Level of Industry

It's time for new updates this week. Launching this summer season with a lot of free code drops, frameworks/toolkits, saffron and much, MUCH more.

It's on!

:)

I know there have been some concerns as of late regarding the development of Saffron. Let me kill all of those rumors by saying that Saffron development has NOT by any means ceased. In fact i've actually ramped up development on it since I've fallen behind on some of the features promised in Saffron. But are some screenshots of the latest saffron development build. As soon as I get some minor issues fixed tonight I will post a much more comprehensive update with release information, invite info and roadmap. Cheers!

   

It's been an incredibly busy past couple of weeks filled with lots of client work and Saffron code changes. I do apologize for the lack of Saffron updates and I will be updating this site with a lot more Saffron information within the next couple of days. Well first things first, I want to thank Shawn Pucknell, Naomi Okebe and the crew at FITC for making FITC Hollywood a memorable experience. The line-up of presenters was amazing and there were a lot of inspirational presentations given by remarkable speakers. I also want to thanks those that attended my session. I received a lot great feedback on Saffron and I am really appreciative of that.

Another highlight of the conference was the first ever live performance of Phlash5 a rock band made up of various members in the flash community. That! I must say, was a complete blast. It has been a while since I was last on stage and I must say it felt great. My fellow band mates are all amazingly talented musicians and songwriters. one interesting aspect of Phlash5 is that all of the members live in different parts of the world which meant that most of our collaboration had to be done over the internet. Our performance at BB King's in Universal City Hollywood was actually our third time in life that we ever played together as a band!

Aral Balkan ( SWX, OSFlash ) - Vocals
Aral is an amazing vocalist with such a dynamic stage presence that he's able to add amazing energy to our sets!

Chris Allen ( Red5 Server, infrared5 ) - Trombone
Chris has an amazing insight into Jazz composition. Chris and his buddy Jared arranged some of the most memorable brass pieces for the band that just have to be heard to be believed.

Chris Mills ( formerly FriendsOfEd, now Opera ) - Electronic Percussion
The gentle giant to my left on stage keep the ferocity of the percussive elements constantly rolling without missing a beat!

Craig Swan ( Crash!Media ) - Guitars & Visuals
Craig masterminded the AIR Visual Guitar which powered all of the stunning visuals that were projected behind the band during the gig.

Jared Sims ( the only none flasher of the group ) - Saxophone
Jared provided all of those tasty and amazing saxophone licks. It was really fun to play with Jared since he has the uncanny ability to hype everyone up during his amazing sax solos.

John Grden (PaperVision3D, Red5 ) - Drums
What can I say about John? He is an amazing developer doing really crazy things with Red5, PaperVision3D, Flexible, etc. But man oh man can he play the drums!!

Samuel Agesilas (Saffron, Modulous) - Guitars
Yours truly on guitar.

Seb Lee-Delisle (Plug-in Media, Particle Engine Super Freak) - Bass
Seb is just money on the bass. He and John kept the bottom end locked and tight throughout the whole set.

 

 

Check out photos from the gig here @ flickr. It looks like our next set is going to be in Amsterdam next year which should definitely be a blast!

Cheers,
Sam

Here's a little hack a use when I'm using when I need to an event handler to access variables or object in a particular function scope.

import flash.events.MouseEvent;

var clickHandler : Function;

function foo() : void
{
        var firstName : String = "Samuel"
        var lastName : String = "Agesilas";
        
        this.stage.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, clickHandler = function(event:Event) : void
        {
                trace( event );
                trace( "First Name:" + firstName );
                trace( "Last Name:" + lastName );
        });
}
foo();

By creating a variable ('clickHandler') outside of the current function scope (in this case the function 'foo') we have a safe place to store the function handler and it can be removed at a later point in time if necessary. The biggest advantage here is that now the 'clickHandler' has access to all of the variables and objects inside of my current function scope making event handling a lot easier and with less code.

cheers!
Sam

We dwell in the space between your time and my devotion
as we pursue pleasure that embodies the melody of harmonic motions
traversing over our emotions.
Understanding that we are more than just a state of mind
is the very spirit that powers the souls of the countless
lovers who dare express that they are obsessed with their own success.
In you I  envision myself completely engulfed by the essence that fuels the very thought of us.
Acquiescing to  it  consuming our souls with unadulterated lust
while passionately washing away our sorrows with each and every thrust
And though we may be completely separated by oceans.
I can't seem to rid myself of this yawning elation as I go through the motions
of dwelling in the space between time and our emotions

            -Samuel Agesilas Pastel 

 

As a designer, I often find myself searching for inspiration anywhere I'm lucky enough to find it. Sometimes it can be as simple as a bumper sticker or as complex as a full scale print by Joshua Davis.  However I also find a lot of inspiration, in my daily interactions with random individuals I so happen to meet. Night or day. But ever so often I encounter an object that I just can't  get out of my head. An object that speaks to me in the most intimate fashion possible. Awakening my passion for thought and creativity, leaving me but with one thought; "Holy shit! I must design something around this!".

 

For yours truly, that experience came rushing once I say the B120 Wraith motorcycle by the Confederate Motor Company. I was speechless and blown away to say the very least. I've never seen anything like it and at that point I knew I had found the source of inspiration for Saffron's user interface. I'll definitely go over this rabbit hole of a journey in my session at FITC Hollywood. I'm looking forward to talking about the design process and showing which pieces of the Wraith ultimately garnered my attention as an inspirational source.

cheers,
Sam

Wow! It's been a while since my last Saffron update. I've been real busy closing off bugs on Saffron and getting ready for the beta release. Adobe has been awesome in their support and I really appreciate that. I must take this opportunity to send a lot of love Ryan Stewart's way and publicly thank him for getting me on the AIR beta program.  It's been an interesting couple of weeks as I get ready for FITC Hollywood and finish up the bits for Saffron. As everyone can imagine developing beta software with beta software can be quite a harrowing task. The love that Adobe is showing for Saffron is definitely helping out quite a bit.

On a technical note I'm happy to announce that Saffron will work with AIR Beta 2 and NOT Beta 1.  AIR Beta 2 address a lot of issues that I was having with Saffron that caused unavoidable delays in the release cycle. Now that I have a more feature complete version of AIR I have started removing some of the old workaround code and replacing it with a leaner, meaner code set that works with AIR Beta 2.

The plugin model for Saffron is coming along beautifully and I can't wait to show this at FITC Hollywood. The plugin model is extremely powerful and has a feature rich set API that will irrefutably assist developers in writing plugins for Saffron. It literally turns the Saffron workspace into a blank canvas allowing developers to build or modify any type of Saffron application. I'll be demonstrating this at Hollywood with some pretty insane examples of how creative you can get with these new APIs. I'll be posting screenshots of the latest builds as well as some release notes for the forthcoming beta. Can't wait to show the new build! Cheers!