i checked out the Sony Consumer Electronics show this afternoon. The big press show was on Thursday. This event seemed like more of a bid for Sony to show Joe Public that they’ve purchased and renamed the Sony Centre …. formerly the Hummingbird Centre … formerly the O’Keefe Centre … formerly a large empty field where cows liked to romp and moo.

Announced in Japan today but not available to us unrefined North Americans is the Rolly, an MP3 player shaped like a thermal detonator that dances while playing music. As the suppository-shaped device gyrated ly, proclaiming that its “hips don’t lie,” the crowd stood mystified, wondering why anyone would buy it.

“Where’re you s’posed to use that thingy?” asked one guy in the gathering crowd. The demo jockey said “You can have this in your home, or at your cottage … or in your chalet.”

IN YOUR CHALET. You can purchase the Sony Rolly for your chalet.

i don’t know what this guy was thinking. My only explanation is that Swiss Chalet is a very popular chain restaurant unique to Canada, and this guy was a visiting yank who was trying to contextualize the Rolly’s brilliance for the locals using words they’d understand.

The dumbfounded man stood slack-jawed as the Rolly spun around a few more times. Then he said “Well what’re you s’posed to DO with it?”

The demo jockey, undaunted, said “Well i have one of these, and i showed it to my friends, and they were entertained by it all night.”

i couldn’t resist. i asked “Did you entertain them in your home, or in your chalet?”

When the Rolly shimmies its way to Canada, it’s expected to cost $400. Also in this price range: lighting $400 on fire.

i used to write video game reviews for my former empliyer’s website. It was an unpaid thing. i was paid in games and cookies. It’s like being a stand-up comedian and being paid in beer.

i hope that by now, i’ve published enough stuff to be considered a viable freelance reviewer.

One of the latest review copies to cross my desk was EA skate. The game is huge, and i haven’t given it enough time to review it, but here are my initial thoughts:

“Hooray.”

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While it’s still fresh in my mind, i wanted to commit to pixels the ideas that sprung to mind during the Adobe OnAIR Bus Tour.

AIR is a product that lets you develop desktop applications. The apps can interface with the Internets and your user’s local file system. Adobe has taken pains to ensure that the product is accessible to as many people as possible, from C-language coders using Flex, traditional HTML and javascript guys, and web sugar Flash guys and game developers like myself.

i don’t know why, but the one feature of AIR that gripped me most was the file drag n’ drop API. Here it is in a nutshell:

- drag and drop files onto your app
- teach your app to recognize the file type
- teach your app to respond to the file when it is dragged into the app, and when it is dropped (user releases the mouse button)
- drag stuff out of your app and on to other apps
- bundle file info with the doodad you’re dragging so that other programs will recognize and accept it (for example, your user drags an image out of your app and on to Photoshop. Photoshop likes image files, so it loads the sucker up.)

Wow! Pretty boring - unless you have imaaaaaaginaaaaationnnn ….
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i knew i recognized Lee Brimelow’s name and voice when i heard him speak at the Adobe OnAIR Bus Tour.

A short time ago, i found this excellent tutorial explaining how to swap data between a mySQL database and Flash via PHP:

PHP, MySQL, and Flash

It’s aaaalll Lee, baby. This tutorial is much better than any other Flash/MySQL/PHP tutorial i found on the Internets, because Lee does the simplest thing possible with the tools most novices are using - namely phpMyAdmin instead of command line shell access.

As an added bonus, you are lulled into learning by Lee’s dulcet voiceover. He’s like the Barry White of Flash tutorials.

Go light some incense and candles and check it out.

i turn up a lot of strange stuff using Google image search.

When i was browsing “passport” photos for reference material, i came across this page.

The gist: in an effort to cheat someone out of an order of dried insects (??), this scammer sent a message purportedly from his wife saying that he had been killed in a motorcycle accident. The email goes on to provide pictures of the corpse as proof!

Methinks the scammer doth protest too much.

i ranted a little yesterday about the puffy egos on the Adobe OnAIR Bus Tour. i said the Adobe evangelist staffers acted as though they thought they were Jesus, and for that, i feel i should apologize. To Jesus.

From what i know of Him, Jesus would never act as totally awesome and unapproachable as the OnAIR bus guys, and he wouldn’t be caught dead taking 77 000 vanity pictures of himself and his disciples.

Truth be told, Jesus wouldn’t be caught dead anywhere. ;)

Adobe put together a tour to promote their new software, Adobe AIR. They held an all-day even at the Guvernment in Toronto. Here are my thoughts:

About Adobe Air

The product looks great. Mind you, i sat through a day-long brainwashing and indoctrination session. i don’t remember much, but i have a feeling i signed some kind of purchase agreement, and was touched inappropriately by the Bus Tour presenters. Here’s what i recite robotically when someone utters the phrase “Adobe AIR makes you cluck like a chicken”:

Adobe AIR is an app that lets you create desktop software. It’s all the same nonsense that you create in http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/ or Flash, with some delicious new superpowers that i’ll list in a bit. You can also code AIR apps using javascript and HTML, which kind of blew my mind. What they’ve basically done is expose Actionscript 3 to html/js developers, so that you can use tagged code to pull of some magical fancy wizardry like file drag n’ drop, opening and closing the dashboard, and playing FLVs. Through AIGCH TEE EMM ELL, folks. The markup language that brought you your favourite web pages from the 1930’s. Mind-blowing.i just named a few, but let me rattle off the goodies that made me fill my pants with processed Adobe-sponsored hors d’oeuvres:

- open and close the file dashboard to load stuff and save stuff

- recognize when files are dragged over your app - file type too - and respond to that event

- let the user pull stuff OUT of your app, draggy/droppy style, and bundle that with file info so that, for example, you can build an app where the user pulls a jpg OUT of your thing and IN to Photoshop, and P-shop’s all like “that’s coo”

- build your app ONCE to deliver on Mac, PC, whatever

- native OS support. All your windows and alerts and prompts are gonna look like they’re at home on the Mac or the PC - whatever your user digs - and you don’t have to lift a finger

- windowing. Give your app a window with the title bar and min/max/close gadgets. Or a slimmer window chrome. Or NO BLOODY CHROME AT ALL. That means if you dupe someone into running your AIR app, you could have a transparent chromeless window with a naked pic of gramma stuck like graffitti to the desktop. RrrrrroOWWWRR!!

- create one - 1 - WUN - png, and let AIR figure out how to build the icons. It builds Mac icons! It builds PC icons! It does different sizes! It slices! It dices! Anyway - a very nice feature, because it’s a great polished detail and one less thing to fuss over.

- Local single-file database. Hot, hot hot. You can set up a 1-file DB on the user’s machine and store things in there, like secrets and Tic Tacs

Code bridging. Easy communication between apps. Data synch. Connectivity detection. Installation badges. i could go on. Some of you app devs out there will be like “what’s the big deal? i’ve been developing desktop apps for years.” Yeah, big shot? Well I HAVEN’T. Flash hasn’t been able to do any of this nonsense without some heavy-duty nipple-twisting. Sure, you can open the dashboard, but you kiss your soul goodbye and hope Satan has fun with it, because you gotta re-hooptle the flimflam and unjiggrify the blaminator before you can get it working. With Adobe AIR, the syntax is something like “GIMME MAH DASHBOARD, BITCHES!” and *poof* … you got the dashboard. And given the choice between Adobe documentation and Microsoft Developer Network, i’d rather see Adobe’s simple code usage example right up front than navigate Microsoft’s labyrynthine list of common runtime usage and exceptions and NerdSpeak. OPEN MAH DASHBOARD, BITCHES. Sheesh. Throw some dots and slashes in there, and you’re done.

Next post: more about the Adobe OnAIR tour. Sure, Grant Skinner knows his code, but is he hot or not? And which of the Adobe bus evangelists would YOU rate as best - and WORST - dressed?

So i’ve done my hypnosis-induced duty by telling you all about the Adobe OnAIR Bus Tour. Now for a Queer Eye-style post-analysis of the event that you won’t find anywhere else.

Here are a few scraps of evidence that i collected at the day-long promotional event that i use to draw a profound conclusion.

The Bus.

So Adobe crams a bunch of dev geeks on a bus and ships them off on a nationwide tour to shill their new product.

It’s a bus. i know this because they called the promotion the Adobe OnAIR Bus Tour. When i arrived at the event, people were taking pictues of the bus. The bus factored in a majority of the pictures and tech demos i saw at the event. It was mentioned in nearly every breath the presenters took.

So here’s what i don’t get: it’s a bus.

Adobe saves a few bucks on air fare for their overweight A-Team and decides to spin it by promoting the Hell out of the fact that the tour is on a bus. Forgive, but it’s not like you’re the Rolling Thunder Tour on a year-long concert crawl with Bob Dylan and Joan Friggin Baez penning songs for the ages and redefining the cultural zeitgeist. You’re handful of overweight nerds sleeping on a bus. The bus became this big shiny phallus that all of the presenters stroked onstage until it shot an enormous wad of 77 000 pictures onto the presentation screen which were, coincidentally, all taken inside the bus. The Escher-like qualities of this collossal wank boggle the mind.

The 77 000 pictures taken inside the bus.

In the final session of the extremely long day, well after everyone had run out of interesting things to say, Mike Chambers positively gushed over the fact that he mounted a camera inside the bus and, using an Adobe AIR app, uploaded a time-released shot EVERY MINUTE to Flickr. The result was a Flickr account with 77 000 pictures of a mobile sausage party, with such amazing highlights as:

- chubby technophiles lounging on benches
- two dudes playing Guitar Hero
- an empty bench, devoid of overweight dudes
- dudes checking their email on laptops

Then, for his presentation’s money shot, Chambers showcased a video where he - get this - PLAYED THE PHOTOS IN RAPID SUCCSSION to create the ILLUSION OF MOVEMENT. He began running SEVEN MINUTES of timelapse photography where, if you squinted kinda hard and clapped your hands to believe in fairies, you could swear it ALMOST ran at the same frame rate as an invention that we now call 30 FRAMES PER SECOND VIDEO. Mike was all “OMG, this is incredible! Look - when you put all these photos together, it looks like we’re really moving around the bus!”

It’s unclear to me why Adobe thinks that developers should take a day off work to endure this.

“LOOK! i duct taped the camera to the wall and it started to droop as it took the pictures but it looks kind of artistic when you play it back!”

His words. Seriously. Then he said, with his hands down his pants, that he’d love to run a contest where the winner had to find the best picture in the lot of 77 000. He went on to explain that the pictures totalled only 77 000 because he turned the camera off at night when the bus was dark “and the pictures were less interesting“.

My conclusion?

Riding the bus makes you Jesus.

i’m pretty sure Jesus never even rode a bus, but you wouldn’t know it the way these guys carried on. Humility is not their strong suit. When i approached Grant Skinner just to introduce myself as a Fellow of the Flash, it was almost as though he was offended because i didn’t kiss his ring. Fair enough - he was checking his email. He’s an important man. Adobe’s not paying him to sit in a corner to answer questions and meet developers, following a presentation where the speaker announced that the AIR team members were going to sit in a corner to answer questions and meet developers. … ?

Then there was Kevin Hoyt, who looked like he had somewhere else to be when i started asking questions about signed code and installation trust with AIR. Sure, sure - i may have mistakenly called him “Mike” a few times, but you gotta take that kind of thing in stride when you’re clearly the Second Coming of the TechnoChrist. He just so happened to be talking to Grant Skinner when i approached him, and there was this barely perceptible moment where they exchanged “don’t bother with this guy” vibes through osmosis, or some kind of new AIR app they built that enables telepathy.

Here’s one more gripe for you:

Adobe Hires Nerds, Not Presenters

All of the awkwardness of the junior high graduation dance was on full display as the Adobe bus buddies took the stage to promote the product, making such amateurish presentation decisions as yelling “HOWZ EVERBUDDY DOIN THIS MURNIN!! YUH FEELIN GOOD???” at 9:15 AM, and when everyone gave the typical collective zombie moan response, “WHAT? Iiiii CAAaan’t HEEEEAR YOooooUUu!” like that pirate from the opening of Spongebob Squarepants.

On the subject of bikini bottoms, kudos to the presenter from Akamai, who despite being a very nebbish fellow, took time during his presentation to show a client video of a bikini contest. That’s what i call understanding your audience.

Grant Skinner, despite acting somewhat papal when i introduced myself to him, was the only presenter who threw out ideas about how to actually earn MONEY using AIR.

A succession of borderline mentally retarded presenters from various sponsor companies followed, each speaker poorer than the last, until the last guy came to the stage, sat on the mic, and yodelled his address to a presentation-weary crowd. Horribly bad.

The clear winner all day was Lee Brimelow, who was the only presenter to effectively use humour in his presentation. While the rest of the presenters stroked their nipples and talked about the bus all day long, Lee showed off a few useless but amusing AIR apps that showcased the platform’s features in exciting and unique ways.

i spoke to Lee afterward, and he was a class act. Humble to the bone, and pleasant in person, i found him eagerly answering attendees’ questions and smiling while he did it. Granted, Lee had just joined the tour and wasn’t spoiled by all of the rotten road fatigue and delusions of grandeur that plagued everyone else. But Lee is the best example of Adobe’s money well spent on an evangelist.

With a few stops left on the tour and the developer conference, Max, as the big finish, it will be interesting to see if an evangelist can convert a bus load of Jesuses.

At long last, i’ve left Corus Entertainment where i worked for seven and a half years.

The company is going through some major restructuring. A few months ago, the Interactive department general manager left amid a series of announcements about executive-level shuffling. Two weeks ago, the Financial Post Trading Desk reported that the president of the Television division had dumped all of his Corus shares. The very next day, fp trading desk reported that CEO John Cassaday had made a similar move.

i’ve seen the writing on the wall for some time now, but when the company cut 53 jobs on Tuesday, a number of people were taken off-guard. The Interactive department was rent asunder, to put it dramatically, and Corus lost a lot of great talent. If you are a Canadian media company, and you are looking for game developers, interactive project managers and producers, or even an entire independant television production arm (!!), get thee to Monster.ca and make your best offer!

i’m not sure if Corus is finished “consolodating”. The trades are calling Tuesday’s layoffs the “latest round” of restructuring. There’s still some juicy talent left in that company! i hope to be in touch if Corus leaks more folks in the future.

i was going to invite the mayor over for a ribbon-cutting ceremony, but i got antsy about it.  With the cost of gift supplies skyrocketing, you never know when a little ribbon will come in handy … not to mention gigantic novelty scissors.

 Anyway, the site is up, which you know, because you probably click’d on the friendly orange Blog Monster to get here.  Or you Googled “click’d”, which is the olde English way of describing how peons serfed the web in the Middle Ages.

Wit!!  The wittiness!  Will it cease? Nay!

The Untold Entertainment Inc. site is not complete at this point, because i was silly enough to put a launch date on the front page, beneath a phony logo of a duck on a ball juggling chainsaws.  Here’s that logo, so you can pine for what could have been:

Looks dangerous. Special emphasis on “duck”.

Aside from a games page with only one game on it, the content on the site is complete, but the sugar is not. And with this kind of site, the sugar is the content.  So i guess you could say i’m just missing a whole load of awesome doodles.  Expect them shortly.i’m also missing an apologetic blurb that Two by Two was created in haste during a Pepsi- and Frito-fuelled blitz for the 2007 TO Jam, a game dev free-for-all where participants must complete an entire game in one weekend, or face elimination in gladitorial combat.  i chose game development because i am lousy with a mace.

At any rate, i’d hate for anyone to hold me to graphics and gameplay that i cooked up while coasting on 30% less sleep than is recommended by the Canada Food Guide.  Still, enjoy the game as a horribly confusing twist on your standard flip-n-match fare.

And enjoy the site and the blog!  i’ve committed to releasing at least one game or application per month.  You’ll get all the news about what i’m working on here, so click the Blog Monster whenever the mood takes you. 

- Ryan