In Flagrante Delicto! » FVM

Obligatory Year-End Analysis

Joseph Labrecque — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 22:06:21 +0000

I’m really not one for posting random thoughts all over the place- but it is interesting to think over some of my activities while on parental leave one year ago and contrast that with what life is like now- how things stand and where things are going.

Work at DU is good. It’s been very busy and that is a major concern. We should be hiring someone soon to take some of the load off. There is no shortage of interesting projects. I get to work with Flash, Flex, AIR and the rest- a really nice environment to use my skills. It’s difficult to see myself working in a more corporate structure at this point.

I’ve also been very active with teaching- way too active. It’s a nice source of extra income but if I take on too much it becomes a burden rather than a pleasure.

My work through Fractured Vision Media has really blossomed this year. I’ve partnered with ZStream Media Services on a rather large project building an interactive media delivery system for Blockbuster, La Quinta Inns, and potentially a number of other clients. The framework we’ve created is pretty extensible and the initial development will hopefully wrap us soon as we are seeing a nationwide release beginning this week.

Personal projects have been sparse. Just no real time with all the other stuff I have going on. One item that I am very pleased with is the completion of a new audio collection “A Prison of Oneself” which I am releasing through FVM. I’ve worked on material for this release off and on since 2003(!) and have put in far too much work to let it rot in my archives. I sold a number of copies of “August” back in 2000 and with much better distribution through the internet, I believe I can recoup the small amount of money I’ve put into this project fairly easily. I set up a crappy MySpace Music account to help advertise and network with artists I’ve worked with when I was more active with this stuff. The album should be available for purchase within the next week or so.

All in all, it has been a pretty successful year. If I can look back next year with the same amount of optimism- I will be thrilled!

My wishes for the new year involve the following:

Become more introspective and considerate of personal time, personal projects, and the inner-life.
Continue growing Fractured Vision Media as a multimedia services entity.
Become more fluent in ActionScript 3.0 and related technologies while expanding focus once again to design aspects of my many projects.
Generally become a better father, husband, and human being…

Happy New Year!

Flash Player 9 FSCommand() Bug

Joseph Labrecque — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 17:50:57 +0000

I’m working on a rather large AS3 project through Fractured Vision Media which relies on the flash.system.fscommand package to properly transmit data from the application to its container layer. Unfortunately, we’ve come across a bug in which FSCommand calls are ignored! Through some quick research (e.g. Google) it was discovered that more than a few others have come across this problem as well.

The workaround for now is to be sure you are generating unique argument strings to pass through the FSCommand. This could involve changing the case of different characters in your argument string or appending a unique ID bassed off of something like the current time.

Does anyone know the status of this bug? Will it be patched in “Moviestar”? Seems pretty major to me…

Website Is Back- I’m Posting Again

Joseph Labrecque — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 14:23:17 +0000

Over the past few months, I’ve been attempting to sort through a lot of things in my life to discover what is necessary and what is really just nonsense to be thrown aside. In this process, I’ve been removing a lot of items from my schedule to see what sort of difference the absence of this or that will make in my overall feeling of contentment. One of the first things to go was this website along with a few others I’ve been caring for over time.

What I’ve learned in this process is that I am taking on too much work and do not have enough time for myself and my personal projects. I’m scaling back my Fractured Vision Media efforts to become more of a venue for the production and distribution of my personal endeavors. That is not to say that I will not take on any client-based design or development work, I will just be a lot more selective in this area.

I’ve recently been given the opportunity to do more teaching and will be shifting my extra-daily work activities to that area. The teaching is becoming much more regular and it is something I enjoy. Not having to be scrambling for project details, client wishes, and all the rest that comes with freelance work is also something very nice about a regularized teaching contract.

Now that some time has gone by, I believe this project, In Flagrante Delicto!, still holds quite a bit of value, not only for myself but also as a contribution to the greater pool of information. I’ve removed a lot of the less technical, more personal, posts and plan to post less often but with greater relevance.

In bringing things back online, I’ve chosen to use the Sandbox theme as a base. There may be a few things to patch up, here and there, as I re-form the website and apply my own design stylings to the structure. So… please excuse the mess.

New Short: “Window View”

Joseph Labrecque — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 20:42:27 +0000

I’ve completed a new short film called “Window View” which can be viewed at The Memoryspiral.

[IMAGE MISSING]

“A scene from within a house- looking out at events in the backyard.”

I’m very happy with both the concept and the final realization. There were some technical considerations I was able to get around with the tools in Premiere CS2… specifically using a garbage mask to remove props I left in frame on one shot- oooops! Haven’t had a look at the new version yet, but do want to give it a try after the full trial is released to see if it speeds up my workflow at all.