You can access the Seed to Plate site at http://www.seedtoplate.co.uk.

The Seed to Plate site was jointly developed by Acumen and Buffalo.

You can get the source from here, both an animated and static examples are included.

However I recently was stumped with producing transformation matrices that included rotations about any point and reflection along any line. As there was little example code out there for this, I’ve decided to publish the two methods I’ve written to perform this. Both methods take the Matrix to set the transformation to as the first argument.

/**
* Constructs an affine rotation matrix.
*
* @param m The matrix to set the affine rotation to.
* @param angle The angle of rotation in radian.
* @param ox center of rotation in the x axis
* @param oy center of rotation in the y axis
*
*/
private function rotation(m:Matrix,angle:Number=0,ox:Number=0,oy:Number=0):void
{
m.rotate(angle);
m.tx=ox-(m.a*ox)+(m.b*oy);
m.ty=oy+(m.c*ox)-(m.d*oy);
}

/**
* Constructs an affine reflection matrix. The line of reflection
* is defined by the last three parameters of the method.
* @param m Matrix The matrix to set the affine reflection to.
* @param angle Number The angle of rotation in radians.
* @param ox Number The reflection lines relative position from the origin.
* @param oy Number The reflection lines relative position from the origin.
*
*/
private function reflection(m:Matrix,angle:Number=0,ox:Number=0,oy:Number=0):void
{
m.a= Math.cos(2*angle);
m.b= Math.sin(2*angle);
m.c= Math.sin(2*angle);
m.d= -Math.cos(2*angle);

m.tx=ox-(m.a*ox)+(m.b*oy);
m.ty=oy+(m.c*ox)-(m.d*oy);
}

Anyway as a native Ubuntu user I’ve been enjoying this immensely. The only disappointing thing is that Adobe have seen fit once again to only bless Linux users with 32bit binaries. Now I think that it’s pretty hard to get a new pc or laptop that doesn’t have 64bit support, so why the reluctance?

I managed to get it working in the end of course. But it meant taking off my 64bit version of eclipse, and installing 32bit version of this and Firefox. The instructions were all clear enough on adobe’s site. What makes me laugh is the fact it might have just been easier for them to build a 64bit version rather than wasting time writing a detailed HowTo.

In other related 64bit Linux news, I got my dirty little paws on a 64bit Ubuntu package! Great stuff Skype, glad to see you listened to everyone who relentlessly bombed your forums.

Ok this is my last Ubuntu fanboy post for a while I promise. I just wanted to spread the love.

This is the first OS that I can show to inexperienced people with pride, showing that features can be added by them with no help by me. But most of all this is the first OS I’ve enjoyed using, my laptop now makes me happy, not frustrated. All those little things, like having ssh filesystem access from the desktop, that just makes my job so easy. It helps now and again being an old hand with the CLI, which always intimidates new users who want to go a bit deeper into Linux.

My next adventure will be installing kvm, I’m going to set up a freebsd testbed on my laptop. Reports here later as to my success.

Additionally this shows how in two lines you can be notified of the scripts entire execution time using StopWatch.

<?php
include('StopWatch.class.php');
$stopWatch=StopWatch::getInstance();
$stopWatch-&amp;amp;gt;setFinishMessage('script executed in %01.2f seconds');
sleep(2);
?>

And here’s the source stopwatch.zip.

Too many times I’ve seen my code swell with foreach loops, looking for elements with a certain property, or to call a function of each object in an array. Additionally making sure the keys of an array match one particular property and stay in sink with them. So to try and side step all these I’m started Vector, I’m sure others have done similar, but reinvention is one of the fun things about being a programmer (and one of the few things which make it similar to being an artist).

So here’s how you use Vector currently:

<?php

require_once('Vector.class.php');
require_once('User.example.class.php');


//initialize a Vector and add a index that uses the username field of each object entered into the array
$users=new Vector();
$users->addIndex('username');


//add two objects of class User into the vector
$users->addObject($frank=new User('frank.n.stein','monster'));
$users->addObject($vlad=new User('count.dracula','vampire'));


//call the checkpassword method of the object whose username is count.dracula
if($users->exists('username','count.dracula') && $users->username['count.dracula']->checkPassword('vampire'))
{
echo 'password correct!';
}
else
{
echo 'password false';
}
?>

I hope to include more features later. But it’s a start.