Blogcritics Author: zenbullets

Graphic Novel Review: Empowered Volume 2 by Adam Warren

zenbullets — Sun, 7 Oct 2007 10:12:27 EDT

Nudity, bondage, violence. It's all good, isn't it?
Post-modernism means never having to say you're sorry. Translation: you can basically get away with the most deplorable, un-reconstituted behaviour, as long as you do it under the guise of irony. The '80s 'new man' part of me wants to be thoroughly appalled by Adam Warren's work, with its fun-filled depictions of hopelessly...

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

Book Review: Programming Flex 2 by Chafic Kazoun and Joey Lott

zenbullets — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 19:03:29 EDT

The beta of Flex 3 came out today. The book I'm reviewing, Programming Flex 2, only came out a month ago, and is one of the first books covering Flex 2, yet before I've even got to the end of its 460 pages a new version of the software has been released. I was wondering if the world would mind slowing down a little, just for a while, to allow me to catch up.But ignore my kvetching. This is not an obsolete book, far from it. Flex is one of the most exciting new technologies around, and with the speed the web moves at it is not uncommon to feel like you are chasing the coattails of technology. In this case I suspect Adobe are involved in something of an arms race with MicroSoft's SilverLight platform, which is why Flex is racing ahead so quickly. This can only be good for the consumer really.You've probably already heard of RIAs - Rich Internet Applications. In fact you're probably already using them - managing your life with GMail, reading blogs via NetVibes, or cyber-stalking with StreetView. RIAs are the hottest thing on the web right now (sorry, but I refuse to use that horrible anachronism "Web 2.0"). In a nutshell they embody the idea of growing beyond the client/server model of traditional web pages - having an "application" within your browser window rather than just a "page".The term was first coined by Macromedia, so it's perhaps appropriate that they, now Adobe, seem to be defining the methodology of Rich Internet Application production. Flex 2 is based on Flash, and runs within the ubiquitous Flash 9 player. But don't let that distract you. Flash programmers may have an advantage in already having familiarity with ActionScript, but Flex is not just an extension of Flash. In fact, if you have an ingrained understanding of Flash's timeline-based approach, you may find yourself at a disadvantage with Flex initially. Flex, to be insultingly simplistic, is basically Flash without timelines.Programming Flex 2 is written by Chafic Kazoun and Joey Lott, one a new name to tech literature, the other an old pro, and is, I can say quite unreservedly, excellent. There aren't many Flex books out there yet. I've tried a few and haven't really got on too well with them so far, but this one spoke to me very clearly. It takes a highly technical angle, and is very exacting in the way it explains the technology, which was an approach I appreciated. At no point did I feel I was getting anything less than a full understanding of what was going on. Particularly good is the way that MXML, the mark-up language Flex uses, is consistently explained with reference to how it translates into ActionScript, something I felt other Flex books skipped over but is essential to understanding it as a programmer.Of course this is "Programming Flex 2", so it may not be as palatable to more casual users. But unfortunately I'm not sure there is a suitable entry-level book out there yet. Also, it should be pointed out there is no ActionScript 3, reference in this book, so you have to rely on online documentation (or join the wait for O'Reilly's long overdue AS3 Pocket Reference).I have high hopes for Flex 2, and the future of the Flash platform. And if Adobe would just stop releasing new products every other month, maybe the rest of the world will have a chance to jump on the bandwagon too.

zenbullets is a writer and coder from Brighton UK. He blogs on the subjects of philosophy, technology, culture and comic books, and is particularly interested in the areas where the four all meet.

Thoughts on Early Adopters and Apollo For Adobe Flex Developers Pocket Guide

zenbullets — Thu, 3 May 2007 06:33:43 EDT

Who'd be an early adopter?In the aviation industry the test pilots get danger money (and the love of the airline's vice-president according to Green Lantern comics). In the chemical industry early adoption is only ever inflicted on animals. But in the world of software, geeks just love playing guinea pig; they will eat each other for a sniff of new technology. This is nothing to do with 'cool'. It's not like the music industry's early adopters; who instantly go off a band they've raved about as soon as they 'sell out' by getting a song on the radio. It's computer software, it's the antithesis of cool. Don't get me wrong, I make my living as a programmer, and I love what I do, but it doesn't matter how many times you've re-read Neuromancer, computer programming still isn't cool. And the early adoption urge is what separates geek from uber-geek. There is kudos in certain circles if you are one of the first to have installed Linux 2.6. These aren't circles most people would admit to moving in though.But the early adoptors provide a great service to the developer community. They are the only ones crazy enough to leap in at the deep-end, into muddy waters. When an early adopter encounters a bug, they can't just google it, they have to come up with the work-around themselves - and then hopefully write it up on their blog so the normals can google it when they get to that point six months later. But for what? What is their reward for fearless wrestling with half finished software?These are the thoughts that have been going through my head the last few months playing with the Flash 9 Alpha, trying to get a head start on ActionScript 3, with nothing but online documentation and the blogs of even earlier adopters than me to help. And they are the thoughts I have been having this week bashing my head against the Alpha of Adobe's Apollo.I got terribly excited about Apollo when I first saw it demoed at Flash on The Beach in December. Apollo is Adobe's new cross-platform runtime, aiming to combine the ubiquity of the browser with the power of a desktop app. In honesty, I think what excited me the most about it was that it was designed to be a framework encompassing a set of existing technologies, all of which I already knew; Flash, Flex, HTML, JavaScript and PDF, i.e. it meant I could add something new to my CV without having to actually learn anything.So now Apollo is out as a "Public Alpha", along with Flash 9, which has been in Alpha for the last 6 months but is due for release any day now. In the case of Flash 9 I simply couldn't wait for ActionScript 3. I had been designing a Flash isometric 3d game engine, and it just seemed daft to build it in AS2 when a radical rewrite of the language was just around the corner. My need for Apollo was not as pressing, but I started looking at it because of O'Reilly, the tech book people, who have just published Apollo For Adobe Flex Developers Pocket Guide.It's very unusual for literature of any kind to accompany an Alpha release, especially technical writing of the quality we have come to expect from O'Reilly. And this is, I believe, the first time they have released a book devoted to so young a technology. The reason this book, along with the forthcoming ActionScript 3 Pocket Guide, are out so soon is because O'Reilly now has a partnership with Adobe. But it may also be a reflection of the demand for this breaking technology. The Apollo Pocket Guide is a gentle introduction and a very quick read, just about enough to get you started and give you the idea - which is all you should expect from an Alpha release really. If you want the Definitive Guide at this stage you're going to have to start writing it yourself (and I'm sure O'Reilly would love to hear from you). Even so, after many tedious early adoption adventures in the past, I really appreciated having this book in my hand, like a sturdy rudder to grasp through unfamiliar waters.But I soon encountered the one big problem with a book written this early in the software development cycle - it can't anticipate the bugs that are pretty much expected with an Alpha release. For this reason, even with a sturdy rudder, I found myself hopelessly ran aground less than a third of the way through. My installation of the Alpha couldn't even create a basic "Hello World" application without a string of bugs. And trying to get any kind of support from Adobe for an Alpha release seems very difficult; they don't welcome email and their forums are, understandably, much heavier on questions than answers. The Pocket Guide doesn't have a chapter on troubleshooting unfortunately, which is unsurprising for such a rush release, but troubleshooting is typically a significant part of the Alpha experience. It is not O'Reilly's fault that the Apollo Alpha is not sturdy enough to justify this book. But it makes me wonder what the point of Adobe's "Public" Alphas are in the first place, when it is nigh on impossible to feed back any experience to Adobe which might improve future versions of the product. But I suppose I already know the answer to that one. It is because we masochistic early adopters demand it, and so we will hopefully start blogging these bug fixes in plenty of time before the paying customers get there.

zenbullets is a writer and coder from Brighton UK. He blogs on the subjects of philosophy, technology, culture and comic books, and is particularly interested in the areas where the four all meet.

Movie Review: Inland Empire

zenbullets — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 18:01:40 EDT

A new David Lynch film is always cause for celebration, and after failing to get into a preview a few weeks ago, I was itching to see INLAND EMPIRE (caps required) this weekend. Also, bizarrely, this week I had a request from an Iranian magazine asking if they could translate my ten-year-old article on Lynch into Persian for publication! So, after this little reminder that I’m actually one of the world’s leading Lynch scholars [cough] I had to run out and see his latest work. So was it any good? On first viewing -- it’s difficult to say.I can’t even tell you what it was about. It has very little plot of relevance, it can only really be described in terms of mood – gritty, dark and disorienting. Every David Lynch film has at least one of those scenes that seem to come out of nowhere, having no relevance to the rest of the film, yet are incredibly powerful – Sherilyn Fenn stumbing from a wrecked car in Wild At Heart, the horror behind the diner in Mulholland Drive, the woman who’d just ran over a deer in The Straight Story. This is a film entirely made up of those scenes. But even though it left me bewildered and disoriented for pretty much the entire running time (three hours!) I still had to pick my jaw up off the floor by the end of it. I wasn’t sure what I had just experienced, whether it was good, bad, entertaining or torturous, but there’s one thing it wasn’t -- boring. It was impossible to tear your eyes away, it was mesmerising, and I think the rest of the theatre agreed with me, as everyone remained in their seats until the last of the credits had rolled and the house lights went up, by which point I no longer knew if it was today or tomorrow, or what I was doing there.There was one obvious flaw with the film though. It was all shot on DV (using a Sony PD-150), and Lynch was producing himself, which meant 1) it looks awful, and 2) it really could have done with some trimming. While the decision to use DV had obviously given Lynch a freedom to shoot whatever he wanted, it also imposed limits of its own in that it was very heavy on close-ups, probably because all the longs shots and mid-shots looked really grainy and pixelated. With surrealist cinema lush imagery can often make up for a lack of coherence, but INLAND EMPIRE didn’t have this luxury.But, even if it didn’t look that great (there was still some great cinematography, even with the constraints) suffice to say it sounded amazing. Lynch is much celebrated as a director, which sometimes overshadows his comparable skill as a sound designer. The sound is the reason why it’s always worth seeing a new Lynch film in the cinema, even if he’d shot it on a mobile phone.So, while INLAND EMPIRE is a stunning piece of work, I can’t say I’m too impressed with the move to digital, and the creative freedom it has given him. My favourite of the four films he’s made in the last 15 years was The Straight Story, which was the Lynch style applied to a Disney film, and is the most restrained film he’s ever made. Both Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive don’t really stand up as well by comparison. But with his new found creative and financial freedom, Lynch may not ever need to make a studio picture ever again, he’ll never need to try his hand at a romantic comedy to make ends meet, or to be hired to helm a summer blockbuster, which for a director like Lynch would be a much more radical and interesting project. Instead he can quietly carry on making ever more abstract and inscrutable films solely for his diehard audience, churning them out until there’s no one watching any more, much like Godard did. Which in some ways would be a shame.There was another film I saw recently, Michel Gondry’s latest, The Science Of Sleep, which has much in common with INLAND EMPIRE. Both are surrealist, non-linear, open-process, and purposely blur the line between accepted reality and fantasy. But The Science of Sleep somehow managed to do all this in a way that was also charming and funny, while INLAND EMPIRE just used fear and disorientation cranked up to 11.Lynch has recently said that since discovering the freedom of DV, he can’t go back to celluloid. Which means we can probably expect him to disappear even further up his own art-hole in the next few years. Gondry, on the other hand, is on his third feature and every new film he makes is bursting with creativity and originality. I have to say that, even as a long-time Lynch obsessive, I am now much more excited to see the big budget sci-fi epic that Gondry will inevitably get offered any day now, than the next few years of David Lynch home videos.

zenbullets is a writer and coder from Brighton UK. He blogs on the subjects of philosophy, technology, culture and comic books, and is particularly interested in the areas where the four all meet.