0;}
display: inline;
list-style: none;
background-image: none;
padding: 0;
margin: 0;}
background-image: none;
padding: 0;
margin: 0;}
[/CSS]
Technorati Tags:
developing, php, wordpress, widgets
When I am not mucking about with Quartz Composer and interesting electronic bits and bobs, I work as a web developer. I came across a problem recently where some of the work I was doing on one site affected another on the same server. As I wasn't watching the log files of the other server, I was unaware of the problem - not good!
PHP has functions built in for dealing with errors, but these don‘t extend to Fatal Errors and Parse Errors. What to do? The Apache error log mechanism where the PHP errors end up can cope with being given a program instead of a file. So some dubious shell scripting later, I now have a program that appends the result to the correct error file as usual, but also checks to see if the error contains either of the strings ’PHP Parse‘ or ’PHP Fatal' and if so, emails the error to me.
Problem solved - instant notification (contact me if you want the script)!
SteamSHIFT out.
Technorati Tags:
osx, server, developing, php, error
This one stumped me for a bit … If you are using a Javascript Patch in Quartz Composer, watch out for the fact that if the inputs aren‘t changing, it doesn’t process. The way around this is simply to add a ‘Patch Time’ node, connecting it to another input on the Javascript Patch. You don't even need to reference it in the javascript.
SteamSHIFT out.
Technorati Tags:
quartz composer, tutorial, osx, experiments, javascript
Based on an experiment by Sam Kass (BTW check out his compositions - some very useful stuff there), here is a simple but useful quartz composer clip (put it in /Library/Application Support/Apple/Quartz Composer/Clips) that takes 2 images and makes the second one the same size as the first.
Technorati Tags:
quartz composer, mac, osx, experiments, clip, macro
I have been playing on and off with SoundFlower but not had huge success until now when I have finally managed to get it to do what I want (sort of).
Basically, I just wanted to route the sound output from iTunes into Quartz Composer and also be able to hear it. For some reason I couldn't get it to work. Since the release of SoundFlowerBed version 1.1, I can achieve what I set out to do.
My setup is this:
Easy as pie. The only thing I haven't worked out how to do is output to 2 sound output sources at the same time. Any thoughts?
NB: Detour doesn't work with Garageband, but with a bit of messing you can get it to output correctly via SoundFlower.
SteamSHIFT out.
Technorati Tags:
VJ, quartz composer, mac, osx, experiments
Experiment - using bass response from sound input to distort an image. Adjust the ‘Smooth Factor’ on the handy ‘Smooth a single value’ macro to get the best response (needs this or the response is too frenetic!)
Technorati Tags:
VJ, quartz composer, osx, experiments
NB: You apparently need to reimport the 2 flash movies into the composition and link them as QC seems to be having difficulty with relative paths or some such.
SteamSHIFT out.
This started life as a little part of another test I was doing, but it stumped me for a little while, so I thought I'd post it.
It‘s also quite neat because it shows how you can use flash animations directly within Quartz Composer. I saved mine out as Flash 4 SWF files and they work fine. It’s a shame we can‘t access all the goodies that ActionScript 2 has to offer; hey ho. While we are at it, one of the neat things about flash is that it will directly import animated gifs (which QC doesn’t); I brought the one I was using in, and used flash to trace the bitmap. I could then select all the stuff on the page and give it a white fill. Then I have 2 flash movies, both on black backgrounds, 1 with the character, the other just the filled outline of the character.
In Quartz Composer, I was doing some stuff with a sprite and I wanted to use a movie with no background. First up, there is no mask image input on a sprite, so you have to use ‘render in image’ with a billboard inside that (make sure you have a Clear node in there as well!), connected to the image input of the sprite. The other gotcha, is that you need to connect the mask image through a ‘Mask To Image’ node in order to get the desired mask.
Click the image above for an example composition.
SteamSHIFT out.
Technorati Tags:
quartz composer, tutorial, osx, motion graphics, experiments
