Knowing someone online
You know, a lot of us have been kicking around these tubes for quite some time now. While I haven’t personally met everyone I talk to online, I feel like I’ve gotten to know many of them pretty well. Here’s a quick list of some of the people who have had an effect on me since I began this big electronic social experiment:
http://www.mg33.net/
Michael Gallagly was one of the people I go to know on the Flashkit boards from way back in the early days of Flash.
http://www.markfennell.com/
Speaking of Flashkit, it wouldn’t have existed without Mark Fennell.
http://raydoeksen.com/
I’ve known Ray Doeksen on several boards and I always consider his opinion to carry great weight. He’s one of the good guys.
http://kenvella.com/
Ken Vella did a lot of video work in the early days of Flash and although I haven’t really connected with him in a while, he is an inspiration.
Thanks for the interaction over the years!
Crowd sourcing, spec work and the budget-conscious client
Posted by hollowmyth in Personal on February 26th, 2009
There’s a catch-22 involved in crowd-sourcing which I find frustrating. The buyer will not receive work that’s as high-quality as they could from working with a single designer (or firm) who really understands their business. And the designer spends time on semi-custom designs which may or may not be chosen, resulting in an overall loss of time and effort. The whole process seems designed to grind down both sides to middling results. Now I’m not saying that everyone needs to pay Chiat/Day prices for all their design work, but if you’re asking for custom spec work, you should pay the designer for their time. Otherwise, you’re just asking for lots of random submissions with cookie-cutter solutions to your unique problems.
Posting from the Adobe AIR Bee app
OK, so Adobe has just released the 3rd beta of its desktop/connected platform, AIR (stupid name, Apollo was much better.) One of the sample applications is Bee, a blog editor. On first load, it asks you if you have an existing blog, of if you want to create a free one on wordpress.com. I put in my user and pass and was greeted by the “quick start” menu. It’s a pretty nice way to jump into posting a blog entry. I don’t know if I’d use it all the time, though, since I just don’t blog that much.Â
 anyway, intereting turn of events how AIR is shaping up. This is going to be a wild year with Silverlight and AIR/Flex duking it out while Google, Yahoo and others hone their AJAX-fu. I wonder what Christmas will bring a year from now. Hopefully fatter paychecks for all of us in this crazy online world.Â
Flash, OOP and an AS2 Document Class
Posted by admin in Technology on January 2nd, 2007
Ok, so I came across this post by Keith Peters in which he explains a way to mimic a document class in AS2. Danny Patterson had the same idea and blogged about it around the same time.
So, I’m in the middle of trying to get my head around OOP and figured this would be a great way to rid myself of the timeline crutch once and for all. Well, not so fast. There were a few pitfalls which I’d like to document here for posterity. In the next few days, I’ll add to this post and show what had to be done to get it working and the leaps of knowledge I had to go through to get there.
Data visualization with Flash AS2
Posted by admin in Technology on October 12th, 2006
Ok, so I’m trying to learn more about advanced data visualization with Flash and I’m trying to do it in the most object-oriented way possible. Flash seems eminently suited to this task and with the coming switch to Flash player 9 (once it hits above 80% version penetration) the power will be formidable.
So, I want to put together a bunch of links and experiences that will show how I did what I did and where I learned it.
Firstly, here are a few links that I’ve found:
www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/index.cfm
Samuel Wan’s treemap visualizer: www.samuelwan.com/information/archives/cat_source_code_downloads.html
I’ve seen neurofuzzy’s php junk: www.neurofuzzy.net/2006/04/28/treemap-php-source-code/
and I’ve looked at a few of the java projects on the big U of Maryland site: www.cs.umd.edu/projects/hcil/treemap/
Everyone who knows CSS take a step forward…
Not so fast, Rich Paul!
Ok, now that this whole Web 2.0 hogwash is starting to get venture capital funding, everyone is talking about semantics and css layout as the way forward for social networks and magical user-centric webservices. Well these things, like the technologies underlying the so-called web 2.0 movement, have been around for a long time. They have only just recently reached critical mass and the mainstream eye. Now I, however, was immune to the siren song since I had taken a different route and plunged into the heady world of Flash development.
So, here I am, having taken a different job, jumping head-first into the current state of standards-compliant web design. And I tell you, I believe in it. It makes sense to separate content from presentation. It makes sense to make sites easier to update and accessible to those with difficulties. But why does it have to be so damn buggy? I mean come on. It’s 2006! I would think that by now there are quite a few people in the online world that know what they would like to be able to use when putting together a site. Well, here’s my list:
- Rounded Corners. Why can’t we specify them in the code?
- Easy n-column layouts. Sure we can hack them together, but it shouldn’t be this hard to put together such fundamental site organizations.
- Alpha transparency.
- Downloadable fonts. Why can’t my text appear how I design it to look?
- Gradients. Why can’t I specify them with code?
- Rotation. Why can’t I rotate elements on a page?
- Vector graphics. Would help with the rounded corners and a whole lot more.
Now, I know the web is about content, but after all these years, why can’t we have the tools to make it easy to produce content the way we want?
P.S. This rant sprang up after the 12th time I had to edit my CSS because of another crippling IE bug which caused me to completely re-configure my somewhat complex 2 column layout so it would work again.
I’d like an a-la-carte channel selection, please.
Posted by admin in Technology on July 3rd, 2006
Only one time in my life, have I ever been given free cable. It wasn’t asked for. It wasn’t an underhanded deal. The installer just happened to not put any trap on the line and hey, free cable for a few months! It was pretty cool and I got to know a few channels very well. Well, after a few years, and jobs, life moved on and we never had money for cable…until recently. Since the gigantic phone and cable companies are starting to battle on the content field, prices are starting to come down. So, I stuck a toe in the water and perused the local bundles for all the many offerings and you know what they were all offering? If you act now! You’ll get not 100, but 200 channels you will never watch with programming you never really cared-for! And don’t forget the 40 premium movie channels that all play the same movies, just at different times of the day! Plus, we’ve got the most HD channels of anybody, but you don’t really care, because your tv is from the stone age, but you’ll upgrade for this! We mean it! Buy now!
And that’s ok. The packages they’re offering might be just what some people are looking for. But, I’d like to think there’s a better way. How about I sign up for your service, and I get to pick the channels I’d like to watch? At the high-end, I’d probably have 20 or so and maybe one premium movie channel. I will never watch 250 channels. That will never get me to sign up for cable or television as it’s being offered by the phone companies right now. I’d just like to watch what I want. And if they could throw in a little DVR action to sweeten the deal, I’d go for it.
In this day and age, I don’t think this is an unreasonable request.
Pixar’s Cars: review with spoilers.
Posted by hollowmyth in Media on June 19th, 2006
Ok, I’m a huge fan of Pixar. I own every one of their movies. And maybe it has to do with the fact that I have kids, but I even love how schmaltzy the stories are.
This time, however, I didn’t come away raving like I did for Nemo and the Incredibles. I came away from this movie feeling about like I did after A Bug’s Life. I loved the overall concept and animation. But, I felt the characters and situations, as a whole, felt forced and sappy. I truly believe that the gimmick superceded the storytelling.
Now, don’t get me wrong. There’s a lot to love in this film, especially if you’re even somewhat of a car fan and like a good dose of Americana. You can tell a lot of research went into this film. From the classic references to racing and the meticulous design of each car, to the wide open landscapes and variety within the car “cities” you really get a feeling that this world was pretty fleshed-out.
That’s why I hated to see such middle-of-the-road performances from the cast. Maybe they just weren’t given much to work with, but I really expected better. The exception here was Paul Newman. Such a nuanced performance! And the animator(s) who caught every expression in that chrome bumper and the windshield eyes cannot be commended enough. Incredible stuff. And I must say I didn’t hate Larry the Cable Guy as much as I thought I would. Sure, it was an extension of his regular schtick and there really wasn’t too much to his character, but the character design and that big, buck-toothed grin made up for a lot.
The last thing that bugged me, I also thought that the music was uneven in parts. Perhaps there were a few too many pop songs, but I felt that Randy Newman’s score just didn’t quite hold up the whole time.
Overall, I loved the concept, the animation and the general feel of the movie. I didn’t like some of the characterization and the uneven music. But, I must say that this is still a great film and a worthy entry in the Pixar line-up.
Hollowmyth is coming soon.
Hollowmyth.net will be a place for myself and others to discuss mythology, legends and storytelling.
I would like it to be more than a factual place to learn about myths. I want it to be a place to deconstruct their meaning. I want to explore their place in humanity’s history, the factual events that may have spawned them and what mythologies we are creating today and into the future. Read the rest of this entry »
10 letters. 10 measly letters.
Posted by hollowmyth in Design on June 13th, 2006
Ok, I registered hollowmyth.com a few years ago. I had great plans. I had a vision. I was finally going to have a place to let my creativity run wild…
Well, my spare time didn’t match up with my ideas and it lay fallow with only a lowly splash page to mark its existence. Well, this year, I decided to take up the charge and try it again. I was on fire! I wasn’t going to let anything stop me! Except the “server not found” error when I typed in the URL.
“What?!” I cried. How could it have expired? I had it set to auto-renew. Well, after chasing down the registrars info and loggin in, I found all the alerts were sent to an old email address. The domain was circling the drain, about to be flushed into the waiting hands of the highest bidder.
Ok, fine, I accept I lost it due to user error. So, how much will it be get my domain back? $80 bucks! $80 bucks for 10 letters. $80 bucks for 10 imaginary letters made up of a few bits of information sitting in a database somewhere. “If you’d renewed it within 12 days, it would have been fine,” the service rep tries to help.
So why does it cost so much? “Well, we get charged for blah and blah and blah so we feel the need to bend over our customers just like we get it from verisign and ICANN,” I can almost hear him shrug. “That’s business.”
So, I’m forced to either purchase a less optimal domain, pony up the dough for the renewal, or sign up to watch for it when it gets put on auction.
I know it’s a weak rant, given the state of the world, but c’mon…it’s just 10 measly letters…