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I'm Thomas Viktil. I like to play with all sorts of things. And this is where I write about the things I learn while playing.


Garbage collecting in AIR

November 28th, 2009 | No Comments | Written by Thomas Viktil
At a recent project I had to make a video loop indefinitely and most importanly: seemless. I tried all kinds of different methods, including using FLV, F4V, M4V, FLVplayback component, the Video class, embedded video and a few other. The only solution that worked was (in my opinion) the most ...

Posted in AS3, air, flash, flex

Skinning IK with modo

July 14th, 2009 | 1 Comment | Written by Thomas Viktil
Having fiddled around with modo 401 and all its new features, I soon came to experiment with the animation features, including the new IK system. It works like a charm and when you're used to working with modo, it just feels natural. It was very easy to rig a mechanical ...

Posted in 3D, animation


Alfonso Bialetti in 3D – sketching

June 10th, 2009 | No Comments | Written by Thomas Viktil
As I was minding someone else's business I felt the urge for a cup of coffee. Allthough I like regular coffee, I do prefere a nice cup of espresso. When I was in Berlin for the last Pictoplasma conference, I invested in a truly nice piece of a coffee making ...

Posted in 3D

iPhone dev: Remove the glossy effect from the application icon

May 25th, 2009 | No Comments | Written by Thomas Viktil
As you probably know, the iPhone adds a nice glossy effect to your application's icon. It sure does look good, but sometimes it just doesn't suit your icon. It can be prevented by editing the Info.plist file. It's easy! Follow me. Click on one of the lines to make the little ...

Posted in iphone


AS3 Snippet #3: Remove all childs

May 2nd, 2009 | No Comments | Written by Thomas Viktil
I code snippet I tend to use quite often. And one that I tend to forget how I wrote the last time i used it. while (this.numChildren > 0) {     removeChild(this.getChildAt(0)); } Update: And when you want to remove a child as a part of an event handler, do this: event.target.parent.removeChild(event.target); Let's say you want to ...

Posted in AS3, flash, flex

Adobe AIR: Error when creating AIR file: 303

April 28th, 2009 | 2 Comments | Written by Thomas Viktil
I'm currently using Flex Builder 3.0.1.205647 with Flex SDK 3.1.0 and I got an error saying Flex couldn't create my AIR file. After a bit of googling I found out that it is a bug in Flex Builder 3 (Bug report #FB-11712), and it seems like it will be fixed ...

Posted in air, flex


Change prefix of database tables in Wordpress

March 12th, 2009 | No Comments | Written by Thomas Viktil
Here the other day I was adding some security settings on a Wordpress installation. One of them involving changing the prefix of Wordpress' database tables. It's pretty straight forward, but you've got to remember changing some values inside some of the tables. I found quite a few articles on this ...

Posted in wordpress

Tips: Reading variables from Arduino using Flash, Flex or AIR

March 5th, 2009 | No Comments | Written by Thomas Viktil
If you have experienced getting only gibberish from the Arduino when tracing it's output using Flash, Flex or AIR, you might have misconfigured the socket server. I spent a whole day trying to figure out why I only got square boxes, a couple of random numbers and an occasional 'f' now ...

Posted in AS3, arduino, flash, flex


Super Sculpey: Fritz Leopold the army squid

December 5th, 2008 | No Comments | Written by Thomas Viktil
At sunday, nov 30th, I headed up to Cecilie & Rune's flat for a creative workshop. The whole idea was just to have fun while fiddling with Super Sculpey and whatnot. I packed some of my tools and as I was on my way out, I thought about what to ...

Posted in sculpting

iPhone game: Fieldrunners

November 22nd, 2008 | No Comments | Written by Thomas Viktil
[caption id="attachment_46" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Fieldrunners for iPhone"][/caption] A couple of days ago I purchased the game Fieldrunners (by Subatomic Studios) for my iPhone, and in an instant it became my (so far) alltime favorite iPhone game. The concept is simple; kill the creeps before they get out of sight. Unlike the popular ...

Posted in games