Friday, August 26, 2005

Craig Shimala pointed something out to me in the Threadless blog forum, he directed me to the photos used on the catalog main page and when I looked at the source I found that there is yet another jpg that Threadless use which is fantastic news for me as it means I have rewritten the flash app to just fade in each photo on load and no zooming necessary! Hurrah!

Jon 4:38 PM Permalink

Thursday, August 25, 2005

I'm pretty sure that everyone should be viewing my website from my new host servers by now and although I have a little issue to think about, my new Threadless flash thingymajig is up on the right hand side. The main problem is that I have to grab the jpg from the rss feed which is a photo of people modelling the shirts, I can't however guarantee the position of the person in the photo and since I am displaying it quite small I have to zoom in slightly in order for the design to be visible. In some cases this means all you will see is somebody's arm etc. not ideal.

So what do I do? Well I could wait until I have Flash 8 and then dynamically load the gif of the T Shirt design instead, this might mean I have to process the image first to reduce the size though as they are quite large. The other thing I could do is use the photo at a larger size but that means altering the design of my weblog to fit it in. I could maybe scroll sideways instead of zooming in...? Finally I could just not worry about it.

Jon 9:28 AM Permalink

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

I forgot to put the new host settings into blogger... DOH!

Jon 6:12 PM Permalink

Are you reet sick of Google taking over just about everything? Well how about a Google Instant Messenger? Admit it you're tempted!, here is the link http://www.google.com/talk/

Jon 1:59 PM Permalink

I have just switched my hosting to an Aussie company called Quadra Hosting and currently there are a few problems with my site as my nameservers are switched over, nothing out of the ordinary just the usual waiting game... come on interweb, I'm waiting!

Jon 10:01 AM Permalink

Monday, August 22, 2005

As Chris Velevitch just raised this point with me I thought I'd let you all know what we were told about Flash 8 components. Basically apart from the video component there hasn't been any new development, the component development is being carried out by the Flex engineers who will be releasing an updated set sometime next year. The new video player component is very nice, easy to customize and much smaller filesize than the previous media components, it also comes with about 30 pre-designed skins which are pretty cool!

Jon 4:09 PM Permalink

Well just got back from the 1st Macromedia Launch event in the world! Mike Downey et al flew down under to deliver an interesting presentation in Sydney showing off Studio 8's new powerful features and capabilities. No real suprises for anyone who has been following the Flash 8 beta testers' blogs, it all looks fantastic with some great new features but as I had already seen them I was more interested in the new Dreamweaver release which I hadn't read much about. The new xml integration is very impressive, creating an xsl template is now very simple and will ease the pain of rss syndication for many people. Also the new developer toolbar is great with collapsable code among the new features, woohoo! Also the ftp manager in Dreamweaver will save a lot of people time as it works in the background now.

They didn't have much time, 2 hours is hardly enough to go over Flash alone, so there is still a lot to discover but it was a good teaser of what is to come and how it will improve our site development and possibilities.

Jon 11:04 AM Permalink

Saturday, August 20, 2005

I've been up since 5am today as my partner Kate is lucky enough to be jetting off to Broome in WA for a weekend photoshoot, being the kind man I am I drove her to the airport and when I got home it was around my normal wake up time (6.30 ish) so although I tried I couldn't seem to get back to sleep... so instead I fired up the powerbook and started messing about with an idea I've had for a little while, creating a little flash 'insert current flash micro application buzzword here' which I can't think of a name for. What it does is it gets the current Threadless.com rss feed and displays the photos of the T Shirts using the default view jpeg. I then tarted it up a bit with some Tween effects eh voila! a widgette is born... only problem is my ftp server seems to be down so I can't upload it to my blog... bugger.

Jon 12:09 PM Permalink

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Enter DTV, Internet TV on your Mac. (via James) I've just downloaded the Beta, I'll let you know what I think once I've had a good play!

Jon 4:17 PM Permalink

Thursday, August 11, 2005

A couple of years back I posted about a site that offered free tech books online, well Ndaru Purnomo has contacted me to say that the site has moved to http://www.freetechbooks.com/ and has a massive amount of information on offer. There is an RSS feed which helps you keep track of the latest books on offer.

"All the books listed here are available for free, as they are hosted on websites that belong to the authors or the publishers. You are most welcome to view, download and print the books for your own private use at no charge.

These authors publish their books for free to give you a chance to review their books, to get as much good information distributed as possible. So, if you like what you read online, you can always support the authors by buying the paperback at your local or online bookstores. "

Jon 9:18 AM Permalink

Monday, August 08, 2005

Just came across this site for the Fly Pentop computer which is kids gadget but the site is really nicely done, lots of flash video content using some clever slight of hand techniques (in the scheduler section) to make it look like the person in the video is writing what you type or select, nice. There is also some really nice illustration which comes to life briefly when each section loads. It seems they are going to be added new info sections soon.

Jon 10:28 AM Permalink

Friday, August 05, 2005

Just came across this girl via a newsletter email, she is a like a female Michael Hedges attacking her Ovation Acoustic guitar like a drum kit, watch one of her videos on her site KakiKing.com to see what I mean (go to the Audio/Video section). Pretty impressive stuff!

Jon 12:53 PM Permalink

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Well after a great 4 1/2 week holiday back in England & Scotland I'm finally back in Sydney. It's been a bit mad with the terrorist attacks going on and it meant that we had to cancel our trip to visit mates in London but apart from that Kate and I managed to get to a wedding in Devon, see friends in Bristol for a curry and booze up, see mates in Brum for Curry, Cantonese and a few booze ups and of course my family in Brum and Henley. Especially nice to see my nephew and neice who have really grown up since I saw them last, and for our chance to visit Scotland and see some of the highlands which was beautiful and even the weather was kind to us peaking at 28 degrees which I think was taking the Scottish locals by suprise! We also had a couple weeks of really great weather in England which ended just as the cricket started, although that didn't help we still got smashed in the first test. Anyway, that is why I haven't blogged for a month.

Jon 12:40 PM Permalink