The blog has been pretty quiet lately. Things have been really busy with conferences and workshops in addition to normal work. I’ve also been working hard on a personal project called gallery incomplet, which I’m launching today at incomplet.org. [Note: moved to incomplet.gskinner.com]

incomplet.org is a timeline of experimental Flash pieces that I have played with and never really completed. It currently houses work from 2004-2005, but I plan to include pieces all the way back to 1999 over the next few months. The site was designed with usability in mind but it wasn’t a driving concern, I was more interested in creating a simple, small (35kb), attractive shell that didn’t distract from the experiments which are the obvious focus. Likewise, there are few compromises for older systems – the site requires a fast processor, Flash Player 8, and at least a 1024×768 screen.

Just as the experiments are never really complete, the gallery will continue to evolve as I add content, update functionality, and tweak the design. The whole site is really an exercise in passionate procrastination.

Click over to incomplet.org and have a look. I’d love to hear what you think of it. [Note: moved to incomplet.gskinner.com]

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Flash 8 introduced a new “feature” whereby EventDispatcher handles events named “load”, “draw”, and “move” differently. This broke the previous version of the XML2 class, which dispatches “load” events. I have updated it to use a “complete” event instead – it’s a little less intuitive perhaps, but it works. I’ve also added support for a “httpStatus” (F8 only) event, as well as adding some missing typing on method params.

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I just got back from delivering my Flash 8 Bootcamp in Toronto, and speaking at the Spark conference in Amsterdam (awesome conference – more on that soon). I think the workshop went really well. I had about 30 Flashers with a real diversity of backgrounds attend. Everyone seemed to have fun and learn a lot, and I don’t believe I lost anyone over the two days (except maybe when I got into bitwise operations and color math – I’m planning on allocating a bit more time to that in LA).

It was a lot of fun to teach, and I want to say thank you to everyone who attended. I’d also like to thank everyone at FitC who organized the workshop (Shawn, Liz, Rick). I’m really looking forwards to the Los Angeles run. If you are interested in attending, check out the workshop outline here, or visit the sign up page here.

UPDATE: The bootcamp will be running in London, UK on February 11-12. Please read the announcement for more information.

Here’s some of the feedback I’ve received so far:

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After a week of voting, the winner of the Great Pumpkin Showdown II was pretty clear. Macromedia (Adobe) better watch out, because piracy seems to be all the rage with Flash developers these days.

Unlike last year, where the results were neck and neck, this year was a landslide victory. The pirate pumpkin won out with 147 votes. Frank came in a distant second with 91 votes, and the Puki pumpkin trailed with 78 votes.

Here’s a look at the pumpkins the day after hallowe’en. I was going to take a picture after voting ended, but the pumpkins dissolved into protoplasm by day 3 and had to be poured into the garbage can (ewww).

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I’ve been building out some new demos for upcoming conference sessions and workshops, and really like this one, which generates fire onscreen based on webcam motion. It basically turns you into the Human Torch. I think it’s a nice counterpoint to my Webcam Snowstorm experiment – fire and ice.

Another thing I find really cool about this is that it’s only a 1kb swf. Good work Flash engineering team!

Check it out, Flash 8 Player and a webcam is required:

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Or… how to kill a user’s computer with 1 line of ActionScript.

I’ve been profiling CPU/RAM usage in Flash 8 content in the last few days in preparation for the Flash 8 Bootcamp I’m running in Toronto and LA. Last night I ran into a major memory leak that is wreaking havoc with some of my latest experiments, and this morning I isolated it. This leak makes it ridiculously easy to accidently create a process that increases the Flash Player’s memory heap at a very rapid rate, and ultimately immobilizes the user’s system (I’ve had to do a few slow motion restarts while testing this – I had over 15GB of virtual memory dedicated to the player at one point).

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