New Project Launched

After I returned from Brighton and Flash on the Beach I was immediately booked on a job. To be honest, all I wanted to do was lie down for a week, but that wasn't meant to be.

Luckily, it was an interesting job and one I haven't done before. A snow globe. I got to do a few things I've wanted to use in a project; copy images via BitmapData so I only need to load them once, and I adapted Seb Lee-Delisle's AS3 particle system for the snowflakes.

Wish you were cheer

Ran into a couple of bugaboos; namely SharedObject issues. Somewhere along the line we thought a downloaded globe could access a SharedObject created by a website. I think I knew this already, but I was hoping I was wrong. So we had to go with writing a text file on the fly, grabbing the exe and zipping them both up for download.

For the embed code, it was a fairly simple matter of copying basic object and embed code and using FlashVars in the code for the blog aspect. One thing I didn't know and had to join MySpace to discover, MySpace rewrites that code on the fly and it does away with whatever it is I had that the globe recognizes for the globe. Any globe embedded on MySpace is blank. It still looks pretty sweet, and the snowflakes still work, but it's a bummer it's not your own globe. And FaceBook won't let the code work at all. If anyone knows anything about embedding swf's in FaceBook, enlighten me.


Wish you were cheer

However, if you have a blog, it works fine. See the post below this one.






Wish you were cheer

Snow Globes

'Tis the Season

Gift-giving is coming up more and more, once again, in conversation. My typical response, when someone asks me what I want for Christmas, is "money". My mother agrees and we had a good chat about it the other day;

- Money is something everyone wants or needs.
- You will never return it because it doesn't fit, isn't your 'style', not the right colour or because you wanted something different.
- You don't need a gift receipt to give money.

If you're like me, you need to drive "all over God's half-acre" to fit in all the visiting you'll do over the Christmas term. That takes gas. Gas costs money. Man, what I wouldn't give to not have to think about how much it's going to cost me to fill up while I bring my toddler to Aunt so and so or Cousin what's his name.

My mom told me that when she says, "Money would be good." The typical response is, "But money is so impersonal." I disagree. Money is something you'd never ask for. But you can always use it. Whether it's to pay off a bill, fill up your vehicle, buy something nice for yourself on a whim or save and put towards a trip.

Tell the truth, when someone asks, "What do you want for Christmas?"isn't there some small part of you that feels like saying, "A hundred bucks."?

I think the other side of this is my birthday is on Saturday. The more I get asked what I want for my birthday, the more I either say "Nothing" or "Pass the hat, Reverend."

Man Alive, I'll be 35!!!

Flash on the Beach - over

I had a great time in Brighton & Hove during Flash on the Beach. John Davey and his crew did a terrific job of making everyone feel welcome and personally, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Although I missed a couple of the talks I'd intended to see (my apologies, Mario, Marcos, Craig, Andre, Rich, et. al) due to scheduling conflicts or sleeping in or lunches going long, the talks I did see were truly inspiring.

It was so great to see everyone again after so long an absence and it reminded of what great people it's been my privilege to know. Any pictures I have that are worth seeing aren't really of the conference, so I'll just leave them offline. Let me just say, when a person drops his camera in a pint glass, keep your wits about you and take a picture! Don't laugh until you realize your camera's on and all you had to do was snap it. All I got a was a lousy pic of the camera being shook out.

Lastly, there's nothing more rewarding than meeting new people and seeing that they are of a like mind. You know you who are. I'm happy to have met you guys. But Chris, Underberg is gross. No two ways about it.

Kudos once again, to you, John. I cannot wait for '08.

Much love to my employers, Organic, for footing the bill for me to go. Now if you'll just let me expense what amounts to $400.00 CAD in alcohol expenses over the week, I'll be good.