Date

Description of learning activity. Comments. Time spent/Total

Feb.24, 2003

300 miles to completion.

Back home, I had used Goldwave (which I talked about in a previous entry) to cut and convert my Cowboy Bebop theme mp3 to a very low quality wave file so that it can be sent in an email. The maximum file attachment size in Hotmail (http://www.hotmail.com) is 1.3Mb so I had to experiment with the different compression rates provided within Goldwave in order to get the size just right. So back in class, I retrieved the file I sent myself by using the Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com) account. As most people in the class know, somehow the computers can’t log into Hotmail. Anyway, so I imported the theme into Flash and, good lord it spans more than 300 frames in the timeline! It’s going to take me quite a while to do this, tweening effects and all… Oh yeah, so I spent my time today drawing all the different objects and pace them so they fit the tunes.

3h (28h)

Feb.27, 2003

So things were going relatively smooth until I encountered this problem with the masking effect. Basically, what this does is to have a layer that covers up all previous layers of the project except for selected areas which will show through, which of course the user gets to pick. Well, my problem with it is that I just don’t know how to use this feature. It was not in the lessons, the sample doesn’t teach me anything, what am I to do? I had to leaf through the big Flash 4 book. Unlike some other "guide" books, this one was straightforward and explained every each step of the way. Pretty swell, methinks. Although now I only know how to do the "spotlight" masking effect, it is good enough for the part of my movie.

2.5h (30.5h)

Mar.2, 2003

Well okay, so this has nothing to do with the classic movie trilogy nor does it have anything to warrant a "part III", but I know it would draw some attention! Plus, it does have something to do with my journal entry for today. It goes like this: So my real godfather back in Macau emailed me asking about where best to download mp3s and edit out some of that excess silence that a lot of mp3s have (I have personally encountered a song with a 10 second silence after the actual music ended). Well, just like I told everyone else who ever asked, I also told him about my absolute favourite software to be used in such situation… Kazaa (http://www.kazaa.com) and Goldwave! But since my godfather isn’t exactly the most computer-savvy person in the world, I had to type up a very step-by-step guide on how to do what at what time. This is for both programs, and if you’ve used Goldwave as well, you’d know the difficulty in doing a step-by-step for that! Oh, anyway, so I sent the email but I have yet to receive a reply on it.

1.5h (32h)

Mar.3, 2003

After much thinking and designing, I’ve defeated the monster that is Flash 5 Splash Banner! However, I couldn’t have come out victorious without going through the hellish pit that was "The Skip Button". Boy, quite a hassle that was. Basically the whole scenario was that I was supposed to make a skip button so that whenever the user clicks on the button, it skips right to the end. My problem was, once I added that function in, the movie would skip to the end all by itself without anyone having to do the clicking! After much experiments and meditation, it turns out that I didn’t select the actual button object when I was scripting, so I actually was scripting the whole frame, telling it to skip! What a bummer. I spent so much time on such a minor mistake! Now all I have to do is put it on a web page. Shouldn’t be too difficult, with Dreamweaver and all.

2.5h (34.5h)

Mar.4, 2003

Blasphemy! Just when you think it’s all well and good, fate likes to come back with a dirty little sneak attack. See, I was done with the little web page and was just about to hook it up with the splash banner when I watched the exported movie for a final check up. The animation speed was all wrong! Aaarrrggghhh!!! I don’t understand it either, because back in the application’s timeline, everything was tuned perfect. I re-exported the movie for half a million times and they all give me the same result. In the end, I just went back into the workspace and made the animation run faster by cutting down on the amount of frames. So now everything is out of place in the Flash application timeline but works great in the exported movie. What a waste of my time!

2.5h (37h)

Mar.6, 2003

I have come to understand that in addition to 2 term projects, we are also entitled to complete one more website as a side project. We can do whatever we want, that’s good, and I have spent half of the class thinking about what to choose as the theme of my website. Well, having thought about my own interests, I have come to the decision of doing a site about the world of combat sports! This would include both professional Mixed-Martial-Arts (MMA) fighting and pro-wrestling (I know it’s scripted, but it’s still combat sport, especially when I cover Japanese pro-wrestling, puroresu.). Oh, so I spent the rest of the class looking for pictures (to do another Flash intro) and information. A couple very informative sites are Sherdog (http://www.sherdog.com) and The Great Hisa’s Puroresu Dojo (http://www.puroresu.com).

1h (38h)