Nothing too sexy here, unless you find Socket Servers sexy.

Don’t go there. Thank you.

Scoot on over to the Downloads page, and you will find a new link for Palabre Modules.

Therein you will find modules for telling if certain entities like nicknames and room names exist on the server, and a very handy (at least until the next release) module for pre-processing messages sent to the server.

To all six of you who find this useful and exciting, hats off to you! (And see you on the forums).

For those of you who are a bit fuzzy on the whole ’socket server’ thing, and read this with a kind of a ‘who cares’ vibe, Palabre is a open-source project that allows you to build multi-user or, dare I say, multi-player apps built in Flash.

WARNING: What follows is a game only a Geek can truly appreciate.

A while ago, I posted a design for a chess variant, that eventually became known as Eigen Chess, aka Schrödinger’s Pawn.  It turns out to have been a very popular idea, that has generated much comment.

The success of Eigen Chess has prompted my to ponder more mashups of common games and exotic physics concepts. It is from this proud line that springs forth today’s design: Einstein-Rosen Bridge. For those who need a refresher, the Einstein-Rosen Bridge is a theoretical construct predicted by the general theory of relativity. Einstein you know, Nathan Rosen was collaborator with the Big E, and they published a paper in 1935, outlining the eponymous Bridge.

Those without a strong grounding in general relativity, or worse, without access to Wikipedia, will probably be familiar with the more common popular conception of the ERB, a science fiction trope called the wormhole.

A wormhole  is a twist in the shorts of space-time that allows instantaneous travel between two points in our universe, or more likely, two points in parallel universes.

Bridge is a card game for four players, played with one or two standard decks, and it’s rules are more difficult to comprehend than the 1935 Einstein-Rosen paper that spawned this post.

Let’s get on with it, after the jump.
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Hah! It’s only been nine months since my last post, so all of you who bet on a year between posts, pay up!

So much to talk about, but for now you’ll have to live with this little teaser.

I’m building a multi-user Flash application, and having lots of fun doing it. The guts of the enterprise is a open source Flash Socket Server called Palabre, written and maintained by Conort Célio.

This has required a number of things of me, not the least of which is brushing up on my Object-Orient programming in both Python and Flash, and becoming my own little mini-ISP, of sorts, to run the socket server.

It also means I’ve started to extend the server software by writing add-on modules. At some point, there may be an archive for them, but for now, I post them here for your enjoyment.

existsQueries.zip

This module is exceedingly simple. The client sends a user nickname, or a room name, and the modules tells the client if it exists.

I’ll be moving this site over to the new server soon. If all goes well, you won’t feel a thing.

Wow. My friends are really kicking ass this week. Rich and Tina launched their new show, and now Gareth grabs a little national media attention.

You go!

I’ve talked about my friend Gareth Hinds here once before, when he signed a deal to publish with Candlewick Press. While King Lear is still working it’s way to the shelves, Candlewick has released a magnificent hardcover edition of an earlier work, a graphic novel adaptation of the old English epic poem, Beowulf.

I was thrilled to hear from Gareth that Beowulf was getting a review in today’s New York Times Sunday Book Review. The review compares three adaptations of the work, and they lead with Gareth’s new edition.

While I am enough of a geek to cringe when they call a graphic novel a comic-book, I can’t grouse too much, as they give the book a very

nice review. Here’s snippet:

It’s a fantastic book, much (all?) of which was hand painted on wood, which gives a subtle and beautiful sense of weight and age. You really should go buy it right now.

Theatre is alive in well in Los Angeles, in no small part due to my good friends Rich Alger and Tina Kronis. They are the creative force behind Theatre Movement Bazaar. They’ve just announced their new show, Monster of Happiness. This is their tenth (by my count) original show, and going strong.

They consistently choose interesting and challenging themes to explore. This time they take on…well, I’ll let them explain it:

Monster of Happiness is a psycho-physical, science fiction love story based on the myth of Adam and Eve and examining a cornerstone of the American Dream: the pursuit of happiness.

In this work the company pursues the 20th century aesthetic innovations of early American modernist literature, Meyerhold’s Biomechanics, and post revolution ‘Soviet Style’ cinema. Integral to this process is a feedback loop, an invitation for the public (via the TMB web site) to provide personal views on happiness.

That last bit is important. They are asking the web public (that’s you!) to fill out a brief questionnaire about happiness. Some good, thought-provoking questions, and it can be answered anonymously, so the government web-spiders won’t find out your views on questions such as:

• If you had to choose between happiness and peace, which would you choose?
• What do you imagine to be the happiest era in world history?
• What’s better than being happy?

The show premieres at the 24th St. Theatre.

Show Times

June 15, 16, 22, 23, 29, 30, July 6, 7, 13, 14 @ 8:30pm

Late night shows June 30 & July 7 @ 10:30pm

You can buy tickets for the show online.

Use the hidden secrets of the cosmos to impress your friends and family, see things otherwise hidden to the human eye! All this is within your grasp with  an astounding new tutorial.

Head on over to the How-To section and learn the secret of checking the batteries in your remote control with nothing but a cellphone camera.

A movie is included for your edification and enjoyment.

The Game Design section was starting to look a little overrun by Flash and ActionScript tutorials, so I’ve added a whole new page for Flash and ActionScript. Check there for the latest experiments.

Speaking of which: Drawing Regular nGons in Flash.

That’s right. NGons, baby! Try to curb your enthusiasm.

I’m working on a project that requires the drawing (or at least calculating) of regular nGons (pentagons, hexagons, octagons, etc.), so I threw together a demo movie. As usual, source code is included.