Win an artist’s proof of my cover art for “Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom”

Filed under Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom, Works in Progress

Some lucky – or, at least, some random – attendee at this month’s Arisia convention in Boston will be going home with a signed proof of the poster version of my dust jacket art for Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom.

How could that happen? Well, throughout the weekend they’ll be selling raffle tickets for this and other Fabulous Prizes; and then on Sunday there’ll be a drawing. Proceeds from the raffle will go to the Alzheimer’s Association in memory of Sir Terry Pratchett.

The final poster will eventually be available to the public, but that won’t happen for a while. So this is your chance to steal a march on those folks next door who always get the first dust jacket posters for anything I do. You know those people. You hate those people. They’re just so smarmy.

It’s worth a trip to Boston, just to show them who’s boss.

So if this all sounds great to you, but you have no idea what Arisia is, you can read all about “New England’s largest, most diverse Sci-Fi and Fantasy Convention” right over here.

Hey, Ursula Vernon and Stephanie Law are going to be there. I’m thinking it’s worth your time. And of course there’s the added bonus of a signed print of the Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom cover, for someone who could be you.

Fun and games with Javascript animations

Filed under Web Development, Works in Progress

I’ve just finished up about twelve days of work on a set of Javascript animations for a web site. The site itself won’t be reachable until some time next year, so I can’t show you that. But here you can see a few individual frames and elements from the set.

Because they’re meant for the web, there are very few frames. I have to allow enough time after the page loads, and before the animation plays, for all the frames to get loaded. For that reason there’s a very simple animation that plays first, and there are only two animations on each page.

There are usually two things going on in each animation. There’s a primary motion that carries the element around the page, and a secondary action that’s sometimes a limited animation within the element, and sometimes a special effect.

This meant I needed to use Javascript’s setInterval() function twice. The first time sets the delay before the animation starts, while the second one sets the frame rate for everything that happens, once it does. I never had to set a third interval, though I did schedule some updates to occur on every second or third frame.

The site’s page layout responds to the browser window’s width and it changes any time the window’s resized. That did lead to some conceptual weirdness. I can’t predict how large the browser window is, or whether its size may change between one frame and the next. In some cases I had to deal with unexpected outcomes when I resized the browser.

Everything seems to work now. There’s just one case – an element that travels along an arc – in which phones may have trouble keeping up with the frame rate. I can’t test that because I don’t use a mobile phone. But the math in that one instance is fairly intense; I don’t think any of the other animations will present a problem.

And I may even do one or two more before you get a chance to see them. But, honestly, this was just a twelve-day obsession. I really ought to be working on something else. It’s just that it’s nearly impossible for me to leave something alone when it almost, almost works.

Volto-Vac announces its newest robot: the Ursatron

Filed under Works in Progress

That’s about all I know about the Ursatron. Heck, until this morning I had no idea what to call him. But I’m sure I’ll figure out a thing or two about him in times to come.

You’ll be the second to know.

Starting Wednesday: Ben Bowman in the Vault of Terror

Filed under Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual, Works in Progress

What do you do after you’ve dropped a building on your boss’ head? Well, in many cases, you rethink your life. There are also those who dance around the building, singing about it. But we pretend we don’t know those people.

Even at the Retropolis Registry of Patents there are several approaches to this kind of trauma. Violet, the Registrar’s secretary, is in the “rethink your life” camp; Investigator Bowman is off on a tangent of his own. He’d just really rather not have to spend any time down in the Registry Vault (the “Patent Registry Models and Samples Repository”).

Nobody likes to go down there. It’s full of the working models and prototypes for every invention that’s ever come out of Retropolis’ Experimental Research District. If you get posted down in the Vault, you can’t help knowing that at any time something really dangerous and irreversible is likely to happen. And when it doesn’t happen? Well, there’s a statistically identical chance that it’s going to happen now. That sort of thing can wear you down.

Really dangerous and irreversible things almost never happen, of course. Almost never.

Meanwhile the Registry is expecting its new Registrar (again) and so that’s what’s on Violet’s mind. She’s made a resolution not to do anything to this one.

We’ll see how that goes, starting on Wednesday, in Ben Bowman in the Vault of Terror.