my rows are wired backwards, its commented in the code
and yes using a transistor on each end would be advisable if you want decent brightness, but also resistors for each anode
mine has neither, and its dimmer than i would like, + i had to kludge the shift registers by piggy backing them + its totally uneven! (which you can make out in the images)
or in other words ghetto, but the code is pretty solid, tho I have not tried animations yet, that just displays a static image (in ram, so your going to have to figure storage out)