I've been working hard the past few weeks on a Silverlight Rich Media Expandable Ad project at PBJS. The task at hand was to really push the Silverlight 1.0 plug-in to do things it wasn't really designed to do. The project was generally a success. What I'm planning on doing is putting up some code snippets that I used to create this project to hopefully shed some light on Silverlight 1.0 for anyone that is interested in learning it.

The project pays homage to the Justice D.A.N.C.E. Video but adds an interactive element where you can influence the animations on the shirts.



For now, please check out the project.Please leave comments about any questions you might have.

I'm also going to try to see if I can get everything working live on this page, just curious at how well the Silverlight 1.0 plug-in will work inside blogger.

update: didn't work so well. so please view the project here.

With Silverlight 2.0 coming out soon, I'm very interested in making use of some of the features that were lacking in the 1.0 release, namely Rich UI Controls, Alpha Channel support in video, and a more robust graphical rendering engine. This project did push me into learning more about XAML and how to manipulate it using JavaScript.

XAML is pretty slick. The biggest drawback that I've seen so far is it's a little verbose for markup. In many cases, characters could be left out and it would cut down significatly on the file size of the XAML. It also requires all data to be a string, which isn't very efficient in my option. In many cases, I had to convert values to and from integers and strings because I couldn't use integers as values for attributes like Canvas.Left and Opacity. That struck me as a little odd, but I digress.

The other thing is every time you enter a value for a color, XAML adds the Alpha value as well. In my opinion, the default should be full Opacity every time unless otherwise stated. So #ff0000 for Red rather than #ffff0000, which is two extra characters for every color. There is probably a good reason for this, but I don't know why.

The Code Trip is kicking off after Mix08. I'm really anxious to see what kind of apps the guys come up with. I think Silverlight does have a valuable place on the web, and I hope to see more cool implementations in the near future using the new 2.0 features. For now I've been reading Scott Guthrie's blog which has a preview of Silverlight 2.0. There will be a lot of Silverlight hype in the coming months, I'm looking forward to the dust settling and taking a calm look at the aftermath and enjoying some full featured Silverlight Apps.

Labels: Javascript, Mix08, PBJS, Silverlight, Silverlight 1.0, Silverlight 2.0, The Code Trip

Got a new Nikon D40 for Christmas and up until today have only used it to take pictures of Rogan. There was some cool morning fog today so I went out, camera in hand and came back with this and a few other gems.

This picture was taken from my back yard in Sammamish, WA.

It's not everyday that you can get a glimpse inside the mind of an artist. You can visit a gallery and see a snapshot, or look at a bunch of their pieces and get a good idea about that period of time.

Then there is the artist sketch/notebook. Di Vinci's notebook is a traveling exhibit of it's own. The sketches and thoughts draw millions of visitors a year. Picasso, Monet, Degas have pages from their sketchbooks framed and displayed in museums around the globe. The notebook of an artist is more than one of their works. It's their thought process laid out on paper. A storyboard of their thinking, a true glimpse into their mind. I believe that is why the sketch/notebook of an artist is so interesting.

Moleskine notebooks have long been a standard for artist and intellectuals alike. Recently Moleskine sponsored an extremely cool online art exhibit. Artist from around the world made videos showing the contents of their sketch/notebooks. The collection of videos can be seen at the DETOUR THE MOLESKINE CITY NOTEBOOK EXPERIENCE website.

I carry a Moleskine notebook, and one of these days I'll have to make a video of what I keep in mine. For now, I'll be inspired looking at what others have done and enjoying a brief journey into the minds of these gifted artists.

Labels: Art, Artist Mind, design, Moleskine

This little interview with Aral Balkan really shows you how excited Aral is about this cool project. Still don't know what Singularity is, find out.

I completely agree with Aral that the time is right for something like this. I'm very excited for it, and hoping to take up some of the "grass roots" organization in my area. I know there are lots of flash developers around, but there really hasn't been anything here to bring them all out of the woodwork. I'm excited to meet the local talent and build relationships with other Flash community professionals.

Labels: Flash, Seattle, Singularity

will.i.am of the Black Eyes Peas produced (with others) this little video. Regardless of your politics, it's worth watching.



You can also visit dipdive.com to see more information about the video.

What 'begs the question' explained in a way that will not only make your head spin, but make perfect sense.

Here's a small excerpt from The Morning News:



The whole article is worth a quick read, if just to say that you've read it, which would make you smarter, if you weren't already the smartest person in the world.

:)

Labels: creative, humor, logic

Besides the Patriots?

My Silverlight travels have brought me to an interesting place. I've been tasked with creating a narrative around the word pwned. Now while I was a competitive gamer I still used the word 0wned and it wasn't until my career was nearing it's end that pwned started popping up with frequency. As such, I take this task with a sense of nostalgia. What did it mean to get pwned or to pwn? To pwn or not to pwn, that is the question. Well I did my fair share of pwning. It really was more about the community than the game. I played Unreal Tournament. In that game the weapons are so completely overpowered that it was very easy to destroy your opponents. The real pwnage was the trash talking, or flaming, that happened before and after the matches in chat rooms and on message boards. The remnants of these can be seen still in the archives of teamplay.net.

IRC CHAT ROOM
gamer 2: WTFBSLAG!!!!
gamer 1: d00d, I totally just pwned you on that map.
gamer 2: wtfever, i was ping raped
gamer 1: yeah yeah, upgrade your connect
gamer 2: like i have $$$ 4 that
gamer 1: you need move out of your parents house, l0s3r
gamer 2: d00d
causal observer 1: pwned
casual observer 2: ahhahaaha
casual observer 3: LOLOLOOLLOLL!!!!11!!

That's just one example. Now the question is, how do I translate the essence of that conversion into an animation?

A long time ago I made a video that really personified pwnage! Good vs Evil. We were good and the suckas we b347 d0wn were p0wn3d! It was all about the flame wars. It was a great match up and we ended up on top, but the video makes it look like we completely pwned the other team. That's the essence of pwnage. Complete and utter domination and humiliation.

Time to start storyboarding. Maybe I'll troll the b04rds for some inspiration.
game on! w00t!