L.I.F.E Is Fully Epic

Crazy, Hilarious times

2009-03-04T13:00:00.002-05:00

Boy, oh boy! I've got a ton of new stuff to post about. Everything from new projects, potential happenings with the business, cool new people, difficult clients, and more.

I'll try to get to it all by tomorrow - in the mean time, I gotta get back to work!

Restoring something back to the 80's!?

2009-02-21T22:09:00.006-05:00

You know, the last 3 months or so have been incredible, for more than one or two reasons. Business has been better than ever, changes are being made and progress is being made at HSWWC and with the giant vision for the Kingdom. We {Exit 31} had a great business meeting earlier today at the new Indianapolis International Airport, and God was all over it. And personally, I've finally seen what living really is recently.

It almost feels like God is restoring me to a lot of the original greatness, inspiration, and potential {all of which He gave to me of course - can't take credit for that!} that I had as a wee lad growing up in the 80's and early 90's before the sick cold world tried to strip me of it. The story is way too long, and actually the majority of it I'd like to leave as a 2-way convo between God and I mainly because not many could understand if they wanted to, but MAN, it feels good!

So what's this about the 80's? Well, it's pretty obvious that a lot of the world's trends are being retrofitted back to 80's motifs, everything from graphic design to clothes to music, to reestablishing popular 80's franchises {::cough...transformers...cough::} - you name it.

But what I think is particularly cool is the mashup of 2009 and the 80's - pop culture of today just intersects well with pop culture of yesteryear. In fact, I'm not a big fan of 80's influence only. It's gotta be fresh, it's gotta have a twist. An I feel like it's the same way with my life. Yes, the somewhat distant past was cool and full of potential, general innocence, and insipiration, but 2009 is destiny! Every event up to this point, whether good or bad, pre-ordained to become a stepping stone for becoming what God wants me to be.

My life is a mashup, the best of each era. It's a song God is directing for me to make sure I stay on tempo, and right now He and I are bangin' out some on point retro beats.

In celebration of the new era of greatness, here's a song that epitomizes the great mashup sound I'm referring to. It's by a great group called Family Force 5. The album is "Dance or Die". The song is "Dance or Die". Grab the album!

Useful After Effects Tip for Rendering Error

2009-02-07T02:47:00.004-05:00

Here at Exit 31, I'm working on a fun new animation for a client. It's going great, but I ran into a small snag a little while ago and want to share the solution.

You see, we at Exit 31 Creative love all things high definition - I love rendering animations in excessive HD even if the client doesn't necessarily request it, and Tyler wants us to be the first company to produce '300 dpi websites', LOL! (Yes, we know typical display devices on the computer are only 72 ppi etc, it's a joke! Sheesh!)

Anyway, as I queued up this latest composition in After Effects CS4 for rendering and pressed that magic 'Render' button, I got a new message a few frames in:

'AEGP plugin media IO plugin...' blah blah blah 'Not enough memory to render...' etc.

Never had this happen to me before since I've got a plenty beastly machine (4GB RAM, GeForce 9600 GT w/ 512mb memory, 500GB storage, Dual Core Xenon E3110 OC'd to 3.2GHz - AAAHHHRRR! ...Sorry... man moment -- and it's almost time to upgrade to that new Core i7 rig I've been eyeballing!).

At first I just thought setting all the usual stuff in Preferences like disk caching, overflow, and memory management options would help, but the same thing happened still, even when switching between OpenGL rendering and normal.

A quick search on the web clued me in on a tip that fixed it though. The key is to purge your display cache during render at small frame increments, similar to how you can purge your cached rendered frames when previewing by pressing 'Ctrl' + 'Alt' + 'Numpad /'.

To do this during rendering, press and hold 'Alt' + 'Shift' then go to 'Edit' -> 'Preferences' -> 'General'. Once that menu opens, you should now see an extra section appear called 'Secret' (best menu name ever!). Go there, and change the 'Purge Every __ Frames During Make Movie' to some value such as 15 or 30. The lower, the higher probablity it will fix your problem, but performance decreases a little as well.

...I had to set mine to 5... although it still went quick without too much noticable degredation in performance.

That's it! Enjoy.

Getting uTorrent to work on Windows 7

2009-01-30T00:04:00.002-05:00

I'm loving Windows 7 (beta build 7000). It's fast, stable, and feature packed. I know the retail version will be butter.

That's not to say there aren't some quirks though. The good news is that Windows 7 seems to do a (much) better job than Vista at helping you solve your problems (I've successfully fixed all of reported issues, like the common MSI installer errors, using Solution Center).

Now, I recently got a new router (D-Link DIR-628 Wireless N) which works GREAT. I just tried to do some torrenting using uTorrent though, and the dreaded yellow-light in uTorrent indicating a connection problem came on.

No problem, right? I went into my router's interface and forwarded the port (click here for details on how - it's simple and something everyone who uses a router should know how to do). It didn't work though! What!? I didn't have this issue 2 days ago before I switched routers...hmmm.

Well, this is the quickest solution ever. It turns out that this combination of a router and Windows 7 is the only time I've seen the Windows Firewall actually block the port's traffic! Just disable your Windows Firewall (go to your control panel to do it) and you're good to go.

Figured I'd save someone 10-minutes of time if possible.

EOTD -- 1.29.2009

2009-01-29T23:40:00.003-05:00

It's about time for another Epic of the Day.

Today's is another song; Misty Edwards - You Won't Relent, from the ablum Relentless.

Normally, I can't get too into Misty's music (definitely talented, but the style is often too monotone and/or repetitive... it's hard to describe), but this track and at least one other from the same album is MASSIVELY EPIC.

There's something to be said about a well-executed crescendo of tension, militant drumming merged with epic rock, solid dark chord progression, beastly guitar riffs, and of course epic lyrics that describe God's relentless pursuit of men (and there is NONE more epic than God).

Enjoy. And go cop that album!

Thanks to J.Demchack for the track!

Construction Kick-Off

2009-01-29T23:32:00.002-05:00

At the start of what is sure to be a super-packed, incredibly awesome year(s) of construction for God's Kingdom and His church (especially here at Healing Streams WWC), I've been busy doing some construction myself.

I got some new hardware and gadgets that are cool enough to merit a rearrange of the my work area, plus there was some ceiling mounting that needed to happen. Needless to say, Fry's Electronics and Home Depot got hit up by me several times without shame. The end result is great though. AND I got an excuse to bust out the power-drill, stud-finder, and zip-ties.

Ahhh, man moments.

This is the year it all begins - the greatest move of God in history, full of an epic revival, awakening, building, tearing-down (the enemy of course), and EPICNESS for days. Trust me, it's not rhetoric.

Free at last

2009-01-22T23:01:00.001-05:00

Free at last. Free at last! Thank God Almighty! I'm free at last!

Validate a Youtube URL for PHP and Javascript

2009-01-16T15:56:00.011-05:00

I like the idea of posting random small useful things here, if only to help someone else along the way for whatever purpose. I think I'll do it more often if I can.

Here's a quick, but useful code snippet.

I'm working on a project that uses the Youtube API and I relies on a user to input a Youtube video URL, plus grab the video ID of that video from the URL.

Of course, since you don't want a user inputting a malformed address, it's necessary to validate that it is proper - ideally both on client-side for quick feedback, and on server-side for extra security.

The functions below use regular expressions to validate a youtube URL and returns the results in the form of an array.

PHP Example:

/*FUNCTION: validate_youtube_url
Returns: array(valid URI:Boolean, Error Message or Video ID:String, match results:Array)
*/

function validate_youtube_url($str, $protocol = '(http://)|(http://www.)|(www.)'){ // Default to requiring http://, http://www., or www.  prefix

$protocol = str_replace('.', '\.', str_replace('/', '\/', $protocol)); // escape those reg exp characters
$protocol = ($protocol != '') ? '^(' . $protocol . ')' : $protocol; //if empty arg passed, let it it match anything at beginning
$match_str = '/' . $protocol . 'youtube\.com\/(.+)(v=.+)/'; //build the match string
preg_match($match_str, $str, $matches); // find the matches and put them in $matches variable
if(count($matches) < 3){ //No matter what protocol/prefix, we should have at least 3 matches
  return array(false, 'Invalid URI', $matches); //bad URI
}else{ //so far so good....
  $qs = explode('&',$matches[count($matches)-1]); //the last match will be the querystring - split them at amperstands
  $vid = false; //default the video ID to false
  for($i=0; $i<count($qs); $i++){ //loop through the params
      $x = explode('=', $qs[$i]); //split at = to find key/value pairs
      if($x[0] == 'v' && $x[1]){ //if the param is 'v', and it has a value associated, we want it
          $vid = $x[1]; // set the video id to the val
          return array(true, $vid, $matches);
      }else{
          return array(false, 'Missing ID', $matches); //invalid querystring - couldn't find the video ID
      }
  }
  return array(false, false, false); //everything went wrong....ouch
}
}
$u = validate_youtube_url('http://youtube.com/watch?v=_ZSbC09qgLI&feature=rec-HM-rev-rn');
echo $u[1];

Javascript Example:

/*FUNCTION: validate_youtube_url
Returns: array(valid URI:Boolean, Error Message or Video ID:String, match results:Array)
*/

function validate_youtube_url(str, protocol){
   if(!protocol && protocol != ''){
       protocol = '(http://)|(http://www.)|(www.)';
   }
   protocol = protocol.replace(/\//g, '\/', protocol).replace(/\./g, '\.');
   protocol = (protocol != '') ? '^(' + protocol + ')' : protocol;
   match_exp = new RegExp(protocol + 'youtube\.com\/(.+)(v=.+)', 'gi');
   var matches = match_exp.exec(str);
   if(matches.length < 3){
       return Array(false, 'Invalid URI', matches);
   }else{
       var qs = matches[matches.length-1].split('&');
       var vid = false;
       for(i=0; i<qs.length; i++){
           var x = qs[i].split('=');
           if(x[0] == 'v' && x[1]){
               vid = x[1];
               return Array(true, vid, matches);
           }else{
               return Array(false, 'Missing ID', matches);
           }
       }
       return Array(false, false, false);
   }
}
var u = validate_youtube_url('http://youtube.com/watch?v=_ZSbC09qgLI&feature=rec-HM-rev-rn');
alert(u[1]);

'Wake up, Joshua.' I'm up.

2009-01-15T21:41:00.033-05:00

Lately, God has been talking to me a lot about 'waking up'. Not necessarily as in an early morning rise from slumber, but more like the 'Wake up, Neo' Matrix type of arousal. The references and reminders have been everywhere for the last week or two (it seemed to be the focus of tonight's prayer hour at church as well).

I was at a mini-get-together with a few friends from high school at my friend's mentor's house on Saturday. I hadn't seen the mentor and his wife in a while and we started having some small talk conversation. You know how that goes; ease in with simple questions, bear some awkward silence and head-nods, then re-attempt the strike-up with a '...Sooo, how has...' phrase. Good times. They're great people though and it doesn't take long to get past that. Anyway, in the process someone asked me 'What do you like to do in your spare time?'. Easy question. No problem. I should be able to answer this one and keep moving the conversation along.

Not quite. I opened my mouth to answer and then it shut. I tried again, and looked around like an idiot, but still no words. At this point, my brain clicked on and had a conversation aloud with me. 'Hmm, good question. What exactly do I like to do in my spare time anymore? In fact, what spare time? Heellllooooo...? Is there anyone with a life here?'. How have I spent my time?

Allow me to articulate the situation:

It's as if large chunks of my life, years, are just densely fogged hazes reflecting memories of autonomous motions. As if I were sleep-walking and not fully aware of life. The realization of these ambiguous blocks often results in a sobering gaze of nostalgia, frustration, and remorse; wondering why and how time has passed by so effortlessly and without bearing more fruit.

Ah, but God in His sovereignty... He revealed to me the source of the problem two months ago: Sin. Wait! Before you think this is going cliche, keep reading. I believe you'll be enlightened.

See, I've learned that sin {definition}, while seemingly unpunished in the immediate, is a slow-stabbing, waterboarding, coma-inducing assassin. Over time, it forms cataracts and drains light from your eyes, causing them to grow dim. Your life and all of its potential slows to a crawl and congeals. Everything becomes normalized, with no thing outweighing another, as if a glacier traveled the course of your priorities and desires. Illusions and slight-of-hand become the norm, inevitably fooling you to believe that down is up, up is down, precious metals are dirty coal, and dung is a fine-meal. You fall asleep. It's a deceptively peaceful euphoria that makes time and the rewards of enduring its tests escape from you; they run with a gait measuring days, weeks, months, and years. And since you decided to drive your own life rather than let the {real} Architect take the wheel, you could easily follow the tangent of any one of life's dangerous curves and plummet off of a cliff. Sin steals your gifts and talents, shelving them and packing them away with lies for labels to devalue them. It perverts efforts of good into selfish ambitions that exemplify Romans 7:15-25. Your time, talents and treasures - everything meant for service to God and given as gifts from The Same - rot until you are left barren.

In my case, I had spent so much time of my life in sin that the realities of this fatal sleep were all too common. The natural response is to make futile attempts at righting yourself. Isolating yourself from certain people, coming up with routines to keep you on track, making oaths to yourself and/or God {be careful!}. Even non-Christians do it. Just take one look at the New Year and all the resolutions and promises it brings. Of course, it's been my observation that the majority of those solutions and promises derail quite quickly.

If you haven't noticed this effect in your own life, look closer. Closer. Keep going. Zoom and enhance. Interpolate non-existant pixel data from a low resolution image to show the face of the cluprit, just like an episode of CSI. Now do you see it? Yeah, I told you - it's a quiet ninja indeed. So what's the solution? How do we wake up? Paul answers that in Romans 7 as well.

"What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin." Romans 7:24-25

Some may think this is a weak answer. Others may argue that they have tried Jesus, with all they have, but it didn't work. I can say that many times I tried to seek God wholeheartedly but still continually failed to escape sin. Oh, but that's the beauty of it all. To those that argue the answer is weak, the Bible clearly states that God uses weak things to shame the strong. To those that argue they tried already to no avail, the Bible clearly states that this race we are on isn't a sprint for the swift or strong, but life is about enduring to the end.

If you seek God, His Kingdom, and His righteousness without ceasing, He'll give you a wake up call, draw back the curtains, brew the coffee, turn on the music, full-hand slap your bare-back, toss you in the shower, and wake you up! Re-read that Romans 7 scripture above. Similar to the Matrix, He will 'free your mind'. And while your body may still be bound to a fallen world where deception and lawlessness abound, He gives you both the desire and the power to do what pleases Him.

That wake-up call can be a number of things. For me, it was a true experience of God disciplining me a couple months ago, causing me to lose the trust, friendship, and possibilities thereof of someone dear to me. For others, it may be a close-call, sudden epiphany, or whatever. However it comes, it's up to you to catch it and wake up! You have to respond to the blinking green cursor on the screen. And I'm betting you'd be surprised just how many wake-up calls He sends us...every day. I've learned that you shouldn't be bitter with God for His discipline, but rather, thank Him for loving you enough to do it!

As for me - I'm awake now. That's no boast in myself. No. There are so many things God has done for me that I simply can't take credit for even if I tried. I do boast in Christ's complete work for me, though. And that's what I know empowers me to accomplish every desire, dream, and vision He's given.

Strange? Possibly. Long blog entry? Definitely. But I've learned, especially in the last 2 months, to trust God's dealings with me. If He wants to use the Matrix as a learning tool, by all means - I'm so glad He talks with me at all!

My cataracts are gone. Hindsight isn't the only thing in 20/20 anymore. Every day gets better. Efficiency goes through the roof. Opportunities aren't overlooked or mishandled. Skills are perfected. Favor is lavished. I'm up. Praise God.
"I'm somewhere in the future, and I look much better than I look right now."

AJAX proxy using PHP and cURL

2009-01-12T02:19:00.012-05:00

I'm in the middle of making a useful javascript-based web-app that needs to get some data from a well-known web-service that uses the REST API. The ideal way to get the data (in my case, some XML) is to use AJAX. Simple enough, right? Of course not.

Since the request URL is on a different domain (or sub-domain), the AJAX HTTPrequest object will throw the angering error 'Access to restricted URI denied' code: 1012. Which basically translates to "Sorry. You can't access remote data from any location outside of your current domain". It's a necessary security feature in browsers, but a sometimes frustrating problem for developing mash-ups or other web-apps.

Now, there are of course workarounds for this problem without using AJAX:

You can use dynamic script tags and place them in the 'head' element of your document (created programmatically with javascript, preferrably by directly manipulating the DOM) and set the 'src' attribute to the remote URL. In the case that you are loading XML, you should also set the 'type' attribute of your script tag to 'text/xml' so you can immediately access the XML object via javascript. Check out iFormattable's blog entry or Mark McLaren's Weblog entry for more info on this solution.

This generally works just fine for most people, except when the URL is too long for the browser, or if the parameters passed need to be POST rather than GET. The problem I ran into with it is that I wanted to have access to the 'innerHTML' of that script tag to play around with the contents, but since it's not directly accessible to the Document Object Model (to the best of my knowledge), I couldn't.... stubborness, I know, but still... Ahhhhhh!!!!
You can perform the request using Flash or some other environment with its own security sandbox and spit the data back out to javascript using the Flash ExternalInterface command (or FScommand and getURL for older versions of Flash player). The process would look something like this:
- Embed the Flash object in your HTML (static or dynamic, doesn't matter)
- Create a javascript function that calls the ExternalInterface of the Flash object (or setVariable for older versions - not recommended) to trigger an event listener or fire a function in Flash and pass the remote URL and parameters
- Flash does its thing with the urlRequest object and retrieves the data
- The callback function for the completion of that urlRequest then calls the ExternalInterface again and sends the data back to javascript.
The benefit to this is that Flash allows cross-domain requests as long as the remote server has a crossdomain.xml file set up. Also, it doesn't require any server-side language or setup on your part (platform independent). The problem, obviously, is that it is completely unreasonable and inelegant from a programming standpoint, plus it requires both javascript to be enabled and Flash to be installed, which is generally OK but still more exclusive than AJAX alone.

Of course, if this was packaged in an easy to use zip file bundled with a javascript class and some well-tested, lightweight libraries like SWFobject and Mootools or jQuery....hmmmmmm.
You could set up a server-side script to be a proxy for retrieving the data. This is the method I chose since it's easy, concise, and 'elegant'.

I figure I should post the code here. It uses PHP and the cURL library. Also, the javascript is based on the Mootools 1.2 framework, but it could be any other framework or regular old DOM references.

PHP code (file named 'remote_proxy.php' or whatever somewhere on your server):

$post_string = http_build_query($_POST);
$c = curl_init();
$url = $_GET['url'];
curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($c,CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS,$post_string);
$src = curl_exec($c);
curl_close($c);
echo $src;

Javascript code

function ajax_it(url, urlparams){
var time_qs = 'randtime=' + $time(); //Random time to keep fresh
var params = '';
for(i in urlparams){ //Loop through the pairs in urlparams object to create the POST string + escape the values
params += i + '=' + escape(urlparams[i]) + '&';
}
var ajax_result = new Request({ //do the AJAX request
url: 'http://yourserver.com/remote_script.php?url=' + escape(url),
method: 'post',
onComplete: function(response){
  alert(response); //alert the response from the proxy
}
}).send(params);
}

ajax_it('http://someremoteserver.com/api/rest/', {param1:value1, param2:value2}); //Call it

See? Simple, clean, and on useful for multiple projects. Hopefully it will help someone somewhere with something. Let me know if it helps, or if you have any other solutions.

Now, about that option number 2....

Kingdom Manifest

2009-01-01T12:00:00.005-05:00

It's a new year!

Ah, 2009 - you are destined to contain incredible and epic events and blessings for me. Ah-ah-ah...shhhh....don't argue..you don't have a choice when God says so. That's right. Submit. That's better :-)

You know, God has been good to me, and it's always getting better. The theme for the year at Healing Streams and for the body of Christ: Kingdom Manifest.

Manifest: readily perceived by the senses and especially by the sight

Get ready - it's happening whether you like it or not ;-)

Epic of the Day -12.29.08

2008-12-29T19:16:00.005-05:00

I'm all about epicness. Probably because God, who just so happens to be my best friend, is the King of epic.

Well, I think it'd be coo to occasionally post a kind of 'Epic of the day' [EOTD] here to share with the world the great and epic things of our times. Plus it's quicker and often more entertaining than writing about other stuff...Uh, was that outloud?

Today's EOTD is a song: 116 Clique's Beyond Belief from their album titled Amped. The whole ablum is an EPIC mashup of genres that's hard to pinpoint the exact style. It's not the typical Linkin Park style mashup or cheesy Christian rap/rock mashup (sorry, but somebody's gotta say it! It's past time to step up our game!).

Go buy this album [via HolyCultureDownload.com]!

Late night daylight and my friend, Chico

2008-12-24T01:14:00.011-05:00

It's late. Yeah, I know, blog entries are normally posted earlier, but I don't feel much like sleeping right now.

What a year. Seriously. It's been, without doubt, the most trying, beneficial, at times heart-wrenching, confusing, blessed, gracious, maturing year of my 23 year-old life. It's kinda crazy realizing how much God can expose with His infinitely bright light, and gleaning understanding of some of the many facets and conduits of His love. Mind blowing, actually.

The weirdest thing happened this weekend. My good friend Randall was over at my house on Saturday evening, and for whatever reason I began talking on and on about KOPO [the kick one pick one action dog from Nickelodeon commercials], which looks just like Randall's dog. Anyway, I used to have a dog for many years named Chico. He was an all white Maltese, 4 lbs full-grown, with the coolest beard, biggest and darkest eyes, pinkest tongue, and best personality of any dog ever. And I mean it. I haven't had him or seen him in probably over 8-9 years now; we couldn't keep him because we weren't home enough and didn't want to neglect him, so someone else took care of him this whole time for us. It's rare that I even think about Chico [probably once or twice a year since college], even though he was completely awesome. But after I talked about KOPO, I started talking to Randall about Chico, showing him pictures of dogs that looked similar and trying to describe his beard and bark.

Well, tonight I found out that Chico died. The weird part: he died Saturday night during the same time I was bragging on him to Randall and remembering how great he was to have around growing up. He died of natural causes; he had cataracts for years and was getting weak, sometimes falling over and losing some spunk over time. I didn't get to see him before he passed, but I do thank God that He let me remember and enjoy him when I did. God knows me better than anyone, myself included, and in a way I am kind of glad He spared me from actually seeing him pass, especially given my other recent situation which feels virtually like a loss as well. He won't put more on you than you can bare. That's scripture and I believe it.

I'll miss you, Chico. I know you're doing your hilarious laps around heaven, sliding around, excited to see the awesome Trinity at last.

Well, since I don't want this to seem like a sad post [it's not, God is blessing beyond measure! Read my previous post and remember my excitement!] I'm posting a video of one of Exit 31's latest finished projects.

We've recently started expanding into motion graphics on top of print and web, and this is a logo build I did for a production company called "Ebony Daylight". We didn't do the actual logo seen at the end [it would have been better if Exit 31 did it!], but everything else, from concept to completion was us. The client wanted the feel of an African sunrise among other things. Color-correction on this was a beast!

Leave a comment and let me hear your feedback!

Catching up on meta-life

2008-12-20T01:36:00.003-05:00

It seems like it's been a grip since I've posted anything here. Maybe it has, but I think it has more to do with how busy things have been. WOW. There is so much new, so much good; God is awesome. I'm looking forward to the green-light on revealing it all.

In fact, I have so much new stuff, I think that rather than posting it all in one giant long post, I'll just do a bunch of smaller posts back-to-back [as I have free time, of course...so it may very well not be too back-to-back...]

Stay tuned!

Cross-Browser Rendering: From Bad to Worst Scary

2008-12-11T00:15:00.004-05:00

This is a quick one, since I really don't have time to post this at all ;-)

I was working on a few tweaks and mods for our church's teen ministry social network, and went to IE8 (beta 2), only to find the scariest rendering anomaly ever.
Yep, it's a JPG with dimensions set... I know, confuses me too.

For the record, here's how it's supposed to be.

Oh the day when every browser renders and executes code the exact same way.

Epic acceleration, and JavaFX

2008-12-05T16:23:00.008-05:00

Wow - I am tired! It's been a busy few weeks, and it doesn't look to be slowing down, even well into February/March... Can't complain! God is good!

Things are packed out, with no shortage of projects, opportunities, and ideas. It's also been nice being able to partner up with different organizations and individuals in various capacities. I always thank God when we have the opportunity for creative freedom and the chance to show what He's made us capable of! We should be having some great big pieces of news in the next few months, so either look for it here or on the Exit 31 site to keep up to date on new projects and happenings. As always, I'll post more on that later (if I remember, of course).

Anyway, it seems like technology is on the accelerated path as well, and one example of that is the release of JavaFX. I just found out about it, and after some research, the best way I can describe it is a direct competitor to an development platform like FLEX, but aimed more squarely at native Java developers.

It seems like most desktop programming languages (JavaFX included) and platforms in general are making efforts to widen the door of entry by simplifying the logic and migrating toward more generally accessible and understandable scripting languages like Javascript, Actionscript, and PHP. The twist is that I've noticed that the trend among those scripting languages, particularly Actionscript (especially with 3.0), is the opposite - choosing to move toward more traditional OOP (object-oriented programming) languages, taking cues from Java and C# to help those programmers come into a familiar environment.

The result seems to be two-fold. On the one hand, the applications perform significantly better and are more robust and versatile, especially for those who have the prior exposure to familiar APIs or standards. On the other hand, I kind of pity those who are just now hopping in the game because the learning curve to make anything worth value or unique is getting steeper as well.

An example of that is with the release of Adobe Creative Suite 4; I'll take Flash 10 as the example. It's a familiar enough environment with nearly every change being an improvement or advantage in some way. Things like the adoptation of a bezier curves based animation system and applying those keyframes directly to the object rather than a timeline, as well as the addition of a Z-axis and perspective, plus the [great] inclusion of the Pixel Blender Toolkit which is it's own language itself, allow for unprecedented control and cool effects that just weren't possible before (leveraging AS 3.0 and Flash 9/10+ significant performance advantages due the the new virtual machine). The downside is that nearly every project will at some point require significantly greater than average knowledge of the inner workings of Flash, probably far greater than what most designer/animator only artists prefer. For me though, it's a progressive improvement and I find that more and more problems I run into can be solved by natively included functions or packages.

Oh well, that's just the price of admission. Thank God for open-source initiatives and extensive online API documentation, helper classes, and of course, the Holy Spirit and the wisdom given by God!

Wisdom was with God all during creation :-)

"Then I was the craftsman at his side. I was filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in his presence, rejoicing in his whole world and delighting in mankind." Proverbs 8:30-31

Speaking of performance advantages in AS3, check out this demo from ROXIK.

Breaking status quo

2008-11-28T13:22:00.002-05:00

I'm here, and definitely have my head on straight. Where to begin!? With all the R&D for various projects, P2 (personal progress), and reworking of life, I've got a ton I'd like to share on here soon.

For now, check this out. It's the Technology Review's TR35: 2008 Young Innovators Under 35
Some of those people there have some very widely recognized products and technologies that they either invented or contributed to, like the innovative battery technology found in GM's Chevy Volt, or Drupal, which I'm finding to be one of the more impressive and fiercely expanding/adopted platforms. More on that later.

I'm going to make a bold statement. I'll be on that list in the coming years; watch. God's too great to not have some young Christian innovators causing seismic activity in the relevant markets of today, and personally, I'm tired of us just getting by and being at (more typically, below) status quo.

Back to work :-)

Foreseeable future

2008-11-20T12:40:00.003-05:00

"And now, O Lord, for what do I wait?
My hope is in you.
Deliver me from all my transgressions.
Do not make me the scorn of the fool!
I am mute; I do not open my mouth,
for it is you who have done it.
Remove your stroke from me;
I am spent by the hostility of your hand.
When you discipline a man
with rebukes for sin,
you consume like a moth what is dear to him;
surely all mankind is a mere breath!
Selah

"Hear my prayer, O LORD,
and give ear to my cry;
hold not your peace at my tears!
For I am a sojourner with you,
a guest, like all my fathers.
Look away from me, that I may smile again,
before I depart and am no more!"

-Psalm 39:7-13

Amending time

2008-11-18T00:05:00.007-05:00

A good explanation. Yeah.

Artist: Kenna | Album: Make Sure They See Me | Track: Static

Complexity for simplicity's sake

2008-11-17T17:10:00.003-05:00

This will be a quick one. So as I mentioned a while ago, I'm working on some top-secret butter-sauce magic internal projects here at Exit 31. This is far and away the most R&D I've had to pour over, but I'm sure it'll be worth it. But you know, the further I get along, the more I encounter the same issue:

This thing is complicated.

Not just that, but there is A LOT of great tech out there that I'm really split on. I'm looking to use a few frameworks for the different languages on the back-end, and I've progressively migrated from none to simple to complicated. I had started thinking CakePHP was the way, but after some more research decided to look more into Zend because of their recent work with Adobe and great (though super expensive) IDE, Zend Studio, built on the Eclipse platform. I also have always been a big Mootools fan, but now I'm torn between it and Prototype/Scriptaculous because of Zend's native support for those frameworks in it's AJAX libraries.

Well, the goal was to make it extensible and modular so I can add/change/remove easier. Here's hoping all this will make it easier and not face-mangling in the end. Face-mangling. Ouch.

I just want to get back to the days when the words Web and 2.0 (is that a word?) were never married. Maybe I'll start the Web 3.0 revolution, which will be a mass-reverting to non-standard jumbled mark-up. Yes...

XPERIA X1. Beastly

2008-11-16T23:01:00.006-05:00

Hard to believe it's been around 2 years since I got my good ol' Samsung Blackjack (still branded Cingular from back in the day!). Time has not overlooked it; it is a battle-scarred beast. So I've been on the hunt for a good few months on a replacement phone and have had my eye on three beasts: HTC Touch Pro, Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 {X1a in the US, and also manufactured by HTC}, and Samsung Omnia. All of these are finally either on market or trickling in, and I've done plenty of research on them - perhaps too much...eyes burning...

Anyway, I've come to the conclusion that after the latest firmware update on the X1a, all my complaints have been answered. It's just a sexy beast. All aluminum, classic HTC genius mixed with that Sony Ericsson style. Plus the feature-set in hardware {YES, Sony finally made me happy by not using their ~~garbo~~ proprietary Memory Stick Duo, opting for MicroSD instead} is really beastly as well. As an added bonus, their new 'Panels' interface even allows for use of the TouchFlo 3D interface found on the Touch Diamond/Pro/HD series, and virtually any other WinMo UI. My only complaint is the lack of an (g) accelerometer {what!? why!?} - so no fun tilt-based, iPhone-esque games. But oh-well. I do believe I've found/decided on my next phone! Now, all that's left is to wait til it releases with a carrier (AT&T only, mane!) so I can get it on upgrade/contract instead of the $800 Best Buy is selling it for unbranded. Peep videos below. Or a review by the unwired, here.

The phone {enjoy the hilarious music!}

TouchFlo3D as a panel - YES!

Quantum of What?

2008-11-15T13:58:00.002-05:00

It feels good to finally be back here in Indianapolis. I got in around 3pm yesterday afternoon, and even with the imminent task list, managed to slip in an hour or two nap.

With everyone being in town at the same time, we decided to go check out the new 007 movie, Quantum of Solace. Here's a quick review:

Good. Not great, nor epic as a whole, but good.

The action, as always in any Bond movie, is on point. The cinematography was pretty crazy, and some of the stunts were, while definitely not really possible, super fun to watch.

The plot was also decent, but they relied on you to have seen and remembered a ton of stuff from the most recent Bond movies to fully understand the plot and subtleties that this new one put out there.

I will say that the acting was better than I remember from Casino Royale, and the concept of revenge was executed in epic fashion. My main disappointment was with the opening Bond theme! I thought that with Alicia Keys doing it they couldn't go wrong - but I was wrong. Just wasn't catchy at all. The rest of the soundtrack was, as usual, epic as an untamed beast running through a moonlit desert toward a battle for the freedom of a nation from the gripping hands of evil. Yeah.

{A work-in-progress render of the never-finished 3D project of mine, Trusty Beast, from 2 years ago. It is, in fact, a beast riding through a desert toward an epic city. One day I'll redo/finish it if I have time}

Anyway, I'm off to a wedding. Paul and Sarah, congrats in advance!!!

Anonymous apology

2008-11-14T04:50:00.004-05:00

Well, I've been delaying this one long enough. As a preface, this really is really directed at only one person {if that person is reading this, they know who they are}, so everyone else can feel free to skip over this one. I guess since I am making this public and universally available on the internet for everyone and their mom to read, I probably can't filter anyone out. Oh well, for whatever reason I kind of want it to be open. Warning: this will probably take an odd (won't be often, I promise) turn for the serious and generally un-epic/ un-manly. Sorry in advance, but if the world knew how much of an idiot I was to merit me writing this, you would understand. Anyway, on with the show...

Dear anonymous:

I'm sure I've already done enough damage {even as early as February - probably earlier} to ruin our friendship 8+ times over, and my hope is that this doesn't add to that grocery list of my faults I keep racking up and exposing. I know I might have said the words before, but I honestly can't shake the need to deliberately and almost embarrassingly, continually apologize and hope for amends. Maybe {likely} you're way past it and have made room for other concerns, but I'll continue either way. Apology first, explanation second.

So I've had more than a few ~~weeks~~ months to process, and I've come to the conclusion that I've seen two of the greatest extremes I can imagine. On the one hand, there was all the craziness I did and the incredible rudeness and inconsideration. On the other, I witnessed a display of patience, faithfulness, and friendship that I know could have only been from God. You may have been right when you said no one else would be willing to do that. Seriously, beyond anything else, my worst regret for the outcome of things is that I made the friend that I met out of nowhere disappear seemingly just as fast. Since your circumstances are different now than a couple months ago, that's where I'll leave the mentioning of my regrets. I'm sorry for each of those days I acted like friendship was invincible and something to be recovered at my own convenience.

As far as explanations go, I'll say what I can here, and if you do ever read this and for whatever reason want the whole of the story, I don't think I have any more reservations about filling you in. I will say that from the beginning, every problem I created came from a central character issue or two that I was/am still working on and praying about. Anything else I ever said or implied was probably a cover-up or circumvention of the real deal.

I have to say, though, that while I have changed since then {not perfect by any means, but perspective is better}, so have you and your circumstances; both, I'm sure, for the better. That said, I won't make the same mistake twice, and hopefully you know what I'm talking about. So this is in no way any initiative to create confusion or anything remotely close. In fact, if it did, I'm sorry, and you can ignore everything said. I'd rather you be silent and clear than talking in confusion or anxiety. I guess my only hope from this is that you understand my position of sincerity {maybe that's my reason for making this public as well}, and to let the world know how fortunate they would be to have you, or a clone of you, as their friend, even though you're anonymous :-) Well, another reason could be that in doing this I may be able to go a day or two without feeling the urgent need to repent for my foolishness. A little selfish, I know, but true.

If you made it this far, thanks. If you want, you can hit me up by email or whatever and say anything you want, good or bad. But like I mentioned a little while ago, either way, I'll try to keep you in prayer. Take care.

It's not over yet...why?

2008-11-14T03:57:00.005-05:00

Just when you thought you heard the last of the adventure - mother of pearl, when will it end!?

I'm writing this post on the road {~~stealing~~ tethering from phone} - on the way back from Washington D.C. Yes. D.C. You may be wondering how or why we went from Indianapolis to Tarpon Springs, to Clearwater, to Tampa, to Miami, back to Tarpon, to Tampa again, to Tarpon again, then to D.C, and now back to Naptown. Right?

Well, my good friend John Posey, who recently went to the Navy back in April {graduated top of his class of 600, and finished top of his class at Ceremonial Guard - had to throw that one in} is coming back for my other good friends', Paul and Sarah, wedding on this Saturday. Anyway, our party of 2 is now 3, just like old times - and it's definitely great having John back. Funniest dude on earth. Seriously. Plus he has giant hands and is built like an ultimate warrior from 170 years in the future. His other name is Yanni. This will make 3700 miles and 59 hours on the road since last Wednesday night.

So, since this is yet another personal post {not that I've set any precedents, but the goal was to try and actually post other useful stuff for people} I'll go ahead and finish my vent for the night...uh...early 5am morning. Actually, I'll make that a seperate post. Right now. Be back in 20-30 minutes.

A good way to come back

2008-11-12T20:08:00.010-05:00

So, I realize that I haven't really posted any pictures or media in general in a while. There's way too many pictures and stuff in general to post em all, but I think I can get away with a few pictures and a song. Eventually I'll make a custom gallery app so I can post random stuff like an album.

Go ahead and listen to this great song while you check the pics. We've been blasting this whole album on the way here to FL, and everywhere in between. Artist is Kenna, album is Make Sure They See My Face. This song is called "Wide Awake". How appropriate for the long road-trip..."Don't sleep, don't sleep, don't sleep!" LOL

{This was the view we had during the, oh, 27 hours we've spent on the road. Picture taken in good ol' Alligator Ally}

{This was part of the scene at Clearwater Beach the weekend of the Ironman Triathalon. Wouldn't it be horrible if someone through something at it!?}{Ah, good ol' Miami. This is Coco Walk, or something like that. We saw Role Models at the AMC there. HILARIOUS}{And since this is an epic blog, here's an epic picture. Well, semi-epic. Or...maybe? Ah, I thought it was coo!}