Who’s up for a holiday in Haiti?
What are you doing with your vacation this year? Hawaii, Whistler or just relaxing on the couch? Well, I will tell who isn’t doing any this, DC’s killer project manager, Steph.
Steph and her bff of 24 yrs, Shannon, are heading to Fond Parisien, a small town just out side of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Once off the plane they’ll be working in union with a nonprofit, Hands of Light in Action, to provide rehabilitation to the residents of the American Refugee Committee’s Camp Hope, an Internally Displaced Persons camp with approximately 2,500 displaced residents. Steph and Shannon have been hard at work fundraising donations to help cover for their airfare, food, transportation, medical evacuation insurance and massive cans ‘o bug spray. They have exceeded their goal, (applause to all you amazing contributors!) but every extra penny they receive will be devoted to purchasing art supplies for the children of the refugee camp. If you would like to donate to the cause visit www.giveforward.org.
We all wish Steph the best of luck and lots of energy on her “holiday.”
Circle Grow
About a month ago I heard tell of a JavaScript Demoscene contest called JS1k. For those who haven’t heard of the Demoscene, it’s basically a sort of programming art-form that allows a programmer (or team of programmers) to show off their hacking skills. Originally due to the storage and processing limitations in the past, demo programmers would have to pull out all sorts of clever tricks or hacks to reduce the size of their program as well as make it run as efficient as possible. Nowadays, with our obscenely fast CPU’s and practically infinite storage capacity, those limitations are self-imposed – Demoscene contests will set a limit on the size of the code to make it challenging. In the case of JS1k, 1000 bytes of JavaScript is the maximum.
What makes this particular contest so exciting is that most modern browsers now have a cool new toy for JavaScript programmers to play with: the canvas object. The canvas object basically defines an area on a webpage where a developer can programmaticly draw images using JavaScript. For the first time, web developers can use an open-standard, non-proprietary technology to create dynamic and engaging rich media.
Inspired by JS1k (but by no means talented enough to compete), I decided to create my own JavaScript and canvas-powered demo. It’s extremely basic compared to the JS1k demos, but it did help me learn a lot more about canvas, and it was fun to program! So, without further ado – I present to you… Circle Grow!
SVC Wayzgoose Photos
Here are some great pics Matt F has taken of DC getting there print on at the SVC 9th annual Wayzgoose. Thanks to SVC for letting us participate in such a fun day. We look forward to getting our hands dirty next year and we were just wondering SVC next year can we drive the steamroller?
