the singularity of being and nothingness
existdissolve
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Posts by existdissolve
Coming Up for AIR
Mar 10th
(Please ignore the absurdity of the title-I couldn't help myself!)
A little over a week ago, Adobe officially released Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) 1.0 along with Flex 3 . While I've looked into a AIR a bit in conjunction with Flex apps, I've not really gone beyond that.
However, with the official release, I decided to take another look.
What is AIR? As the full name explicates, it is a runtime that can be used to, um, run programs on your computer, mobile device, etc. So as with Microsoft's .NET framework, AIR allows developers to create programs that can be packaged up and installed on these devices.
However, unlike Windows-only or Mac-Only (or Linux-Only) programs, AIR is ambivalent about the OS. As long as the client machine has the runtime installed, any application developed in AIR can run on it. This in itself is really cool, and takes the bite off the exclusivity of OS platforms.
But the coolest part about AIR is that you can leverage different technologies when building applications. For example, a while ago I built an extremely simple Countdown application using Flex 3. Easy enough.
But what if I don't want to use ActionScript 3? No problem! Using the HTML, CSS More >
phillipnewton.com
Feb 18th
A good friend of mine recently approached me about creating an online resume for him. He wanted it to be incredibly simple and to focus on the content.
So that's what I did.
This design is quite a departure from what I usually do. Normally, the designs I create include standard content sections like a header, navigation, content body, and footer. Since this site had so little content, I decided to jettison those concepts altogether.
So because these content divisions were non-existent, and because there was so little content, I decided to keep all of the content on one "page", and to create divisions through a javascript slider (I used Adobe's Spry framework , if anyone is interested).
Although I was hesitant, I submitted this design to several design galleries. To my pleasant surprise, it was featured by a few of which I've been trying to make for a while with my designs.
Here are the galleries which have featured this one so far:
css creme css design yorkshiremostinspired.comboxedcss.com
To be perfectly honest, I was not expecting a lot of response on this. However, I think the focus on content and design simplicity attracted some attention, for which I am grateful.
::::::HUGE UPDATE::::::
I just found out that phillipnewton.com More >
On Becoming a Better Web Designer
Feb 8th
Anytime one approaches a new design project, it is easy to get distracted by trying to have the project finished NOW, instead of doing necessary preparation work to ensure maximum work efficiency. I am as guilty of this as anyone. In the past, designing a website and bringing it through development was a hodge-podge of cutting Photoshop files and piecing together random bits of code, all the while constantly being frustrated that things were not finished YET.
As I've matured, I've learned to identify several time black-holes that serve to quickly derail a project's timeline.
Unorginization
Without question, this is the one for me. It is especially a problem because from design concept (Illustrator) to web-ready images (Photoshop) to HTML (Dreamweaver) to database (MySQL) to application code (ColdFusion), my files are touching a lot of applications. If I'm not careful, it's easy to, say, save Photoshop files to random places and then have to search for them when I need them in Dreamweaver. While this is only a matter of seconds (normally!), it adds up over the course of a project and is frankly annoying.
So the biggest time and headache-saver I've learned is to standardize every aspect of the project. This means I More >
A Call for Discussion
Feb 4th
Regular readers of this blog will note that I have devoted a number of posts to providing an apologetic for the compatibility of the theory of evolution, big bang cosmology and Christian theology.
In pursuing these ideas, my intention has not been to suggest that these naturalistic theories of origins are infallible. Rather, I am simply attempting to be intellectually honest with the data that is available, recognizing that these categories are currently the best we have for describing the universe in which we live and how it developed in cosmological history. In fact, in private conversations I have repeatedly asserted by certainty that in years to come, these theories will be modified or even supplanted by others that better describe the evidence.
But the beautiful thing, I think, is that Christian theology is not harmed by these ways of understanding the development of the universe. My purpose in these posts, after all, is not to necessarily support naturalistic theories of origins, but rather to show how Christian faith and belief is not affected by the winds of scientific change. As Christian faith is necessarily transcendent of all philosophical fads and trends, so it should be apparent that current scienitifc theories should More >
stonewallwesleyan.com Launches
Jan 30th
I've been away for a while…that's because I've been consumed with work and LAUNCHING A NEW WEBSITE!!!
Okay, that was a bit dramatic. But I am terribly excited about this one. For one, I worked incredibly hard on this. I built every bit of it from scratch, and in the process of development learned an incredible amount about ColdFusion-which was good!
Stonewallwesleyan.com is the new website for my home church, Stonewall Wesleyan Church. It featuers a fully interactive blog, user interface, podcasting, etc. Additionally, there are fairly robust administrative tools for managing calendar events, worship set-lists and schedules, page images, etc. I am pretty happy with it overall.
Anyway, when you have a chance, check it out here .
The Day to End All Days
Jan 25th
Well, in case you live in a hole somewhere, the next three weeks are shaping up to be huge. In less than two weeks, God-fearing Americans will celebrate the day-before-Lent (Fat Tuesday) by more or less determining the identities of the Democratic and Repulican presidential nominees. In another week and two days, lovers across the world will commemorate their passions with cheap chocolates and over-priced floral arrangements.
Yet few realize that an even more momentous event will occur between these big days. But this event will be truly earth-shaking, and it will hit February 12th.
No, it's not the most recent Jack Van Impe prediction for the return of Christ, and it is not the release date of what is going to be the incredibly awesome sequel to Batman Begins, The Dark Knight.
Nope. February 12th is none other than the death of Internet Explorer 6.
Okay, that was a bit dramatic, and not entirely accurate. Despite fervent prayers in support of IE6's digicide, IE 6 has proven, historically, to be more difficult to kill than it is to design a website for (and that's saying something!). Rather, February 12th marks the date when Internet Explorer 7-IE 6's better (but still not More >
Inerrancy Revisited
Jan 24th
Nearly two years ago (wow…), I wrote an article questioning the usefulness and/or helpfulness of the concept of biblical inerrancy. In this post, I argued that it seems apparent that the doctrine of inerrancy is actually inevitably harmful to a Christian understanding of the place and role of Scripture within theology for it unnaturally weds the doctrine of Scripture to modernistic conceptions of historicity and textual criticism by way of antithesis. In doing so, I concluded, a theology that affirms the doctrine of biblical inerrancy is qualitatively indistinguishable from that which it seeks to overcome in that by necessarily affirming the starting premises of modernistic notions of historicity, biblical inerrancy unwittingly capitulates the legitimacy of said categories while (illogically) arriving at different conclusions. In my understanding, such an approach is ultimately doomed because its entire attempt at substantiation will be (and is, consequently, being) washed away with the next great philosophical paradigm shift.
In the two years since writing about my thoughts on this perspective, I have engaged several who are opposed to my view and assert-nearly above all other things-the absolute necessity of the doctrine of the inerrancy of Scripture. While I certainly do not wish to call into question More >
Fun with Flash and ActionScript
Jan 8th
My brother recently approached me with an interesting project: He wanted to make a flash movie that would have enable someone to control the mouth movements of a "bobblehead" with keystrokes.
Although I have not done this before, I was certain it would be something fairly easy to do. ActionScript 3's "Keyboard" class has a plethora of functions and methods that allow one to do just about anything with a keyboard and a flash animation.
So here's the breakdown: The animation needed to have five "states": Default, profile, wobble, "ooh" and talk; and each needed to be assigned to a separate key.
Cake.
The first step was to create the background movie. My brother did this in Motion 3, and we set it inside a Movie Clip on the first frame of the flash movie. Next, we defined another movie clip that contained all of the movements for the head "states".
Beyond that, all that was left to do was to define the keyboard actions. The following is the totality of the code:
function doTheBobble(event:KeyboardEvent):void { if(event.keyCode == Keyboard.SPACE) { Mouth.gotoAndPlay(2); } if(event.keyCode == Keyboard.LEFT) { Mouth.gotoAndPlay(21); } if(event.keyCode == Keyboard.RIGHT) { Mouth.gotoAndPlay(31); } if(event.keyCode == Keyboard.UP) { Mouth.gotoAndPlay(41); } if(event.keyCode More > Fun with Flash and ActionScript
Jan 8th
My brother recently approached me with an interesting project: He wanted to make a flash movie that would have enable someone to control the mouth movements of a "bobblehead" with keystrokes.
Although I have not done this before, I was certain it would be something fairly easy to do. ActionScript 3's "Keyboard" class has a plethora of functions and methods that allow one to do just about anything with a keyboard and a flash animation.
So here's the breakdown: The animation needed to have five "states": Default, profile, wobble, "ooh" and talk; and each needed to be assigned to a separate key.
Cake.
The first step was to create the background movie. My brother did this in Motion 3, and we set it inside a Movie Clip on the first frame of the flash movie. Next, we defined another movie clip that contained all of the movements for the head "states".
Beyond that, all that was left to do was to define the keyboard actions. The following is the totality of the code:
function doTheBobble(event:KeyboardEvent):void { if(event.keyCode == Keyboard.SPACE) { Mouth.gotoAndPlay(2); } if(event.keyCode == Keyboard.LEFT) { Mouth.gotoAndPlay(21); } if(event.keyCode == Keyboard.RIGHT) { Mouth.gotoAndPlay(31); } if(event.keyCode == Keyboard.UP) { Mouth.gotoAndPlay(41); } if(event.keyCode More > Two Levels of Creation…?
Dec 28th
Over the last several weeks, loyal readers of this blog (if any remain…) will note that the focus of the majority of my posts have centered around web application coding techniques. While part of the reason for this is that I have been improving exponentially in my coding abilities over the last several months (not hard when one is going from zero to somethng…), the major impetus for these posts is simply that I post about what I am thinking as well as that to which I am devoting my time. Frankly, while I love theology deeply, I have not been devoting much time to it lately, partly out of necessity, partly out of lethargy.
The last week, however, I have been on vacation and, more importantly, sick. During this time I have had a lot of restless hours to quiet my thinking and devote mental energy to things other than web application code (even though that has still managed to creep in). In these hours of contemplation, I have come across what I believe could be a major diffusor of objections to big bang cosmology (BBC) and evolutionary biology (EB) in re: the relationship of God's activity to the More >
