Nip/Tuck = Reality. No, Really!

Joyce and I saw the premiere of FX’s Nip/Tuck last night. Oh my. This is going to be an interesting season. Joyce thinks they’ve done some market research on what the audience wants because it has really been cranked up a few notches. Some scenes were so outrageous that we found ourselves in a combination laugh/gasp several times. If you’ve got the stomach for it – blood, guts, debauchery, sex (not necessarily in that order) – I’d highly recommend watching it.

I found myself thinking that somewhere on this planet, people actually live like that. Right?

Essential ActionScript 2.0

Well after several attempts I’ve gotten my hands on Colin Moock’s new tome (well maybe not tome – Programming ColdFusion MX is a tome), Essential ActionScript 2.0. I’m excited to dig in. Surely much of it will be elementary, but hopefully this will be a place where all the little bits and pieces I’ve compliled in my head with the help of my friends – “and you know who you are, TAH!” – will fall into a pile of best practices, launching me into the AS atmosphere. We shall see.

(That was me doing Liza. DON’T ask me why, I don’t know)

This is for the Birds

We went shopping for Father’s Day gifts last weekend and decided on bird feeders. We ended up getting one for ourselves.

So much for that idea.

Max = Boring?

I was looking at the tracks listing for Max 2004 this morning. I was seriously thinking of attending this year, but for programmer types it seems that unless I’m totally banking on Flex there doesn’t seem to be anything very interesting for AS coders. Am I missing something? I’m sure that it’ll be fun either way.

The _root of Evil?

I’ve been breaking through on some Flash concepts thanks to a friendly and helpful dialogue between JesterXL, Stacey-BWC, and myself. As always I’ve been trying to stick with AS2 conventions all the way, and in trying to generate instances of components (in this case Label) on the fly I was hitting a wall when trying to use createClassObject and assigning the instance to a declared variable of type Label ( var myLabel:Label ). I have even imported mx.core.UIComponent which inherits UIObject (where createClassObject is), which inherits MovieClip. It just wouldn’t work! Junk with can’t import class or can’t find class or something.

It’s amazing that someone can waste most of a day trying to display a Label on the stage with actionscript. Here’s the deal…When you’re working on the _root level in your main movie, you’re really not dealing with an object of type MovieClip, even though it has a timeline and stuff. Imports and stuff don’t work because this _root is not a technically real movieClip. Don’t ask me why, but if you create an empty movie clip in your main movie and attach a class to it, say one called Main, you can import class libraries and generate crap dynamically all day from this Main class (which is attached via linkage properties). Once you jump into a “real” movieClip (using say, attachMovie) you’re now working in an object oriented world.

The lesson from this is, other than some preloading functionality, never start working in the _root of your main movie – treat it as a shell and load a MovieClip there to do your work in.

Also, make sure that the class attached to the movieClip extends the correct class – generally UIObject or UIComponent depending on what functionality you’ll need.

Make sense? I hope so – it took me a day to figure it out. Thanks Jester and Bitch! Straighten me out if I’m wrong kids!

MovableType 3 Attempt 2

Nope. Didn’t work. I got further than before – everything ran and upgraded just fine, but I couldn’t log in. “Invalid login.” Deleted everything, even the database tables, did a full install from scratch rather than an upgrade. Same problem could not log in using the default user Melody Nelson.

Restored the old version from my backups and could not log in. Had to download mt-medic.cgi to re-enter the password. Now it works.

Something is definitely not happening with MT3. From the web and the MT boards I suspect there is something wrong with setting cookies on windows flavored servers.

I’m going to be waiting until the official release comes out rather than the developer release. What a waste of two hours.

Barefoot in the Park with Jane, Bob, and Pete

Went to the second Screen on the Green at Piedmont Park last night with Joyce’s work friend Sherri and her husband Will. It was the 1967 Robert Redford/Jane Fonda, Neil Simon adapted film Barefoot in the Park. Pretty funny movie. An interesting thing is that Jane and Bob introduced the film with a suprise appearance by Peter Fonda! Turns out that everyone was next door at the Park Tavern for a benefit auction for Jane’s G-CAPP – Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention. This was nice and all, but Redford took the opportunity in introducing the film to complain about the current administration. Jane kept it non-partisan and actually explained the cause (G-CAPP) for the auction next door, that I doubt most people even knew about.

Given the two events, traffic and parking were tough. The crowd was huge! We usually sit up front, but couldn’t even get close. One cool thing is that we ran into some former clients/friends of mine Lee and Meg.

Now the complaints. First off, if you can’t behave yourself in public, don’t show up. From constant drunken conversations to out and out loudly ripped farts, you people need to stay home. Secondly, there are two rules, no dogs, and no highback chairs. Dogs don’t bother me and I’d like to bring my dog so it would be nice to know if they will be enforcing this rule or not. The highback chairs ARE a problem. It is sooo rude to bring your fricking camping chair and plop it down in front of the people that are sitting nicely on blankets on the ground. Entire groups of people would do this and sit 6 or 8 across blocking the view of the people behind them, and the people behind them, and the people behind them…on and on for at least 50 feet. I can tell you it nearly ruined my night with some dude’s head smack in the middle of the screen. The organizers really need to enforce this rule or raise the screen 30 feet!

Too Soon Ray, Too Soon

You know I always wanted to see him but I always figured each time that there would be another time. Dammit.

Obituary

Gerling Invades the USA!

Man oh man. I’ve been waiting for this ever since Claire had Deer In You as the Single of the Week on totallyradio’s Daily Show with Claire Kember. I finally got my chance to see Gerling live – their first EVER American show – and I must say it was one of those moments like seeing Blur at Atlanta’s tiny Cotton Club years ago. Like Blur, Gerling is a band that in their home country Australia regularly fill good-sized venues. They even played on the 2004 Big Day Out tour. Here they were playing tunes from their new disc Bad Blood at the Echo Lounge!

I had really only heard Deer In You and when I heard they were coming to town I had to get ahold of more material. The US release of Bad Blood is on Fenway Recordings and is not scheduled until July 13! Talk about bad timing for a tour guys! So I ended up ordering from Chaos Music, an Australian mail order company. Along with Fur Patrol’s latest, I ordered Bad Blood, When Young Terrorists Chase the Sun, and Children of Telepathic Experiences. As of the day of the show I had all but the Young Terrorists release. This was good stuff. I was ready for the show.

Good thing for me, they were opening for the Suicide Girls burlesque show so they were the second of three performances – I might get out of there by midnight! So I arrive, no one has played yet and I saw singer Darren talking to some people. I walked up and asked him about the US release date (July 13) and I gave him a hard time about that. I mentioned I’d be reviewing for totallyradio and that if they went to Brighton I might be able to help them get an interview or something with Claire. They autographed my Bad Blood CD and then had a picture taken with me. All really nice. Cool guys.

When pictures were being taken, I run into Erin Igney, former girlfriend of ex-HIP employee current Twittering Machine member Bo Lathum. Turns out that Erin’s bandmate did a write-up on Gerling for the Creative Loafing and that Gerling’s tour manager called and asked if he knew of anyone that could help “chaperone” the band while they were in Atlanta for three days prior to the gig. Erin ended up being on of the chaperones. According to her, they’ve been having a great time getting wild, bowling, strip clubs (The Clairmont, etc.). The band looks happy now. We’ll see how they look after thirty cities and thirty parties! Oh and Bo showed up in the end which was cool – he looks like grown up Bo.

Anyway, the show was fairly short, but they did lots of tunes from Bad Blood and it rocked! Here is the Gerling road weblog.

Go See Them!

The rest of the dates are:

Wed 6/09/04
Atlanta, GA
Echo Lounge appearing with SuicideGirls Burlesque Act

Thu 06/10/04
Orlando, FL
Back Booth

Fri 06/11/04 Fort Lauderdale, FL
The Factory

Sat 06/12/04 Saint Petersburg, FL
State Theatre

Sun 06/13/04
Gainesville, FL
Market Street Pub

Mon 06/14/04
Columbia, SC
New Brookland Tavern

Tue 06/15/04
Washington, DC
9:30 Club

Wed 06/16/04
Baltimore, MD
Ottobar

Thu 06/17/04
Philadelphia, PA
The Trocadero / Balcony Bar

Sat 06/19/04
New York, NY
Knitting Factory

Mon 06/21/04
Chicago, IL
Double Door

Tue 06/22/04
Cleveland, OH
Beachland Ballroom & Tavern

Wed 06/23/04
Albany, NY
Valentine’s

Thu 06/24/04
Allston, MA
Harpers Ferry

Fri 06/25/04
Hoboken, NJ
Maxwell’s

Sun 06/27/04
Philadelphia, PA
The Khyber

Mon 06/28/04
New York, NY
Mercury Lounge

Tue 06/29/04
Arlington, VA
IOTA Club & Cafe

Tue 07/06/04
Portland, OR
Meow Meow

Wed 07/07/04
San Francisco, CA
Bottom Of The Hill

Thu 07/08/04
Los Angeles, CA
Knitting Factory

Fri 07/09/04
Long Beach, CA
Koo’s Long Beach

Sat 07/10/04
San Diego, CA
Mira Mesa Epicentre

Sun 07/11/04
Phoenix, AZ
Modified

Tue 07/13/04
El Paso, TX
Schaffino’s

Wed 07/14/04
Austin, TX
Flamingo Cantina

Thu 07/15/04
Houston, TX
Fat Cat’s (formerly Mary Jane’s)

Fri 07/16/04
Denton, TX
Rubber Gloves

Sat 07/17/04
Baton Rouge, LA
North Gate Tavern

Mon 07/19/04
Columbia, MO
Mojo’s

Wed 07/21/04
Denver, CO
Larimer Lounge

Thu 07/22/04
Salt Lake City, UT
Kilby Court

Flash Data Binding and Other Stuff

The other day I was searching for info about Flash MX 2004 data binding and found an article on DevNet called – tada! – Data Binding in Macromedia Flash MX Professional 2004 by Aral Balkan. This article is very good and the concepts are completely layed out and clearly explained, unlike unfortunately, many of the articles I find there. It explains binding, the Data Holder component, and how to use formatting and validation classes with V2 components. Very nice!