Portfolio Site

Hey long time no blog! No one reads this anyway, but I have a design portfolio up now. Been up for a while actually. So go there: www.rabidziggy.com

Flash Tutorial : Closing a .SWF inside another .SWF

Today I ran across a big problem while coding my final for my advanced Flash class. Heres how it goes: I am creating a portfolio, and want to make it so when someone clicks on something like, "Posters" and new .SWF in the Lightbox style pops up. Whatever I did I couldn't figure out how to code a button so that when someone clicks it, the new SFW that pops up closes. After searching on the Internet I finally found out how. Simply put the following code into your button:

on (release) {
unloadMovie(this);
}

or it could go something like this in your actions layer:

button.onRelease = function () {
unloadMovie(this);
}

Since this seems to be a relative common problem with not a lot of helpful answers out there, I thought I'd post this on my blog (which no one reads anyway.)

Review: Children of Men

From time to time on this blog I'll be writing reviews of some of the movies I see. The first one I'm writing is for "Children of Men."
Initial thoughts: Blown away. Simply put, this movie was amazing. The cinematography was breath taking; it made you feel as if you were actually there experiencing it. The battle-scenes were extremely intense, and had one of the best continuous single-shots I have ever seen. By the end of the film, all I could say was "Holy shit...that was awesome!"
The film is based off of a novel by P.D. James, in which due to a number of reasons, some known and some unknown, women have become infertile, and this has thrown the world into chaos. The story takes place in Britain, basically the only country left functioning (a pretty accurate comparison would be to the game Half-life 2, although not as severe.) Clive Owen plays our main character, Theodore Faron, a former activist who has a great responsibility thrust upon him. He puts in a fantastic performance, and the cast is helped by other equally great performances by Julianne Moore, Michael Caine, and Chiwetel Ejofor.
Alfonso Cuarón should win Director of the Year for the movie. It was simply just that well directed. To quote movie critic Nick Rester: "It seems like Alfonso Cuarón broke every rule of film making in this movie and in turn recreated the genre."
Basically, just go see this film. Maybe even go see it twice, I know I plan to. 10/10

"The Brown Suit Killer"

"The Brown Suit Killer"

This is the true story of what me and Nick call "The Brown Suit Killer."
After stopping off at Troy's house for some Ice Cream and sugar, me and Niick became photojournalists of the Night. The temperature at set below freezing by this point in time (it was about midnight,) and the night was still young. So off we went to Libbey Park to see what there was to see. We parked across from the Contempo Salon and prepared to set out. As we stepped out of the Le Baron we heard a rustling in the forest next to us. Nick looked at me.
"Did you hear that?" He whispered.
"Yeah, weird."
We continued talking, when all of a sudden we noticed a large form hiding in the bushes, one that could only be a man.
"Holy shit!" said Nick. "Did you see that?"
"Yeah, lets get going."
As we walked towards the downtown area, we could sense someone following behind us. Finally about the time we reached the street corner we heard a noise and a man yell out.
"FUCK!"
We turned around and a man in a shabby brown suit, his shirt and tie disheveled, his hair a mess, run towards the other side of the street from the park. He stopped suddenly and stared at us. We could tell by the look in his eyes that this man clearly was not well. This is a man that was doing who knows what in the bushes in weather well below freezing. A man that had seen us, and knew that we had seen him. We decided it would be best to move to a place that had more light.
After a few minutes of walking around the front of the park and taking photos we decided we needed a flashlight for some of our excursions and walked back to car. But before we got their a thought, a slow, slimy, maggot of a thought wormed its way into our frozen brains. What if this man in the brown suit had killed someone, and was waiting for us? He definitely saw us get out of the car, so he would know where to wait. After a few minutes of deliberating we thought that we would be fine thanks to my trust tripod, but we should call the local Police anyway and report this guy.
I talked to an officer on the phone for a few and he told me he'd send someone out. Sure enough, 30 seconds later a squad car came down the street. He spotted me and Nick and immediately sped up. He got out and demanded to know what we were "doing with that tripod." We told him that we were the ones that called. He was relieved and asked us some more questions. He then assured us he would go find this guy and off he went. Within a few minutes there were about 4 or 5 squad cars around the movie theater, so we're pretty sure that they were already looking for this guy when we called. After that we went around and took more photos, from the church in front of David's house on over to Bart's Books. But all the while we were on the lookout for "The Brown Suit Killer."

Free Money Bitches!

So today I got an email from my school letting me know that I'm receiving more free financial aid. W00t!

"Your ACG grant will be paid in two disbursements. You will receive $650.00 this semester and $650.00 next semester, coinciding with the regular disbursement of financial aid at the beginning of the spring semester."

Word.

"Flesh"

"Flesh"
This weekend we finished filming Nick's movie "Flesh," for the second time. It was fun because we totally did everything over again, with Nick playing the main character this time. Hopefully the film will be awesomely edited and we won't have to do anything more, because its tiring re-filming an entire movie. Note to Troy: don't edit the film crappily.