Epic for me: The Verve Forth

This is a great album, as someone who had abandoned the idea of a reunion, but was held together during trying times by Northern Soul, and the self titled 'Verve' this is an epic release, and thus far the press has been on it also. A- from me.

Obama 2008

In regards to the presidential election in the US this year, I consider myself a true believer, that rare individual who holds strong to a firm and unyielding view on a collection of issues, a philosophy so ingrained in belief that it rules personal judgment in and out of professional and social relations. I was unsure of where America stood on social justice, fair trade, fair wages, and most importantly the possibility of an American of African descent as the countries leader. I donated for the first time ever to a politician, and am for the first time enthusiastic and inspired by someone in public office. I liked Clinton, I felt like he was honest and positive about complex issues that faced our country, and had the rare abilty to explain beyond a 30 second sound bite why he was for or against something. It may seem weird to consider Bill Clinton honest, but I am referring to the honesty of a politician who is honest in the sense that they endeavour after American's best interest, and not a cooperate shill deceiving the public for their own gain. Obama has this quality, but even beyond Bill he convinces me that he honestly gets it. We the people are not accepting the inevitability that the affluent will use the working class as a disposable commodity, that America Patriotism is not a mindless jingoistic following of leadership without question, that war should never be used as political tool, that capitalism is not a state of competition against your fellow man but a state of opportunity to create and progress as a people and provide and share in success. Conflict is expensive in many ways, and it should be avoided whenever feasible. The concept that a politician would deliberately manipulate the public, endanger our people's lives. and spend our countries wealth for any reason other than a clear and present danger is sickening to me. I am continually amazed that 30 second collections of manipulative lies that air of TV can decieve an obviously ignorant or confused public so completely. This leads us to the sad reality that soundbite must fight soundbite and the candidate most dishonest having the greatest advantage. I hope my faith can be restored again...

modrn colour: 3d test render

a quick video render, 3.33 seconds 9.5 mb uncompressed

modrn.net video updated

new camera movement, new materials, new movement

Flash 10 Astro

Adobe Flash and the actionscript language continue their rise from their roots as javascript hack to a versatile, well formed language under the guidance of Adobe and it's engineers. Me, I still have not had time to master AS2, but the path of actionscript continues on at an asounding pace, that only full time Flash developers can hope to keep up with. To that end nears the release of Flash 10 astro, on the heels of the ECMA, OO only, Class based structure that is Flash 9, comes many enhancements to the actionscript language including the long touted 3D programmatic classes which can make any of your objects an interactive 3D object, obviously something I look forward to testing:)

some notes from the FP10 page

3D Effects - Easily transform and animate any display object through 3D space while retaining full interactivity. Fast, lightweight, and native 3D effects make motion that was previously reserved for expert users available to everyone. Complex effects are simple with APIs that extend what you already know.

Custom Filters and Effects - Create and share your own portable filters, blend modes, and fills using Adobe Pixel Bender™, the same technology used for many After Effects CS3 filters. Shaders in Flash Player are about 1KB and can be scripted and animated at runtime.

Advanced Text Layout - A new, highly flexible text layout engine, co-existing with TextField, enables innovation in creating new text controls by providing low-level access to text offering right-to-left and vertical text layout, plus support for typographic elements like ligatures.

Enhanced Drawing API - Runtime drawing is easier and more powerful with re-styleable properties, 3D APIs, and a new way of drawing sophisticated shapes without having to code them line by line.

Visual Performance Improvements – Applications and videos will run smoother and faster with expanded use of hardware acceleration. By moving several visual processing tasks to the video card, the CPU is free to do more.

Enhanced Sound APIs – Work with loaded MP3 audio at a lower level in Flash Player 10. The new APIs will let you do application-level audio mixing through ActionScript and even audio filtering with Adobe Pixel Bender.

There was a language reference online at the labs site showing all the new classes, but it appears to have been removed, I will upload a copy for perusal later. Overall some cool stuff, just wish I wasn't falling so far behind the curve.

Pointless slow loading, self indulgent 3d movie!

Cheers hope you enjoy, pretty happy with it in general, not happy with the fluidity of the camera movement, but decent lighting, smooth text wrap around the sphere, decent custom textures/materials, and reflections look decent, though compression killed some of the more subtle bits

quick camera and movement render

3D logo design for modrn

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