Gimping along a broken leg.

So I haven't been around for a while. 1 month, 10 days to be exact, and what have I been doing with my time you may ask. Well, not building my application. This is what happens you when you're running an understaffed department, and take up 3 to many side projects. Why don't I ever listen to myself? Cause I want a new toy that is way, and the only way to do that while you are already stretching your salary to support two people is to take up some extra work. So I did.

So here I am, 1 month and 10 days later and still no closer to getting this application done. That's okay. It's a project of love and will finish when it finishes.

On to something more on subject. UI. I constantly find myself thinking about how I interact with all objects in my day-to-day life, especially computers. As you can guess, I spend 90% of my day on a computer and I have to say, I'm very disappointed in how slow user-interfaces have been taking to become something that is fluid and natural.

The interaction of the mouse and keyboard seems so rigid and unsatisfying to me. And when I'm at home watching TV on the Mac Mini driven entertainment system, I constantly draw diagrams of a one control that would be a mouse, keyboard and remote control, all-in-one, but still not be one of those damn Microsoft XBox remotes that have enough buttons that you would need 6 hands to effectually use it.

Want to see the diagrams? To bad! Hehehe, no I haven't actually drawn them out, but they are all in my head.

In the meantime, I can share this link with you.

http://www.macobserver.com/columns/devilsadvocate/2006/20060815uis.shtml

Some of these interfaces are jaw-dropping, while others make no sense to me. For example, the one that has pieces of shapes and when you move them the same shapes move on the computer. There could be some interesting applications to this, but seem to be limited to the physical object, how is it defined, how does the computer know it's shape, and how easy is it to create new objects?

I also have a theories on where the computer is going next and how to get there. I'll have to finally write those out for all to see. Till then, let's talk Flash.

FLASH Programming

Flash still amazes me as a program. Its the perfect meld between creative and technical there can be. Right now I am working on 2 sites that are scalable Flash sites, while keeping porportions, 8 Flash modules that interact with RSS, and one bad ass video player, which I believe I've mentioned before.

The video player is the coolest of all, I would say. With the ability to reuse it on a drop of a dime, you simply place it in a page, tell it how big you want it, what file to play, how long it plays, and that's it. You have a video player that is cross OS, cross Browser, and pretty already on 98% of all machines.

Version 1.0 http://www.angelfather.com/videoplayer/