A Blog!?
Nov-2008

Nov. 29, 2008:

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving, and got plenty to eat; spent time with family, and just had a good time.
I did :o)

I had some time the past couple days, and played some with the MATC logo.
Turned out pretty dang good, too!!
Check it out:

...Well nuts...I can't post it here, but if you could see it you would be awed and amazed!


I find that working at a school is inspiring to me, even tho all my time so far has been spent taking an inventory of each and every asset in the school website. Don't get me wrong, I know it's an important thing to have, but if I didn't create something new...soon...my head was going to pop. LOL
I feel much better now, thank you. :o)

It's a fun logo to work with, and I thought it a good idea to get to know it better. I was able to get a copy of the base vector MATC logo work, opened it up in Illustrator, exported a swf, and then imported that into SWiSHMax2 for animation.

The drop shadow might be causing a bit of a CPU usage issue. It could be dropped for the sake of performance. I was having a layering issue but I think I got it, mostly. There is one small flaw, but it's pretty hard to see. If you want to look for it, it's right in the middle of the anima.

Nov. 21, 2008:

Well, I just completed my second week on the new job. Been doing a lot of work getting to know the files; up close and personal too! This week I am working on taking a full inventory of each and every single file, and folder on the server....and boy, are there a lot of files LOL All was going well, right up until today, right before quitting time. The info I am to gather, in addition to the files names and paths, are the last user that made an update, the last user to approve the update, and the date of that update and approval. I was doing real well, tho it is very slow going, and after about 2000 files(less than a third of the way...) I discovered I was taking the wrong date, and entering it in my inventory. As you can imagine, I was pretty sick about it, when I found out. I had to tell the boss about it, and he seemed to take it ok, but I know I disapointed him. That sucks too.

Nov. 16, 2008:

Got an update: for the v12 template
This fixes the bug in the email form, and the clumsy solution I had in there for the "Selection.setFocus" issue for the input fields of the contact form. The email form used to work fine when imported into the text field like it is now, but after one of the flash9 updates it no longer worked. That was when I tried that onRelease work around on each of the input text fields. It was clumsy and I should have thought of this new solution before; it was so obvious. Sorry 'bout that.

Anyway, as follows:
The contact form itself is now a library item in the index.swi and is no longer in the contact.swi. The new contact.swi now uses attachMovie to call the actual contact form from the index.swf, and places it right over itself, just outside of the main text area.
_root.mainBody.pageHolder.myArea.getNextHighestDepth()
Deletes itself when the contact.swf is no longer in the page.

Zipfile can be found here and contains an updated index.swi, and contact.swi
You'll need to export your swf's from your own v12 work folder.
All other files in the original zipfile haven't changed at this point.

Nov. 14, 2008:

'K...I had a GREAT first week at the new job.
Learning the system layout, and CMS. Not too bad. It has a few bugs, and could be better, but it's not so bad. Just needs a bit-o-TLC once in a while. LOL And by golly, I'm just the guy to do it :o)

I am looking forward to starting something there that will last beyond my own span. Can't think of a better place in which to carry out such a dream. I've learned a lot over the years, and if I can help inspire someone a bit, then all the better, huh?

Yeah, that's what I thought, too. LOL

Nov. 9, 2008:

Been spending the weekend trying to get ready for the new job. I am a bit nervous, but still can't wait to start the new gig. I'll do my best do make a valuable contribution to this new project. I have a few ideas already that I'd like to propose, if I'm given the chance. We'll see. This will be the biggest project I've ever been a part of before....back to being nervous   ;o)

So, today I'm doing a bit of house keeping. I'm still unpacking boxes from when I moved here back in January. Keeping busy, so I don't think about it too much. LOL Got all my pictures and wood odds and ends hung.

Nov. 8, 2008:

Well, that day I feared has finally come...
I knew it would happen someday, but now that it has I can't help but feel somewhat sad about it as I had no part it.

The new website design for Carmex is up and running.
It looks pretty good, too......dang it LOL
http://www.mycarmex.com/

I am still happy and very grateful that I got to be a part of that company's history.
Thanks Paul :o)
It was great fun, and I will always remember the time I spent working on the old site!!

Nov. 5, 2008:

Just heard yesterday that I got the full time job I had applied for,
And I start Monday morning!!

So, in celebration of that and in the spirit of learning and sharing that which I have learned, I have decided to offer v12 of FlawlessDog.com as a download for the SWiSHMax community in a thread called Bringing It All Together.

I've been asked several times how I did the stage management, scroll bar, and all the rest of it.
Seems a picture is worth a thousand words, so here we go.

This template is NOT a component, and is only for those that really like to get their hands dirty and are able to just jump right into the ActionScript.

I've tried to leave as many notes as I could within the ActionScript, so read on.
I've changed the text, and killed the links.
Got rid of all but one gallery pic for the sake of the zip file size.

Enjoy!

Nov. 4, 2008:

Go out and VOTE today!!
I cast my vote today, and was among the first 100(#61) voters today in my town. I am very happy to have cast my vote for Barack Obama/Joe Biden. Best of luck to them. I know they will do well when elected.

Nov. 3, 2008:

All righty, then ;o)
I've gone live with this site, and I am proud of it. I made a few updates since I last posted. This site is now Search Engine Optimized. All the content is contained in and being imported from the index.html page and it seems to work pretty well.

The text field script I am using is based on the work Greg Baker (gsb) did a couple years ago for the Great SWiSH Max Competition 2006, Not Just Another Scroller. One of the best scrollbars ever scripted for SWiSHmax in my honest opinion.

Still, it took some re-writing to suit my needs for this site. I striped out the scrollbar parts but kept some of the other features, like the processSpecialTags function as well as the getTag function which suited my needs perfectly in this application. Then had to make the text field autoSize=true so it would re-size according to the text being loaded. Once that was done, it was an easy matter to read the _height of the text field for use with the new stage management scrollbar I have installed here.