Unity 2.5 Released

Unity 2.5 has officially been released. Whats so special about 2.5? Well, in my opinion, one of the biggest things is that you can now develop on Windows! At my previous job @ Blockdot, we didn’t really get into too much Unity work, because you could only develop it on a Mac. No excuse now I had better see some great 3D stuff coming out of there soon.

Truthfully, I am not one to do much 3D work usually, but this might actually get me to try. I would need to learn how to model something in 3D first, but I could probably just find some templates online to use for a simple game. Anyone have any links for anything like that?

Anyways, if you want to find out more about Unity, here is a link to the release notes.

Um… How do you work this thing?

Almost 3 years ago I stopped blogging. Jeebus. That’s a long time. Well, I guess I had better start explaining…

Jobs

Back when I was last blogging, I was halfway through my job at Yahoo. I ended up leaving Yahoo to work at Blockdot, an adver-gaming company here in Dallas that specializes in… well… gaming. Mostly Flash work, but some Director (ew…) and iPhone work as well. While there, I was tasked with developing a lot of different multiplayer games. Some of the games I developed are no longer online, but one that you can find online is Chicktionary. Chicktionary is a word game where you get 7 “eggs” to form 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 letter words. This was my first full AS3 game at Blockdot (don’t ask. I didn’t wait this long by choice…), and I must say I am very proud of it. The framework for the “MSN” games is still in use at Blockdot.

About 4 weeks ago, I left Blockdot to pursue an opportunity as a Technical Account Manager at Adobe. This job is completely different from what I have been doing for the last 8-10 years of my life. I was a bit nervous at first, but this has ended up being a wonderful opportunity for me. The people are great, the work is amazing, and I get to work on the FMS team. I have already learned a lot about FMS that I didn’t even think existed. You’ll be hearing a lot more from me about this on the blog.

Gaming

Most of my readers knew this already back in 2006, but I am still very much into gaming. Whether it be Xbox Live or World of Warcraft, you can usually find me playing some type of game in my free time. When I decided to start blogging again, I thought I would include a category just for games. I will be talking about what games I am playing, what I think of them, etc. This isn’t just a blog about Flash anymore (like it ever was!).

Flash, Flex, AIR and Apps

I also wanted to start blogging again, because I am going to be working on some AIR apps in my free time. I have an idea for an AIR app that involves World of Warcraft (yes, I am still addicted). You will be hearing more about it soon, and hopefully I will be releasing a beta of it in the next couple weeks or months, depending on how busy I get at work.

Work in Progress

So yeah, about the redesign. This is still a work in progress. In the transition to WordPress, all of my posts forgot their category. So I am going to have to recategorize everything. Also, if you are using IE6… die. Then, upgrade. Because my site won’t work in your piece of crap browser. This site was a pretty quick job, so I haven’t really validated any of it. I know it works in the most popular browsers, and really that’s all I care about. So if you want to comment about it sucking, do so. But know it won’t be fixed for a while.

Resubscribe

I know many of you have probably given up on my RSS feed but when you get a chance, please resubscribe to it. I promise I will update more than once every 3 years Also, if you would like to contact me, please feel free to shoot me an email or contact me any other way (you can find the info at the bottom of the blog).

How Not to Implement Video

Well… Welcome back to me (for the 2 readers I still have)? Sorry I haven’t written a lot lately, but I just haven’t been motivated enough by anything to write. Things are going to be changing around here. I might not update as often, but I am going to write whats on my mind, whether it be Flash/Web related or not.

Video & Erectile Disfunction

Now, onto the meat of the story. Video. I am not going to proclaim myself to be some video expert, but I know one thing. Autoplay is bad, especially on the front page of your site. Not only autoplay, but autoplaying advertisements. When the first audio I hear from your site is…

Believe it or not, erectile disfunction affects a lot of guys…

… you are doing something wrong. Correct me if I am wrong, but isn’t most video online on demand? It plays when you CHOOSE it to play. Not when THEY choose it to play. Sure, YouTube autoplays, but you know going in, that they are an all video site, and you also know that there aren’t any ads about ED in their videos (yet).

Of course, I don’t really expect any better from ESPN. They don’t exactly have the best track record. Tricking users into clicking on content you have to pay to see. Making a ton of your content “Insider Only”. Fucking up Fantasy Drafts. I could go on (seriously, I was just finding a way to vent my Fantasy Draft frustration)…

A Solution?

Yes, it’s simple, don’t autoplay. And if you do autoplay, make sure there is a cookied option to disable it. I understand that you think you are making the next big wave into advertisement here, but at least disable sound? Most other video advertisements do.