Movies for the Day

While I work, I like to have a movie playing in the background (as in, my second monitor). Usually at half size and kind of quiet, but a nice little "Hey, what's going on over there?"

Anyway, today's movies are;

• The original Rat Pack in Ocean's 11
• Master and Commander - The Far Side of the World
• The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
• O Brother Where Art Thou?

R.I.P George Carlin

George Carlin was my favourite comedian in high school. I went through a stand up comedy phase. Starting with Bill Cosby, Eddie Murphy, Steven Wright and ending with George Carlin.

George, you will truly be missed.

Father's Day

Sunday was my second father's day and it was awesome! But first, let me talk about Saturday. My cousin Chandra's husband, Dave, was in town with his band The Tall Boys of Kentucky for NXNE.

What an incredible show. They didn't go on until midnight and I was pretty tired and sober by the time they rolled onto the stage. Riding your motorcycle can put a damper on any visit to a bar. They Tall Boys had an amazing energy and all familial pride aside, Dave's drumming was phenomenal. They're playing tonight, Tuesday June 17th, at the Lakeside Lounge on the Lower East Side in Manhattan. If you're in the neighbourhood, check them out. I guarantee you'll enjoy them. Plus, Dave hooked me up with two bottles of single cask bourbon. I love you...

Anyway, this leads me to Sunday. My one father's day request was to sleep in. With a toddler waking up at 5:30 am every morning and going to a show that went til 1 am, I really wanted, nay needed to sleep in.

Libs woke me up with Declan at 9:30 am. My presents? Besides a happy Declan, I got a card, a shirt and Libs had a little printed card stating she was having one of my Josh prints framed. The last time Josh came to FiTC, he gave me a Ming Dynasty print. Eric Miranda is one of my favourite New Yorkers and his band is awesome. Josh knows it, so it's a great gift. The last print he gave me is oddly sized so I need to have it professionally framed. And I've been a little reticent in that area. Anyway, I'm excited to have the Ming Dynasty print framed. I love getting artwork from my friends.

She also gave me a great shirt. Then, when Declan was napping, I ran out bought myself a father's day gift. A new helmet. Finally, I can replace the half helmet I bought a year into owning my bike that never really fit and made my head look like a mushroom. The new helmet is exactly like this but with flames. Sweet.

Then, we went to a concert. Declan's first ever concert. Dan Zanes is like the Raffi of the 2000's. It was awesome. Declan had so much fun! He'd stand on his seat and dance, he'd jump into the aisle and dance. He went to the family behind us and sat on the lap of first the father and then the son. He'd clap and yell. He spun around and around.

Finally, to top it all off, although it was closed, the organic butcher down the street from the concert invited Libs and Declan in to look around. Libs picked out a few chicken breasts. Oh, and it was FREE CHICKEN DAY. Excuse me? A free chicken??? So we got a free 6 pound chicken. Which I promptly shoved a king can of beer up it's ass and roasted on the BBQ. You've never had chicken til you've had beer chicken.

To sum up;

Free chicken, good.
Dan Zanes, good.
New helmet, good.
Framed artwork, good.
Kentucky, great.
Libs, awesome.
Declan, awesome.

Happy June

Things are busy as usual and that means not posting. That's not to say I'm not doing anything and just to prove it...

I ran into a problem in a recent project where I had a series of buttons and I wanted to one to be active right off the bat. ie, like a gallery where the first image is the triggered from the first thumbnail.

There are two ways I found;

1. When your button isn't actually sending any information along with it you can change your callback function to accept a null parameter.

ex.
button.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, onClick);

private function onClick(mevt:MouseEvent=null):void
{
//do whatever here
}

now I can just call the onClick function like any regular ol' function

onClick();

However, if you want to actually click the button because you need to know something that button has;

//using the same code as above

button.dispatchEvent(new MouseEvent(MouseEvent.CLICK));

TADA!

Now tell me I haven't been doing anything.