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March 24, 2005

Dual Monitors

To borrow a phrase, "YEAH, BABY!" I finally have the workspace I've been pining for these last few years-- dual 19", Samsung 910T LCD monitors. Driven by the best nVidia Quadro card my motherboard's 1.5v AGP slot will accept-- the 700XGL-- dual-screen, OpenGL-antialiased wireframe view in 3DS MAX is simply breathtaking.

WOW.

2560x1024 is much more manageable than "ordinary" desktop resolutions of today.

The amount of screen real estate on my monitors is finally proportionate to that of a modest wooden work desk. There is now plenty room for documentation, application windows and toolbars.

Well, that's it for now... My next workstation is going to support 3 monitors ;)

Posted by garyduke at 12:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 10, 2005

Flash's identity crisis

Flash has becoming alarmingly popular. I say alarmingly because it seems to have an identity crisis.

It is a graphics tool, but doesn't yet support such essential functionality as ink/alpha transfer types like screen, multiply, and invert.

It is a programming tool, but doesn't cater to programmers by having a proper IDE.

Is is a video tool... here Flash MX Professional 2004 does score big points.

Macromedia's other multimedia content creation tool, Director, builds shockwave files in an environment catering more to programmers, those who need an extensible application, and includes proper support for screen, multiply and invert filters. Director 8.5 also supports real 3D environments.

It will be interesting to see what Macromedia does with Director in the coming years... Because of Directors extensibility via Xtras and the ability to write ones one plug-ins it isn't likely that it will be absorbed into Flash. Funny enough, Flash functionality is a subset of Director in that Director can import and communicate with embedded Flash movies!

Director's programming language, Lingo, is also quite different to ActionScript and, in my opinion, much easier to work with.

Director is more extensible but less widespread. Flash is more limited but is ubiquitous.

Both require use of a plug in to embed themselves into a web page. And both solutions usually require a fixed-height area in which to embed themselves. However, it is possible to build a movie in Flash that can fill the entire height of the browser window with as much content as there is room for (not simply scaling graphics, but intelligently making a text area larger). I wonder why most designers don't do this.

Currently, both Flash and Director can't provide content to small-screen, low-bandwidth devices like the cell phone, PDA or Blackberry. This is where a Web-standard approach still wins out.

Posted by garyduke at 12:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 09, 2005

Current listening...

My head is spinning as I am working hard to cement associations with great people who can help me with what I will refer to here in my Blog as "Little X". If you wish to accomplish great things, you need to surround yourself with people whose brain lights are on and steadily lit. You'll also need careful plans, patience, and good sense.

Posted by garyduke at 10:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack