Arndt.Wil

Flash -> JavaScript and JavaScript -> Flash communication is whole lot more rockin’ in Flash 8+ than previous versions. No more need for clumsy FSCommand and that crew. Now you can call functions directly! Geekly sweetness.

Learn all about it here:

Adobe - Developer Center : Using the External API for Flash–JavaScript Communication

and another take here:

http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=0922A

Note: if you’re having problems getting the communication happening on your local machine(JavaScript errors in your browser, etc.), you may need to set your Flash parameter ‘allowScriptAccess’ to ‘always’ instead of the default ’sameDomain’.

Tags: ActionScript by wil
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HP is running a promotional campaign about it’s 100 millionth HP LaserJet printer shipped since 1984. Seriously, given the built-in obsolescence that seems to be an unspoken “feature” of most consumer printers, I question whether this is something to be proud of, or even mention.

What do 100 million printers mean? Read on.

Let’s do some non-scientific guestimation here on the impact of 100 million printers over the last 22 years.

An informal survey tells me that most people I know (who buy printers, obviously) have had to replace their printer (HP, or otherwise) about 6 times since 1984. If we get conservative (and give HP the benefit of the doubt, recognizing their hardware’s good anecdotal track record) and assume that maybe 2 out of 5 HP printers purchased since that year have since been discarded, then that’s 40 million HP LaserJet printers in the garbage.

Looking at the HP announcement, we see that 1984 printers weigh 71 lbs. and 2006 printers weigh 43.8 lbs. For this 22 year timespan, let’s assume, then, that’s about 57 lbs. per printer. That’s 2.28 billion pounds of plastic and metal (if my math’s correct? Lemme know).

And that translates into 47,174 metric tonnes per year on average in landfills (note that’s just HP LaserJet printers, not any of their other product lines, nor their competitors, like Epson or Lexmark).

The Empire State Building weighs 330,000 metric tonnes. So, in our rough guestimation, we threw away about three Empire State Building’s worth of HP LaserJet printers in the past 22 years.

Sure, that’s just a drop in the ocean compared to the 132 million tons of solid waste trucked away to landfills every year in the United States alone. But still. We can design ways to avoid this. We can. But we need to get our priorities straight.

The time is coming when it will not be “cool” to be a reckless consumer. In fact, the trend toward eco-friendly consumption has been in the works for a long time. And that’s probably the key to making true change — the market goes where consumers go (it can be said otherwise, but I’ve yet to see it on a grand scale). So maybe the trick is to use our slickest marketing tools and manipulations into making obsolescence unfashionable. Is it possible? I think so.

But the pathetic reality is that, for now, and despite my complaining and holier-than-thou grand-standing here, I will probably end up opting for the saving-my-money route. Screw the environment. I need a printer. NOW.

It’s still cooler to make money than to save the world.

Oh well.

Here’s some help for those of you willing to fight the power and reanimate your own defunct printer: http://www.fixyourownprinter.com/

Tags: Cool Stuff, Design and More, mod7 Studio Life by wil
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Things are looking good in the new stoo-day-oh. We can finally breathe and move around without bashing our hips, and I think that’ll translate into more efficient designers, smokin’ websites and lots and lots of money.

Shopping for the office is fun and not so fun. I just love running out and spending the boss’s money on stuff that I think will look cool or will make the office swankier. Then I realize that I am the boss. Nuts. Then I go and return useless crap that the boss thinks is too expensive. What a dick.

I spent much of last week at Home Depot. And IKEA. And shopping for furniture at stores with other gay people in the middle of the day. I’m not gay, but somehow I seemed to bump into the same gay couple at every furniture store in South Granville. Trying to make them feel like I wasn’t stalking them, I’d joke around and say stupid things that, upon reflection, probably made me sound like an insane and lonely loser. Which I am also not. 

I ended up buying a couch and chair set (I was initially opposed to the pedestrian idea of a “set”, how droll) from Moe’s. Yes — a furniture place called Moe’s. But it’s cool — the dude’s name is really “Moe”, so whatever.

At the start of the move we were all stoked, which is probably why things got done faster. We were out of the old place and into the new literally within a few hours. But by the end of week number one of “moving mode” — between client work intrusions (what? we still have to work??), shopping numbness, and brittle plaster walls that don’t hold up pictures very well – much momentum was lost. In the end, it took one day of me taking a hard-core “I’m not leaving until I’m frickin’ done” attitude to rock out clear the decks. I rocked out with the organization, man. In anticipation of the new couch set, actually. We had to make room.

Now, there’s still a pile of cardboard rubble in the corner of one room, and I have stacks of docs and papers a mile high to review, but it finally feels like it’s coming together.

We have red lockers.

We have comfortable yet stylish seating.

We have nice track lighting.

We have a coffee table with design-y mags and type books I’ve never had time to open.

There’s still a lot on the 2-frickin-do list (plants, picture frames to mount, rubble removal, sinks to put in, and on), but it’s closer than ever. I’m looking forward to the mod7 “open house” – when we invite all our clients and friends to casually drop by and help us drain our fridge of all the beer that BURNKIT sent us.

Cause it’s probably the one time I’ll get the chance to actually use our new couch set.

Tags: Building a Design Business, mod7 Studio Life by wil
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