Microsoft have finally done it. Not only have they created an advert that not only makes some sort of marketing sense, but they’ve also created an advert that is actually genuinely quite amusing. But at what cost? Only the Double Rainbow meme.

Most readers will probably be wondering what I’m on about. Well, Microsoft has commissioned an advert in which the Double Rainbow Guy advertises Windows Live’s panorama stitch feature. This is good. Not only is the advert quite amusing, but it also makes sense. Most of Microsoft’s adverts, such as the I’m a PC campaign and the bizarre Microsoft Office 2010 campaign they’re running (there are posters up at my work, you see), don’t really make any sense. They’re trying to advertise a product or feature of Windows or Office that most people don’t care about in the most annoying and patronising fashion ever. Most of these adverts involve some cheery ‘normal’ person who is scarily enthusiastic about the most mundane tools in our lives demonstrating how wonderful Internet Explorer’s Privacy Mode is. Or declaring their love for Windows in a generally quite creepy fashion, all while doing ‘normal’, everyday things like motor-boating and skydiving. How many normal people love Windows that much- that much that they’d evangelise the operating system while experiencing one of life’s greatest thrills? Only the complete nutters, I tell you. While they may be mental enough to buy your products, nutters aren’t a particularly great demographic to be aiming them at.

Evidently Microsoft’s advertising division is a shambles, then. So when Microsoft gets it right, they deserve a bit of a celebration. A bit of a fuss. Like a toddler that’s being potty trained; everyone else can get it right, but you have to encourage the little darling to keep going when all their other attempts usually end in a sack of excrement around their waist. Let’s hope someone in Microsoft’s building baked the guy who came up with this idea a cake, or something. At least a pat on the back. Even just a high-five or a supportive smile would suffice.

But, as with all good things, there’s naturally a downside to this; Microsoft has killed the Double Rainbow Meme. While it wasn’t that great of a meme, it had it’s laughs and it definitely deserved to be kept as one of the internet’s treasures. But just like when Google changed every video on the front page of Youtube to redirect to Rick Roll a couple of years ago, all memes die when they go mainstream… and this one went mainstream through Microsoft, the most untrendy, unpopular company in the world. Microsoft is the Gordon Brown to Apple’s Barack Obama. Rest in peace, Double Rainbow meme. We hardly knew you.

Anyway, enough talking. Here’s the video. Now you, too, can experience the mixed feelings of joy and dread when you realise that Microsoft has created a good advert that has just killed a meme. I’m guessing it’s the same feeling as the successor to Adolf Hitler when he became President of Germany; You’ve become President at last, but you’ve lost the war and your country is heading towards inevitable doom. Ah well, you take the good with the bad.

(With thanks to Tom who pointed me in the direction of the article on Neowin.net that informed me of this video.)

Last time in my quest for a perfect Indie Film Production kit, I discussed my camera and how it compares to to it’s older brother, the Sony HVR-Z1E. What else do I need, though? A tripod, to start with!

Ever since I bought my first camcorder in 2006 (a Samsung VP-D362 – the one I’ve used to film the Rowan and Jimmi Adventures, a couple of music videos and the vast majority of Clayground shorts), I’ve been getting by with using a cheap little Hama tripod that I bought from Amazon for £12. Despite its cheap price, it has actually been a really handy little tripod and has paid for itself many, many times over now. It fits in my backpack easily, it’s light and it’s about a metre and a bit tall when the legs are fully extended. Bargain. But alas, the time has come where I desire a larger, sturdier tripod to carry my newer A1E.

Now, a wise person once told me that the best equipment is the stuff you’re familiar with. This is true. When purchasing my A1E I was quite nervous that I’d never used one before. I kept panicking that it wouldn’t work properly or that I’d made a bad choice. Thankfully I hadn’t and all was fine, but I ran a massive risk. So when it came to purchasing a tripod, I knew what I was going to get; a Libec TH650 DV. Not only is it sturdy, but I’d used one of these (or at least something very, very similar) when filming most of Robot. I know it’s quite sad buying stuff I’ve used at college, but I know it works and I know how it functions. (Left: the same/very similar tripod supporting up a Z5E while filming Robot)

So with that out of the way, I’ve now got two tripods to keep my shots sturdy and stable; a larger one for the majority of shots and a small one for shots in tight places, or to be used as a makeshift steady-cam (one of the added bonuses of a tripod that small). What about a Dolly? Well, I’m one step ahead. When purchasing the tripod I could add an additional dolly for about £30 extra. A chance I jumped on, naturally.

In the past, I’ve used a Hague track and Dolly system -I think it was- which produced some really amazing shots. Thanks to the tracks, the dolly had a really smooth, debris-free surface to roll over, and even in the middle of a field I could get incredibly steady tracking shots that really looked fantastic.

My dolly, on the other hand, is slightly different. Being a studio dolly, there are no tracks for mine. The whole thing is freewheeling and this causes a couple of problems. Firstly, it’s difficult to control the dolly and you need a fair amount of room to use it. As the wheels aren’t fixed, they can rotate and twist underneath the tripod, and when you start a manoeuvre there can be a bit of an awkward pause where it sorts itself out that stops it from going where you want it to go immediately, like a baby buggy or a shopping trolley. Secondly, it’s quite stiff, so there’s no chance of using it outside to get a nice tracking shot; the only flooring it can really be used on decently are smooth ones, such as wood flooring, Lino, and other such smooth surfaces. I recently used it for a video I shot on a weird, spongey flooring and it worked pretty well, but I’ve also tried using it in the street and it was so wobbly that it was unusable. It doesn’t really help that, by design, CMOS cameras are much more susceptible to camera shakes, which can cause “Jellyvision” (here’s another fun one involving windscreen wipers). But at £30 I can’t complain that much when track-based alternatives can cost over ten times more.

Overall, I feel like this is starting to come together. Next time I’ll discuss my new microphone that I bought recently, and then I’ll go into lighting and editing in future editions. Until then, I must try and work on writing a couple more scripts so that I have something to make with all of this stuff!

Today I went to the cinema with my girlfriend. We were originally planning on seeing Inception, which looked like an awesome film. Unfortunately for us, we missed the screening we were planning on attending because I wanted to get a case for my camera (I didn’t end up getting one in the end, frustratingly), so instead we chose to see The A Team, since she likes that sort of thing and I was just happy to do something nice on my day off. So what did I think?

Well, ever since seeing the trailer for it a couple of months ago, I thought it was going to be awful. I thought it was going to be an awful Hollywood remake of an old, popular TV Show because almost everyone in the film industry has run out of new ideas these days (or at least has run out of ideas that will make money, anyway). Other titles that fill this specification include the absolutely appalling Thunderbirds film and Michael Bay’s Transformers (which I quite enjoyed). Most of these films are made to either relight interest in a dead franchise, or make kids interested in a dead franchise, presumably just so they can understand the apparently ‘pop’-cult references TV shows make about these old shows. Regardless, I was right and wrong.

I was right in the respect that it was one of those films that fits in the aforementioned category; it was a lame Hollywood adaptation of a traditional, classic TV Show that lots of people love and would probably hate to be abused in such a manner. However, I was wrong about it being awful. To be honest, it was actually quite enjoyable to watch. Ridiculous, but enjoyable. I most likely wouldn’t buy the DVD, but I’d probably watch it on TV if it was on at Christmas when I was at my grandparent’s house and had nothing else to do. The story was relatively easy to follow, the plot was pretty well structured, and by the end of it I did feel quite drawn into what was happening. The only thing that I didn’t like was how ridiculous aspects of it were (e.g., A tank being flown through the sky and everyone in it still being alive when it crashed into a lake), and how unconvincing the CGI was that achieved those ridiculous aspects, especially when the rest of the film was really good quality. I just feel that CGI dates films really quickly, and if it looked pretty unconvincing at release then it has no hope for the future. Other than that it was good.

However, the film got me thinking about something I’d been discussing with a work friend recently; when making this film, were the actors not really depressed? I mean, if I were in something like this, I’d be very aware throughout the entire process of making the film that my performance, no matter how hard I tried, was going to be compared to the friggen’ A-Team, and that most people would probably leave the cinema grumbling because of it— even if I put my heart and soul into doing the best I could in order to please those people. I mean, the guy playing B.A. Baracus surely would have been constantly aware that he was having to try and put on as good of a show as the legendary, internationally well-loved, Mr. T, no? That is one pretty high bar to jump over. I imagine that most of the lead cast were probably suicidal/on sedatives by the time the film premiered.

All in all, it was worth watching and if you want to go to the cinema and there’s nothing else on then it’s worth a go. But I wouldn’t choose it over any of this summer’s Blockbusters, such as Toy Story 3.

Still chugging along as per usual. Nothing interesting to add. Life feels a bit repetitive at the moment, and I keep forgetting which day it is. It feels like a Friday today. It’s not Friday. Look forward to actually doing something for once. Keep putting off the things I should be wanting to do due to a lack of energy. Will have to muster some enthusiasm from somewhere.

I really need to stop procrastinating on doing productive creative things. While it’s not like I’m spending each and every day being lazy, laying around playing computer games or watching reruns of Scrubs on E4, I’m not really doing much creative-wise at the moment and I really should be – or rather, I really want to be. I have about a month and a half before I leave home to go to University and I had hoped to actually do something before then. Plus I’ve just bought a load of camera gear that I should probably make the most out of.

So until I stop procrastinating, I think I’m going to spend my time creating an anti-procrastination device. I’m not sure what it’ll be but it’ll have to be something pretty darn good! I think maybe something that prods me when I visit Facebook or Twitter… Or maybe something that holds a random member of my family hostage until I make a new video – actually no, scrap that. That’s a terrible idea; the product of that scenario would only be forced into existence, so it would suck almost as badly as Speed 2. Back to the drawing board, I guess.

I know! I’ll crowd source; How do you get over procrastination? Give me a clue in the comments! (Did I do that right?)

No, this isn’t some public suicide note or cry for attention. It’s a reminder; a reminder of the good times before life completely changes. As of writing, life is pretty good. I’ve just finished work on a large film project of mine that’s received positive feedback, I’ve done pretty well in college and I’m enjoying my part-fulltime job. But alas, there’s something big and scary coming up soon, and that thing is University.

In itself, University isn’t that scary. While I’m not going to count my eggs before they’re hatched, I image that University will be pretty enjoyable and despite being hard work, it shouldn’t be too hard to complete it at a level I’m happy with, as I know I will put the effort in just like I did with college beforehand. That’s not the scary part. The scary part is that I’m digging up my tent-pegs and moving to the other end of the country, which is scary. Not only will I be leaving behind my friends, family and job, but I’ll be on my own in a place I’ve only ever visited twice. There are so many things that aren’t clear yet -and won’t be clear until I start my course in September- that are eating into my nerves a little.

But maybe this anxiety is just fuss about nothing. Things should be fine. After all, I’ve got money sorted on an accommodation level, I’ve got my place on the course and thousands of people my age find themselves in this exact same position and get through it perfectly well. On the other hand, it’s quite scary knowing that you’re completely on your own in the world, especially with student debts and loans and warnings being stapled to my conscience like they’re going out of fashion. And things are going to be very different, especially since I’ll be living in the halls of residence with people that are complete strangers; it’s bad enough living with my family who I’ve lived with all my life, at times. Whereas a conflict regarding who wants to watch what on TV at home results in a bit of a heated scuffle, I can imagine the same scenario in Halls ending in a stabbing or the stealing of my rare treat of a can of Pepsi Max — one that I’d been saving my buttons up for weeks for, I imagine quietly to myself. That sort of thing is scary (although obviously I’m exaggerating a little bit out of uncertain anxiousness).

However, I’m posting this to remind myself that things are going to alright, since life is good and things can always get better, no matter who you are and what you’ve done. And hopefully, maybe, I’ll read this back in September and laugh as things are going swimmingly. So there we have it.

Having left college, leaving behind all their lovely lovely toys… I mean, equipment, I’m on a quest to build my own Indie Film Production Kit that rivals what I was using before in order to make my own independent films in the future. Although I’m going to University in September, and will no doubt be able to borrow equipment there, there’s something liberating about having your own gear; something I discovered when filming my short film ‘Robot’. Instead of having to worry that you’re hogging equipment or -even worse- not going to be able to get access to the equipment you need when you need it, you know full well that you can do whatever filming you want whenever you need to do it. Towards the middle of making ‘Robot’, I managed to bargain my way into purchasing a Sony HVR-A1E, which is effectively a miniature version of the Sony HVR-Z1E – a common camera in the industry, used by many lower budget HD productions out there, and many Standard Def. productions as well. Sony Z1s are popular among independent film makers, documentary makers, wedding videographers, and even massive studios like the BBC due to their low price, decent quality and their portable size (this is compared to massive HD studio cameras, rather than consumer camcorders, naturally).Yes, yes, enough about the Z1. What about the A1? Well the A1E is a much smaller camera. Think of the old sort of Handycam size – not the new ones that are the size of a matchbox and fit snuggly your palm, but the ones that were all the rage before the consumer video market kicked into HD mode. What makes it so special, then? Well, from what I gather, t it was designed to mimic the image quality of the Z1E, while pushing the form factor much smaller than it’s bigger brother – and that it does. This makes it ideal for productions like car review programmes, or candid camera shows that need to get a good quality image from a space that wouldn’t be able to house a bigger camera such as the Z1. The small size also makes it useful for filming in areas of high risk, such as the News, that film in places where media presence may not really be appreciated. But I’m not going to be doing that, I shouldn’t think.
No, the reason I’ve bought this camera is because it’s cheaper much than a Z1 while retaining most of it’s attributes. And now that I’ve been able to use both cameras equally, I can firmly state that there was really very little difference in quality, despite the A1E only having a single chip CMOS sensor, and the Z1E being a 3-chip CCD monster in comparison. When spliced together, it can easily become difficult to remember which camera shot which parts of a scene, especially when viewing footage in a lower resolution (this is a good thing for people who will ultimately down-rez their footage for DVD distribution or non-HD broadcasting). Even at full resolution, though, footage from an A1E doesn’t look out of place or even noticeable in a video shot with Z1s. This is  really impressive, considering the massive difference in size and sensor.
Unlike most of the affordable camcorders that are aimed at the consumer market, however, the A1E includes the biggest dealmaker for me. A lot of the other HD camcorders I looked at included a host of auto-features such as autofocus, autoexposure, auto-white balance, auto-tune, autotrader, autobahn, automatic doors, auto… You get my drift. This is great for, well, consumers, but, as such, they were all missing one thing that I had grown to love so much after using Z1s and Z5s at college; the Manual Focus Ring! Now, a lot of people who don’t know what they’re doing despise the focus ring. They avoid it like the plague and stick to having their focus tweaked by the camera, which, coincidentally, probably thinks the pot plant in the background looks much more important than the person you’re interviewing and decides to focus on that instead. But I digress a little. The point is, I love being able to manually focus on things, allowing the transition from a shallow to long focus in a pseudo-artistic manner. It’s fantastic; it allows for much more control over what the camera is doing and lets your films look so much more professional. So overall it was a win win situation.
And thus it was set; I bought myself an A1. In fact, a couple of my newest short films were filmed on it and it’s come out looking pretty sweet, especially in well lit areas. I am very impressed and cannot wait to get more use out of it, and having finally found a copy of the manual online I can finally work out how to get the best out of this little beast. With that, my first hurdle (and probably the most expensive, at £1100) was jumped in my quest for the perfect Indie Film Production Kit. Next up; the challenge of tacking sound, tripods and dollies, and lighting. Here we go…!

Thought I’d better post a couple of pics of the Robot DVD box to whet the appetite of those of you hoping for a copy. Apologies for the rather low quality pictures (not sure what’s going on there). Bear in mind that the DVDs are in PAL format, so you’ll probably need to play them on your computer if you live somewhere such as the US or Canada, where PAL isn’t used commonly. If you have a PAL or Region 2 capable DVD player, it’ll work fine in it.

As you can see from the photos, there’s a lot of black on the cover. Unfortunately this is causing manufacturing issues at the moment, mainly because I don’t have much ink left after printing covers for ‘Unlucky For Some’ a few months ago. Manufacturing should resume shortly and people who’ve already registered interest will start receiving details about how to get their hands on a copy. The waiting list is is really long with my standards, so I’d appreciate your patience for now. In the mean time, feel free to check out my latest album ‘Unlucky For Some’, where  stock is in solid supply.

Yay! Robot is finally finished! That means that George, Kyle, everyone else involved and myself can finally return to our normal lives. At last! So how can you see it? Well, I’m currently in the process of sending the film to festivals (I’ve sent it to two so far and plan on sending it to more as I find them) and I’m running a short promotion on the Facebook fan page that will allow for those of you who’ve been following the film to get a copy of the DVD. Why not just put it online? Well a number of festivals aren’t too happy with the films submitted to them being available on the net, and I feel that for now the amount of exposure available through festivals is much more valuable than that of, say, YouTube.

I’ve also set up a page on my site here with information about screenings, as well as other bits and pieces related to the film. Hopefully a couple more dates and venues will arrive on the page shortly, but for now. If you’d like a copy, be sure to take part in the promotion on the film’s Facebook fan page where you can find out about getting a DVD copy.

Other than that, I hope you enjoy the film as much as everyone I’ve been hearing about has, and I’d like to just thank everyone who helped make the film, as well as all of the other people who’ve been really supportive and given feedback – you gave me a reason to keep going with this project when most of my tiring body was yelling at me to stop (I’ll admit that it got a little bit tedious towards the end!)
So that’s Robot! I’ll be sure to keep everyone updated with any news on screenings and the likes. Thank you, and take care.

Danger Drop.

So I did it. I bought an iPhone 4. But it was no easy feat. Not even slightly. What made it difficult? Maybe the unnaturally high global demand. Maybe the 200+ people queue. Maybe it was the fact that despite waiting 5 hours, it was still uncertain I would get one. Would I do it all again? Hell yes!

When I first heard about the iPhone and iOS4, I looked at my 3G and felt despair as knew that yet again I would be missing out on most of the cool things that my friends would soon be raving about. I mean, my 3G wouldn’t even allow for a background picture on the home-screen (something I think is ridiculous, considering that computers from at least as far back as 1995 could show pictures on their desktops), so how much would shinier new features like FaceTime and Fast App Switching burn? Not much, admittedly, but my contract was almost over and I was eligible for a free upgrade (free as in no early termination fee, sadly). So I knew what I was going to do; buy the new iPhone 4! Woopee!

What about the high global demand? Well, last Thursday at 3:30am, I set off from my house and ventured into town. As my friend Tom (who lives in London) was talking about how he’d need to camp out for almost 24 hours to beat the queue, I thought I’d best be prepared. There was no way that I wasn’t getting an iPhone 4. At 4am I arrived, and who was there? A cat. Yeah; It was deserted… and was so for at least an hour and a half before a young couple turned up, then another bloke and a couple more after that. But by 7am, there were almost 20 people. Slowly the shutters started to rise and we lurched forward… But they were just waiting for a delivery. At this point a couple of people, who we suspected were just delivery people, entered and the shutters came down. To cut a long story short, they were queue jumpers.

The people I waited with and I soon found out about this and talked to the centre staff, who claimed that they were going to be asked to leave and not be served. Nothing happened and they were served regardless. Very disappointing. To think, four people who’d been waiting legitimately were unable to receive new phones because these people had jumped the line; it’s not Alton Towers; it’s like everyone can have a go once the queue dies down. No. There were only 20 or so models available… So yeah. That was my day. Now I have an iPhone 4. Yay for new things.

It’s taking forever. FOREVER. But it’s getting there and I’m happy with the results. As of writing, the film is currently 83% finished, with three scenes and a couple of pick up shots left to film this coming week. Currently, all together, the film is running to about eighteen minutes in length. So what’s left to do?

Well, as already mentioned, there are three scenes left to film. These are the first scene, last scene and a random scene in the middle somewhere. After that, it’s a matter of recording and adding in the Robot’s lines, fixing the colour for each shot and sorting out the audio and soundtrack. The deadline for the rough cut is Friday, where I need to hand in a ‘finished’ version of the film for assessment for my course, but I expect a ‘Public Release’ candidate to be prepared for the end of June. At that point, I’ll get together with all the cast and crew, take any criticism and try and sort out the last few bits before releasing it for all you lovely people. Hopefully, it should be released by mid July.

Here are a few more pictures to whet your appetite.

This production was a group project for a college unit, which was one of four. I received a Distinction grade for this piece of work.

My good friend Jimmi saw my post Sunday Special: Nigeria Special and tried searching ‘Special’ himself. The only difference was that his results were grim… You can read his post here. I won’t spoil it for you.

[Is Google becoming a bit too close to the knuckle?]

Just another quick update on the filming of my short film ‘Robot’. So far we’ve completed eight scenes, with about twelve more to go – that roughly equates to about three more days worth of filming. Let’s just say it’s looking very promising. Last Thursday the gang and I filmed our first full-cast scene and it came out brilliantly. We’re using a Sony HVR-Z5E to film the production, for you camera nerds (Not a Z7 as I incorrectly noted in an earlier post) and the footage is looking fantastic. It’s all being filmed in HD, which is brilliant, too (although it’s making the mistakes harder to hide).

Calling in at about 5 minutes so far, the film looks like it should be between 10 and 15 by the end of it all. It looks like the film should be finished by the end of June, definitely, assuming the entire cast can be assembled again. Everyone is donating their spare time for this project.

That’s all, really. I hope I can say more shortly. Massive thanks to cast, crew and the people at Lincoln College for their help and support throughout filming, so far.

Back in the day, Flash was awesome. I remember the time when I excitedly bought a -little to my knowledge- bootleg copy of Flash MX on Ebay for £12. I recall spending about five days eagerly waiting for the disk to arrive in the post. I was only twelve at the time. At that point in my life, the only thing that mattered to me was earning a place on the front page of Newgrounds.com. But, as I grew older and my interests progressed from making dodgy cartoons into video creation, I realised that Flash just wasn’t the tool of choice for me any more. Instead I moved onto making my stop motion animations with specific stop-motion tools and a dedicated video editor like Adobe Premiere Elements, and now Final Cut Express. The problem with Flash was that it just wasn’t designed for making videos; it’s a tool for making dynamic web content. With the rise in popularity of Youtube, the hurdles it took to export a Flash creation in a video format was excruciatingly difficult (Unless you fancied animating everything on a Frame-by-Frame basis, that is). That’s when I fell out of love with Flash.

Like that, myself and many others jumped Flash for Youtube’s sake. But that just made things even worse, really. The problem was that Flash was the only decent way to provide cross-platform video over the web. That’s not to say that there weren’t other solutions (Quicktime, Windows Media Player, Realplayer, etc.) but Flash was the only one that was decent enough to use, and it allowed for designers to make their own video control elements (something you couldn’t do easily in any of the aforementioned). Soon, many websites across the web started mimicking Youtube and serving up their own videos in Flash players, and the ball began to roll down the hill. Everyone from the New York Times to your mother’s cat blog was using Flash to display web videos.

So what’s the problem? Well, Flash is proprietary. That means that no-one can alter the Flash runtime engine (the thing that makes Flash files play) apart from Adobe, it’s owners. This is bad news for other platform providers as it means that they have to support Adobe’s Flash platform on top of their own, by waiting for Adobe to provide the plug-in for them. While that doesn’t sound like much effort, it means that companies like Microsoft and Apple have to work hard to ensure that Flash doesn’t provide their users with a bad experience (which is often the case with lower spec hardware such as smartphones and netbooks). The problem is that because Flash can only be altered by Adobe, if there are problems with Flash on a platform like Windows, the quickest way to fix it is for the manufacturer (Microsoft, in this example) to release an update that alters their own code in a way that makes Adobe’s run properly. This isn’t really the right way round, when you think about it.

The problem is that Adobe is slow, lazy and greedy. When Apple released Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard in 2007, Adobe casually admitted that it’s Creative Suite 2 software would no longer work in the new OS, and that users intending to use Adobe Software on the new platform would have to upgrade to the then upcoming Creative Suite 3 for that support. Anyone who is familiar with Adobe’s pricing knows full well that upgrades can cost thousands of dollars, depending on which version you’re upgrading from. Adobe could have issued a free update for CS2 that fixed the bugs that caused problems in the new OS, but instead decided to charge people for it instead. This is really bad for many reasons; Firstly, Adobe exploited it’s customers who keep on top of OS updates by dropping support for them if they don’t buy the new software. Very greedy. Secondly, Apple releases a lot of security updates for it’s newer Operating Systems, while not so much for it’s older ones (ones that inevitably end up out of the product support range). People who cannot afford to pay the money to upgrade to CS3 (£70 for Leopard vs. £700 for CS3  - so you can’t use the fact they can afford Leopard in defence) would be left using an Operating System which is vulnerable to many exploits that were patched by later versions. You could argue that this is Apple’s fault for not supporting it’s older OSes, but Apple, and others, have learnt that if you continue support for an old product then you end up with stagnation in innovation as you keep toning down your software for a legacy system – look at Windows XP. Thirdly, you could argue that Adobe markets at professionals who can afford the upgrade fee. Not always the case. When there are more pressing financial issues to address, like replacing dead cameras or installing new studio facilities, upgrading to a new Creative Suite isn’t really a priority. This leaves a whole bunch of computers left open to vulnerabilities just because these people need the software more than they think they need the security.

So how does that relate to Flash and mobile devices and everything that people keep going on about? Well, the Mobile industry is still very young. iPhone OS is only three years old this summer, Android is two years old and the new Windows Phone 7 Series (a ground-up rebuild of Windows Mobile, so technically a new OS) will be released in the Autumn, apparently. Compare this to the 26 years of the Mac OS and 25 years of Windows, then that’s not a very long time. Mobile Devices are the new wave of computing, especially with the entry of tablet devices like the iPad, and it’s essential for these seasoned OS makers to learn from the mistakes they made back in the 80s, 90s and early 21st Century. Hence the bitterness about Flash. If you read the open letter by Steve Jobs, you’ll understand the biggest problems that these platform makers have with it; it’s just not designed for these new devices in any way, shape or form.

Personally, I’m in the “Who needs it?” camp. Anything that’s Flash based and worth using on a mobile phone has it’s own mobile offering, be it an app or an optimised site, that displays content in H.264 video (a format used by most video providers now). In regards to games, anything worth playing is available through the App Store, anyway. In fact, most App Store games are miles above anything you could play in a web browser anyway, bar remakes of copyrighted games like Mario and Sonic, which would only be allowed into the App Store by an authorised licensee (there is an official port of Sonic the Hedgehog port, for example). At the end of the day, unless you heavily rely on Flash for your enjoyment of the internet, you’re not going to miss Flash on your iPhone. So far, every example from Adobe of Flash on a mobile device has crashed the device’s browser and drained the battery very quickly. Adobe is clearly flogging a dead horse here. Those companies that are interested in their content being viewable on mobile devices have done what they can to deliver it by using formats like H.264 and making Apps. Alternatively, those who don’t care about mobiles won’t be bothered if Flash is on mobile devices or not, either, as they don’t care anyway. In fact, it’ll probably just make the mobile web experience even worse anyway. And hey, you’re not going to replace your computer with a phone any time soon anyway. If you need Flash then it’s still within reach; it just isn’t quite in your pocket.

My short film “Robot” is underway. Hooray. So far we’ve filmed about six scenes (of twenty-one) and should be doing more over the next couple of weeks, assuming actors can be scheduled. I will keep you posted as it goes along. Let’s just say that it’s looking pretty good so far! (Oh yeah, can you guess what time we shot the pictured scene at?)

I was largely just fed up that when I embedded videos they were too large for the post’s content section. On that note, the videos don’t work in Safari at the moment. Please bare with me while I find out why and inevitably have to solve this issue! Thanks.

Ok, it’s rather late but here’s my Easter short for 2010. Enjoy!