I've been meaning to clean out my Eclipse for a while now and decided today is the day. I was surprised to see a new face, Ganymede, instead of the old Europa. There are a ton of new features that really make my workflow so much easier such as automatic updates. The lack of this feature is the reason why I've been so far behind with updating Eclipse. Along with updating Eclipse, I figured I'll update Flex as well to the pre-release Gumbo build on the Adobe Open Source website. While at that, why not target for Flash Player 10. Good stuff all around and now I have some time to work on v2 since my school week is over.

So, the next project for my Advanced GD 1 course is titled Sequence. I won't go into it too much, but to summarize we pick an amendment and design a sequential piece based on it. It could be a series of posters, a book, or a motion graphics piece. I'll be photographing a series of portraits for the first amendment with each person holding something that expresses their freedom of speech, religion, press, etc. I'm going for a friendly mugshot look to subtly touch on the idea of the absence of the amendment. Take a look.

[update] Pictured above is my roommate, Benjamin Barend Bours. He's a graphic design major here at MICA too. Check him out.

Corny, I know, but I would've regretted not saying it. My beauty dish reflector arrived last week and I didn't really have a chance to play around with it, so I brought my equipment home from work today. I love getting new photo things because Jen is as excited as I am to see how they perform. I can't get over how affordable and compact this reflector is. It's stunning close up for portraits, but also fills an area really well from afar. I can't wait to use it in the next project for my Advanced GD 1 course.

I couldn't resist—I'm expecting a second beauty dish tomorrow.

I've fallen in love and couldn't wait to tell someone. Springpad is my new favorite web app. I was planning on making an Adobe AIR task manager, but Springpad already has everything I could ever want—well, almost. I contacted them suggesting a public API, so I can make a lightweight widget to see what's on my agenda. Now, I've only dipped my feet, but I plan to dive deeper tonight and see what else they have to offer. I think the task manager was enough to rave about.

For the past few months, I've been thinking about the next direction for Destroy Today. I know I want to abandon the blog look, but retain the ease of seeing updates. I know I want to promote my non-web work as much as my web work. And, I know I don't want a complete redesign. I've finally settled on a layout I'm happy with about a week or two ago. I was able to program it to a point where I'm not completely embarrassed to show it. Keep in mind this is a work-in-progress and still has a long way to go.

I've decided to use flash this time around because it will really give me the flexibility I need to put my ideas to work. I'm using SWFAddress for the ability to bookmark specific pages within the site and SWFMacMouseWheel to allow scrolling using the trackpad, mouse wheel, etc. The reworking of my site has also given me the chance to improve my Foundation Framework. I completely rebuilt my fSprite class so it's now 8kb instead of 30, and I'm cleaning up many other frequently used classes. The site uses what I call modules to display the content. At the moment, there is a TextModule, ImageModule, and FormModule. Each is extremely lightweight and produced via XML.

Now, I said the site still has a long way to go and it does. I'll give a short list of what's still needed. First of all, the lab section has no content whatsoever. Since the new site is flash and won't reload each page, I'll need to rewrite each study so it won't slow down the site. I also plan to add a function to disable the study while the mouse is not around it. Projects don't have process or documentation pages yet. I'm determined to update DestroyFlickr's documentation before putting it on the new site. Considering the last time I left off was 1.0.4 Beta, I'm in for a few solid hours of work. In the portfolio section, I added just a few items to the non-web work just so they would have something to list. Also, the format will change from what it is now—there will be more text between images. The new section has seen the biggest change. I feel like any posts past the first page weren't really being seen and now you can easily navigate to an older month or year. You can also click the post's title on the left to ease to it instead of scrolling. I also plan on designing commenting. It's unavailable at the moment, but will certainly be included.

So, this is just a first couple weeks of working on the site. I expect to have a much more cohesive version when I'm ready to make it official. Until then, check it out and please let me know what you think.

I finally launched the Fone Box website last week. It's a bit different from other websites in the portfolio because whoever wants to see it needs to request an access code and confirm that they agree with the terms and conditions. I'll be sure to post again when it's open to the public, but until then, the screenshots will have to suffice.

So I realized I rarely post about anything unrelating to Destroy Today. I've tried to keep things central to my work, but I think it'll be okay in this instance. Every now and then, I come across an extremely useful application that is both lightweight and free. Those free gems make life so much easier, attributing to an essential part of my workflow. My applications have been promoted by others—why not lend a hand to the ones I use?

Starting off this new category of posts is an add-on called Sound Menu. At work, I sometimes find myself needing to switch between my headphones and the internal speakers. It used to be such a drag to unplug my headphones each time, or go into system preferences, knowing I'll be switching it back five minutes later—this is where Sound Menu comes in. I found him on VersionTracker, and he's already gotten a really solid amount of positive ratings. Simple and to the point, it allows you to switch your audio input, output, and system sound output. If I want my music to play through my headphones but the little frog sound to always come from my internal speakers, consider it done. (In all honesty, I use the Funk alert sound)

[update] When I got into work this morning, I realized I use a different menu for switching audio—SoundSource. It's equally as simple and convenient, and I must admit, I prefer its menu icon to Sound Menu's—headphones are in, speakers are out.

This project has spanned a little less than a month. In the end, I'm happy I was able to follow through my original idea without sacrificing anything. The process really made it something fun and I'm really glad I was able to document everything. Take a look at each step on the course website.

After two years of following the election each and every day, I can finally sit back and relax, worry no more, and look forward to the following years. It's refreshing to elect a president that makes me feel this good about the future.

Image courtesy of The New York Times

Last year's Halloween was spent on the sidelines recovering from the dreaded wisdom teeth surgery, but this year Jen and I dressed up as Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston (the baby daddy).