What happens in Amsterdam…

… doesn’t stay in Amsterdam. In fact it returns all the way to Kortrijk in a big bus with a lot of exhausted people. FITC was great. We had a great time in Amsterdam, although the weather was pretty damn cold.
It’s the second time I attend FITC Amsterdam and again I’m a very delighted I did. I met lots of new people, had a few very interesting conversations and I saw lots of cool shit (which is in fact why I am there).

Day 1

I thought it would be a good day to keep my habits going in Amsterdam, so I turned up 15 minutes late for the beginning of the first day. Happily I didn’t miss much new stuff. In fact, I didn’t miss a single thing.

Ever since I started going to conferences, they always began with the Adobe Keynote. Today would be no different. Adobe would come on stage and talk about their latest numbers and how fast the latest version of the Flash Player is spreading among the internet’s users. 2 years ago, I would listen with full attention and be amazed by all those details. However on monday: I couldn’t be bothered. It’s great how fast the player is spreading but it’s really not worth half of the duration of the Keynote…
The rest of the keynote would be about the Flash Player on mobile devices. I think it’s a great step forward and I’m looking forward to future development on that aspect of the platform but the guys on stage just couldn’t interest me. So I left the keynote early. Read the rest of this entry »

Happy new year to all of you!

Last year I went for a cheesy ‘Happy new year’ and ‘I wish you all the best of luck during 2009′ and that’s where I stopped… Right now I think it’s a bit silly… So, let’s try a more geeky version:
Happy new year, guys (and gals). I wish you loads of luck in the coming year! May every challenge in 2010 bring you new knowledge, new insights, new possibilities and more faith in yourself.

At the same time I would like to thank everybody who every paid me a visit here, who supported me during my projects and experiments,  who commented, … Hell, everybody who has ever visited my site! This might sound pretty cheesy but let’s face it: With millions of websites out there, hundreds of thousands of Flash-related blogs, having that much visitors really delights me. People reading my blog – giving me an audience to express my thoughts, talk about my experiences and opinions- really means a lot to me. I really want to thank you for that!

A new year always starts a bit empty to me… The only thing on your plate are your new year’s resolutions. So let’s take a look back at what happend during my 2009:

• I finally joined Facebook
• I went to Denmark
• In October, Dorien and I were together for 3 great years.
• I updated Playr to V2
• Playr got downloaded 1 456 times
• I shot 76 592 pictures with my DSLR
• I shot 48 timelapses
• I uploaded 230 photos to Flickr
• I uploaded 17 videos to Vimeo
• I wrote 3 344 Tweets on Twitter
• I posted 520 Facebook status updates.
• I gave a run at 156 experiments
• I managed to complete 107 experiments
• 12 of those made it to a post on this blog
• I wrote a 45 blogposts
• I wrote a tutorial for the magazine Publish
• I released Dooodl, a fun Wordpress plugin
• Dooodl got downloaded 1 876 times
• Using Dooodl on this blog, visitors drew 588 doodles (Thanks for every single one of them!)
• The busiest day on my blog was september 24th, when I hit 829 unique visitors after having published and released the Dooodl plugin on the Wordpress repository
• I got a total of 62 924 unique visitors
• Those visitors left me 265 comments
• I finally got myself a Fisheye lens for my DSLR
• I ran 170,8km using Nike+
• I tagged 173 projects I ran into online as ‘PFS‘ (Pretty F#cking Sweet)
• I faved 185 pictures on Flickr
• I wrote one amazing and very interesting statistical report about my life online
• and I spent waaaaay too much time on computers

And that’s it! Let’s see what 2010 will have in for me… Enjoy the ride, guys and gals!
See you soon, I hope.

</2009>

Let’s face it. Everyone does it at some point in their lives. I did it once and it turned out to actually be a long list and by the end of the year I checked off every single item. Seen as how things go right now I think I should do it again.
If you haven’t figured it out by now: I’m talking about a list of things I’d like to do in 2010.

Here goes!

1. One of the coolest things I did this year was doing all kinds of experiments. Not only did I learn tons of stuff off that, I also got to pulverize the limits of possibilities I had about a year ago. Ever since I started experimenting the way I did I learned that if I can think it, I can make it.
   Seen as this is 2010, the magic number is 10.
   This year I’ll be creating 10 big experiments (something that really makes me scratch my head) that teach me at least 1 new thing.
2. For 3 years I’ve been saying it, and goddamn it: This year it’s gonna happen. I’ll get my head around a major AS3 3D engine and start actively using them.
3. The last few weeks I’ve been looking into RED5/FMS and socket-programming in AS3/PHP. In 2010 I’ll learn how to create serverside applications for real-time Flash clients. I want to be able to do anything: Save every message send to the server in a database, save video streams on the server, serve livestreams (audio/video 1-to-many Flash apps), serve streaming media… You know: anything (from now on referred to as ‘the business‘).
4. Create a movie and submit it to the local video-wall. (For those of you who don’t know: Kortrijk has a public video wall on the market place. Anyone can submit videos. If they like it they’ll show it on there for some time)
5. Rewrite Playr from scratch. I’ve learned a lot of new stuff which should enable me to create an even better Playr.
6. Push out a new version of Dooodl, the Wordpress fun plugin for your visitors.

That’s it!
The 6 things I really want to make happen this year.
Is it too geeky? Should I add some others too? You think I should add some others…
Alright… I’ll add some others… Read the rest of this entry »