It's Pimpin'...

Well it's finally finished and live, (No not my portfolio), the site I've been working on last month for MasterLift... pimpmylift.ca!!!

This has been the largest AS2 project I've worked on. It has 23 classes.. a main document class, 2 controller classes, and each section that inherit from a Section class. I've learned a lot form this project and hope to carry what I've learned on to some new upcoming projects.

I was only commissioned to build the Flash front end, nothing after you're "Done" so the way some things function aren't standard but they work well just the same. Try it out and send some pimped out forklifts to your friends.

www.pimpmylift.ca

Crazy or genius?

I resisted posting this for a variety of reasons but I figured I'd give in.
If anyone has seen the movie EdTV then you may get a kick out of this. A new website (social experiment) has started with the same premise as EdTV. It's called aptly enough, justin.tv. A guy named Justin wears a webcam that's online 24/7.

Now based on the fact it's very difficult to connect and lately it's getting worse, I think it's growing in popularity. But I have to ask why? Why is it that we want to see someone' s boring daily life. Is it human nature just to see what someone has and compare ourselves to them? Or is it something else? Personally I think this experiment (if you can call it that) is ludicrous. But I think I'm in the minority. And the fact I'm posting this must mean I been affected some how.

Take a look and judge for yourself. Are you compelled to watch? or do you just walk away?

BTW - A very cool project I been working for a forklift company is due to launch Monday. I'll post a link when its live.

Adobe's been busy

Today Adobe announced the release of CS3. I've just finished reviewing the new features in Flash CS3 and they are nothing short of amazing!
Now that you can edit PS files straight within Flash is amazing. The new content we'll see on the web with be outstanding. Another feature I think will be useful is the way the pen tool works, similar to Illustrator. I found the way it is now very difficult to use.
I'm also very excited to learn AS3. I've bought my first book on the subject and am just starting to read through it.
It looks like this year will be an action packed, fun-filled one!

It's HERE!!

Apollo is out! 'nuff said.

Get it here. Set it up here. And create apps like these.

It's coming..

It's been awhile since I've blogged because I've been busy with some big projects.
First, I've finally secured my webhost and domain name, www.noti.ca and I'm 60% done my website. I'm so close and excited that's it's almost. Personal projects always seem to drag on forever.
Second, Apollo camp is done (I didn't attend it), but that means the public beta is due to be released SOON. I'm going to get the Apollo reference book when the Alpha gets released.

I have to say.. I've set my goals and I'm hitting everyone.. this year has started out well, I'm hoping to finish it with a BIG bang.

Words to live by..

Someone quoted me a passage a couple of years back when I was making my career transition. It was about reading books everyday on the career path you've chosen. It was something that stuck on me for the past 5 years, and I finally decided to look it up:

Read an hour every day in your chosen field.
This works out to about one book per week, 50 books per year,
and will guarantee your success.
--Brian Tracy

I don't know who Brian Tracy is, but I really like his ideas. I found lots of quotes from him over here.
Another quote I really like is "Every minute you spend in planning saves 10 minutes in execution;". Now if I could get my boss and his clients to think like that ;)

The best book EVER...

I read a lot of books on Flash and actionscript in general.. well actually it's the only thing I read, except the newspaper. Ask anyone who has been to my house and they'll tell you every book I own is Flash.. all the way back to my first book Visual Guide to Flash MX.
I think everyone remembers the first book they bought on Flash because it teaches you the most (let's face you didn't know too much before that's why you bought it). So it's always hard to find a book that quite matches up. Well look no further...
Object Oriented Actionscript for Flash 8 by Peter Elst and Todd Yard is the way to go. I haven't learned so much since my first book. Everything from CVS, design patterns, animation, and External Interface is covered. With wonderful hands on examples that if you work through, will definitely teach someone to everybody. After applying what I've learned in this book to a couple of projects my work flow and understanding of classes has grown by leaps and bounds.. it's opened a door for that has flamed my passion for coding to an inferno. (Yes.. I know a little over the top, but I do love this book).
All I can say it that the pages are worn down from all my referencing back and forth. I can't wait for the AS 3.0 version of this book to come out.

One down...

Just came back from passing the Flash 8 Certification Exam. I didn't really study, (except reviewing the help files) because I wanted to see if I really knew my stuff, plus I was really bust this week.
I've read a lot of opinions around the net about the value of certification, some good and some bad. Here's my take on it.
First, I got certified because I'm always underestimating myself. I think (wrongly) that everyone knows more than me. This just validates that I AM good enough to continue my passion for scripting. (yes, it's a personality flaw). Second, people who hire Flash experts, in small companies (and some larger ones) don't know Flash. Not all companies are large design companies, and this is where most arguments fail. From the standpoint of the employer, they're looking for some validation that you know Flash, and this is a quick and easy way to validate it (Yes, most people want quick proof). So those are my primary reasons for getting certified, as for the exam...

The exam was actually very straightforward. If you work in Flash daily, the exam will not present a problem. Some of it was on the basics like symbols on the timeline and some on video integration. Good luck if you're going for the cert, I think it will be worth it.

Employers, stop asking for the impossible!

If you're like me, you're always keeping one eye on the job market, just to see whats coming up. I got this posting today: http://information-technology.thingamajob.com/jobs/Ontario/Flash-Developer/1132844
I don't expect it to be up for long, or it will be modified because I pointed out the error to the poster already.
For people who don't see it, or are too lazy to click the link, they're asking for "3 to 5 years of experience using Actionscript 3.0". If you're into flash at all you'll see the problem immediately. AS3.0 has only been out in PUBLIC ALPHA (not even released yet) for maybe 6 months, tops. And these people are asking for someone with 3-5 years of experience with it. Who are they looking for Gary Grossman?
I KNOW I'm qualified for jobs asking for AS 2.0 experience, HTML, CSS and other technologies, but I'm no expert in the 25 technologies listed.
No wonder these companies hire people and end having to pay huge money to get rid of them, they've mastered the art of bs.

Something to be said about PLANNING

I recently got the ludicrous request (which I couldn't turn down) to create 4 versions of animated banners for a clothing company. They wanted me to create 8 sizes of each banner. And deliver it in 4 days. The only thing they had was the static creative.
The time line was bad enough, but what made it worse was that they only wanted to review the banners after they were created and each individually!! So essentially only after one set of banners were created would they approve them. (I think you know where this is going.) After the first set was done, they wanted changes.. no problem. Round 2, changes again. Round 3, changes again. Round 4, now they wanted to combine changes from round 1 and 3. In the end it was 7 rounds of changes to 32 banners! I don't mind changes, but I can't stand it when a change it made to an element and then changed back 2 rounds later.
I tried to advise and make recommendations to this (massive) company. But I think it was just too many cooks in the kitchen.
Needless to say I'm bananerd out (like bananas, sorry).

Knowing your target...

Working at a creative company, and checking out thefwa.com often, I've ended up seeing thousands of website. Some good and some terrible. (Heck I've even made some of the terrible websites at the clients request, but that's a different story). But when a website hits it's target demographic head on, it makes me notice... http://www.toopyandbinoo.com/

Normally, I wouldn't give this site a second glance beyond it's nice clean and "easy-to-use" interface, but since I have a 2 year old daughter who loves Toopy and Binoo I decided to give it a closer look.

Overall, this site is amazingly interactive. It's my favorite type of website that looks simple, but is very complex. It encourages kids to click on items and follow Toopy and Binoo on new adventures. One of my favorite sections is when you dress Binoo up with old items in a closet, you see him in the mirror with a the item as they imagine it would look like. For example, if you dress Binoo in a red house coat, in the mirror it appears as Santa's jacket. This promotes imagination and my daughter loves it. We spent at least an hour on this site, and if you have a 2 year old, that is a feat in itself.

I could go on and on about it, but I'd encourage you to check it out and discover it for yourself. When viewing it remember who they're targeting. These people at Tribal Nova are really thinking. Congrats!

Hooray.. now I'm cool!

After reading numerous blogs on Jaxtr, namely Peter Elst and Keith Peter, I decided to try it out.
Well, as of a few minutes ago I got my account. Now I'm cool. Go ahead and call me by using the button on the right.

Too many cool things...

Every time I head over to OSFlash.org I come across something new I want to try. Yesterday, I came across Red5. Take from osflash website, Red5 is:
an Open Source Flash Server written in Java that supports:

• Streaming Audio/Video (FLV and MP3)
• Recording Client Streams (FLV only)
• Shared Objects
• Live Stream Publishing
• Remoting

I haven't tried it, and I don't know too much about it, but if it can do what it says it can, I'm sold. I've wanted to create a program where you can stream from a webcam (just for fun) but I wasn't going to buy any software for it, much less a Flash Communication server. This fits the bill perfectly.

Now, with Papervision3d, AS3, Apollo and now Red5 how will I ever find the time for for anything but Flash programming? My wife will be so happy!! LOL.

AS3 news

I found some convincing arguments to speed up my transition to AS3. Granted they're more visual elements than arguments, but they're still convincing:

PaperVision3d - Private beta 3d engine for Flash. Available for both AS2 and AS3, but to see the real power in AS3, view this (click on the icon in the bottom right corner for FULLSCREEN). I've just got the classes and will hopefully get something together in the future. Although I love 3d, I don't anything about modeling.

computeSpectrum AS3 method - This is way overdue; the ability to generate visualizations from supported sound files. An example can be found here. (Not the best example, and you need Flash Player 9 to view it).

Apollo is coming...

I just read on Keith Peter's blog a developer version of Apollo may be released as soon as March! Man, I'm getting sooooo excited!

This will be huge when it hits.

It's ALIVE!!

The build for my ever talked about portfolio site has started. I'm anticipating a launch at the end of the month.

It's taken some time to finalize the mock-ups, diagram the UML and collect all the assets (ie- screenshots of sites, project files, etc), but now it's all together. I'm trying to build it in a MVC design type so in the future I'll can change to look without having to change a lot of the code.

I'll post some mock ups later this week.

I'm Back...

After an amazing week in the Caribbean I'm back. Although it's very tough to get back into the swing of things when the weather is 28 C and you come back to -18 C.

I went with some friends and family on a cruise to San Juan, St.Thomas, Antigua, St. Maarten, St. Lucia and Barbados. Everyday and new and amazing excursion. But If I had to pick a favorite place, it would be a tie between St.Lucia and Barbados. Both places absolutely gorgeous. I would definitely go back in a heartbeat.

Anyway, back to reality and back to the master plan. Studying for certification and learning AS 3, as well as exploring some career options.

I'll be back to posting AS stuff, so anything I missed while I was gone (on the boards and blogs) I'll post up here in the next couple of days.

Live ... finally

After a slight delay my companies new website launched today, www.trivedicom.com. It took just over two weeks to complete. It uses custom class files I created.
It was a good exercise and I learned a lot about packages and classes, but there's definitely room for improvement ;)

My boss loves it, so I guess it is a success.

Time Flies

I've been so busy with finishing my works new website (launching Jan.15) and playing Super Swing Golf on my Wii, I haven't had much time to surf or blog. But here a couple of updates.

Object Oriented Actionscript for Flash 8 by Peter Elst and Todd Yard has to be one of my favorite books . I'm only about a third of the way through it and the information it provides is invaluable. This books is a MUST for anyone serious about scripting! It will be well worn by the time I'm done with it.

Super Swing Golf, Super Swing Golf, Super Swing Golf! That's about All I have to say. My wife is about to hang me, I spend all my free time playing it. Rent it at your local video store and try it for yourself. If you like to golf, it's a good mesh of a (fairly) accurate swing and the fantasy world. Get clubs, balls and powers you could only dream of.

What's up for this year? I'm planning on getting certified as a Flash 8 designer/developer from Adobe. Finishing my portfolio site and learn AS3. Just to name a few.