Hopeless

He’s my favorite actor. Has been for as long as I can remember. So, what can I say? I had to have this shirt.

Evil Dead shirt with Bruce Campbell Skull

Web 2.0 is so damn awesome. It’s given us blogs (yay) and youtube (double yay) and a myriad of other great things to waste your time on during the natural course of the day.

There is one portion of the 2.0 experience that it gaining momentum that I am not so happy with, however. A real blight that affects my twitter and facebook moments alike.  Quite simply, it’s the disturbing trend of short-but-pointless postings of useless and trite philosophical banter. You know what I mean, you sign onto to twitter, look down your list and you’ll see it dotting the very spine of your page. Shit like, “If you fall on your ass, stand up and let the world know you’re ready for whatever’s next.” or, “If the day gives you a funeral, find the fun in it” or who could forget, “A cold, lonely night always ends with a bright and welcoming morning.”

What the fuck is this shit? Seriously, what the fuck is it? First off this is logic from a 12 year old – someone who doesn’t understand real problems. Getting up when you get knocked down? Everyone does that out of pure fucking nature – literal or figurative. It’s a physical and mental survival instinct for fuck’s sake. You don’t need to repeat that shit. You may think you’re being inspirational but you’re actually talking down to your audience. Even worse you’re insulting people who really do have to deal with real problems. Walk into a children’s hospital and spout that garbage – I’ll stand just out of sight and see how long it takes before a parent throws you out a window.

If you want to give 1 on 1 advice on a subject you actually have real experience with then I am cool with that, but keep the web 2.0 world clean and keep your vague and retardedly obvious philosophical shit to yourself.

I just bought some glossy black acrylic to play around with for my mini-studio. It gives a nice surface for reflections. I’m no pro, but it’s still fun to use.

Mask with just a hint of reflection.

Same mask. More light, more reflection.

Box with a heart on. Very slight reflections

Dear Diary (that is completely public and not read by anyone),

Last night I went to see a new friend’s band, Sleep Fracture. In short, they were pretty fucking boss. I took some pictures. Then I came home and raided in WoW. Fuck I am geeky ass nerd. Shit!

Sleep Fracture

Sleep Fracture

Sleep Fracture

Steve Job’s recent open letter to the world regarding his feelings about Apple’s continued non-support of Flash for his company’s mobile devices has left the web community in somewhat of a tizzy. That’s to be expected though. iPhones, iPads and iTouches are totally the biggest iFads right now. They are leading the pack in the mobile computing revolution. Shit, I have 2 out of three of those gadgets myself and I love em! I can’t live without my iPhone. Deny Flash a chance to run on such a large market really seems to leave a lot of people out in the fucking rain, ya know?

Steve’s argument is that Flash is a secular and expensive environment, the very opposite of what ‘open’ means in the world of the internet. Yeah okay, hello captain bullshit. Can I run the apple iPhone SDK on my cheap ass PC? Ummm, no. I can’t.  Luckily Macs are cheap. OH SHIT, fuck, no they aren’t! Doh! Oh well. I have the luxury of owning a Mac but a lot of people don’t. I guess we’ll just fucking forget that ‘open’ argument.

Actually, that’s not even my biggest gripe. Most of the pro-Steve posts on the subject seem to say the same thing, “yeah, h.264 is better than .flv!” I can’t argue with that. Adobe should do something with Flash and it’s player to ensure that it’s video codecs stay more up-to-date. But for me that’s not really what flash is about. Yeah yeah, I know it’s what most people know it for mainly because of it’s use on sites like Youtube and video.google.com (why does google have two video sites again?) but being a straight video player is not what flash does best. What flash does best, better than anyone else, is present the internet generation’s version of mixed-media to the viewer in a beautifully visual way. Not only that but it’s a fucking snap to author in – even if you’re not some fucking soulless software engineer!

HTML5 will most likely change our favorite sites (web 3.0, anyone?) but to pretend it’s 10 times better because it’s ‘open’ and easier to implement is arrogant and mind-fuckingly false. Flash needs to be recognized for it’s strengths; it’s ability to create small web files (.swf for short) that can be used as webmercials, interactive instructionals, games, useful tools and artistic showcases.

I don’t think Apple will ever support Flash on it’s devices and honestly I don’t know if that’ll end up hurting either company, but for now I predict business as usual for Flash and it’s many uses.

I just updated the whole Suite. Just so happens I have some Flash work I need to do today so perfect timing! Well, probably. It’s usually a bad idea to update a program mid-project. But what can I say? I live on the mutha-fucking EDGE!