OT – Saving Intown Neighborhoods From Tasteless (Evil) Developers

I don’t usually post non-Macromedia related stuff in this category, but I really need some feedback here. As you can see, the house next to ours (ours is on the left) is being torn down. It was previously occupied by the rednecks that grew up in the house and was not maintained well at all. When the house finally sold after sitting vacant for over a year we knew that is was going to be kept as a habitat for squirrels or a tear down.

When we found the house was sold to a young couple and not a developer we breathed a sigh of relief. Then we found out that the new owner was a developer who planned to live there. Then we found out that the developer changed his mind and was building the house to be sold. Why are we so worried? See below.

This is the house across the street and a few houses down. The location was previously occupied by an old woman with dimentia and it was not well cared for for over 20 years. When she died after being assisted in care by the neighbor in the home to the right, the mysterious next of kin swarmed upon the house, removed anything of potential value (certainly leaving any rare/valuable architectual items for the bulldozer), and sold the house to a developer. It too was an obvious tear down project. As you can see this new house dwarfs the homes next to it and pushes the limits of what can legally be built on the property. We knew we were in trouble when the real estate sign (Marcy Shugarman/ReMax) advertised “ELEVATOR!” This house belongs about 30 miles from here in a suburb. Note the tiny patch of grass on the bottom right of the first image. This is what is left for for the yard. This was only modification a few neighbors could force based on existing zoning laws!

See the house above? Looks vulnerable doesn’t it? Well it’s a goner! It’s directly across the street from our house and it has just been sold to a developer. This guy is very famous in the neighborhood for building a particularly bad monstrosity about a quarter mile from here.

This is just what is happening within a few houses of our own! All throughout the beautiful intown neighborhoods of Atlanta perfectly good (and sometimes grand) homes are being razed for huge suburban style homes that generally cost 150 to 200 percent of the going cost of homes in the area. Large homes with yards and carriage houses are being torn down and replaced with three giant houses crammed onto one lot. They don’t fit in with the existing style of homes in the neighborhood and are in my opinion ruining it.

This doesn’t mean that this is the case everytime. Just most of the time. Houses can be restored and built onto tastefully. Checkout the house on the right in the very first image. They demolished everything in the house exept for the front, left, and right brick facade. They added a second story and rebuilt their house in a tasteful manner.

Now these developers have the right to buy and build whatever style of home they want as long as it meets local zoning laws. It’s a free Country and I’m definitely for entrepreneurship. This doesn’t mean that I should have to sit mute and not make people aware of what is happening.

What I’m looking for is groups that have already organized or advice on starting a group to raise awareness of this issue. Not just for our neighborhood, but for all of the intown Atlanta neighborhoods. We want to create yard signs, and a web site. We want to educate home buyers that they can renovate or rebuild their own properties and save a substantial amound of money. We want to find responsible real estate agents. We want to find responsible devlopers.

Please help me save our neighborhood!

Ashley Smith’s Reward?

It’s an incredible story about Ashley Smith, the woman who was kidnapped by Atlanta courtroom assailant Brian Nichols. She gained his trust and was eventually let go by Nichols. She then called 911 to turn him in. She seems to have a tired soul, most likely brought on by the loss of her husband and doubtless other life difficulties.

I can’t help to wonder how long it will take for the authorities to screw her out of her deserved $60,000 reward.

Idol@CokeStudios Launches!

This week the American Idol sections on Coke Studios launched. It was the first work that I did at my new gig at Studiocom so I’m pretty excited. Check it out! Log in to Coke Music and go to the Coke Studios section. You can get codes for the American Idol themed “Furni” by going to the American Idol site.

I was thinking this morning that I’m really enjoying my job, mainly because the work is at or above my skill level, which, in the Director realm anyway, is fairly hard to come by nowadays. The entire system is a combination of Java, Flash, and Director and uses lots of imaging and remoting on the client side.

MediaDisplay and Complete Event Gunk

I’m working on a small project that plays an FLV file using the MediaDisplay component. I’ve got a background clip behind it. If the user clicks the background clip or the “complete” event occurs the file returns to the main menu. The only problem is that if the “complete” event occurs, when I try to play the flv again it doesn’t work. When clicking out using the background it plays again fine. You can see my debug statement and that always returns the correct path. I’ve also used a static MediaDisplay component plunked down on the stage without the attachMovie bit with the same results.

The example uses the MDM Zinc player, which is why some of the code looks a but funky, but I also tried with a regular swf and had the same problem.

Has anyone out there run into this problem where the complete event causes the component to stick?

import mx.controls.MediaDisplay;
//mdm.prompt(fsp_appdir + “files” + pres.video.file);
stop();

var mdVideo:MediaDisplay;
mdVideo = MediaDisplay(this.attachMovie(“MediaDisplay”, “mdVideo”, 1000, {_x:112, _y:185}));
mdVideo.addEventListener(“change”, this.videoChange);
mdVideo.addEventListener(“complete”, this.videoComplete);
mdVideo.setMedia(fsp_appdir + “files” + pres.video.file, “FLV”);

mcVideoBackground.onRelease = function():Void {
this._parent.videoComplete();
};

function videoComplete():Void {
mcVideoBackground.onRelease = function():Void {};
mdVideo.removeMovieClip();
delete mdVideo;
gotoAndPlay(“video out”);
};

Should be simple but I guess not!