Sti Media: The Source

Funny OT: You know you've been in Japan too long when....

I was recently cleaning up a forgotten corner of the house and found this list that I got a long time ago from a coworker. I didn't understand all of them at the time, but now I do... totally hilarious if you get it. Here are some of my favourites:

You know you've been in Japan too long when:

1. You don't think it's unusual for a truck to play "It's a small world" when backing up.
2. When in the middle of nowhere totally surrounded by rice fields and abundant nature, you aren't surprised to find a drink vending machine with no visible means of a power supply.
3. You have mastered the art of simultaneous bowing and handshaking.
4. You find yourself practicing golf swings with your umbrella on the train platform.
5. You buy an individually plastic wrapped potato (tomato, green pepper, carrot etc..) in the supermarket.
6. You use the "slasher hand" and continuous bowing to make your way through a crowd.
7. Back in your home country for a short visit you wait patiently outside your taxi for its door to spring open for you.
8. You start bowing on the telephone when you end the conversation.
9. You find it saves time to stand and retrieve your cabin baggage while the plane is on the final approach.
10. You have developed an uncontrollable urge to follow people carrying small flags.
11. You're not surprised when three men show up with a ladder to change a lightbulb.
12. You can't have your picture taken without your fingers forming the "peace" sign.
13. You run for the train pushing people left and right, jump on the train holding the door open to let your bag in.... because you know there won't be another train for at least a minute.

14. You understand all of the above.

Totally funny stuff to me as I've been here about 8 years now and these "quirks" of Japan are normal life now. I used to be amazed at some of the customs and behaviours but not anymore (or at least not as much). As for the taxi one, I've done that... :D I laughed at myself and then opened the door, but it did take me a few seconds to realize you open the door yourself.

If you have some funnies concerning a foreign country you live in or your own country stick 'em in the comments. This is most certainly not a culture bashing, just funnies on the difference in customs and normal everyday actions we all take while living our lives in whatever environment we are in. I'd have to say this is one of the coolest things to experience when living in another country.

Presenting on FCS at MAX 2004 China

I have been honoured with an offer from Macromedia to be a speaker at MAX 2004 in Taiwan coming up this November 9,10. I don't think many know about this MAX event because almost it's at the exact same time as the one in the US, which is a bit disappointing as this is the very first time for Macromedia China to have a MAX event. I would think that MM would advertise a bit more.

I'll be speaking about Flash Communication Server with Mike Downey for 2 sessions. The topics are:

Developers introduction to Flash Communication Server and application development
Starting from the basics of Flash Communication Server and moving quickly on to building a simple application with and without components, this session should help you understand what Flash Communicatin Server is capable of doing and how you can take advantage of it in your applications. This session is tuned more towards the first timers to FCS but even a slightly experienced FCS application developer should be able to take advantage of the information presented.

Performance Tuning and Troubleshooting Flash Communication Server
Learn how to avoid common mistakes and how to keep your applications running in an efficient manner when developing with Flash Communication Server Common stumbling blocks are covered along with multiple ways of what you can do to debug your application when it won't run the way you expect. Beginners can take advantage of this session to brush up on recommended styles of developing for FCS while the more intermediate crowd can use the presented information as a stepping stone onto more advanced topics.

The second session is on day 2 at 9 in the morning.. ugh.. tough crowd them morningers...

Originally there was only going to be one session, but I have so much in my head to get out about FCS that there is no way I was going to be able to explain it all in an hour. Even 2 hours in total is extremely short, but hopefully most will get the idea of what is up if they don't already know by now. I really wonder how much FCS has infiltrated the apps and sites in China, but am not having much luck finding out by searching as I can't read Chinese. Although I have been informed by MM China that people will probably know how to mess with FCS and will most likely have some hardcore questions for me. Sounds like fun :D

Anyways, this should be pretty exciting I think and I hope there is a large turnout to get the info out to as wide an audience as possible.

Also from what I understand the sessions are taped, hopefully I can snag a copy and stick it up on my blog. I will try to get the materials that I use up here though, so if you're looking for some free study materials pop back in when I post 'em up.

Flash video will support alpha! That's great but...

Why is the video that is about it, on Colin Moock's video on his blog, in wmv?? Doesn't that seem odd?...

Flash Lite 1.1 for AU

The time is coming around again for me to pick up another mobile phone. One of the primary reasons is in order to test content. Up to this point I have been a loyal NTT DoCoMo user (5 handsets in 3 years) and my current primary mobile is an SH900i for Docomo's 3G Foma service. Besides the wide array of features (Mega pixel camera, video phone, java games, web enabled, etc), my primary reason for upgrading was to have support for 100kb Flash Lite 1.0 movies. Prior to this I was using the 505i series that were the first phones to support Flash Lite (20kb max). I have been creating Flash Lite content since the beta release was made available to some content providers here in Japan and since that time have pretty much pushed the medium to its limits (which are not all that vast), but... I digress.

This time around I am thinking of going with an AU handset by provider KDDI. In November, they will be releasing the "Talby" (pictured below), a stylish little phone that supports the Flash Lite 1.1 player. I have been itching to develop some solutions using 1.1, exploiting the capabilities that are so painfully absent from the DoCoMo 1.0 port (ability to pull/push data from external sources, send variables, load movie, fscommand/fscommand2, etc), but without a true handset to test on, it is rather pointless. Yes, there are emulators, but these do an extremely poor job of reflecting one of the biggest issues in Flash Lite dev....system resource usage.

We have already started throwing around ideas for having the phone interface with some of our PC RIA (note that 1.1 still uses a subset of AS 4.0). So, we will keep you updated once the R&D begins!

How'dju make da video spoof??

I got quite a few questions on how I made that MM video banner spoof and finally put some time aside to make an article on it that flashstreamworks.com has been so generous to host. It turned out to be 7 pages though... so you'll most likely need a cup of coffee or something if you are going to sit down and read it. Please let me know your thoughts on the article if you have 'em :)

You can check it out here.

Woe to ye that blogs just before JD ;)

I'm a poet and I don't even... ahem.. Is it just me or is anybody else posting something to their blog, and you go to check the agg's a bit later to see some click counts, pop into the goog and your post is like... half way down the page, and the only thing from the top to wherever your post is, is JD's posts? And you're thinking, "daaaammmnnn, if only I'd have posted like 15 mins later"...

One of these days I'm going to match JD and the macromedia technote team and stick on my Ultra-Blogging Cap (patent pending) and lay down the juice with some ultra-bloggining and post so much that I'll fill up the goog. And I'll time it right after one of the above posts ;)

:: note to self :: - it's just a blog dude :p - ::

FCS Tutorial :: Deleting an FLV without using server side code

OK, here it is then. How to delete an FLV file off of a Flash Communication Server without using server side code at all. Just client side. This came up in the last Peldi's coding cafe a few hours ago. Peldi was showing all how to build a video recording app and had an FLV deleting function that he said must be on the server. When he asked everyone why they think it should be on the server, they all responded that the only way to delete an FLV is to do it with server side code. I responded that you can do it client side.. and hence, a tutorial on how to delete it client side because nobody believed me :)

Here's the link to the recorded tutorial, it's about 2mb and about 3 to 4 mins I think.

I didn't want to tune it too much to the veteran crowd and hope that the description in there helps others a bit less experienced in FCS apps. It's not a huge app, tiny really.. but it works :D If the explanation seems a bit redundant to you, just fast forward to near the end.

In the end... the theory is that when there is nothing in an flv file, it doesn't get created. That's why this method works.

A site that is just dying to be built with Flash and Flash Communication Server

This site is absolutely hilarious. If I were to build it I'd definitely get it going with a webcam, fcs and an flv to jpg component runnin' server side. Worth it just to see what people would post :D

No more wimpy DSL for me..

When I went to go buy a new laptop (current one is running at 366Mhz..) the other day, the store happened to have a special going on where you can get a hundred bucks of the laptop, plus 3 months free of internet connection and 2 months free for the provider fees. Why it is set to 2 and 3 months is a bit beyond me but... Anyways, since the laptop I got was expensive enough (Fujitsu Biblo MG75J) I thought this would be a good time to upgrade to fibre optics as the setup fee is free too. What more can you ask for really? So poo on all you DSL people out there, I'm moving to the next dimension :p

So in about a month or so I'm assuming that I'll be racing along the internet at an even more insane speed than I am now which is all cool I guess. I wonder how much of a dif it really is... If my FCS apps speed up I'll be truly happy :D (and iTunes stops cutting out when I'm listening to the radio..)

The laptop itself is super nice. Pentium 1.7M processor with a gig of ram (upgraded to 1 gig from 512MB), built in wireless, removable cd/dvd drive to stick in a battery if I want, even though the thing does run for a good 4 to 4 and half hours already. To top it all off, it's less than 2 kilos and small but not too small which fits great in my new laptop bag. I figure if my current laptop at 366Mhz lasted me so long I might as well splurge a bit and get something good that is going to last me just as long. As long as I don't drop it in the ocean or gets stolen or something... that would truly suck.

If I had to complain though I would have to say that manufacturers put in WAY too much crap software. I'm talking serious garbage.. it's insanve really. Stuff like little banners that are constantly blinking all over your desktop, the programs entry in the start menu is so full that it doesn't even fit on one screen. I actually ended up doing a recovery of the computer just so I could go back and not click that "You must click this!" icon. Plus it was formatted at 50 and 10Gig drives for one hard drive.. I guess it's just a matter of preference but I definitely wanted more than 10gigs on my "secondary" D drive. So a change to the partitions was definitely called for there.

Any known issues with streaming FLV files from Linux/Apache Servers?

We are currently finishing up development of a web site for a client and have moved to migrating the site to their server. One of the sites features is displaying product and event related videos. Videos are displayed by streaming FLV files to a custom player we developed. The player is told which FLV to load by being passed the URL through a Flashvar.

The system has been working fine all through development on our Windows 2003 server, however after moving the site to the clients Linux server, the FLV files no longer stream. The player opens, but no video. I tested on another Linux (Redhat) server with a different provider and had no problems such problem.

We have tried a few things to remedy the issue:

1.We thought perhaps the server was not recognizing the FLV file type, however we were able to successfully download the FLVs when accessing them directly.

2.Previously the links in the Falshvars were relative paths. Changed these to absolute paths, but it made no difference.

3.CHMODed the FLV files to open up permissions. Again, no change…but not surprised really

4.Chatted with the hosts support team for about 30 minutes, but they were unable to figure out why it was not working as well.

5.Reloaded the files to the server to make sure nothing was corrupt.

6.Currently linking to the files on our server, but that is obviously not an ideal fix, however it will do in the short term.

Has anyone experienced this problem or have suggestions on resolving it? (Other than switching hosts…)?

Thanks,
Kris

Flash Communication Server, server side ASC file editor

I'm looking for a good editor for FCS's ASC files. Up until this point I have been using Dreamweaver MX 2004. Even though DW is excellent, and I have never had any troubles, it is a bit of a hog on the screen and I'd like something a bit lighter and faster to start up. I've recently tried Se|py but it only had flash code hints and I was really hoping for FCS server side code hints too.

*quick update*
I also need it to be able to understand 2 byte characters. Se|py does even though it's a bit weird typing it.. but you can write it.
************

So if anybody out there has an idea of what I can use, or if I can change up a software to accomodate the code hints I would be forever grateful if anybody could put a link up for me. I do plan on using Se|py for a while as it seems like a great editor, so if there is a way to add them into Se|py, that would be even cooler.