I am just one little peon mashing on a keyboard. Don't take anything here too seriously. Danielboyle.net is my own personal playground. This is my blog. You can email me at dan @ this domain.
So, our main client at Organic is Bank of America. It's a little scary given how the financial sector is doing at the moment, but it seems stable eough, and they're doing the buying (not being bought).
My own little corner of BofA (they hate that, by the way) is banner ads. It's not all banners, but I'm the new guy, so I have to handle alot of them. Whatever. You do it, and you make them good. Anyway, I finally saw one of my banners live. It made me giggle.
It took 8 months of working in fits and starts, but I've finally converted the code behind danielboyle.net to Actionscript 3, from a mix of Actionscript 1 and 2. Why? As of Flash CS3, Actionscript 3 became available. It's essentially a complete rewrite of AS1 and 2 as a strictly object-oriented language. Practically speaking, as newer versions of the Flash player become universal, and Flash itself is upgraded, the older styles of Actionscript will fall away, and if you don't know AS3, you'll be in trouble. This particular project was probably the easiest way to learn. I had no real deadline, my math worked, my assets already existed, the logic was already there, and I had a working target to shoot for. For help, I turned to Google, Kirupa.com, and Actionscript.org. I also used Colin Moock's excellent Essential Actionscipt 3.0.
This is NOT a tutorial. This is a port-mortem of my thought process, lessons learned, and results of the re-engineering of my site.
I've finally published a new version of the portfolio on Danielboyle.net – and you shouldn't be able to notice a difference.
The design is exactly the same as the previous version except for a few animation tweaks. In fact, I was, and continue to be, happy with the existing design, but the inevitable march of progress has kicked me in the ass and forced me to learn AS3.
What is AS3? Actionscript 3.0 (Flash's internal scripting language) received a massive overhaul in version 3 (which was released as part of the Flash CS3 package. Essentially, it's a rewrite from the ground up of Actionscript as an object-oriented language. What does object-oriented mean? What are the differences between AS1/2 and AS3? Is one better than the other? How did I do this, and is there an easier way to do it?
There will be a longer blog post in the next day or two detailing going over these answer, but for now, let's leave it at, it wasn't hard, but some things could have been much, much easier. Also, over the next few days, I'll be taking some time to tweak animations and fix any bugs that have popped up, as well as generally cleaning up and commenting my code.
So, I'm a fan of Babylon 5. Season 1 was almost universally awful (except for the finale) and most of season 5 was unremarkable (except for the final few episodes), but the bulk of the series had enough good moments to outweight the cringe-inducing moments.
Part of the problem with the original run of B5 was that it started out on The WB network, and was shifted to TNT, neither network known for quality original programming, or a large audience. You also had budget problems (small, unknown series with lots of makeup, sets, and special effects on smaller networks), scheduling problems (constant schedule changes, including a jump from broadcast to cable), and an always uncertain future (the season finale for season 4 was filmed separately, and the series final filmed at the end of season 4 because B5 was not renewed until partway through its season 4 run. There were casting problem (poor actors). But the biggest problem was that there had never been a similar series on American TV before, and no one knew what to do with it.
B5 was an experiment, essentially: A sci-fi series, with a planned 5 year run. Set beginning, middle and end points. Allowances made for cast changes. Extensive use of CGI. A real relationship with Earth, politics, homelessness, religion, poverty and crime. Truly alien aliens and environments. Unforunately, early on, Warner Brothers wanted a Star Trek like 'alien of the week' series, and it shows.
And if the whole series was re-made today, starting from scratch, every single problem would be solved.
Lost, Battlestar Galactica, and others. All planned. Well, Lost WAS planned - but they were extended by an extra 2-3 seasons, and it shows. But, generally speaking, networks (and viewers) know how to deal with that now.
Sure, BSG isn't considered strictly sci-fi, but it's made it 'cool.' The last run of superhero movies haven't hurt to dimished the nerd stigma around sci-fi either. Just as importantly, sci-fi has also expanded past Star Wars and Star Trek. It'd be easier to attract quality actors and staff, and have some sway with the networks.
The occasionally hilariously bad CGI can be traced to both its pioneering use, and the low budgets. Better CGI is available now, for lower cost.
Of course, I'm not a TV executive, producer, director or writer. But it's nice to dream. It could be done. Of course, B5 has already been made once. There's no real need to do it again (for 20 years or so - look at BSG.
That's one of the 'rules' of fiction writing you come across on a fairly regular basis. It makes alot of sense. And it's why Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson can't seem to write a decent book. I'm perfectly willing to dump the blame on Kevin Anderson. He's responsible for some of the worst cliche-ridden, brain-dead, plot-lacking sci-fi books ever to hit shelves. He's also responsible for Andromeda (staring the guy who was in Hercules). Brian Herbert may have some of the blame, but it's not as much fun to kick him in the metaphorical shins.
Sandworms of Dunesucks.
BSG Season 4 has arrived.
3 days later, I can't help but feel conflicted about the premiere of the final season. Emotionally, I think every fan expected a lot more out of this episode. Starbuck/Apollo fell flat. Starbuck/Admiral fell flat. The ‘new’ Cylons fell flat. Rosalyn felt flat.
In the end it's really hard to blame them though: if we saw all of those thing, we'd probably not need the rest of the season, except as a slow slog towards the revelation of Earth. Without the mystery of Rosalyn, the final 5, and Starbuck - you could finish the series in 3-4 episodes, which could all be protracted space battles.
The only fault I can really hold onto is the return of Starbuck. No tears. No anger. No anything. Just some blankness, confusion and suspicion. Ron Moore and crew had a rare opportunity to have an incredibly powerful, incredibly honest moment, and lost it. We're not getting into Lost territory (a.k.a. ‘Look, something else weird happened!’) but they moved the plot along at the expense of reconnecting us with characters we haven't seen in a long time. (This might have suffered from the extremely long production break between seasons.) Likewise, there's fairly little pulling us into the story of the 4 new cylons. Tigh's hallucination was gripping, and Ander's incident with the raider raised new issues of the relationship between the new and old Cylons opened up some new plot points... but the only moment in which you felt the reality of a Cylon living among the crew was when Starbuck told Anders she'd “Shoot him between the eyes,” if she thought he was a Cylon.
Theories:
Rosalyn is the final Cylon. That's why she's unconsciously moving away from Earth. That's why she had the dream last season. That's why she when to see Six - she wanted to hear the words “You had the dream - you are a Cylon.”
Starbuck is the reincarnation of a God (Athena?)/the Gods. She's pushing to move everyone to Earth. She is the protector of humanity and their strongest fighter... and the only thing the Cylons fear (see: Battlestar Razor).
Also, Baltar for President! (Again!)
There's a wonderful site called Coding Horror. It sounds worse than it is, really. It celebrates badly written code, or obliquely designed interfaces, and the thinking behind them. While it sounds extremely harsh (and it can be), it does frequently remind its readers that we are all walking coding horrors. We've all made stupid mistakes, reinvented the wheel, and occasionally done something so dumb, we print it out, tape it up next to our monitors, and write Never Do This Again in big red letters on it.
Designers have their own horrors, too. This time, I'm sharing one of mine. It's a fairly stereotypical story of a designer given complete control over something for the first time in his (or her) career.
YourPlayTherapy.com was part of a wider strategy promoting tourism to the Jersey Shore. It has a reputation (not entirely undeserved) as a little dirty, a little crowded, and very gaudy. Sometimes that's the charm, but for many people in NYC, Philadelphia, and DC (the target area/audience boundaries) it's not always the case. There was a push in include not just the usual towns of Cape May, Atlantic City, and Wildwood.
Promotions and ads all revolved around the idea of a short vacation to the shore as Play Therapy - a time away from home that's only a couple hour drive away, helping you relax and maybe keep from flipping out. There was a sand dollar-coupon drop, newspaper and magazine ads, tv ads, banner ads, Mini Coopers dressed up as bumper cars and, of course, the website.
Our clients were a board of businesspeople and local government officials (and a couple state government people) - if you are cringing now, it's understandable. While our direct client was pretty good, you can imagine how some conversations went.
I was let go from my previous full time job right after Thanksgiving. Since then, I've been freelancing at MRM Worldwide. Well, that will change after this Friday.
Say hello to Deep Focus.
Also, I will be moving danielboyle.net over to my Dreamhost account. Is Dreamhost perfect? Hell no. But, for $6 a month, it does what I need. It'll be nice to have all of my hosting in one place.
Two upcoming lost posts planned: Organization & design. A site critique (of something I made 2 years or so ago, but there's a very good reason behind it).
So, while everyone has sworn that, this time, they're sticking by their New Year's resolutions and improving their lives, I admit I suck and there's no hope that I'll actually finish mine. Will I make it to the gym regularly? Probably not. But, there's plenty of other things to do.
Need freelance? Know someone that does? Even better, know someone with a fulltime position in NYC (or NJ, or PHL)?
I didn't forget about my plan to do a book cover a week. Unfortunately for anyone looking forward to it, last week I was swamped with freelance work (and my day job was busy), and this week has just been busy at work.
The current list of covers to do:
And, because I need to, the rules I'm setting for myself:
I'm always looking for something to do outside of work. Haven Skate Park is still going forward, but short-term projects are always fun.
I have an hour commute to work (each way) on the train, so I get alot of reading done... about a book a week (though Cryptonomicon is taking 2 weeks, because it's huge). One week is a pretty good timeline for something small... how about book covers? Ought to be fun.
If you ask me how I'm doing, there's a very good chance you will hear the word bored. While I have a very well documented case of Nerd ADD, that's only part of it. Oh, sure, part of it is because I might be a little bit off (to quote my wife), but there's something deeper than that.
(In case anyone from my day job happens to read this, it's not about job satisfaction.)
The previous version, but now with a white background, and cleaned up.
However, it still doesn't do it for me. One of the main things that gets me is the nav. I love the idea in many blogs or in Flickr of tagging, and then being able to sort by tag. In my case, I can roughly divide my work into 2 realms - online and offline. But, since there's a fairly heavy crossover, I don't want to hide a project that may relate to work that's being shown.
This was my attempt at that. I thought about using it as more of a 'tag cloud' metaphor, but then it becomes a cluttered mess, and I wanted to keep a workable grid on this design. This was became more of a compact way to map the projects that were similar (either by online/offline, client, or agency).
It's all getting reset.
The website, the blog, everything.
This is because I still am not 100% happy with the last 'round' of my internal redesign. While sitting around and thinking about my goals for this site, as well as the content and organization of it, I've realized that I really need to think about how to integrate everything.
Moveable Type outputs well-formed XML, if I tell it to. So why not do it? Why bother updated an XML file by hand, or dealing with creating my own CMS/text editor, when I can just use this, and have much more control.
Why not integrate my blog into the site as a whole?
Why not push for a new way to navigate my site?
It's slow going, especially with everything else. But it goes.
In the previous entry, I mentioned how I was going to start redesigning my site, and showed the current state of things. Now, I have to go and do that 2 or 3 more times. In the real world, you never show one design, and run with it - always 2 or 3 comps, 2 or 3 (theoretically) rounds of tightening and revisions, then build.
The first step, which you see below, was pretty much a redesign. No massive changes or anything, just a reworking of the current functionality.
Now? I have to force myself to trash that approach (temporarily at least) and do something else. I've seen some cool things that I want to mess with as far as the actualy presentation and navigation of work.
Previously, I mentioned that I wasn't entirely happy with the current version of my website. Not that it's bad, it could just be better. Specifically, I thought the navigation was boring and overall the site didn't push me at all into anything new.
So, it's started again. Upon the completion of this redesign, I think I'll be on version 12.
Hopefully by then end of this whole process, people will have a better clue as to how I design & work when I have no deadline, no pressure, and complete freedom. Better idea: I'll skip the whining that I'm a hack and the endless self-doubt and constant "can I make that better" and just document where I'm at and how I got there.
