Flash on the beach 2009

Posted on September 24, 02009
Filed Under Flash, Inspiration, Journal | 2 Comments

Flash On The Beach 2009

I'm a great believer that organisations take on the personalities of their founders. This is certainly true of Flash on the beach, an annual gathering of creative and technical innovators from in and around the Flash community. John Davey, the events organiser, loves people. He's big, he's brash and he loves a party. And that's exactly what you get with Flash on the beach.

Now in year four, it's been going long enough that for regular attendees it has a real family atmosphere. This in turn gives the whole event an open and infectious creative vibe that I hope makes newcomers feel welcome. There is a lot of love for this event. You only have to run a quick Twitter search for the #FOTB tag to see for yourself.

This year I covered it for FlashMagazine along with my long term collaborator Jensa Brynildsen. With only two of us covering three streams it was a bit of a sprint but we have all the sessions written up now. I won't duplicate the content but here are the links if you'd like to find out more.

Adobe Flash CS5 Sneak Peaks from FOTB 2009
Flash on the beach - Day 1
Flash on the beach - Day 2
Flash on the beach - Day 3

And finally for a flavour of the event here is a short video I took of Andre Michelle's Flash Audio DSP session.

Thanks again to everyone who came along - it's the people that makes this event so special.

My Day Closed Is In Immortality

Posted on September 14, 02009
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A chronogram is an inscription where some of the letters, when interpreted as numerals, can form a date. The practice was begun during the late Roman Empire and can be found on items as diverse as gravestones, maps, and housing. A natural chronogram has all the numerals in the correct order and a pure chronogram has exactly one numeral for each word in the phrase.

My Day Closed Is In Immortality

In this example the highlighted letters spell out the date MDCCIII, commemorating the death of Queen Elizabeth I of England in 1603. In the image below, a portrait of Lord Coleraine from the British Museum collection, the inscription around the image has been interpreted to give a date of 1703.

Home movies

Posted on September 2, 02009
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With enough time and access to relatively inexpensive tools it's now possible for anyone to make a movie with very high production values. I've come across a couple of these recently, both of which deal with aspects of deep time. What I love about them is that they've managed to combine professional visuals with all the love and energy you find in a 'home made' project,

Big Bang Briefly
by Keith Olwell and Elizabeth Kiehner

A Record of life
by Owen Gatley and Luke Jinks