Creative Moments / ‘Pistachio’

It’s really interesting to me how creative impulses can arrive in little, concentrated spurts. This is how ideas usually manifest themselves to me, and when they do, I like to grab ahold and just go with it.

The past few days I was feeling kinda dry, creatively. Happens every once in awhile and to be honest- provides me with some dark moments. The good thing is that when I experience a period like this, it often means that my inspiration will pick up in a day or so. If I time things right, I can get some really good stuff out of this cycle of mine.

This is exactly the case with ‘Pistachio’, a 30 second piece inspired by a contest held at http://www.getcrackin.com/. I just read about this in passing via Twitter, and immediately some ideas shot through my head like lightening. I absolutely love moments like this. Luckily, I had a few hours to devote to it and below is the result:

Edited down in Premiere Pro CS4 from about a minute of footage in two takes captured ‘live’ from a Canon SD video camera. Compositing done in After Effects CS4 with sound recorded through Soundbooth. Was a great experience messing around with After Effects after a very long time.

Now, I knew from the get go that this would never be accepted by the judges. No way. But that isn’t the point with this sort of thing, is it?

VidLoop 1.4.18 is out on Adobe AIR Marketplace

Just like the sign says… VidLoop 1.4.18 is out on Adobe AIR Marketplace.

It’s been a year since I released the initial version (built over last Thanksgiving holiday) and have been working on some revisions in the past few weeks with the intention of getting this new version out as an anniversary marking. Looks like I made it!

The new version adds the following features:

• You can now present SWF files within a loop
• VidLoop automatically rescans directories at startup and shutdown
• You can choose to have a loop start automatically
• I rewrote the transitions mechanism
• Fixed some directory parsing bugs and other junk

I’m not claiming the thing is perfect or even rock-solid, but after receiving feature requests and thanks from many people regarding the usefulness of this little app… I think it deserves some continued support.

DONATE to Toys for Tots via RIA Beard Off!

I’m participating in the 2010 RIA Beard Off for Toys for Tots, a charity event for members of the RIA community to grow beards and raise money for Marine Toys for Tots Foundation. Donation amounts of $10 to $50 are accepted and we are actually almost half way to the goal of $2000. Would be great if we hit $5K – so please donate and mention my Twitter username @JosephLabrecque in your donation comment (because you know I’ll win)!

For participants like myself, we must update our Twitter avatars at least twice during the event which will be over on December 15th. I’ll probably update mine every day via various webcams and will catalog photos here every few days.

I also have a public Twitter List at @JosephLabrecque/riabeardoff where you can follow all of the participants.

I’m going to end up very, very furry by mid-December. Make it worth my while and let’s raise money for some children in need this Christmas!

Rendering Flash Content with Dynamic WMODE Attributes – Revisited

Screw Internet Explorer! This is one of the many reasons I prefer to avoid having a browser render anything at all for me. Can’t trust it! Better to just take care of these things before it even hits the browser:

Java JSP example

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String embedCode1 = item.getEmbedCode();
 
String expression1 = "><param";
String replacement1 = "><param name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"><param";
String embedCode2 = embedCode1.replace(expression1, replacement1);
 
String expression2 = "<embed ";
String replacement2 = "<embed wmode=\"transparent\" ";
String embedCodeFinal = embedCode2.replace(expression2, replacement2);
 
<div class="embedHolder">
	<%=embedCodeFinal%>
</div>

What am I talking about? You can read up on my original article if it pleases you.

Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2.0 Public Betas

The Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2.0 Public betas are now available via Adobe Labs:

Flash Player 10.1

AIR 2.0

These are the first fruits to come out of the Open Screen Project – and hopefully much more good will follow as FP 10.1 for mobile devices will begin shipping later this year into next covering mobile platforms like Palm, Blackberry, and Android.

Some good resources:
Flash Player 10.1 Beta Release Notes
Introducing Adobe AIR 2 beta
Flash Player 10.1 public prerelease demos and interviews
Mobile and digital home

UPDATE: Wow. Christian Cantrell has everything you could need at AIR 2 Public Beta Resources.