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Code and Beats

I found out yesterday that there’s going to be a rad event called “Code & Beats.” If it turns out to be as fun as it sounds, I’ll probably lobby to bring it to Phoenix.

Here’s the basic premise:

A party celebrating the art of programming through performance. A handful of hardcore coders from the city’s hottest startups will work in the center of a pounding dance floor to a musical journey of electro beats.

Some additional details: it sounds like the “hardcore coders” will be facing the dance floor, with external monitors mirroring their laptops and facing the dance floor. There may also be one or more projectors involved.

I’m going to experiment with some new visual Flash-based stuff, and will try to include the room’s music, a webcam, and/or tweets as inputs!

It should be exciting! Also, I’m probably going to open-source everything I write at the event and post it somewhere like GitHub.

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Actionscript 3: Faster Integer Math – Bitwise Operators

Several months ago, I stumbled upon a great resource for bitwise operators in AS3. Bitwise math is available in many languages, but this one looks at it from an AS3 perspective.

Since I first discovered that page, I have thought to pull it up a few times and searched Google for it (racking my brain to choose the right key words). By posting it here, I will not only be sharing it with you, but effectively archiving the link where I can access it quickly.

Check it out

It isn’t a tutorial or explanation of bitwise math. It is a list of common operations, paired with their decimal math counterparts. The best part about it is that the author details the change in performance between the two techniques (when used in AS3).

Great stuff!

If you have any bitwise math resource pages you would like to share, post them in the comments.