While working on a Flash AS3 site recently, we’ve encountered an odd issue where Mac Pros and Mac Minis didn’t seem to be registering sound via the microphone. Things did seem to work fine though on Windows machines, and also Macbooks and Macbook Pros. Very odd indeed.
One thing to note though, through testing we noticed that calling the method with -1 caused the Windows machines to not record properly. Macbooks and MacBook Pros still worked with -1. Windows seems to prefer that you call the method with no argument. So to enable both platforms, it’s best to do an if statement to check which platform the client flash is running on, and then run the appropriate code.
I had a 4th of July BBQ this year at my pad for all the unit9ers who could attend. The evening went great, with one humorous and dangerous exception. Have you ever wondered what would happen if you set off a $100 firework that is 1 foot wide and 3 feet long upside down?
The vantage point of the camera is taken from my roof terrace, with me down on the street lighting this off. Rockets impacted buildings on all sides. At about 1 minute into the video, the box tipped over and started shooting rockets right at me. I ran like heck with them flying over my shoulder. Lucky for me, a friend had parked his shiny new motorcycle in between us, and you can see half the rockets impacting it and then blowing up! The bike escaped mostly undamaged with a minor dent in the fuel tank. I was unharmed after fleeing for my life around the corner of my building!
Here at unit9 we’ve noticed that Firefox 3 for Mac OS X is creating visual issues on many of our flash sites. In particular, on sites where we use SWFAddress to deeplink into our flash site, when the URL in the address bar changes the Flash site then flickers off then back on.
I was unable to find this issue listed in the current release notes. So far the only information I’ve found has been posted by Adobe employee Mike Chambers who has posted an article on his blog about the issue.
While this may just be Release Candidate 3 (a beta) of Firefox 3, it was released on June 11th, and the finial release of the full product is scheduled for June 17th. One can only hope that Mozilla and Adobe can work to fix this issue.
I got to talking with my friend Steve Abreu about James Brown, dubbed “The Hardest Working Man in Show Business”. He sent me onto the following clip, which really illustrates this. Make sure to watch till atleast 1:35 minutes into the clip for maximum enjoyment.
The theatrics of this performance are incredible. The effort, timing, emotion – all carefully prepared and executed brilliantly. I give a number of short, entertaining speeches to my company and things like this really give me inspiration to give the best speech I can. I hope you too can take away something from Mr. Brown’ performance as well.
As this is the first post on my new site, I thought I’d take a moment to introduce myself, and illustrated just what I intend to gain from this exercise, and what you the reader can expect.
My name is Tony Volpe, I’m a 29 year old American who has been living in London for the last 7 or so years. For the last six of those years I’ve worked at unit9 first as a designer/developer, then technical leader for projects, and I now fill the roale of Head of Development. My professional interests are usability, team development, design, flash sites, and inter-group communication of technical challenges.
Outside of work I enjoy running – I’ve completed the 2005 Edinburgh Marathon in 3:55, reading – mostly fiction and science fiction, console and computer games – such as the Final Fantasy series and World of Warcraft.
Through this publication I’d like to highlight issues that come to mind through my day to day work including views on usability through my experience, and solutions to problems that we face quite often in the Web Industry. I may also cover more casual issues that concern my interests outside of my professional life. I intend to keep my professional and personal posts separate through the use of “categories” in the Word Press system, so you the reader will be able to navigate posts more efficiently.
Please feel free to leave feedback on the site positive or negative, though I reserve the right to remove unconstructive comments from the site, as there is nothing to be gained by them.
