WOW! All that I can say is that this is much sweeter than just plain ol’ Flash MX. Everywhere you look there are new features! It is just absolutely phenominal! Now I just wish that I could make something besides a rotating man.
Monthly Archives: September 2003
Everyone, gather round, for I have news!
September 19 is International Talk Like a Pirate Day!
Arr! Shiver me timbers! I wonder when “Hitler of the Seas” comes out. I hear they’re in post-production, but they’ve run into problems with rendering the rotating stickmen.
RIAAck
This is one of the best articles yet regarding the whole “RIAAAAAAA!!!! They’re coming to get you!” thing. I love this point: “People listen to the average CD many more times than they watch a DVD. Yet CDs are languishing in stores and DVDs are flying off the shelves. How to see this other than sheer music industry incompetence?”
It certainly makes sense to me. Let’s face it. Americans buy lots of stuff they don’t need… I know I own more than one DVD that I don’t think I will ever watch again. And yet, I bought it. Because DVDs are cool. And because they aren’t unreasonably expensive for what you get. AND because they keep going DOWN in price instead of up. AND because I really did believe the reviewer on the front of the cover, J. J. Michner of The Spruce Grove Tribune, who said, “…ONE OF THE YEAR’s BEST!” (Later checking, I found his actual review said “I would have to been living in a GULAG for THIRTY-EIGHT YEARS to call this ONE OF THE YEAR’S BEST!”
On a similar note, I also think the movie industry has a pretty good tactic: GUILT. Anyone else seen the poor set painter pre-preview advertisement by the MPAA? If you haven’t seen it, the set painter says, “I don’t think the whole piracy thing will affect the studio executives. But it will affect people like me. I just want to work. And I just want to make movies. Because I love movies… just like you do.” Please, help the set painter! Save the set painter! They won’t hire him to paint sets if we download movies.
That’s a great tactic — much better than suing the crap out of 12 year old girls and grandpas, but it’s still kind of silly, don’t you think? I mean, is it realistic that sets will cease being painted if piracy becomes such an issue that profits of the movie industry are affected? Maybe I’m missing something.
I can practically imagine the movie in the post-set painter movie industry. Every single film will be set in an unfinished garage and at the beginning and end of the movie, they will have a disclaimer that says, “You drove us to fire the set painter. Hope you like the look of blank drywall!”
Scelbrmad eggs and bocan
Wow. Scaaltpecur! Azniamg! Sutpnuoeds! Sptiud! I hvae no ieda why tihs is cool or ppaoulr, yet it is. And I relaly don’t konw why I, too, tinhk it’s geart. Peahrps it has sintoehmg to do wtih teshe rkcos in my canurim. Deos anynoe hvae any ieda waht wrdos I am sanyig? Oaky… I’m dnoe. Ccehk it out if you hvae lsot yuor melarbs eugnoh to fnid tihs ennarittieng.
Apparently, you can still read fairly well if words are scrambled but the first and last letters are still in place. You can try it for yourself very easily, thanks to lerfjhax.com, which has a word scrambler.
Wreid, huh?
Trampoline Bear
Look, Mom! I got a pet bear! I named him Faceplant!
[mpeg video 1.75 MB]
WSU Football
Well, apparently WSU doesn’t suck. Three years in a row of not sucking? That’s gotta be some kind of record, right? Collin? Can we check into that one? Hello, Collin?
Helicopters?
Helicopters?!?
It moves!
When Lee and I graduated (the second time) from WSU, we were given a mini DV camcorder in anticipation of Tamlyn. Needless to say, we consumed the first few tapes on purely amateuristic juvenile tasteless attempts at comedy. More about those later. But yesterday I finally got a few clips of Tamlyn on my computer and I must say…dang. In fact, I must say it again. Dang. This thing takes movies at near DVD quality, and eats up your harddrive to prove it. A 1-minute movie, 199MB. So I’ve been playing with different codecs to see if I can get the size down to a reasonable 2Kb. I managed to do it using an old River Raid codec, but I still can’t get past the 4th level. For a compromise, I’ve stuck with old faithful DivX, which has allowed us a clip at just over 4MB. Yes, I had to reduce the size from 620×480 to 6.2×4.8, but it’s a start. So, check it out, let me know what you think. Or if you think you’ve got a better codec, let me know about it. And someone help me get past those damn helicopters!
[Adam's note: This video requires the latest version of DivX, available here. So go get it and check this baby out!]
I don’t know about you… but I’ve had enough bread.
In fact, I’ve had so much bread in my life that the next time I sit down to read a newspaper, I will have ingested more little bitty things of yeast than letters that I have used in my life.
Now, that seems a little off-kilter, right? Wrong. Consider the following:
The average person eats 68 pounds of bread a year and given the average life span of 77.2 years, that’s 5,249.6 pounds of bread. Now let’s be real safe here: each pound of bread must contain at least 100 granules of yeast… and that’s even taking into account unleavened bread! That’s a minimum of 524,960 granules of yeast in a lifetime. Now, don’t get too quick on me here. I’m not 77.2 years old yet. The next time I pick up a newspaper (presumably within this year), I will be around 24… so we figure out the number of granules per year (6,800) and then multiply that by the number of years I have been alive (24) and we get 163,200 granules in my lifetime (thus far).
“Whoa!!” One might say. “163,200 letters? I don’t think so sport. You’ve used a lot more letters than that in your lifetime.”
Not so fast, strawberry shortcake. You’ve forgotten something. There are 26 letters in the English language alphabet, right? Are you following me so far? Good job, sport. Now… here’s where it gets tricky.
THERE ARE 26 LETTERS IN THE ALPHABET. That’s it. There are not 163,201 letters in the English language alphabet.
26 letters is one heck of a lot smaller number than 163,200 granules of yeast.
What were you people thinking anyway?! You people disgust me.
I thought that it would be cool to write an enitre post in the title to my post. Then I wondered if I wrote the whole post in the title, would it real
ly be a title to my nonexistant post? Well anyways, I was wrong.