The View Lately

The view hasn’t been all that great lately. Imagine waking up this view from your kitchen window for three weeks straight (so far). You might be able to make out the McMansion in the background of the image on the top. Note our house in the background in the second image. Think that tree in the center will survive? Guess that’s an easy way to get around the tree ordinance.

Actually we have it better than others. The builder is nice so far and the plans are for the house to be compatible with the neighborhood. What kind of people will pay just inder $1,000,000 for a 4/3 house is beyond me.

In other news, the house behind us, a beautiful home from the 20’s or 30’s in fine condition and ripe for expansion recently sold for $420,000 and was promptly leveled. It used to look just like the house next to it pictured in the second image below. We await a 6 bedroom, 5 1/2 bath monstrosity that will be available for $1,250,000. Please note that the agent is Travis Reed from Harry Norman Realtors. Travis is representing a number of horrific new “projects” in our neighborhood and probably does not live anywhere near Morningside and likely does not have a care about the character of our surroundings. I believe that neither do his developer cronies, in this case Suzanne Lamb of Lamb Properties. If you get a chance to contact him, please let him know what you think and please give someone else your business.

With this alarming action it is clear that any house in Morningside valued at $500,000 or under, no matter the condition is at risk.

We actually met with some neighbors this week to see what we can do about the careless development that is happening. Please note that I am not against development. The house that formerly stood on the site next to us in the pictures was beyond saving. I just find the imagery ironic and timely.

Today I also received this link from CNN/Money from a friend about the backlash against what is happening to urban neighborhood. It isn’t just in Atlanta folks.

Anyway more to come in the next Intown Atlantacast lined up for this weekend.

How to Lose a Customer – Part 1: HiFi Buys vs. Evolution Home Theater

I’ve been planning to get some real audio for our living room for quite some time now and finally on Thursday afternoon I got a bug up my butt and and we went to do some actually fact finding. It was off to my old standby HiFi Buys. We walk in and immediately have a salesperson help us in picking out components. He starts with a POS (piece of shit) Bose 321 system, then moves us to the back to show us some real speakers. After listening and asking questions for 20 minutes or so we agree that the Polk Audio speakers are best. Off to the A/V receiver room. We spend about 3 minute there and he asks us when we want to buy. Mind you, the store is empty. Thrown off guard I say either within the next week or two or at Christmas time. He procedes to hand us a catalog, then he walks off and ignores us. I’m a curious customer and he has plenty of time on his hands. Obviously he’s been trained not to spend too much time with customers that don’t want to spend money right away. He should have been trained that and entry level home theater customer grows into a high end home theater customer. He should have been trained not to disrespect a prospect, especially when the store is empty.

HiFi Buys has lost a customer forever.

I go home, do a little research on the Polk speakers and find that people are raving about similar speakers from a Canadian company called Paradigm. I call the local dealer, Evolution Home Theater, and a guy named Seth answers and says “Yeah! I just demoed those! Come on over and listen to them and don’t forget to bring some of your favorite CDs.” Well, this was a bit different from my previous experience. I had seen Evolution on Peachtree Street in Buckhead but was afraid it was one of those high end stores for rich people, but the Paradigm Titans were only $238 a pair so on Friday afternoon I went over there.

I was not mistaken in the fact that it was a high end store. This place was plush! And filled with high end home theater. I asked for Seth and out he came, thrilled to see me. He took me back to the speaker demo room and spent a good 90 minutes talking with me and demoing the speakers. Cool. Here was a guy that was as thrilled to spend time with me, a potential $450 sale, as he would be with a $5000 repeat customer. I didn’t commit and he was fine.

I was considering the Paradigm Titan speakers with the CC-170 center channel speakers. I was going to get a Harman Kardon AVR235 A/V receiver online. After listening and considering the treatment I got, I decided to give Evolution all of my business. I asked a few questions of Seth via email and got a prompt response. On Saturday morning I made my decision and bought the following: Paradigm Mini Monitor L/R Bookshelves, CC-370 Center Channel, PDR-12 Sub and a Marantz SR5400 A/V Receiver (Last year’s model at a drastically reduced price). I spent more than I had planned, but I figured that since my last speaker purchase lasted nearly 20 years, I would be keeping this stuff for a while. This stuff sounds just awesome in our living room.

There were a couple of minor warehouse issues with my order, but you have to remember that these guys are not a big retail store. I was very happy and thrilled to be treated with such respect by both Seth and Isaac. Seth is genuinely enthusiastic about high end audio gear and was a pleasure to deal with. I’ll be dealing with Evolution Home Theater from now on.

So there! You have my full endorsement. If you need any level of audio gear in Atlanta, all means, skip HiFi Buys and contact Seth Herold at Evolution Home Theater. The number is 404-869-1880.

Hey Y’All! PrimalScript 4 is Out!

Check it out: www.primalscript.com

If you’re a registered user eligible for a free upgrade, check your email for “special” instructions.

Intown Atlantacast Is Here!

I finally set up an account with Liberated Syndication and got the domain so head over to www.atlantacast.com and check out my Podcast Intown Atlantacast! Still need lots of work on the design and stuff but I’m on my way!

Intown Atlantacast #3!

Just got back from St. George Island so this is a little late, but here it is! Talk of Podsafe music, St. George Island, Apalachicola, Piebar, and of course, Infill.

IAC_03_2005_08_09.mp3

I’m in the process of setting up atlantacast.com with intownatlantacast.com mapped to it. I’ll let you know when that’s set up.

System.Security.allowDomain() HELL!

I’ve been dealing with trying to load across domains for days now and I’m beginning to feel worn out and retarded.

I’ve got two movies parent.swf and child.swf. I’m trying to load child.swf into an existing clip within parent.swf and monitor it’s progress but the allowDomain() command doesn’t seem to register until after the clip is fully loaded.

I suspect I’m missing something really fundamental here. This is really simple stuff.

parent.swf is at http:/www.darbymedia.com/dev/parent.html. (Remote Debugging is enabled; no password.) It loads child.swf from http://www.darbydev.com/loader/assets/child.swf.

Frame 5 of parent.swf contains the following code (sorry about the escaped quotes, it’s WordPress):

import mx.utils.Delegate;
import mx.controls.Button;
stop();

var mcChild:MovieClip;
var btnToggle:Button;
var iIntId:Number;
System.security.allowDomain("www.darbydev.com");
btnToggle.addEventListener("click", btnToggle_Click);

//randomizeUrl allows a fresh download each time the clip is used.
mcChild.loadMovie(randomizeUrl("http://www.darbydev.com/loader/assets/child.swf"));
iIntId = setInterval(Delegate.create(this, checkLoad), 500);

function btnToggle_Click(oEvent:Object):Void {
	mcChild._visible = !mcChild._visible;
}

function checkLoad():Void {
	trace(mcChild.getBytesLoaded() + " : " + mcChild.getBytesTotal());
}

function randomizeUrl(sUrl):String {
	var sRandom:String = String(Math.floor(Math.random() * 10000));
	return sUrl + "?" + sRandom;
	return sUrl;
}

Frame 1 of child.swf contains the following code:

System.security.allowDomain("www.darbymedia.com");
stop();

I have crossdomain.xml files on each domain allowing each other access.

In general I’ve been having tons of problems with this which seem to come and go without reason. Earlier I was having a problem where my clip reference was stored in a class as an Object type. After the clip was loaded (and allowDomain kicked in) any property or method access of the clip his would throw the sandbox error unless it was casted to MovieClip. Problem is that for some reason, in certain methods in my class the cast to MovieClip would return null! Anyway one problem at a time. Maybe if I can understand what is happening here other solutions will become clear.

Let me know if you want to see my source files.