Months ago, I programmed a flash movie that would read an XML page, generated by PHp, which drew its data from a MySQL database for a coppermine gallery (one which I had previously reprogrammed to act as a shopping cart in addition to its norms).
The movie would take images that were marked off special (I guess there was some extra programming there as well), and it would feed those XML items into itself, with descriptions, prices, and each linked to their individual pages.
Currently, I am making a similar movie, also XML fed, to rotate flyer ads with added text… placed bottom or side, according to the size of the image, it will also likely generate content for some AJAX-driven popup layers – cause that would be pretty ‘spiffy’…
Anyway… it has me thinking…
Have I ever mentioned how much I should be making lots of money at an agency instead of struggling as an artist? No? Well, I guess I was not all that sane before.
Maybe for a long time I have just not considered that these are things that not everyone could do.
… Or maybe it is just that things I cannot do, things improbable or impossible, interest me more than those which come easy.
A year or three back, I was offered a 100-some thousand dollar a year job working for some extension of CBIS, and I turned it down because it seemed more fun to try to turn a dying strip into the thriving place it once was, and then it seemed interesting to try to make the ass-end of the world into a music hotspot, and then it looked like fun to try to travel the country on nothing but art print sales… maybe study a shit ton of animal, geography, and general nature stuffs in hopes of being useful as some sort of eco-activist… pick back up on foreign languages… struggle on the smallest contracts while working towards becoming an author of comic books and graphic novels… because shooting for things I am already capable of, things in reach… seems boring – especially if I fail to put everything off until the last possible moment, because nothing not crammed for, on unneccessary days awake sucking down caffeine, seems worthwhile.
I have to consider that without this drive, I would not know even a fraction of what I do… but there comes a time where I should probably tame this urge, and point it into some general direction other than ‘anywhere elsewhere’… stop seeing what I can put myself through, what I can pull off last minute, how far I can tear myself down before pulling out of the tailspin…
Oh… after the firing range, I hung out at the airstrip today… and have this strange urge to look into piloting classes. ‘never know when such things could come in handy.
… where was I?
Oh yeah… planes are much cheaper than I thought they would be, and maybe if I take those realty classes I might be able to look towards getting one.
I’ve been trying to find out how to do the mysql/php feed to xml leading to flash movie for a while (on and off). Any chance of putting it into WORDS, rather than those stupid pictures i cant make sense of in the flash books??
i dont need the mysql/php to xml, i only need the way to write the flash so it picks it up and works with it.
i hate stuff that’s supposed to make things easy, i always find it makes it harder…
i’m also trying to find your Some Ghouls strip, but i can’t find it.
any chance of sharing how you do the mysql/php to xml leading to flash thing? not the mysql/php to xml bit, but the flash programming. i have bought 2 flash books so far, and all they are is pictures, so i can’t work out what they are trying to say. i speak english not pictogram. when did they start making “programming books in toyland”?
i also cant find your Some Ghouls strip, which was what i came here looking for in the first place…
Some Ghouls Wander by Mistake is currently at someghoulswanderbymistake.com and (easier) sgwbm.com
As for the flash xml parsing – This is a part of my slideshow – I cut a part out and edited it so it does not have my switching images in it (to give you a better working example). Each time the function is triggered, it converts an object to the next image from the set.
Note the numbers in brackets such as [1] – if you are already familiar with arrays and such, well each number is the next xml tag within a set. The script need not know the names of the tags, just where they are by number:
function loadXMLData(loaded) {
if (loaded) {
if (!this.firstChild.childNodes[theCount]) {
theCount = 0;
}
_root.imagenumber = this.firstChild.childNodes[theCount].childNodes[0].firstChild.nodeValue;
_root.filename = this.firstChild.childNodes[theCount].childNodes[1].firstChild.nodeValue;
_root.description = this.firstChild.childNodes[theCount].childNodes[2].firstChild.nodeValue;
_root.price = this.firstChild.childNodes[theCount].childNodes[3].firstChild.nodeValue;
_root.webaddress = this.firstChild.childNodes[theCount].childNodes[4].firstChild.nodeValue;
mcImage.loadMovie( _root.filename );
imagenumber_txt.text = _root.imagenumber;
description_txt.text = _root.description;
price_txt.text = _root.price;
theCount++;
}
}
else {
trace("Could not load XML file");
}
}
xmlFile = new XML();
xmlFile.ignoreWhite = true;
xmlFile.onLoad = loadXMLData;
xmlFile.load("theurlofyourfile.php");