Shocking devastation in Japan. I came across this high resolution photo of the tsunami about to hit the Sendai Airport.

Click the image for high res.

It’s been a while since I’ve done any flash design. Every time I’m tasked with doing something in Flash I feel like I’m relearning what I’ve forgotten. Things that should be easy are a pain in the ass. Here’s a fine example, and maybe it will save you a headache if you get lucky and google sends you to this page.

Have you ever created a button in flash and you wanted the over state to activate an animation that occurs somewhere else on the stage other than the location of the button? If you answered no, I can guarantee the first time you try it you’re in for a surprise.

So you make a button. When you roll over it displays short animation or some text… not directly on the button, but off to the side somewhere else on the stage.

Simple enough right? Just ad a movie clip containing your animation to the onRollover frame of the button.

Uh oh… something isn’t right. If you happen to roll over where the animation shows up on the stage, it springs to life, even though you didn’t roll over the button! WTF!?

The problem is incredibly simple to fix. Click your way in to edit the movie clip containing your animation for the onRollover state. Like any logical human you probably started your animation on frame 1. WRONG! BAD! Your animation needs to begin on FRAME 2 and then everything works just how you’d like! Just remember, any animation on an over state of a button needs to start on frame 2, otherwise the animation starts if it is rolled over, and not the button

8 current, former Bell, California officials arrested

So here’s a little story… I built a website for a friend of mine a few years back. We were in the proses of handing the torch over to another mutual friend of ours to continue working on it, but that required me remembering the user name and password to get into the admin panel for the content management system. It had been a while since I last used it, and yep, I forgot it… good thing esteemed Freeskier Magazine editor Matt Harvey was in town to bail me out… Before Matt got the bright idea that he should be editing magazines, he was a programmer. Here’s his email to me detailing what he had to do to get a new password set up… fucking guy.

Finally got the camera hooked up properly to record air traffic control audio in the cockpit. All in all it was a pretty slow afternoon, I figured there would be more people flying around on a holiday weekend, but apparently not. A few police helicopters, and some banner towing planes and that’s about it… I had the pattern to myself for an hour on a Sunday. While I was in the pattern, Esteemed Freeskier editor Matt Harvey was suckered into going for an aerobatic demo flight with my flight instructor from Sunrise Aviation. Harvey managed to not throw up, despite a raging hangover.