My 2023

Recently I used ffmpeg command line tool to crop video, add blurry background, and convert webm to gif, using some complex filter combinations. Here's the notes.

I've been playing Japanese Mahjong since I was a child. Without Internet access, I learned most of the rules by playing and observing from Gambler Jiko Chuushinha - Katayama Masayuki.

My 2022

I spent a year with repetitive daily chores, either at work or at home. If there's a third way, it's commuting.

This article discusses the basics of using action manager in Adobe Photoshop, mainly focusing on retrieving the layer style info of a selected layer.

This article talks about the 2 unit systems used in SVG gradient, objectBoundingBox and userSpaceOnUse and how to convert from one to another.

When you use lottie-web with canvas renderer, you have to export all the text glyphs used in your project. However, if you require your user to update the text later, things become much trickier. You don't need to switch to SVG renderer to avoid the "Missing character from exported characters list" error. In this article, I'm showing you how I tackle this problem.

This is my notes learning some introductory level materials about the code of the Apollo 11 Guidance Computer (AGC)

A brief summary of installing and using rbenv to install and manage Ruby

I've been perusing Verbal Advantage for almost 3 months. As the program suggested, I bought the hefty unabridged Random House Dictionary of American English Language. The hardcover dictionary is great. Though a digital version might be even better. In this article, I go through all the dependencies and steps to convert a dictionary file compatible with the macOS dictionary.app.

This week I spent almost 2 days configuring all sorts of development environments, which drove me crazy. Before pissed off by RUST compiling error, I chose to circumvent the issue using Charles.app because this time it was the network issue. This article serves as a memorandum of how to set up proxy for npm.

2017 Review

This article talks about the Creative Cloud Extension SDK. I write CEP extensions in my daily work to help designers automate some workflow, combining ExtrendScript and Actions in Illustrator. The techniques from this article can be used in other Adobe products which also support Adobe Extension SDK extensions like Photoshop, Indesign, Premiere Pro, etc.

This article talks about the ExtendScript in Adobe Illustrator. The techniques from this article can be used in other Adobe products which also supports ExtendScript like Photoshop, Indesign and After Effects.

This article talks about the Actions Panel in Adobe Illustrator. The techniques from this article can be used in other Adobe products which also supports Actions like Photoshop.

From a happy new year to a sad mid year and finally ends in calm.

I bought a new PC recently. I've been a Mac user for a long time. It is so easy for me to hit the wrong modifier keys in Windows. I still use a Mac for work. So it's important that I find a way to adjust the keys.

Actually Apple calls it a feature. To prevent you from accidentally hitting the caps lock key when you mean to press A key, there's a delay on pressing caps lock key, meaning you have to press it longer to take effect. This feature is stupid to me. I never make such a mistake since I bought my first computer. Here's how to fix it.

I didn't even known that I'd go to US for a week. The minute my schoolmate asked me when I would come to US, I said this summer without second thought. So I applied VISA in May, bought the ticket, and spent a week traveling to New York City, Washington D.C. and Boston.

A very rush travel to Pattaya and Bangkok. Most of the places we went were specially for these Chinese shopping groups. Anyway, I got two nights wandering around Bangkok. The tip is, do not sign up for this kind of travel plan any more.

Describes how to create color pickers using CSS and Canvas. I'll cover several forms. 1. The HSV color picker with 3 sliders; 2. A color pool showing S and V with an extra H strip; 3. RGB color wheel using Canvas; 4. RYB color wheel like the one you see in Illustrator's recolor artwork dialog box.

Describes whether to use light text or dark text given a background color, making text more readable.

The designers ask me to get the dominant color of an image regardless of gray, black and white and skin tones. I searched the Internet and got some algorithms and combined them together.

Review each month of my 2015.

I didn't write a new post for nearly half a year. Tonight I just feel like I'm in the mood of writing a new one. If I leave it tomorrow, I guess the following words will never come out.

I went for outing with my team last week. The destination is Okinawa. This is the first time that we choose a foreign country as the destination. This article expresses what I saw, how I felt as well as the delicious seafood there.

This article talks about how to create a SWF font file and load that file at runtime. We'll discover two common ways of creating such a SWF font file, by using the GUI of Flash Pro IDE and with pure ActionScript 3. Then onto the loading process, either from a local file system or from an online service. A potential naming conflict is covered as well. Finally, a simple unicode range generator.

This article walks you through the ActionScript 3 part of the VPAID 2 specification. I first comment most of the VPAID inerface properties and methods as well as the events. Then I implement a video player widget for the VPAID creative. After that, I put all the things together to show you how the VPAID creative interacts with the VPAID player. Feel free to download and play with the sample code.

2014 is the year of horse. I am a horse. They say you encounter obstacles in your animal year. Well, not really. This is my 2014.

This article talks about the basics of Apple's new programming language - Swift. Topics includes variables and constants, control statements, functions and collections, and Swift's specific features like tuples and optionals.

One of my friends in Dalian is about to leave for New York. So I flew and spent a few days there.

This article talks about the click mouse event listener on a loaded SWF file. I encounter a problem that when the user clicks the loaded SWF file, the event listener on the loader cannot be notified. The solution is simple. But I guess the process of solving the problem is insteresting and worth an article.

This article talks about Flash Player's compatibility issues when targeting different versions. Mainly it focuses on this error message - VerifyError: Error #1053: Illegal override of z in mx.core.BitmapAsset.

Flex SDK offers the mxmlc command line tool which allows user to compile a SWF file from the terminal. This article talks about how to use Flash Professinal to create an SWC file and use the mxmlc command to compile.

PS4 consoles sold out on all the B2C platforms once it came out. It's expensive to buy one here in China from taobao at the time. So when Amazon emailed me that PS4 is available, I immediately ordered one. Here's the whole process of transferring overseas and the unboxing.

This is the first year after graduation. Looks like I'm at work for most of the time. When scanning the photos, there are some great moments. Happy new year!