Last summer I had the change to be part of an international project at the university of the arts with Chinese students. In the project WUZU 2009 we worked in mixed groups of Chinese and Swiss students on Industrial Design projects. The topic was “Food and Drink”.
I think all of you know how to use trace in a flash project therefore I will target only on how to set up an easy tracing environment. I use terminal to display my traces on my Mac. I think this is an convenient way if you work on a dual screen environment. What do you need to do?
Read more »
Some of you probably read my article about Font Embedding in Actionscript 3 projects. In the January L.A. Flex User Group meeting, Tom Bray recorded my talk about MojoFont. MojoFont is an Eclipse Plugin for easy Font Embedding in Flex, FDT or Eclipse. It was a good experience to speak to the L.A. Flex group. Thank you Tom for letting me a part of it. If you want to see my talk watch this video.
My talk about MojoFont at L.A. Flex User Group
Unfortunately the picture quality is not really good but if you want to know more about Font Embedding with MojoFont read my post about Font Embedding in Actionscript 3.
My second project from the time of my internship which i want to show you is the Almer Blank Labs. This project is currently online and can be seen at labs.almerblank.com. I designed and developed the Wordpress Theme. The design goal for me was to create a design which is clean but also gives the impression of a lab. It should show what we guys at Almer/Blank do or what we look at. The posts get syndicated from different employee blogs and I had to make sure that the pictures and other formatting stuff from other sites work on our site.
My roommate Junya Sakino is a talented filmmaker here in Los Angeles. In the last couple of days we quickly build his website. The site is Wordpress driven and uses a couple different plugins. The website design was created by Junya and I build it into Wordpress. I used the capricon theme but changed quite some stuff. The reason why I mention this website here on my blog is because its a good example for a small and easy website build with Wordpress. Using Wordpress as a CMS is one of the quickest solutions and its easy for both, the developer and the customer.
Visit his website: www.studiorevo.com
After being here in Los Angeles for about 7 months I think its time to show you some things I did during my internship. The first project I want to show you is St Moritz TV. (Yes, a Swiss Guy flies to California to build a site for a Swiss Ski-resort) :)
What is this project?
The website www.StMoritzTV.ch is a prototype for a video platform with short movies about St. Moritz and the Engadine. The main goal of the website is to inform tourists and locals about events, art, dinning and shopping in St Moritz and its surroundings.
What was the goal?
The current version is a proof of concept and developed by me during my internship at Almer/Blank. Its focus is to see what the needs of the users are and how we can build the final version and what we have to improve. Because this is a Prototype we are asking for any feedback about the site and would highly appreciate if as many of you can try it and give us a feedback. We want to see if there is a need for such a website and if so, how can we make it most enjoyable for its user.
But hey, let’s get geeky :)
Read more »
While working on Actionscript projects you will have to use fonts quite often. There are many ways how you can embed a font into your project. In this post I will illustrate different ways of how to do that and I would like to demonstrate a very easy way with MojoFont.
This book is one of my favorite Actionscript books. The author writes in an understandable and clear way. The examples are on topic and clear in the understanding. The book covers a wide variety of different aspects in the use of image effects and image processing in Actionscript 3. The target audience are definitely not for beginners or coders new to Actionscript, but for coders with medium or more advanced level. This book is definitely worth your time to dive into and gives you a lot of new ideas. Read more »
I run into the problem that I had a div tag with a certain width. From a external site I loaded some content in this div tag. The problem was that I did not have the control over the pictures loaded from this external server. Some pictures where bigger then the size of the div tag. I didn’t had the possibility to take the picture and make them smaller with PHP as the source of the picture had to be on the external server. And furthermore, I needed a solution in CSS or Javascript and couldn’t use something like phpThumb.
My solution was to use this:
Read more »
What is Adobe MAX? Adobe Max describes them self as following:
We are in a software revolution fueled by social computing, client and cloud, and the spread of rich media across screens and devices. For four unforgettable days this October, MAX 2009 will bring together thousands of designers, developers, and decision-makers to shape the future. (Source max.adobe.com)
My feedback after visiting this event in Downtown Los Angeles.
Add Communication to your Applications with Ribbit
On Sunday, October 4th, I had the change to visit a workshop about the Ribbit mobile service at the Rich Media Institute in Venice. I could see some examples how to build a Text message application in Flex or Flash and saw different ways to build a phone application. The combination between Actionscript 3 and a telephone system is quite interesting and I see a great potential in it.
During the time of Adobe MAX i moved to Downtown Los Angeles. A quick search in the Internet and I found a place in walking distance to the Convention-Center. For only $40/night I got a room with shared bath and shared toilet in the Hotel Cecil. Without thinking I booked it and worried a bit when I saw the prices of the hotels in the neighbourhood. When I arrived at the hotel I was very surprised. The price for this hotel was really good. I liked my room, everything was clean, there was free wireless Internet and the staff was always helpful and really friendly. I totally recommend this hotel to everybody with a tight budget. Should I stay again in Downtown, I will definitely book this hotel again. The only disadvantage is that they do not provide parking, but parking in Downtown is not really a problem. For about $15/day you find plenty of indoor parking all over the city center.
The saturday before Adobe MAX we hadLAFlashapaloozastock from FITC in our company.
I went to this event with Marcel Vogt from Switzerland who came to L.A. for Adobe MAX. We heard a couple of very interesting talks from Joshua Davis and Joshua Hirsch. After all the presentations our offices changed to a party location. I was amazied because there was free food and free alcohol for everybody. Later the night, we got a pole-dance girl a strip-these dancer as well as a magician. It was good fun. Personally I think, that more conferences should have a fun factor like LAFlashapaloozastock. Because of this relaxed after party I got in touch with many people and had a really good time.
Just before Adobe Max I had the opportunity to visit the Joshua Davis workshop about the HYPE Framework. The HYPE-framework is a easy framework for creating digital art. It makes it easy to build computer based art in Actionscript 3. Josh is a very outgoing and super friendly person. All of us had really good fun with him. We build a couple of examples with the HYPE framework which was build by Branden Hall and Joshua Davis.
Read more »
In a few days Adobe MAX will start. Before and during Adobe MAX there will be many other events. I will help at LAFlashapaloozastock because this event is held in our office. Here some more Infos about this Event.
LAFlashapaloozastock IV is a FREE event for interactive designers, developers, artists, companies and the people that enjoying hanging with. This year is scheduled to be the biggest event so far, as a pre-MAX 09 “free festival”:
During my internship I do a lot of web based stuff. For example designing a newsletter for a workshop at the rich media institute in L.A and Toronto.
The Newsletter for the workshop “Workshop Accelerating Creativity in ActionScript 3 with Joshua Davis” was finally sent as a HTML email newsletter.
Read more »
Last Wednesday was the L.A.Flash user group meeting. I had the opportunity to join the meeting which is held in our office. The first talk was from Joshua Davis about his HYPE framework.Joshua Davis is an internationally-renowned artist, and Flash industry leader. Joshua Davis held a short discussion of the HYPE AS3 framework to help designers create unique interactive and animated compositions. He spoke from New York over Adobe Connect to us but will join us here in L.A at the LAFlashapaloozastock IV. If your interested check out the the talk on youtube. The second talk was from Leslie Wintner about the new Motion Tweens in Flash CS4 and the last talk of the night was from Iman Khabazian about Flash Team Tools like Catalyst, Flex, Subversion, Debugger and stuff like that.
WOW, already my second week and still no bank account. Starting a new life in the States is not easy at all. It’s hard to get in contact with the locals, paper work is difficult and needs a lot of patience. But the beach is cool and work is fortunately challenging.
Lesson 3: Starting a new life in the California is not a piece of cake!
One week ago, I arrived in Los Angeles. Since then, my life changed! America was different then I expected. Los Angeles is not big. Los Angeles is unbelievable huge. I struggled with many problems I thought I will never have, other things seems to be very easy. But all in all. It is a great experience being here.
Now I started work. After my short trip to the office on Monday I started my first day at Almer / Blank yesterday. I will work on a redesign for a community platform. My first approach will be the analyse of existing functions and stuff which is missing. I will have to search for similar projects and have to analyse them. Working on this projects is interesting and I can work independent. I will have to analyse and research a lot. After the research I will focus on user experience and the user interface. I will redesign the hole website and build a new template in Flash or Flex.
What happened back home. I still live with my roommates in the small house in Venice. The dogs are now used to me and do not bark anymore when I pass them or enter the house. Amaya, the owner of the house is a belly dance instructor. Nearly everyday she holds classes in the dance room. My room mates are very friendly. They are very much into pets. As many of you know I’m not but I got used to the cats at my girlfriends flat. :-) But as you know, dogs aren’t cats and smell different. *no comment* Unfortunately the rent is quite expensive and I will need to look for a cheaper place in order to have enough money to pay my time in Venice. Another reason for looking for another flat is that my girlfriend will come to Venice in order to learn English. A colleague from work is helping me looking. Anyway, as long as I stay there I enjoy my breakfast in the garden. I usually sit in a small mosquito tent and have a cup of coffee and some Nutella toast and a fruit (orange).
Shopping in the Venice is different to shopping back home. The first supermarket I went to was full with junk food, lemonades and sweets. But I only wanted to buy a salad. There was no salad. I might should go back to this supermarket to take a photo. Without a salad but with an orange (the ones I eat for breakfast) I left the supermarket. At least they had one healthy thing there. It looked like I choose the wrong supermarket.
Next day I tried a different shop. This time I found my beloved salad but the price was a bit shocking, a salad is nearly double the price of a salad back home.
Lesson 1 for living in the USA: Healthy food is expensive!