Web Presentation Flash, HTML, JavaScript, CSS Cisco 2007 Programmer, All 3D & 2D Graphics, Audio, Animation Cisco wanted a 30-45 second "Web Commercial" in Flash, showing a blue Formula-1 car winning a heated race against multiple opponents, as a way of announcing their new product to "accelerate your business". They wanted Flash, but not the Flash look – they wanted 3D! Plus it needed to support Spanish, French, Japanese and Russian in addition to English… and have really cool audio… and be less than 2.5 megabytes in size, so people could get it in an email. And oh yes, they wanted it in less than three weeks... I said "no problem". Many of the effects (a waving flag, realistic exhaust smoke, an "alpha-warp" transition effect) were created using pure ActionScript 2.0 because they would have been impossible to create using standard Flash animation techniques. This is a huge advantage I have over many Flash artists who would simply be unable to achieve these effects. This was the result. The deadline was met, the client was ecstatic, and I slept for three days afterwards. A demo version and code snippets are available on request. Website Flash, XML, DHTML, JavaScript, CSS, PHP, MYSQL Google 2007 Programmer Internal promo website/database search engine for Google’s "Moma" division, which handles Vendor Management. Also designed the "Balls Logo", shown below, which is an interactive spin on Google’s corporate "ball logo", and also serves as a subtle link to external websites they commonly use, such as MapQuest.com and ExE.com. eMail/DB Analysis Utility VBA, Visual Basic, ASP, SQL, XML, IIS, Exchange Server PacifiCare 2006 Programmer, DBA Very cool, very complex, and very hard to describe. While working at PacifiCare, I was the LMS Administrator, among other things. The first LMS we purchased was horrible, and we’d get tons of mail asking about how to configure it, fix scores, add new users, etc. On average, I’d get nailed by 100-200 emails per day… too many to read in addition to my other duties. In fact, we had three full-time employees dedicated to nothing but reading email and fixing problems. Way back in ’91 I designed a patented search engine that used something called naïve Bayesian logic to analyze and sort historical documents into categories, based on word frequency. Similar to fuzzy logic, Bayesian algorithms are mostly used today to identify spam mails. I realized that 99% of all inbound mail fell into roughly 30 categories; new user requests, transcript requests, bug reports, hate mail, etc. So I put 2 and 2 together and came up with 22, applying my Bayesian skills to the problem of sorting mail. Instead of sorting email into "Spam" and "Not Spam", HDMS sorts them into my 30 categories, even taking appropriate action when possible, such as adding the user to the database, resending his password, or whatever else is necessary. Blammo! Three full-time employees can now do something else. Naïve Bayesian analysis is more than simple pattern-matching. It learns while you use it, constantly improving its ability to read and understand email. By the time I left PacifiCare, it was able to correctly process 95% of all emails it received, and would flag the remaining 5% for a human to look at. In addition to the near-magical sorting ability, HDMS could also send highly-customized mail blasts (better than Mail Merge in Word), perform a number of eLearning/LMS related tasks, generate some nice-looking reports on a regular basis in Excel, PDF, and other formats, and would automatically pull up relevant database records while you were reading your mail in Outlook (there goes that Bayesian analysis again!). Presentation Flash Verizon 2005 Programmer, Graphics (Animation only – Cartoon concepts were provided by staff artists, which I then tweened and animated, except the juggler which is 100% my own thing… you should see him in motion!) A shortened version of this presentation is available for download by request. It shows off my Flash skills, both as an animator and a programmer (the red "logic" ball shown above contains a swirling "alphabet soup" effect that’s 100% ActionScript, and the juggler is a very complex tweening with multiple dependent sub-animations). Online Game Flash Peter McBride 2004 Programmer, Graphics (All) This was a utility created for several online role-playing games. Many games allow players to create "potions" or "Craft Items" wherein several ingredients are combined to produce desired effects. Players have to experiment to find out what all the combinations actually do, which is often time consuming. This program allows players to easily experiment with all the ingredients in their particular gaming system (Morrowind by Bethesda Softworks is shown above), and calculates all possible permutations of ingredients and will even make suggestions for optimal results. Alchemania uses a public XML data format allowing users to add crafting components from their own games, allowing future expansion. CD-ROM Director US Olympic Committee 1995 Programmer Simple no-brainer CD-ROM showing a variety of photographs from the Lillehammer games. Website Cold Fusion, SQL Hasbro 1998 Programmer, Graphic Design This is the "Phantom Menace" tie-in site, aimed at people who collect those hundreds of Star Wars figurines that come out with every new movie/book/TV show. Shows off almost all of the figurines (don’t ever call them "dolls") and includes Wish Lists, street values of out-of-production models, and trading forums. A fun site, and essentially unchanged for 8 years, which must be some kind of record for such a large company. Written in Cold Fusion using Fusebox (www.fusebox.org) methodology. During this project, we all got Star Wars names. If you’re ever online and meet Darth Bif, say hello, that’s me! Online Game (NWN Module) Proprietary Scripted Language Neverwinter Nights 2005 Concept, Programmer, Graphics (3D) Neverwinter Nights is an online role-playing game (MMORPG). I’m an avid gamer, and this module was created in response to numerous community requests for a game based on the popular "Stargate SG-1" TV show. The challenge was to create the ring-shaped Stargate with its signature "Swooshing Flush" effect, a "tunnel of light" effect, and, as icing on the cake, a large pyramid, all without modifying the original Neverwinter Nights code (a "No-Hak" (hack) in gamer parlance), since doing so would limit the number of users who could join the game. Therefore, they said it couldn’t be done… I proved them wrong. Since the no-hak rule prevented the use of new 3D modules, I simulated the effects programmatically by repeatedly drawing existing objects in complex geometric shapes. There’s ALWAYS a way, if you set your mind to it. CD-ROM/Website Director, HTML, JavaScript, XML, SQL Primal Media 1993 Programmer You know how movie stars always have an early-career pseudo-porno flick that they try to deny being in? This is mine. Begins with the inane assumption that people have computers in their workout rooms, and goes downhill from there. Living proof that steroid junkies who can’t act should also not design computer programs. On the plus side, the programming was solid, and this was the first commercial product to seamlessly merge CD and Web (there was another product back then loudly making this claim, but we actually beat them to market by 2 months). Online Game Flash, XML, HTML, JavaScript, JSP, Java, SQL Miller Lite 2000 Programmer, Graphics, Animation Very cool online game for armchair pit bosses, ala "Fantasy Football Leagues" that were the rage at that time. Emphasis was on strategy, budgeting, and business decisions as opposed to being a "driving" game. Players would build their own racing team, hiring crews, drivers, and designing their dream cars. We would then run simulated races using their compiled statistics; winners go to the Playboy mansion (for real) to get their awards. I came on mid-project as a fill-in programmer/artist when it got a little behind schedule, doing all kinds of spot jobs wherever needed. Online Game Director Health Net 1993 Programmer, Graphics Computer-Based Training application based on a popular TV gameshow. Design included a simple questions editor so the trainers could customize sessions for each class. "Family Feud" and "$64,000 Pyramid" themed games were also created. Very popular and still in use, from what I’ve heard. CD-ROM Director Harvard University 1994 Programmer, Graphics Fairly straightforward CD-ROM business training title… video presentations, text articles, and a personal goals tracker, written while I was at Harvard Business School. I have to laugh every time I think about the title "Becoming an Effective Manager", because Harvard was one of the least-effectively-managed places I ever worked at, but the product was nice. One would hope they actually used it once it was finished! Online Game Flash, Director, JavaScript, ASP, SQL Orbit Technology 1998 Programmer, Graphics Online game written in Flash/Director for a Japanese conglomerate. Basically a scripted chat room that allowed shy people to go on simulated dates with other shy people, even if they spoke different languages, so a guy in Germany could "date" a girl in Japan. Hey, they were together in 1944, right? Once the scripted "date" is over, the unsuspecting couple is dumped into an open chat room, where the shy and language-barrier-stricken duo is left to fend for themselves. Hilarity ensues. Hey, I didn’t design it; I just did what I was told (which was also popular back in 1944). Written in Japanese, using a Japanese version of the Mac OS, simultaneously exposing me to the wonderful world of double-byte character programming and the wonderful world of doubly-cute cartoon characters. To my great surprise, even the most conservative Japanese corporations will gleefully doctor their most stodgy business reports with saccharine-sweet cartoon characters, to the consternation and embarrassment of the average Japanese Man-On-The-Street. On the plus-plus side, I got to live in Japan for six months while working on this project. Amazing place, people and history… and also the cleanest place I’ve ever seen. Wow. CD-ROM Flash Verizon 2005 Programmer, Graphics Installation training program covering all of Verizon’s hardware. Utilities Flash, Director, C#, XML, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, VBA, ASP, SQL Verizon 2004-2005 Programmer, Graphics I did dozens of these small applications to help with various internal analysis, training, and debugging needs. I used a basic API in C# to handle the low-end stuff, then used Flash as a front end for rapid deployment… I’d usually crank out one or two of these every month. Graphic Design Primal Media 1995 Graphics Graphic treatments and website detail for two closely-related companies. I was in a "warm" mood that year, it seems. The aborigine fellow was actually done in Flash, and speaks random words of wisdom. Website Cold Fusion, Vignette, Tcl/Tk Entrepreneur Magazine 1999 Programmer, Graphics We started off doing this in Cold Fusion, but moved to Vignette StoryServer CMS which had a superior caching strategy (we were getting over 7000 hits per hour, and every page had upwards of 60 SQL hits - the switchover made a HUGE difference). Interestingly, we kept using the FuseBox methodology (www.fusebox.org) from Cold Fusion after the changeover, and found that it works even better in Tcl/Tk (StoryServer). CD-ROM Director, C, C++ Synapse Technologies 1991 Programmer, Graphics, DBA One of the world’s first eLearning CD-ROMs, and certainly among the largest ever made until online dictionaries became practical. Essentially the history of the entire world, from prehistoric times through the space age, pivoting on October 12, 1492, the day a confused Italian stumbled ashore Paradise, and promptly commercialized it. "Columbus" had 2,800 articles, 5,000 pictures, 5 hours of video and 7 hours of audio. The one working copy that I know of is enshrined in the Smithsonian Institution as "a seminal point in the history of software development" if that speaks anything as to how groundbreaking it is considered to be. The search engine methodology I came up with to navigate all that is actually patented, which is a shame, since a) I don’t hold the patent, the company (which is no longer in existence) does, and b) it would be really cool to implement on Google, which is probably the only company in the world with a dataset large enough and diverse enough to make my search engine practical. Google’s "Similar Pages" feature comes close; given any article, it finds other articles that are similar (based on words in the text) to the one listed. My "Concept Engine" goes the extra step: given any 2-5 articles, it finds articles that have similar concepts to all your selected articles, based on the concepts in your chosen few, and shows you the connections between them. It’s all based on Bayesian principles with a handful of fuzzy logic and about six months of beating my head against a wall. You’re probably scratching your head and thinking "HUH?"… Okay, it’s like this. Say you found an article on Henry the Navigator, who was this king who really liked boats. You’ve also got this other article on Catherine de Medici, an Italian noble with a penchant for poisons. They lived a century apart, but you are wondering if there are any relationships between the two. If they exist, the Concept Engine will find them, returning a list of articles that bridge the gaps and selecting the relevant passages that connect all of them. Think "Six Degrees of Separation" for history buffs and researchers, allowing you to explore new grounds rather than refine and narrow a search… very cool stuff. Presentation Flash Apple Computer 1995 Programmer, Graphics Apple’s fiscal outlook for 1995. In retrospect, I should have invested. Kiosk Director Health Net 1994 Programmer, Graphics Touch-screen/Trackball driven kiosk placed in the lobby of Health Net’s offices. Early use of the internet to exchange job postings and other relevant information. CD-ROM Flash, Director Sharp Technologies 1994 Programmer, Graphics (3D) Strangely enough, this game is designed to teach French to Nintendo-addicted college teens. It probably would have succeeded, but the time involved in rendering all the 3D graphics for a class of 15 students proved a little too prohibitive. Now that 3D of this quality can be rendered on-the-fly, the great untapped Sci-Fi Adventure French Tutorial market may now be fully exploited… Graphic Design (3D) Various 1993 Graphics (3D) I had a brief flirtation with 3D programs early in my career, but reached the conclusion that I’m a one-marshmallow kind of guy, and the rendering times on the 3D engines at the time were just too long to hold my interest. I may draw a mean Snail, but back then you were counting minutes-per-frame, not frames-per-second, and even real snails move faster than that. However, this exposed me to the importance of lighting, balance and composition, even in non-3D designs, which I’ve carried to all my other projects. Graphic Design Health Net 1994 Programmer, Graphics Top was for a Halloween presentation; the bottom carried the theme of a Farmer’s Market presenting our complete product line, which was fitting considering most people enjoy insurance companies about as much as Brussels Sprouts. Online Game Director Peter McBride 2000 Programmer, Graphics Think of this as a binary version of Sudoku… place the checkers on the board so that no two pieces are aligned horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. Harder than it sounds. Demo is available. CD-ROM Flash, Director Tony Robbins 1995 Programmer, Graphics Yikes! I can’t believe I worked for these people! These folks are so upbeat they actually drain energy from we mere mortals that strau too close to them. Tony, by the way, is really just a shoe salesman who nicked the idea from the real inventors of Personal Power... they might be experts on Motivation, but sure could have used tips on contracts! Graphic Design for Portfolio Director Peter McBride 1993 Programmer, Graphics (All) These are just some of the better graphics from an interactive portfolio game I created back in the day. My tongue-in-cheek portfolio actually got several prestigious awards including the People’s Choice from Macromedia and a nod from New Media magazine. I still have a working version or two laying around if you are interested, but bear in mind it was written in 1993 so may seem a bit simple by today’s standards. The biplane was done in a 3D program, the old guy "Sherpa Willie" is a combination photo done in PhotoShop. The girl "Tiffany" I did by hand, except the hat which was a photo… yes I CAN draw when prodded enough! She’s a conglomerate of all my favorite 1940’s era actresses, if she looks familiar… a little Lake, a dash of Garbo and a whole lot of Leigh. The game itself was a fully-rendered 3D maze crawler through a forgotten pyramid, innovative in that the maze was rendered as reusable blocks, allowing the floorplan to change on the fly (an editor was included). Demo is available. eBay Cheater Flash, Director, XML, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, VBA, ASP, SQL Peter McBride 1998 Programmer (Director/Lingo, ASP, JavaScript), Graphics A series of utilities that assist in navigation and bidding on eBay. Within 3 weeks of writing this evil monstrosity, I had over $7000 in auction-debt, because the thing was so efficient at a) finding cool stuff, and b) winning 95% of the auctions I used it for. (I collect 18th and 19th Century ethnic artifacts). Consists of three basic parts: 1) a Favorites list of sellers and categories that you like to visit often, enabling one-click lookups, 2) a simple graphic UI to eBay’s Advanced Find feature, that allows you to save favorite searches, and 3) a Sniper program, which tracks your auctions, placing your bid only at the last possible second to either guarantee you a sneaky win, or at least make life miserable for the guy who does. Other Snipe programs exist, but to my knowledge, mine is the only one which factors in network latency, auto-adjusting adjusting its trigger-time to the absolute last-possible fraction of a second. For really important auctions, it would then spam the server to hopefully lock out other last-second bidders. All’s fair in love and auctions. Only known copy is locked in a vault at my bank. Never again, at least not without a 12-step program to go along with it! Online Game Flash, Director Nickelodeon 1999 Programmer, Graphics Series of 10 or so games aimed at the age 3-5 crowd, so they are mind-numbingly simple by adult standards, but apparently quite popular with the tots. Technically interesting because Nickelodeon has some of the toughest QA requirements I’ve ever seen, making these games among the most robust things I’d ever written, and hammered in the importance of testing things on all possible computer configurations. Ironically, none of them work anymore, because Nick’s insistence on complete backwards compatibility required the inclusion of code which prevented forwards compatibility, so the moment Windows XP came out, the games stopped working. Luckily I still have a few of these in non "super-robust" versions, which still work. Lesson learned: QA is good, but you can go overboard. Websites Cold Fusion, ASP, Vignette, Flash, Director, XML, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, VBA, SQL Red Sky Clients 1998-2000 Programmer, Graphics Red Sky was a great place to work, exposing me to all types of projects and technologies. I coded and/or designed literally dozens of websites, some of which are shown here. CD-ROM Flash, Director Steelcase 1995 Programmer, Graphics This is a weird one. Steelcase furniture wanted a videogame tie-in to their equally weird SuperBowl ad. I wrote a mystery-shrouded 3D maze-crawler, first-person, exploring the basement of the office furniture giant. In various rooms you would encounter bits of Steelcase history (WWII ended on a Steelcase table!) and glimpses of future innovations in, um, cubicle design. Office Space fans would be proud. Robotic controller GUI Flash, Director, JavaScript, ASP, SQL Orbit Technology 1997 Programmer, Graphics This is a graphic interface allowing you to control a robotic pipe-cutting band saw over the web. It never made much sense to me, since you have to actually be at the band saw’s location to put the pipe in, but in retrospect Amada was probably working on a robot to do that, too. Online Game Director, XML, HTML, JavaScript, ASP, SQL Red Sky 1999 Programmer, Graphics Simple cutesy animation tells jokes (via voice synthesis) with a holiday theme, based on your input. The program would try to identify key words in your question, then do a quick server hit to find an appropriate joke about it. If the server was not available, it had a small set of stock jokes to use, or would create bogus Zen parables based on verbs/nouns found in the users question. Example: "What should I get my girlfriend for Xmas?" Response: "It’s been said that a girlfriend who attracts cows will often desire the red tortilla of truth." Funny stuff. CD-ROM Portfolio Flash, Director Peter McBride 2000 Everything Yet another version of my interactive portfolio, this time done in Havoc 3D and Director. Largely unremarkable other than the cool intro sequence using on-the-fly 3D graphics (the TV set shown above) and an interactive flag that blows randomly in the wind… you can actually tug on the flag with your mouse and it reacts accordingly. As for "Snaux" it’s pronounced "Snow", the origin of which is a long story involving a certain Magic Kingdom, wool mittens, wishful thinking, and lots of soap. Ask me about it in an interview. For some strange reason I thought "Snaux" made a great company name until I realized most people were pronouncing it "Snocks". I dropped it, but to my chagrin Adidas started selling "Sneaux Shoes" a year later. Ahead of my time, again. C’est la vie. Online Game in 80k Director 80k or Less Contest 1994 Everything The goal here was to create the coolest Shockwave game possible in under 80k (This was in the days before Flash and cable modems). Narf! is a 3D adventure complete with a first-person maze crawl, casinos (slots, blackjack, poker, 3-card monty), shops, ATM-style prayer stations, rats, snakes, and giant mutated parrots. As a janitor armed with only a broom, you must search the endless sewers of the castle in search of the King’s jewels, which you accidentally flushed down the royal commode. Mazes are randomly generated, along with random puzzles and encounters, for unlimited game play. And realize: the file size of the entire game is smaller than that of the words and images on this page! Video Director, 3D, Video Production, Audio SRS Audio 1996 Scriptwriter, Director, 3D Graphics, Animation, Editing Although I don’t bandy it about, I also do video productions for training and promotional material, in this case a video for COMDEX about SRS Audio, a 3D sound technology that’s 95% likely to be in the very computer you are using right now. The graphics were nice given the budget, but the real star was the audio – even on non-SRS systems you’ll hear sounds coming from behind you, or from two feet to the left or right of your speakers. SRS is amazing. I have a 250MB AVI file of the presentation (the original is on Laserdisc) if you are interested. Play it with Creative’s Audigy SoundBlaster to really blow your socks off! Website Flash, XSLT, XML, XHTML, JavaScript, CSS Verizon 2005 Programmer, Graphics XML/XSLT/Flash based website for Verizon’s FIOS (30Mb DSL) customers. Now known as Verizon Surround. CD-ROM Flash, Director Thomson Publishing 2002 Programmer, Graphics Mammoth CBT project shows just about every single function in Microsoft Office 2003 and a good part of Windows XP in roughly 1,400 animations, many of which I created. When the original designer’s proved unusable, I took over the project and came up with a workable design in half the time. Since I was now no longer assisting with all those animations, I wrote a series of tools to improve the workflow of the other animators working on the project. These tools were able to trim a 38-hour process down to 11 hours, sparing us 27,000 hours of billable time and enabling the project to get back on schedule. Ask for a copy; I may still have some laying around. Television Ads Flash, Director Apple Computer 1997 Programmer, Graphics Series of animations made for NBA Finals. Actors don’t know how to use software or type, apparently, so these were created so that no matter what the actor actually typed or clicked on, the computers would appear to take the correct action every single time. I actually got to go on the TV shoot as technical support. After three days of no sleep, I realized that there are, in fact, jobs more brutal than programming on a deadline. My hat is off to those in the commercial TV industry.