Mahar Drygoods.

Adobe Flash 9 Public Alpha provides access to the new ActionScript 3.0 language and the ability to publish to the newly-released Flash Player 9.

• Adobe Flash 9 Public Alpha
• Flash Player 9
• Action Script 3.0 Language Reference

“Gabba Gabba Hey!, the world’s first punk rock musical, takes 18 mini-masterpieces of bliss, longing and despair by seminal New York rockers the RAMONES - including the classics I Wanna Be Sedated, Beat On The Brat, Blitzkrieg Bop, 53rd & 3rd and Sheena Is A Punk Rocker - and weaves them into a postmodern fairy tale about the redeeming power of love. “

The musical is to be performed at KOKO form July 31st to August 5th.

Gabba Gabba Hey!

Yesterday we went to the private view of a major new exhibition from Bill Viola, LOVE/DEATH: The Tristan Project, at Haunch of Venison in London.

I’ve been always a big fan of Viola’s work, and once again, yesterday “I felt in Love” with two of the works exhibited in St. Olave’s College venue, Lover’s Path (2005) and The Fall into Paradise (2005).

The exhibition is showing at Haunch of Venison, London and the former St. Olave’s College, Tooley Street, by Tower Bridge Road, London, SE1 2JR.

From the press release:

Tristan und Isolde is the story of a love so intense and profound that it cannot be contained in the material bodies of the lovers. In order to fully realise their love, Tristan and Isolde must ultimately transcend life itself

Related Links:

• Haunch of Venison
• Exhibition Press Release
• Bill Viola: Artist’s Talk (TATE online)
• Bill Viola, Artist’s Page

(from lifehacker.com)

Looking so much better: the “Tango”. A history of the official World Cup balls here.

Two different ways of organize objects on your desktop:

BumpTop Prototype:

BumpTop Prototype by Anand Agarawala and Ravin Balakrishnan. Keepin’ it Real: Pushing the Desktop Metaphor with Physics, Piles and the Pen. (See video demonstration here)

Update, this link seems to be down. Here’s the video on YouTube.

SphereXP:

The SphereXP is a 3D desktop replacement for Microsoft Windows. Taking the known concept of three-dimensional desktops to its own level.(See video demonstration here)

Pixelsumo Blog:

Pixelsumo is a site devoted to sonic art, audiovisual fusion, physical interaction, open source technologies, hacking video game culture, responsive environments & installations.

Modern Mechanix Blog:

Modern Mechanix, Yesterday’s tomorrow, today. A site filled with an odd selection of vintage B-list advertisements and articles.

A co-production between Less Rain, As:If Film Matters, Bionic Systems, and E-Motion (Stuttgart), for Energie Baden-Württemberg, one of Germany’s largest electric utilities companies.

[UPDATE:]
Flash: Full-Screen Mode
Flash full-screen mode and Flash Player Update 3 Beta 1 (build 9.0.60.120)

This is just an attempt to create a full screen Flash Video piece (original video size 360 x 204), trying to keep a decent quality by using Video.smoothing property

You can see the result here: Full Screen FLV.

You can download the source files here. (The video is not included)

Related Links:

• Full Screen Flash Video - ah yeah, by Stefan (FlashComGuru).

David Bloom has figured out a way to have fragment identifier history in Safari.

Just a Safari fragment identifier history demo

Related Posts:

• Ajax and bookmarking, refreshing and going back.
• Flash: Back Button and Deep Links Topic.

Problem:

In Internet Explorer after the last tabIndex, focus goes to the browser address bar.

Solution:

An easy workaround is to create an empty MovieClip which receives keyboard focus and automatically gives focus to the first selectable (editable) text field, button, or movie clip.

Example:

[flash]http://www.blog.lessrain.com/wp-content/upload/test_01.swf,250,100[/flash]