December 19, 2005

Flash Book

I'm trying to build a book effect for work in Macromedia Flash ... unfortunately it's devilishly hard to do well. I've found three different books that are nice, but getting them re-sized to do what I want ... and then moved around on the stage ... has been something of an impossibility.

First book: scripted by Macc from IpariGrafika in Hungary ... includes the source code. In many ways the best book out there ... certainly the most fully featured. This book offers a "hardback" option and a million other bells and whistles ... but getting the scripted animations to re-size in actionscript has completely baffled better heads than mine.

Second book: This was something referred to in Sham Bhangal's Flash Hacks, hack 25, but it's not fully explained in the book. Instead, it's on O'Reilly's site. I've tried working through the steps and while I can reproduce the first of four Flash files ... I can't get the second one to reproduce ... I'm missing something terribly easy, I think, but I've looked at it so long I can't find it anymore.

The final book is the only one I've been able to get to work at all: Pixelwit's PageFlip. This one is quite easy to use, although I'm currently stuck on trying to add more pages to it. But, I was hoping to have my book open so that 1/2 the book took up the whole stage ... of course this does mean that I'd have to use twice as many pages, but since we're talking about virtual pages and not rainforests, I'm okay with that. Using just one page on the stage gives me a much bigger page to play with. Unfortunately, the only way I can get this book to work is by centering it on the stage.

I'm attempting to do a nifty little "history of" book. Some text, probably not included in the book itself, but off to the side of the book and then then nice photos and movie clips in the book demonstrating some of the history. Since the focal point ought to be the pictures, I'm really hoping to have a bigger book.

Anyone out there a real actionscript guru and wants to help me out?

Posted by Red Monkey at 4:12 PM | Comments (3) | Blog | TrackBack | Stumble

December 4, 2005

Red Monkey Jeans Re-re-redux

Consistently, the biggest search engine hit I get is for "red monkey jeans." Before starting this blog, I had no idea what those were.

Want something even cooler than Red Monkey Jeans? Try this. Waaaaaay cooler!

However, if you're still really stuck on finding Red Monkey Jeans, try this place out ... EuropeModa. Geez, these people oughta be paying me for advertising for them .... I'm still stunned that I come up #1 on Google for Red Monkey Jeans. Weird. Anyhow, I have no affiliation with this company or with Red Monkey Jeans (who, as far as I can tell, have no jeans with red monkeys on them ... very puzzling). I'm just tired of people emailing me begging to know where to find these highly over-priced rapper jeans. (Apparently Jay-Z wears these things, according to this one site.)

Anyhow ... check out my CafePress store. Awesome gift-giving ideas there ... not the least of which is the golf shirt with my red monkey ... wearing jeans, of course. Come on, it's the least you can do for continuing to hit my site whilst searching for these waaaay expensive jeans (I mean, really, they're like $400 and $600 some odd dollars!!!).

Posted by Red Monkey at 3:22 AM | Comments (0) | Blog | TrackBack | Stumble

November 25, 2005

Logos and things

Over at BlogExplosion they've created a new service -- now they're offering free photo hosting for blogs at BlogPhotohut.com -- it's an awesome service ... check them out!

And, if you're a member of BlogExplosion, go vote for the logo you like best.

And ... just for your amusement and yet another bit of shameful self-promotion, check this out:

In context ...

Posted by Red Monkey at 2:09 PM | Comments (1) | Blog | TrackBack | Stumble

November 24, 2005

Shameless Self-Promotion

Now you, too, can find a shirt proudly demonstrating a Red Monkey who's wearing jeans. Or the CoyoteThunder logo ... or, clothes with pictures of the Caelum Moor park on them.

Coyote Thunder @ CafePress. Check it out. (Black t-shirts coming as soon as CafePress releases them!!)

UPDATE: Black t-shirts now available:

Posted by Red Monkey at 8:11 PM | Comments (0) | Blog | TrackBack | Stumble

November 15, 2005

Truth or Myth ... Answers

All right, so here are the answers, some in lurid, Technicolor details. Others, not so much.

1) I was 19 when my first real relationship started and it lasted for 13 years.

False.
I was 19 when my first real relationship started and it did last for a long time ... but it was only 10 years long. We met my freshman year in college, had a whirlwind romance, moved out of our parents' homes (before being kicked out, actually) and last ten years and four months.

2) I did not touch a computer until a year ago and thought they were run by dilithium crystals or something equally Star Trek-like.

False.
Nope, I've been playing with computers since the Commodore-64. William Gibson, writer of Johnny Mnenomic and Neuromancer -- creator of the whole cyberpunk movement, did think that computers ran on some kind of Star Trek-like crystals while he was writing those books. Said he was quite disappointed when he found out how they worked....

3) I am a gay man.

False.
What, you thought I'd give you more of an answer than that?
HAHAHAHAHA
ahem. Sorry. Nope. I'm not a gay man, but I might be a bi- man. Or a chic or a straight dude or a once-gay man. Or ... well, you really didn't think I was gonna answer this one, did you?

4) I have power tools and I'm not afraid to use them.

True!
Am making a hobby bench at the moment which is mounted on the wall. Completely from scratch, nothing precut, et cetera. And I need a new drill, too, dammit. Can't install the desk area to the cabinet until I get a new drill. Grrrr.

5) My ex now believes he/she is actually the opposite sex from the one he/she was born as.

True.
I'd say more, but in my opinion, it's a sad situation. Look, I know other people who are transexual and I have no issue with that. I honestly believe some people do have every aspect of the opposite sex except for their outer biology. (And actually, a sex change operation wouldn't work as well if it wasn't for the fact that the body of these true transexuals are actually calling for a hormone that their body can't manufacture ... as a result, you often get the equivalent of a Green Beret who later says, really I'm a girl.)
At any rate, I don't believe my ex is a transexual. My ex is just a very, very confused person and has literally no sense of identity at all.
Like I said, it's a sad sad situation.

6) I taught at the university level for nine years ... bonus points if you can name the class and the university.

True.
I taught at the University of Notre Dame from 1995 until 2004. (What class? Freshman writing, the class everyone loves to hate.)
It was a rather bitter parting ... the unwritten policy at ND now is to not let the first-year students fail a liberal arts class, no matter how badly they do -- as long as they show up and turn something in. Yup. Check out this link on the Notre Dame writing program website.

7) My house was once known as "the place you can stay when you don't have anywhere else to stay."

True.
My ex and I took in our first "stray" within the first six months of living together. I've moved people out of apartments with armed not-quite-exes who weren't happy about the moving; I've taken in people with multiple personalities; I suspect I took in one person who may have been serial killer potential (didn't realize it until later); I've taken one person in on at least three separate and extended occasions.
Guess I'm just a sucker.

8) A tornado once moved the back wall of my house about one inch away from the rest of the house. We simply patched up the gaps with drywall on the inside and concrete on the outside and gained an extra couple of feet floor space.

False.
But, this did happen to my dad's family in Amarillo, Texas. They didn' have much money ... and it seemed like a good idea at the time.

9) My father was a member of the 101st Airborne and jumped out of planes.

True.
He was called up during the Bay of Pigs invasion, but not actually deployed. He managed to get out in time to miss Viet Nam without getting called back up.

10) All through elementary, junior high and high school, I never received detention.

True.
I was a real goody-goody. I could be onery and hyper ... but not to the point of detention.

11) I have only fallen off my skateboard once -- of course, it was while I was wearing dress pants and I tore out the knee.

True.
I was skateboarding on a Stow-Board, which is a nifty little skateboard that folds up. Unfortunately, it has one minor little flaw -- it has "rails" all along the frame. There's open space between the deck where your feet go and the rails. It's easy to get your foot caught in the rails.
So, late for a meeting, I was speeding across campus on this ill-conceived skateboard and I saw a huge pothole at the end of a down-ramp. Going too fast to move around it, I attempt to do what I always do, run off the board.
My foot got stuck.
Thunk.
Huge skinned knee and ripped out the knee on my best wool dress pants (that I got at GoodWill for like $5).
Why is this the only time I ever fell off? Because my mom told me as a kid that the first time I fell off the skateboard, she'd throw it in the trash. I'm such a dork, I STILL haven't been able to turn that mom-tape off yet.

12) When my elementary school began a bussing program, I was involved in a fight the first time someone picked on another kid for the color of their skin.

Technically speaking, False.
However, you have the right idea if you answered true. My mom was afraid that I would get into just that type of fight, so she pulled me out of public school and sent me to a private school.

13) If I had gone into the military, I wanted to be a fighter pilot ... with a particular eye toward the Blue Angels.

False.
Another trick question. Yes, I did want desperately to be a fighter pilot ... but I really wanted to be a Thunderbird pilot. I've always "hated" the Blue Angels for having better marketing than the Thunderbirds.
If I couldn't do that, I wanted to go into the navy and subs. Subs fascinate me.
Alas, asthma and poor eyesight kept me out of both.

14) The dog we had as a kid was forced to live outside even though she was highly allergic to grass.

True.
How sad is that? I don't know why my parents kept her ... we should have found a family who could let her live inside have her. But, my parents thought keeping her on steroids and then yelling at her for scratching all of her fur out would be an acceptable solution. She never got to come inside except very closely watched during the winter months (and then she was kept in the laundry room, properly locked in).

15) I build furniture for a living now.

False.
I am a copywriter for an online furniture e-tailer, but I don't make any furniture for a living. (Just for fun at home.)

16) I have, in the past, been heavily involved in a live-action role-playing game ... and was one of the "stars" of a demo of that game during the Dallas Fantasy Fair in the early 1990s.

True.
:)
In the early 1990s, some friends began a chapter of NERO and our first event was at the Dallas Fantasy Fair. We had two or three linked rooms and a hallway. We built Orc "jail cells" out of cardboard and I was one of the "star" non-player-characters for the scenario. I thought I had a bit part, but after the first session, the response was overwhelming. Evidently my acting was a huge hit.
LOL

17) If I could pick an ethnicity/culture to belong to, I would want to either be Irish or Navajo.

True.
Don't know why, but I've been fascinated with both cultures since I was a tiny kid.

18) I regularly snuck into the high school building early, carefully avoided teachers in the halls, and then snuck into classrooms and changed assignments on the chalkboard.

True.
It's not good to let me get bored. I have a tendency to find something that seems innocuous for me to do. And later other people find out it wasn't such an innocuous thing for me to do ... but too late for them to do anything about it.
I regularly snuck into the high school and changed assignments and somehow -- I really don't understand how -- no one ever figured out I was doing it.

19) The Red Monkey on this page is a piece of computer art that I drew in Macromedia Freehand.

True.
Yep, it's based on a Fisher Price monkey from the circus set, but I did draw him in Freehand. And I'm quite proud of him, obviously. He was the first completely computer drawn piece I did.

20) I was almost kicked out of the Dallas Museum of Art, but I slipped into the crowd and avoided the security guards.

True.
I hate art museums ... I do NOT know how people can spend hours in these places. Give me a good natural sciences museum and I'm lost for days. Art? Not so much. Even when I like the art, I can't stand there and be lost looking at it for more than, what, ten seconds at most? (Just tried counting to 10 ... nope, not even ten seconds. Maybe five on something really big that I really really liked.)
So, we're going through this stupid museum and the first thing we do is look at the modern art. One of the pieces is a red canvas. That's it. It's a canvas that has been painted red. No variations, no shades of red, it's just a red effin' canvas. It's in the Dallas Museum of Art WHY exactly?
Anyhow, I was bored. It's not good to let me get bored.
So, we walk into this exhibit from Egpyt ... far more interesting stuff here, including a mummy. And, across the room is this statue of a woman sittin gon a chair. Her hair, I shit you not, has got to be like 12 feet high.
I shouted, "Look, it's Marge Simpson!" and pointed at the statue. Every child in that place turned and shrieked and began laughing hysterically and asking how the ancient Africans knew about Marge Simpson.
Well, I thought it was funny, anyway. The security guards, not so much.

That's it. More than you wanted to know ... except for #3, anyway.

Tired of the spam comments, so I'm closing the comments on this post ... you can use the contact link or comment on an entry that hasn't been hit so hard by the spam-bots.

Posted by Red Monkey at 12:02 PM | Comments (4) | Blog | Stumble

November 14, 2005

Truth Or Myth

**UPDATE**
We are now waiting for Angie to hurry up and make her guesses because she made me promise not to post the answers until after she made her guess. Everyone ... tell Angie to hurry it up. :)
***

All right, I hate these meme tags, but I can have a little fun with this one, so I'll go ahead and do it.

Charles, the banana-boy from Norway, tagged me. The game is simple ... I list 20 things about me ... you guess what's fact and what's fiction.

1) I was 19 when my first real relationship started and it lasted for 13 years.
2) I did not touch a computer until a year ago and thought they were run by dilithium crystals or something equally Star Trek-like.
3) I am a gay man.
4) I have power tools and I'm not afraid to use them.
5) My ex now believes he/she is actually the opposite sex from the one he/she was born as.
6) I taught at the university level for nine years ... bonus points if you can name the class and the university.
7) My house was once known as "the place you can stay when you don't have anywhere else to stay."
8) A tornado once moved the back wall of my house about one inch away from the rest of the house. We simply patched up the gaps with drywall on the inside and concrete on the outside and gained an extra couple of feet floor space.
9) My father was a member of the 101st Airborne and jumped out of planes.
10) All through elementary, junior high and high school, I never received detention.
11) I have only fallen off my skateboard once -- of course, it was while I was wearing dress pants and I tore out the knee.
12) When my elementary school began a bussing program, I was involved in a fight the first time someone picked on another kid for the color of their skin.
13) If I had gone into the military, I wanted to be a fighter pilot ... with a particular eye toward the Blue Angels.
14) The dog we had as a kid was forced to live outside even though she was highly allergic to grass.
15) I build furniture for a living now.
16) I have, in the past, been heavily involved in a live-action role-playing game ... and was one of the "stars" of a demo of that game during the Dallas Fantasy Fair in the early 1990s.
17) If I could pick an ethnicity/culture to belong to, I would want to either be Irish or Navajo.
18) I regularly snuck into the high school building early, carefully avoided teachers in the halls, and then snuck into classrooms and changed assignments on the chalkboard.
19) The Red Monkey on this page is a piece of computer art that I drew in Macromedia Freehand.
and finally
20) I was almost kicked out of the Dallas Museum of Art, but I slipped into the crowd and avoided the security guards.

Answers will be posted when I have at least 10 comments on this post! :)

Posted by Red Monkey at 10:58 AM | Comments (12) | Blog | Stumble