SOME RANDOM DUDE

A while back, I wrote a small article about why I felt Silverlight should fail. The writeup generated a lot of good conversation and a bit of ire from Silverlight supporters (such as this example) so I thought it would be beneficial to write a followup. Let me try to make this clear, I am not a Flash fanboy. While I use Flash to pay the bills, I have written about my concerns with Flash. It is my belief that use of Flash on the web (and other RIA technologies) will continue to dwindle as open-source solutions that provide similar solutions take their place. Even if Silverlight usurps Flash (something I greatly doubt), there may not be much of a kingdom to reign upon once they do. I think Adobe sees this shift, I am unsure if Microsoft does.
(more…)adobe, air, browser plugin, cross browser, cross platform, flash, flex, javascript, microsoft, open source, ria, silverlight standards

Earlier this week, I asked readers what they disliked about Flash. The post spearheaded a large and helpful discussion on the various issues where Flash needs improvement. Many issues brought up were well know and expected, while others were things I had yet to consider. While I tried to respond to each person’s thoughts, I felt it may be interesting for me to lay out what does not excite me about the Flash technology as a whole. Let me preface this by stating, once again, that I make a living in Flash and there are many, many things that I like about it. I have spent time defending it - however, until some of these issues are addressed, I will continue to have my doubts.
(more…)adobe, annoyances, bad taste, browser plugin, context menu, doubts, experiences, flash player, flash projects, flash technology, intensity, internet users, many things, meta, new feature, preface, resentment, specifics web design

I had a serious chill-out session this weekend, hence the late posting for the weekly links. It is definitely lacking in some areas, but there are still plenty of worthy links to check out.

Enjoy the links.

(more…)adobe, beautiful junk, bush, camera noise, collapse, css, damned time, design, dog, dudes, economy, electronics, elephant, finger, follow, gadgets, george bush, god particle, good, google, google analytics, hard time, hartija, hillary clinton, hp, ice, indiana, internal combustion engine, internet, jo on rails, links, madam, middle class, mission accomplished banner, modular, nelson mandela, olinda, open screen project, openframeworks, ouch, physics, pimp, pixel, pretty printing, print, proprietary devices, real simple syndication, robotics, rss, rssday, ruby on rails, ruby processing, sculptures, self promotion, shoebox, signatures, suicide, synchronization, tarpon, terrorism, twistori, twitter, underneath it all, video, visualization, weekly white house

I am certainly amazed, but I seemed to have continued to write at a steady pace throughout the entire crazy timeline. Things are starting to slow down again and I am making life-decisions to ensure that they continue to be that way. I have a couple other cool posts that will be coming down the pipe soon - make sure to drop by to check them out.

Enjoy the links.

(more…)2008 olympics, actionscript, adobe, as3, asylum, baseball, baseball game, beijing, beijing 2008, booing, browser, browser market, buddypress, css, css techniques, design, DIY, eco city, embedded fonts, flash player, flex, fonts, fontstruct, george w bush, good, google, google maps, halford belair, iPhone, jeremy harris, life decisions, lighting, links, linux, man suit, mccain girls, mile high ultima tower, motion detection, mugabe, name, network platform, olympics, open processing, Photography, prank, president bush, processing, revolution os, runoff vote, safari, serving javascript, sewer treatment, shock camera, social network platform, steady pace, stool, super pii pii brothers, true player, typography, unusual flower, weekly, wind solar, wordpress, wordpress plugins youtube

I have really fallen in love with Processing, but I had been had hit a bit of a plateau in terms of progress in the past month or so. I never really have spent too much time with algorithmic motion/drawing. When I jumped into Flash, I went straight towards the Tween class and never spent much time trying to work in the EnterFrame-loop based motion design. Because of this, learning how to work with Processing's draw() loop has been a bit foreign and one can only find so many ways to implement sine/cosine motion treatments.

Luckily, I ran across the simply stunning work of Robert Hodgin who just happened to offer up his source code. After looking through one of his projects and banging away at it, I ended up learning a quite a bit on how motion can end up looking more organic and sporadic. This particular project used the noise() method as its basis for motion jittering. I had not even known such a method existed. After hacking up Robert's source, I came up with some really interesting form experiments using Robert's general motion concepts.

(more...)1280x720, actionscript, adobe, flight404, h 264, loop, meander, motion design, motion drawing, noise, plateau, playback, processing, robert hodgin, source code, video video player