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Getting into Java... I'm starting to make my first Java applications with the aim of being able to program cell phone API and other handheld technologies. I see this as a huge market in years to come and can wait to get my...

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Teaching Intro to Flash at Tunxis Again Looks like I'll be teaching at Tunxis again this semester. Can't wait to get started again as I have a lot of fun the last time we did this. The class is going to be restructured slightly to showcase the...

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The difference between classic and motion tweens in... Here it is: If you're used to doing things "the cs3 way" then you can continue to do so with the classic tween tool. It works the same way as you remember, using key frames as normal, but you cannot...

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PHP: If (equal to AND not equal) - eliminate form spam... Just learned a great function of PHP thats already made my forms a lot better. A while back I wrote an article about eliminating form spam without captchas by using css to hide a text input box for bots...

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Drop Downs, Fly Outs, and Accordion Site Navigation: This last week I was in a meeting discussing a client site. It was a typical business meeting that was going into overtime on a Friday afternoon, and then things turned for the worst... someone suggested...

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Leaving For Peru

Category : Night Life, Social

Leaving for Peru for 15 days tomorrow. Wicked psyched. There’s really nothing else to say about it.
Plane leaves from JFK at 11:30AM.

Just gotta publish this page and start packing…

On the Radio Tonight – 91.3 WWUH -

Category : Politics, Social

Im going to be on the radio (Hartford, CT area) over at WWUH (91.3FM) sometime tonight from 12 to 3am. I’ve been asked to provide political commentary to The Dawn of Chaos, a metal and hardcore. I dont know the exact format yet, but Ill start posting the weekly talking points I use along with supporting links and source materials.

I dont see this becoming “another blog about politics” – there are so many already. Most of them stink, but Id like to highlight the few that have risen above the rest.

Tonight I want to cover:

  • Problems with the Cap and
  • Trade Bill currently winding through congress
  • A new slaughter of native people in Peru-America Free Trade Zone
  • Israel attacks “Spirit of Humanity” attempting to enter Palestinian waters to deliver humanitarian Aid and building supplies. Nobel Peace Prize winner and former US Congress woman taken prisoner by Israel.

More to come soon.

Working at an Award Winning Tattoo Shop

Category : Social

If you have been following the blog for a while you might remember me getting a job at a local Tattoo shop, Visual Expressions. If you live in the CT area you might also have heard us getting some love from WCCC (106.9FM).

They (WCCC) did a listener driven contest to find Hartford’s favorite tattoo artist, and wouldn’t you know it – it’s our very own Kelly Green. You can check out her portfolio here. We didn’t win anything but bragging rights, but it was fun to compete. Im wicked glad to be learning from such amazing artists – everyone in the shop has something to teach me.

I wasn’t sure when I got the job if I was going to keep it. Now I wonder if I am going to keep my other jobs. I really enjoy tattooing and like watching people show off my work. It makes me smile as an artist in ways no amount of money can. I like that.

Conundrum of Life: Solved – Morning vs Night

Category : Humor, Night Life, Social

Happy Memorial Day; my thoughts on that aside.

I figured out a wondrous thing tonight while I was driving home from Springfield this morning: The best way to determine the morning/night status is to look at the street lights. If they are still on – it’s still night. Once they turn off (about 5:33am this morning in case you were interested) then, and only then, is it considered morning by civilized people.

The normal argument would say 12:01am; but that’s only if you want to be a dick about it – of course you’re not wrong, but practically speaking I’d say that I left the party at around 5:20 last night and got home at about 6 o’clock this morning.

Guest Host on WWUH 91.3 – Dawn of Chaos

Category : Around West Hartford, Night Life, Politics, Social

I got to guest host on Dawn of Chaos, a weekly radio show on 91.3 WWUH. We had a great time talking about politics (Piracy & the British TV tax). I shit you not; its illegal to watch TV it Briton without a license – how sick is that? I have to pay someone for the privilege to watch ads? The real winner this week though was a story about how the French are kidnapping their bosses if they threaten to ship jobs over seas. THATS A UNION IN ACTION!

From there the conversation digressed into Ultimate Warrior – a show I’ve never seen from beginning to end. It pits fighters from all around the world against each other in mock battles that would never happen (Pirate vs French Knight). I’ve seen clips from it – but I never get through the whole thing. The scripting seems lame and the match ups moronic. (Ninja vs Spartan? Ninja would never fight a spartan head on… kill him in his sleep. Done.)

Anyway, I was happy to get some good ol punk into the mix. Most of the time the show plays metal but I brought in some T.S.O.L. Decedents, Exploited, and the Necromantics and we had a ball…

Ill be back next week Tuesday 12-3am on 91.3 WWUH with more political discourse, ramblings and rants.

Last Week of Classes – Message to Students

Category : Around West Hartford, Social, Teaching

To all my students: Thank you for all your hard work this semester. I hope you got as much out of the classes as you could. If you have any questions in the future – please dont hesitate to ask me. Just because you’re no longer in my class does not mean my door is closed.

Reflections:
Im only going to teach one class a semester from now on. I wanted to able to go in deeper with both classes and I think I could have if I was clearer about the class objectives and what I was expecting. This was my mistake. A demo reel of examples I had found to go with each assignment would have been instrumental in achieving this.

I’m glad I did it though, I learned Flash CS 4 in 5 days and met some new people who I hope to be working with int he future. Actionscript 3 is still greek, but I’ll have to learn it evenutally to begin working with
AIR.

The easy road isn’t rewarding… It’s easy.

The Future for Night Clubs Twitter

Category : Night Life, Social, Technology

Fliers cost money and everyone throws them out. Myspace and Facebook take too long and you have to know a college kid with enough time to do nothing other than friend 8000 people on each service and then spam them day and night with messages, comments, and bulletins every time you throw an event.

Twitter is the next step. It’s like word of mouth with instant gratification and all the linkable goodness the web provides. Event pictures, videos, and reviews are all done via text message style communication and from the promoter’s prospective it’s even better because it’s public.

Spris in Hartford is already on this trend, but I think they can go further. You don’t have a lot of options to customize your account’s appearance in Twitter, but you can customize the background a little bit to add some function in there, like contact info for bottle service, emails for djs to send a demo, the flier for the month’s party, etc.

I see this going a lot of different ways. Makes me think that the next hot wave of ideas will be ways for people with huge Twitter lists to make better use of their lists and manage them it ways that makes sense.

Who blogs near you? Find out with Placeblogger

Category : Around The Office, Around West Hartford, Cool Web Programs

This is a neat concept. You enter a location and it displays a list of blogs that are published in that area. You can also cue the blogs into a single feed and get all the selected posts from a given area.

I can see this as having a professional use for journalists, politically minded people, law enforcement, marketing/PR peopl, and anyone who wants to keep tabs on the pulse of a geographic community. The main drawback being that some people simply wont post their blog because they enjoy the curtain of privacy the internet provides.

On the otherhand, if I was going on vacation in Tokyo and wanted to find some really cool clubs, I could do a survey of blogs in Tokyo and see what the people are saying without ever going there. As an added plus, Id avoid the “top 10″ clubs in the city and hopefully find a comfy dive within walking distance of my hotel.

http://www.placeblogger.com/

Finally on Twitter

Category : Around The Office, Social, Technology

Getting to this now feels really late. I should have been on Twitter ages ago. I might have bypassed it entirely at this point but I’ve got to learn it for some client work, and so now here I am.

Add me –> http://twitter.com/SteveYanicke

and maybe use this link to give me a tweet.

Mohawk Paper Breakfast with the ICC

Category : Around West Hartford, Social

I just got back from a paper breakfast with the ICC (Independent Creative Club) and Lee Moody of Mohawk Paper. As a web guy I don’t typically get a lot of requests for print work – but I still like knowing what’s going on in related fields. There is some cool stuff going on with paper these days and it’s all about sustainability.

As a society we’re progressed from styrofoam boxes, to cardboard boxes and “green” packaging, but now print advertising going even further. Companies in the past used to call themselves green because they added “to help reduce office waste please do not print this page” to the bottom of their email. A modern day green company looks like this: Maintain and care for your own forest and natural resources, produce everything with wind energy, minimize waste, and inform your consumers about making impactful choices. That’s pretty green.

The Mohawk reps talked about different papers on different digital printers. I guess it’s a new thing for paper companies to offer digital papers, but with the cost of digital coming down more and more, the window for cost effective printing is getting larger so more people are taking advantage of it.

And the breakfast was great too. Thanks Lee!
For more information on local CT design events, check out the ICC on Meetup.com