blackthir13en

Updates just around the corner

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 12:28:19 -0500

First off, I so sorry. It's been a long time. Lots changed over the past few months and I needed to ensure everything was still in order. Part of it was a laziness factor and part of it was I totally forgot my password/login information. But I'm gonna be around, but a little different. The original idea of the blog didn't hold up long and now it's just Incarna and I, well ok, just Incarna doing his thing so I think a blog merge is coming soon. I'm not exactually sure the format it will take on. I still know we are interested in doing a web comic to some extent. And I'd like to get some flash stuff out there, expecially since I do that 24/7 now.

But I'm gonna keep todays short, but just thought I'd say-I'm back.

My New Jobs Threat Levels

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 19:35:38 -0500

Even though the picture isn't the best, I thought I'd show off my new jobs threat levels. These are not threat levels of amount of workload, stress levels, or anything like that. Instead it is a gaseous methane vapor monitoring system. Today I was lucky, it was a blue air condition day. As apposed to a brown or double brown diamond day. The last symbol means they had Qdoba.

Bring it on 2008, Bring It Bitch

Sun, 30 Dec 2007 18:40:20 -0500

Well thank god 2007 is down the toilet! I'm totally optimistic about 2008, starting a new job that looks challenging but I'll be doing what I love. And ultimately I'll be helping kids learn, math and english. Soon 'll be getting all of my odds and ends I need, heck I still need to get a bed. And I am going to do some changes to this blog soon to show a little more of my coding and things I've learned recently. And probably will separate my more personal stuff into another format. And I'll blog more I promise. Things are much better now and I feel on track

Music to my Ears

Sat, 08 Dec 2007 09:43:58 -0500

Oh, busy busy, I finally finished cleaning my old apartment so that I didn't have to lose cash on a deposit. I can totally thank Don for not helping moving or cleaning, thanks! Anyways, I'm finally getting everything back on track. After the breakup I went into a 2 week slump of depression, which trust me I'm sure is not quite over. During that time I was blowing everyone off, sticking to myself, doing some online chatting, and every so once awhile doing something productive. There was even a point I thought, about moving back home, since my mom is out of prison. No seriously it's not a joke.

That and knowing that Xmas is around the corner, with family miles away, and friends going home for Xmas. Single + Miles away from family + Friends Gone = Bleah. So I was definitely in a rut, but thanks to a few friends here and there that listened to my whiny complaints and music has lifted me back into a more proactive mood.

So I thought I'd share a collection of various stuff that I've been listening a lot to lately.

The Postal Service - Such Great Heights -At the moment my favorite song, I can listen to on repeat over and over
Spoon - I Turn My Camera On
Radiohead - Reckoner
Finley Quaye & William Orbit - Dice (Only thing i could find was an OC video, everything else sucked)
Paint the Silence - South

Wanna see my new place?

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 16:38:41 -0500

Ok so I admit I have been bad lately about updating, but it's because of some major life changes have happened and I totally forgot how much time dating can take up along with my continual job search and over the next few days i'll be doing updates. I'm going to try for more updated but shorter posts till everything gets situated.

But first things first, my new apartment. I can't wait till my friends actually get to come stop by...so till then I'm bringing them a first look at the apartment. It's not decorated, so don't bug me about it. LOL my room is so not even remotely done that I avoided pictures of my bed. Oh and make sure to read the captions, I try to tell a story.

Oh and one last thing, I just took them with my phone, so don't even go into bothering me about them being in or out of focus, LOL.

Check out my New Place!

Hulu Test Embed

Thu, 15 Nov 2007 12:28:05 -0500

This is a test I am preparing for embedding Hulu content of shows I love. I decided to use this first clip ask a special favor for Rachel. =) Hope you likey.

A tidbit of stuff I've been learning lately

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 23:31:53 -0500

Wow the amount of potential opportunities, any more for someone in multimedia field amazes me. At least compared to the last time I looked for a job. In fact, I was so worried last time, that I wasn't going to get a job in this field that I took a job which required me to learn Perl in a week. So I did it, and within a few weeks after going through QA I figured out how to create demo projects for high end clients. I did a pretty good job I think, if I worked their over 3 years.Thank god I got to do other things, besides just perl.

But anyhow, ever since I started looking for a job I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do. Flash, Video, SEO, PHP ect...I find it all so interesting. And I will find an outlet for each of those. Some may be in jobs, others in organizations, other charity work, ect.....

For now, I'm still working on completing a freelance project. And it just so happens that it's a Flash project. There was a snag in their implementation, and after trying to diagnose the situation. I felt that rewriting the project in AS3 might speed up and/or help me guess how to debug the situation. I'm at a disadvantage, because I wasn't allowed to see the behavior. I'm doing a lot of guessing and am not familiar with how their servers and the rest of their software works. I just now how to get JavaScript to get the inputs, and then send back some scores. And load everything in dynamically. Well I did anyways in AS2. But I've been actively learning the object oriented style of utilizing classes and I am doing pretty good so far. I've had a few snags like trying to figure out how to get SwfObject variables sent from javascript into a variable I could use in flash.

Luckily I eventually found:

var paramObj:Object = LoaderInfo(this.stage.loaderInfo).parameters;
var url:String = String(paramObj[keyStr]);

Then I had issues creating a variable for an object, that only created itself once and not for each duplicate. So I used this code:

            if (doOnce) {
                GlobalVarContainer.vars.initArray=[0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7];
                var shuffledArray:Array;
                GlobalVarContainer.vars.shuffledArray= distinctShuffle(GlobalVarContainer.vars.initArray);
                doOnce=false;
                trace("mytest " + GlobalVarContainer.vars.shuffledArray);
            }

Oh yeah and do you see that GlobalVarContainer, that was another hurdle. I wanted a few Global variables to play around with, so I came across this great class, from http://greenethumb.com/

package net.blackthir13en.utils{
    public class GlobalVarContainer {
        public static var vars:Object = [];
    }
}

I'll go more into detail on each, but I was working a bit with sager through out the day thowing ideas back and forth. And I think he eventually helped me using an object to collect the values from JavaScript. I think I owe the syntax for that one to someone on the OWLTS team. But the other middle variable example, though not pretty is all me.

Well it's getting late, and I'm gotta be up early because I'm getting my info for a second interview for a place that I'm very interested in.

It's not a tumor

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 17:40:11 -0500

I'll let the image speak for itself.

life.reboot();

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:33:19 -0500

First let me apologize for my lack of posting and some of the subtle changes you might have noticed. Such as the change of the redirect from andablog.com and the obvious removal of one of the bloggers. Unfortunately the blogger could not maintain a posting schedule and asked to be removed from the site. Which brings me to a second note, that blogger used to be my boyfriend of 9 years. Yeah 9. So that along with my recent loss of a job due to being laid off, this has placed me in limbo. I'm not going to bore anyone, but my friends, about the specifics but....he has decided that he now would prefer to be my bestfriend/roommate. And we'll figure out everything like the integrated finances as we go on. Hopefully I don't go to psycho, and we can work through this change. But the couple, is done, kaput.

So don't I don't feel bad for a little bit of slacking. I never wanted this blog to be the adventures of Mick Rose, but please bear with me as I am a little directionless at the moment. I'm just trying to grasp and keep ahold of anything that is tangible. And thank god, Rachel ::hugs:: is beside me as I write this just in case I do break down.

::damn windows vista:: (having computer issues while blogging, I'll just have to save a lot)

So anyways, I'm pulling myself up by the bootstraps and trying to figure out next steps. I have recently been working on improving myself. First, I quit smoking, Then I let my nails grow, and even though I'm still working on not biting them, I do feel that I'm doing a pretty good job. And now I'm working out. I want a body like Peter Petrelli. (Milo Ventimiglia), so I am working slowly every day. It might be a 5 year plan, but I've already lost 5lbs in a short time period. But I am going to keep this post short and sweet because I have no idea when I'm going to lose internet connection again,

oh crap, not again.

Let Campaign Monitor Tell You what Potential Employers are Interested in You

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 19:36:09 -0500

I just have to say, I absolutely love Campaign Monitor. It is essential for assisting me in showing the true interest of a potential employer. But how you might ask? I mean come on, Campaign Monitor is essentially just email newsletter software. And why am I using newsletters to find a job? Well let me explain.

As I've mentioned before I have recently been going through a job hunt, trying to find that perfect match. Luckily for me I don't have to just take the first job, thrown in my direction. But one issue that just bothered me is that at more and more interviews, people weren't asking to see my portfolio. I am not sure if this is a growing trend in interviews, or that they actually do look at my portfolio site when I give them the url (usually i don't even see them write it down). Either way, my analytics can't distinguish between an employer or some random guy that just happened across my site. So for awhile I was hoping that it wasn't a random person that stumbled upon the site, but instead was a potential employer.

Well I wanted to fix this issue, I figured that after an interview I should write the standard thank you letter for each interview. But I wasn't sure if a physical letter was good, I could list all of my sites, and hope they looked at them. And I thought a email letter would be much worse. So Cornflakeboi, suggested that I make a newsletter/emailer/webblast (whatever you want to call it) and at first I was kinda thrown off by the idea. I was like, eh I usually think of them as spam, when I get them from Apple or what not. But as I thought about it more and more I thought it might add that little bit of personal touch, and started to build a framework newsletter which I could modify the letter portion for each interview.

Now here's where Campaign Monitor comes in, it takes my html and converts it into an email newsletter. You can then do some testing to ensure that it looks fine in all browers, ect, ect...but I just send it to the most common clients and call it a day. Then, it allows me to send my thank you letter to each member of the interview. Nothing at this point is truly different than sending a thank you letter for the mail.

Except that in that newsletter, I also provide sections such as: reference emails, portfolio links, even linked-in, and twitter accounts. Each link in Campaign Monitor can be tracked. I get to see if the employer even opened my mail. Yeah I know which interviewers, even took the time to open up the email. I know how many times they opened the email, what links they clicked on. I now know if they were interested enough to click on a potential portfolio pieces. This also tells me right away which potential employers to continue to pursuit and which are just dead weight. Not surprisingly, no one has looked at any of the more social elements. I personally think someones bookmarks says a lot about a person, but then again I'm the one looking for a job.

The only thing I'd love to figure out a way to implement is a way to gauge total time spent. Kinda like if Campaign Monitor and Mint had a little baby.

But again, I can't stress enough how Campaign Monitor has assisted me on which employers do and do not seem interested in me. I am sure there are a lot of other emailer software out there. But I just love how easy Campaign Monitor is to use. Especially since I already know how to build proper newsletters. Once I finish a letter, it doesn't take more than 5-10 minutes to set up when to schedule the newsletter for delivery.

Hopefully it might help you too!

I work more unemployed than employed

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 09:30:02 -0500

I cannot wait till I have a full time position! Most people would be love to be in the situation with no office, sitting at home in your jammies, relaxing to the sweet music of Cake.

Reluctantly crouched at the starting line,
Engines pumping and thumping in time.
The green light flashes, the flags goes up,
Churning and burning, they yearn for the cup.

By now I'm yearning for a Amp or Red Bull. Looking at my mail, looking at Monster.com and other career sites looking for that opportunity that jumps out. Wondering which item of the day is most important. Laundry, adding portfolio pieces, house cleaning, working on freelance, continuing the job hunt, or trying to bury Incarna's post (especially the last one) so that potential viewers see what I'm up to. I have been twice as busy since I've been laid off and I have only taking a break on Sat & Sun. I'm treating being laid off like a full time job. Sure I'll msg my friends on gtalk or twitter here and there. I'll also occasionally read my rss feeds, but I've almost been so busy to even do that.

Overall my interviews have gone pretty good, well except one. I had a phone interview where I had to tell this crazy lady that I didn't want to work for her because she obviously didn't even know what her own position required. She informed me that SEO and Google Adwords had nothing to do with the job. However I could read the online posting for the job. At that point I knew we wouldn't be a good match, but it still took her another 5 minutes before she got the idea that I didn't want to work there.

Besides that, there was only a few things that concerned me. First, I was quite perturbed during an interview I recently had where someone insisted that I was fired from my job. Fired != Laid off. I work hard, I love what I do, and I ensure that the people I do the work for appreciate me. Every single boss I've ever had has loved the work I perform for them. I never miss deadlines. And I do top notch work, based off the timelines I'm given. I know I'm not the best designer in the world but I know tons of programmers that wouldn't know the first thing about vector vs bitmap images. I was NOT fired for incompetence or poor performance. I still have my last review in which I got a stellar review I think the worst thing on there was that I have to watch when I roll my eyes.

Other than that the only thing that has surprised me overall is that I tend to be doing more personality interviews than showing quality of work lately. I understand that at every place of employment they have a different set of standards for interviewing, however I would think that seeing if the person can do the job would be high on that priority list. I was willing at both positions to demonstrate my skills but it seems that they may solely have been personality interviews.

But then again, I just really could have bombed at all my interviews. I really hope not, but sometimes it's hard to tell. You can possibly get a vibe, but you rarely have anyone tell you honestly how well you did. I'd actually like it if an interviewer told me why I wouldn't make a good candidate, and how I could change that (if I could change that). I think I'd want to work for that company even more, after I got over the whole not getting the job.

Well today I'm working on some thank you letters and also have some Flash programming for OWLTS to work on, so I'm off to another day of work.

Jack & Tony Sandwich - The 24 Countdown has begun!!

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 17:45:01 -0500

Ut-oh!
Jack vs Tony, or is it a ploy? I have a strong feeling it is. Jack I think will turn on the United States and end up joining up with Tony!!!!!@#!#@! What now America?

Since 3>2, is AS3>AS2?

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 22:40:08 -0500

Today I needed to give myself a crash course in ActionScript 3, I honestly haven't had an opportunity to utilize it at work so I placed AS3 on the learning shelf. At my last job, we didn't need anything with more functionality than in Flash MX 2004, heck we could have gotten by with Flash MX to be honest. But I have an opportunity, which I cannot afford to not to miss out on and I'm almost 100% certain they already utilize AS3 on a daily basis. I have a lot of catching up to do, but thankfully from prior experience I find I learn things quickly.

I'm going to point out a few things which changed with AS3 that I felt would have been things to know since I was familiar with AS2.

Throw'n that " _***** " away

I totally dig losing "_" in front of _x & _y. I always thought that was wierd. But I did kinda like _root for some reason.

Variables are now so strict

myvariable = 0; // flash thinks you suck! It even tells you you suck. var myvariable = 0; // flash still thinks you suck =( varmyvariable :Number = 0; // yippy! flash love me long time

onEnterFrame i knew ye well

All the old methods are going bub bye, now you have to create listeners to react to events. I totally shunned this when I first saw it, I thought it was a "pooty" way to do events, but I guess I'll have to get used it. I just keep practicing over and over so that I can memorize the new syntax.

from 0-100, to 0-1

Oh yeah, nothing is 100 based anymore... it's all 0 thru 1. So if you want 50% alpha:

myClip.alpha = .5;

code on the timeline please

When you write code in Flash using ActionScript 3, you're only allowed to write code on the timeline. So no more coding on movieclips or objects, only timelines. This doesn't really bother me, because I always perferred coding via the timeline.

Until I'm more familiar on AS3 I won't be able to talk about the debugging, but it looks like it gives much better output than just having to rely on traces.

I didn't build a whole website or anything in AS3, but I did write a little program which draws a whole bunch of boxes to make a checkerboard by myself. Just needed help on syntax, so that's really where I'm rusty I'm not sure what the "new" phrases are. It's really not that drastically different.

Oh I also just used an api from Yahoo to show the weather, I did it from This is Portable blog. I then practice making my own version!

Blackthir13en Studios

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 18:22:28 -0500

As I had mentioned priorly I had totally forgot to keep an updated resume and portfolio. So I unfortunately had to neglect this blog till I had something that I was satisfied with. I love the blog and all, but we don't even have ads on the site. We're not really trying at the moment to make money off of the blog. Maybe someday, maybe never.

But either way, I had to spend the past week and half getting all of my crap together. I spent a few days just organizing, since my office is now my desktop at home. I felt that it was time to get an online portfolio ready again. It's been awhile since I've organized all of my prior projects into a single location. But it needed done, and it needed done fast.

In the end, I'm glad that I got most of it organized, It isn't in a perfect state, but I've been rushed to get something up as fast as possible and figured I'd tweak it as needed. So I now have a portfolio site that I'm happy with (at least for now) I went with a clean and simple design. Just like this site I'll update it every day or so and add something new that I'm working on.

Blogging via the iPhone with a Movable Type plugin

Sat, 20 Oct 2007 11:18:31 -0500

So i am excited to see how well my post turns out. Typing on the iphone really isn't as bad as i thought it would be. I make mistakes here and there but overall it isn't bad. This also coming from someone who has never utilized a Blackberry. I would guess that can type about 20-30 words a minute which I am totally blown away by. I would also have to say that the iphone ar least for me lives up to the hype.

My only minor complaints are:

1. username / passwords really suck to enter on the iphone.

2. I wish they would work on the spelling correction to be more user friendly and also more acurate.

3. It would have also been nice to have a tutorial for the new user. We had no idea what to do right off the bat.

4. I did get the black screen of death after only one day of usage.