Gradin.com » Flash

Lennart Green Magic Amazes TEDrs

Olaf — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 18:55:10 +0000

Lennart Green, the foremost close-up card magician of the world, dazzled the audience of TED 2005. I caught the video today on my Zune and was thrilled. His show is very entertaining, quick witted, and his foreignness is close to my heart (Green is from Gothenburg, Sweden). The TED video is around 30 minutes of goodness. Green had me laughing often, and his hand work is second to none. If you ever wanted to be a magician, watch this video and give up on your dreams. You’ll never amount to anything!

No Bones About It

Olaf — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 05:44:06 +0000

It has been submitted! It took way to long to get the presentation worked out, and I’m less than excited about the results. I tried to use some Flashy-goodness, but couldn’t get the file size down to the allowable limit. I am however, pretty jazzed about the final result. Sure, I could have kept editing it forever, but I needed to punt at some point. This will be my real learning experience and I can move on with more submissions in the future.

So thanks for helping me with my critique, now please vote like the wind! I have to keep the piece high enough in the rankings to last for all 7 days – that is, of course, as long as the judges approve it for the go-forward.

It’s Like Watching NASCAR on Acid

Olaf — Tue, 27 May 2008 03:13:20 +0000

We went out on Mother’s Day with some friends to see what we all knew would be a bad movie, Speed Racer. Between the 9 or so adults, there were also 3 children around Balthazar’s age. If nothing else, we thought they would thoroughly enjoy the over-the-top cheese and hyper-saturated pop-film. We might have all enjoyed it [some] if it hadn’t been for the fact that it lasted about 70 minutes too long.

I will admit, there were some classic Speed Racer moments that I enjoyed, but they could have been wrapped up into a hip music video or something. Perhaps a short film. The effects were awesome in many cases, over the top in the others. However, I recognize that it was an effect the Wachowski brothers were going for. The effects didn’t bother me too much, though the final race is pretty mind-bending. If you suffer from epileptic seizures from flashing lights, this movie is probably not for you.

The Home School Phenomenon

Olaf — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 15:14:07 +0000

Man has been on a quest throughout time to find the riddle of the root of all evil. Ole-Magnus Saxegard, a student of the Sydney-based University of Technology, explores this riddle in his latest frame-by-frame Flash animation (A History of Evil). It is a brilliant vision. If he’s looking for further inspiration to this age-old question, I have yet another clue…from the future!

I have noticed over the past several years that home-schooling seems to have risen in popularity. Initially, I was impressed at the number of people involved in the home school method. I later learned that many of these home school students actually get together on some routine frequency to develop socially, as well as to share the responsibility of teaching across multiple parents. I can’t say for sure, but I’m guessing this is a bit of a regression. Didn’t school systems start this way? Finally,there seemed to be an ulterior motive to home schooling. There have been a rash of parent vs. government cases over the last decade regarding the use of faith-based programs in school systems. Of late, Darwinian Evolution and Intelligent Design are the major contention points. Home schooling seems to be the concerned parents’ answer. A parent that disagrees with the educational system – perhaps also disagreeing with private systems, or unable to afford them – can pull their child back into the home where teaching is at the discretion of the family. From a Little House on the Prairie ideal, this seems like a charming social shift in America. However, I see it as a disaster for our future. If children are taught through home school primarily to reinforce religious perspectives on science, then our legacy’s potential for critical thinking is severely limited. The views of the parents will extend through to their children, and while not obviously as detrimental as racism, will inevitably give rise to ostracism.

See: Twin Cities Creation Science Association Sponsors Home School Science Fair

Interface: Flash

Olaf — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 15:44:33 +0000

Pentagram: Flash

Pentagram: Flash

Olaf — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 15:38:40 +0000

Interface: Flash

Zune 2.x

Olaf — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:43:18 +0000

You may recall that I had written up the Zune Wish List a couple of months after I received mine in December of 2006. I took the time to assess my needs and what the Zune hardware and software could do to meet those needs. It has now been nearly a year since that list and it’s time to update it.Microsoft released their 2.0 Zune Marketplace software with the newer Zune hardware made available for Christmas of 2007. The new software addressed some issues with the older software, but more than anything I think the new version was an aesthetic shift for the product team. Maybe they’ve completely replaced the creative group in favor of a sexier image. At any rate, with a good number of users and a year or more on their belt as Zune users, there were clearly going to be some polarized debates about the change.Refresher: Here is the old and new iteration of the Zune (Marketplace) Software, respectively…
Here are my original ‘wants’ for the hardware and software after 2 months of use:

Zune Hardware:
- Alphabet ToC Navigation in addition to click-wheel
- Ratings categories (so I can play 4-star or 5-star music only, for instance)
- The ability to remove songs from my “quicklist”
- Setting EQ attributes to a song or album uniquely
- Inline normalization
- New category…or put a recently added link at the top of each category
- Make playlists of video files
Zune Software:
- Faster *My software has long periods of unavailability, though I realize I have an over-sized library
- Automatic playlist creation
- Support for OGG
- Insight into the folder monitoring – some sort of progress or status on this
- Better album art application – album art isn’t always displayed immediately after you add it
- Without knowing any better, I wish the album art was embedded within the ID3 tag of the file rather than being added as a hidden file in the directory
- Perhaps support for a real database back-end – I feel the need for enterprise class media management

There were also some real problems that needed attention:

Crashing…the software crashes, the hardware crashes. Sometimes it’s solid, but then it goes into a fit and crashes consecutively all to often. **UPDATE – I found out that the hardware is most likely crashing due to an electrical protection feature. Static electricity is not the Zune’s friend.
Renaming/hiding MP3’s. This could be related to crashing – I’m guessing that MP3’s were being indexed and something went wrong. Then, the Zune software went and renamed a *lot* of MP3’s to their cataloged GUID and hid them. The files won’t play until I rename them back to a .mp3 extension. It will annoy me when it comes up – so far only a few of these songs have come up in my shuffle list.

In the hardware category, Microsoft did exactly zero to fulfill my wishes. The closest they came was to introduce sorting by “date added” to the software. That’s actually very helpful, but it doesn’t help me find new music on my device after I’ve left the computer. The Alphabetical ToC thing would still be cool, but I will say that the click wheel seems to be spinning songs by faster than it used to. It hasn’t bothered me as much that I can’t jump to a letter in the alphabet quickly, though it would probably make me a safer driver if this feature were added. Depending on your attitude towards the “Ratings” debate, the new software either decimated your organization, or has drug you from Ratings procrastination. I’m somewhat in the middle on this. I’m adapting quickly enough, though I had finally figured out a decent way of rating my music along the 5-star basis that helped me managing my music. The new Zune uses only a “Heart” to signify the emotion a given song lends. You love, hate it, or are indifferent. Despite the change, there is still no way to play music on the device that you’ve “Hearted” unless you create a playlist first (static). Microsoft took away the “Flag” option in the Zune hardware. I was using it a little bit, but it was so unnecessarily slow and useless that I had stopped altogether. I had hoped that the new firmware would add much needed functionality to the flagging option, but now we find it missing in action. No love lost for the old function, but I would like to see the ability to flag a song for my review back at the software. I would primarily use it as a reminder to do something with that song (e.g. add to playlist, look up artist, etc.).

The Zune software; that is, the part installed on a Windows machine for interaction with media and the device itself, is a piece of work. I mean that in two very polarized ways. Piece of Work: 1) Quality craftsmanship, exemplary; 2) opp. The worst, poorly demonstrated – syn. Piece of Shit. I may sound a little harsh, but this new software encourages me to use Microsoft’s new “Heart” ratings to express my emotions. This brings me to my earlier comment regarding the product’s shift in direction. I really get the feeling they threw the old software out and started fresh. On the love side of things, I really like the new look. While I prefer the technical features of an app to let me do all matter of evil to it (i.e. preferences, customizations, tweaks, etc.), I really do like the slimmed-down simplicity of the new Zune software. The previous software left me feeling like I should see more options, but didn’t. This software, on the other hand, gives me the impression that what I see is what I get. It took a little while to get used to – I’m still a little unfamiliar in its kid-gloves aesthetics – but I’m gaining proficiency. I also like the fact that this software appears to be running faster with fewer crashes. I haven’t had any MP3′s get renamed (and hidden) to GUID replacements. While file monitoring still doesn’t lend any insight as to the percentage complete, it does seem to run faster and more consistently.

On the negative, the functionality of the software has been grossly gimped. I am no longer able to do something as simple as edit my own ID3 tags in a simple form-based interface like before. I can’t seem to update an album against a web lookup – it happens automatically, but I don’t have finite control over the process as was given in the previous software. While I love the addition of the podcast category, I don’t much care for the level of experienced interaction given to users here. I prefer the more technical feel when it comes to podcasts. They tend to vary wildly in format and compatibility, so it seems best that I have the option of modifying URL’s, identifying what URL’s are being used, and possibly see the actual error message for a given RSS URL when the Zune software rejects it.

Ultimately, the Zune software direction has the potential of being good. I feel more like I’m using an Alpha product than something released for public consumption, but the good stuff is really good. With the negatives going against my my expectations of software for this type of work, I would actually rather use a third-party application to synch to the Zune. As I’ve stated before, MediaMonkey is my favorite (in case their developers are reading).

The Lone Ranger

Olaf — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 19:10:45 +0000

We have now officially fallen to a distant 2nd for Balthazar’s adoration. My mother gave him the gift of a lifetime – somewhat inadvertently – yesterday. She had been at a dog party where the requirement was to dress up your animals for Halloween. Among hers, she had some cowboy and villain paraphernalia that fell into the hands of one 4-year-old on the farm. Balthazar must have nearly vibrated into hysteria at his luck. He’s all boy, and as such, enamored by all things weaponry and heroic. I’ll have to get a picture on this post as soon as I can; he describes himself as “Cowboy Superhero.” His garb consists of two side shooter cap guns, the belt with holsters, sun glasses (Power Ranger), a cape, and a Sheriff’s star. Oh, he also has hand-cuffs which – thank you mom – are metal and rather painfully slapped onto the wrists. They’re not even useful for cuffing the boy to a hand railing while I go and take a nap – he can wriggle out of them at their tightest setting.

With the power of the Internet, I was able to demonstrate to this superhero that his act has already been done and he has a more proper name, “The Lone Ranger.” He didn’t have a cape, but he had a horse named Silver and sported a red neckerchief (thank you, dear, for the proper term). We watched some opening scenes of the old shows; I learned that there was a cartoon series as well. Then we found this…

I have either destroyed the fantasy of the Lone Ranger forever, or made an enduring memory that will always leave him thinking wistfully of the masked hero of yesteryear. Either way, we both laughed our asses off!

Superhero Quiz (Revisited)

Olaf — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 19:18:54 +0000

I was reminded of the Superhero quiz today and thought I should try it again to see how the results compare or contrast.
Today, I am Green Lantern

Green Lantern		70%
Superman		65%
Robin		62%
Spider-Man		60%
Catwoman		60%
The Flash		60%
Iron Man		55%
Supergirl		50%
Batman		50%
Wonder Woman		40%
Hulk		40%

~~Hot-headed.~~ You have strong
will power and a good imagination.

Times have changed, but I wasn’t far off from Green Lantern last time. It’s interesting to note that there’s a 60% chance I’m Catwoman. Meeeeoow!

Find out who you are here, and trackback here so I’ll know.

Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

Olaf — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 18:34:35 +0000

TED.com speaker, Sir Ken Robinson, delights the audience with his clever wit and poignant message on the worldwide problem of education systems. My aunt in Pasadena, California is a teacher to early elementary school children and can probably speak on this fact. I have had at least one conversation with her on what I call the “evolution of thought.” I’m not going into it here, but suffice it to say that evolution denotes a progressive development – not necessarily better, but different. An educational institution must adapt to this development or be ineffective. The mindset that educational systems seem to rely on is our nations’ collected references on historical data. While easier to implement and measure, it is not entirely effective, and stagnates the “system” in a quagmire of perpetuated problems. While the world continues to change around us, our methods of teaching do not keep the pace. Ultimately, I think many teachers would profess that the job doesn’t pay for creativity, and they’re right. Teachers are underpaid for the service they provide to the world. Perhaps when people realize the value and credit due of their office, some creative individuals can reform the system and guarantee the success of our futures.

The bright side is that there are schools out there that cater to exactly this kind of thinking. In fact, even in my [nearly] local district changes have been implemented to allow for various focuses to receive extra attention and guidance. There are a host of specialized school systems such as the Progressive systems; Magnet, Montessori, or the diverse array of private schools. While not available to everyone, they at least stand as practical examples of the application of non-standard or non-traditional educational means.

TED.com: “Do schools kill creativity?”