So no surprise I’m a big Fan of pretty much everything Flash. Because of this people will ask me things like “Flash you’re still doing that?” and “Isn’t that a dying technology?” and my response is “NO!”. I’ve blogged about this before, but let me just state again that I personally feel that the technology behind the Flash Player was, and still is ahead of its time as far as delivering rich content on the web is concerned. You create something once and you can deliver it everywhere that the Flash Player is installed. And that is pretty much everywhere. Except on iOS devices. iOS is a different story and I’ll come back to that. Leaving Flash in favor of HTML 5 is a step backwards as far as I’m concerned. Don’t get me wrong, I think that HTML 5 is great, it’s just inferior to Flash and it’s not as ready as everyone who supports it would have you think. When I say inferior I am referring to using it as a tool to create rich internet applications and games, the two areas where I feel Flash is the better choice. If you just want to make a sweet website with a cool little jQuery navigation then by all means use HTML 5. The other thing that I feel is disappointing is how everyone is deciding to leave Flash right when it is getting good. Flash player now supports processing on the GPU and multi-threading, things that I never thought I’d see. ActionScript has come a long way and in my opinion is a very powerful and robust object-oriented programming language. So with that said let me address the iOS thing. Now before you get all upset and run off telling everyone that I hate Apple, I want to make it clear that I like Apple products and own three iPods and love them. Apple makes great (expensive) stuff, and they are brilliant marketers and innovators. With that said I strongly feel that they, like any other company do what’s in the best interest of themselves, and that’s fine. The part that rubs me the wrong way is that that’s not what they say. Let’s take the now famous stance from Steve Jobs himself against the Flash Player (again don’t get me wrong, Steve Jobs did a lot of good for the world of computing). So he said that it wasn’t secure and that it didn’t perform very well both of which I think are bunk. Then he went on to say that HTML 5 was the way of the future. So here’s my question: If HTML 5 is the way of the future, why does Apple not use it on their own website to display video content instead of Quicktime? Isn’t Quicktime all of a sudden a dying technology as well? It seems a little one-sided, just saying. I recently purchased an Android tablet and wanted to go watch some movie trailers on Apple’s website, but what do you know I couldn’t because I needed Quicktime and at the time of this post I couldn’t get it for my Android device. I’m not trying to bash, I just wish those to whom a majority of people look up to in the computer world would be a little more honest and not just say things that will benefit their personal interest. Right now is a great time to be in the computer world. There are new technologies coming out all the time that are revolutionizing things. Let’s embrace those and use them, but in doing so let’s not attempt to kill others that are also great.
Category: General
Happy Thanksgiving
Happy Thanksgiving everyone. So as everyone knows Thanksgiving is a great time to get together with family and what better to do with family then play computer games. In my family Age of Empires II is still the all-time classic. This afternoon while getting one of my computers ready to play AOE2 I noticed that the colors were showing up weird. This particular computer is running Windows 7 64 bit. After trying a bunch of things and searching around online I found the answer. To make the colors show up right you need to follow these steps:
- Launch the game.
- While it is launching start the Task Manager.
- Click on the Processes tab.
- Find explorer.exe, click on it then click on the End Process button.
- Alt+Tab to get back to AOE2
That’s it and you’re off and running like normal. When you’re done follow these steps to start the explorer.exe process again:
- Ctl+Alt+Delete then select Start Task Manager.
- File -> New Task (Run…)
- Type explorer.exe in the text field where it says Open.
- Click OK
Now you have everything back like it should be and you’re good to go.
I hope this helps someone else out there that might be trying to play AOE2 on a newer computer or any other older game. When trying to play any older game try to run it in compatibility mode and try this. If neither of those work then you’re probably out of luck. Enjoy the turkey and pie!
Let Me Explain
So if you’ve read the previous posts on my blog you might be wondering what’s going on. Before abandoning it, please know that I’m still going to blog about cool programming and graphic design stuff, but now and then I’m going to add some cool quotes and yummy recipes. After all any good programmer or graphic designer needs to hear some awesome quotes and definitely needs to eat some delicious treats. Oh and to make up for the treats I might every now and again throw in one about nutrition or exercise.
Thanks Visual Link
So I started a new job this week and wanted to give a special shout out to everyone at Visual Link where I worked for the past 6+ years. I only have super good things to say about my experience there. It was a pleasure to work with and get to know some of the best people on the face of the planet! I wish everyone the very best!
WordPress is Awesome!
If you are looking to put up a blog or an entire site for that matter, you need to check out WordPress. I just finished creating a theme for this blog and absolutely love all the control you have. It’s not very hard to set up and customize and has everything you need to power a simple site or blog. If you do decide to use WordPress and need a custom theme send me an email for a free quote.
Joe Billman = ACE (Adobe Certified Expert)
Recently I did something that I’ve been meaning to do for a long time. I took the exam to become an Adobe Certified Expert in Flash Professional. Those who know me know that I love Flash and have been using it for a long time. It feels good finally have something other than my experience to verify my abilities in Flash. Okay that’s enough of my 5 minutes of Flash fame.
if(computerWorking){iBeHappy = true;}
I am writing this from my computer again instead of my laptop. Woo hoo! It is great to have it working again and even better working with Windows 7. Man I don’t know how I ever got by without a 64bit version of Windows. Windows 7 64bit ROCKS! I am loving it. I had to just write briefly and say how much I love that fact that my machine is working again and that I will soon be posting the Reflection class that I blogged about previously. Also I want to give a quick shout-out. I work with two of the best programmers and all-around good guys in the whole world, Dan and Josh. They just recently got new blogs up so I wanted to put up some links to them. If you like Flash and or code go check them out. Dan’s blog Josh’s blog
Computer Problems
So just when I thought that I was doing good on keeping up with my blog my computer crashed. The mobo on my computer bit the bucket and I am waiting for a replacement. I am writing this entry from my 7 year old piece of junk laptop. I have been watching some more sessions from MAX and am excited to try the beta of Flash CS5. Also at work I recently wrote a cool class that dynamically adds a reflection to a Display Object in Flash and will be putting that up soon when my computer is up and running again. My current boss Dave Clark is real cool and wants me to put it up to give back to the Flash community. Also we are going to be putting up some cool free stuff to help people learn Spanish free online so if you are looking to learn Spanish click on this link and check it out.
What I’ve been doing
A quick catch-up
Okay, so it has been a while since my last post. So what have I been doing? Definitely not blogging! I hope to do better in the future. I still have yet to get my site up and running. It is still the same old one page, but I have been working on some other sites. The one that I have put the most work into is www.ldssacredsongs.com I have done quite a bit of work for this one. I designed the look and layout as well as programmed the entire site. It has a pretty cool MP3 player all done in Flash and a new widget that I just added also done in Flash. I am planning to do some video tutorials here in the next little while and might demonstrate how I did some of these items. If you see something on this site or any of the others that I discuss on my blog and would like more info on them please feel free to leave a comment. I love getting people addicted to Flash! Another website that I did the design for recently is www.visuallinklanguages.com This site is for the a company that I work for. Web design and Flash are two of my favorite things! Well that is it for now. I need to get some sleep.
Hey y’all
Hello world, my name is Joe (Joseph) Billman I am a computer programmer/graphic designer. I do a lot of work with Adobe Flash both in programming and design. Because of this I plan on blogging about cool things in Flash, but that is not all. I have been using Flash since 2004 and flat out love it. If you happened to stumble onto this blog and you also love Flash I hope that you will find something useful. I am really looking forward to sharing some really cool stuff and reading your comments. Until the next blog.