Schleifstein.net

Mike Is 30

Originally uploaded by schleifnet

So, Sunday was a double whammy. My first father’s day and my 30th birthday. We had a laid back day mostly due to the double blowout on Saturday (barbecue party at the house followed by really really latenight quartering by mike, troy and david). The cake above is pure cookie with customer spinkles for writing. And it’s all gone now (so good, cookies).

Anyway, we had a lot of fun and ended the day seeing my dad for father’s day and getting choclate cake courtesy of my mom. Of course the grand parents loved seeing the baby.

Unfortunately today started with a starting to get sick mama and an almost starting to get sick baby. cross your fingers that I don’t join them by the end of the week.

Check out the flickr feed for more pics as Mandy posts them. Make us a contact to see all the friends and family only ones.

My Tie

Originally uploaded by schleifnet

So I had to wear a tie to work Thursday last week and when I got home, of course I wasn’t allowed to remove it. Why? Because Annabel decided to start playing with the silkiness and looking a the blue green print.

Speak of ties, this Sunday is a double tie whammy (or at least is will be in a few years). Not only is it my first father’s day ever (woo-hoo), but I enter my third decade. 30 years is a long time to be around, here’s to a few more.

If the weather allows I’ll be partying it up in the Quarter Saturday night on my last night of my twenties (after barbecuing in the backyard with friends and kids).

lafreniere park

Originally uploaded by schleifnet

Figured you guys might want some more content over here, so here’s a nice leafy texture from the ground in Lafreniere Park (pre-k). I was wondering, how cool would this look blown up and printed on canvas and hung up in the lobby of a huge office building. Like a big strange modern art piece…

Anyway, baby’s good, baby mama’s good, house is ok… talk to ya soon.

on the floor - Originally uploaded by schleifnet

Update from a proud daddy and mama: Just wanted all of you to know, Annabel is scootching all over the place. Everyday we giggle as she zip zips around the floor with her inch worm style of almost crawling. Recently, Annabel started singing and playing piano as well…let me explain. She started saying ‘bah bah’ a month ago and then discovered the joy of having her tongue in the air. This led to a tongue out bah or LA and now we enjoy the vocal stylings of the best la-la-er in the world. As to the piano, well Mandy brought out my really old electric keyboard (I think its from junior high, 1992ish) and Annabel has been banging away on the keys ever since. It started as eerie music with a baby on top of the low end of the keys and then migrated to rumbas and more as she found the demo and auto-accompaniment buttons. Can’t wait to see her recording contract in the near future.More to come…

Apparently a juicy picture I took of some wonderful Louisiana Strawberries got noticed by a new site about going green in New Orleans. Their page on NOLA Locavores features the pic and some interesting news on the state of eating local to go green.

Makes sense, right? If you eat locally produced food less CO2 will be released and less gas used since the goods don’t have to travel as far.

The photo was uploaded to Flickr at 10 Feb ‘07, 8.42pm CST PST by schleifnet.

See a larger version at Flickr.

EDIT: just an FYI, the pic was used with my permission. The webmaster contacted me via flickr and since the site is going to be non-profit and the owner had an ok record on flickr. So I said ok.

post test in the new upgraded version of wordpress… I got this pic on harrison ave in lakeview (search blogging new orleans for the full story… i think i should start blogging about personal stuff again and maybe post some art too… what do you think?

ps: congrats to kevin and andrea!!

After my first four semesters as an art major using mostly digital media, it was pretty apparent that I was going to be a web designer when I grew up but I wanted more, I wanted to program, I wanted to learn… Actionscript! While trying to come up with an idea for a senior semester project Flash MX was released. One of the major changes in this release was the ‘Settings…’ menu (found by right clicking [PC] or control clicking [MAC] inside a Flash movie). This menu selection brings up a Flash player settings window that includes the camera and microphone permissions settings. The user can allow their computer connected camera and/or microphone to be accessed via Flash player. What does this mean? Flash Communication Server was not released at first and the camera and microphone features were not listed in any Flash manuals when MX debuted, so I wandered bookstores for weeks looking through Flash books and trying to find the hidden camera and microphone setting meaning. Then inside the Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Actionscript Bible the Camera() object was finally defined. This object allows Flash to access and control a user’s camera in order to facilitate teleconferencing using Flash Communication Server, plus it can even detect motion. The only thing the Camera() object doesn’t seem to do is take ‘still’ photos.
Still photos could allow the developer to add their user to an animation or game and thereby enhance the user experience. But how? First you acquire the camera using the Camera.get() method. This allows the Flash file to access the camera directly. This method with return null if the user has disabled access via the settings menu. If the user has not ever set the access settings for the specific Flash file or web site, they will be prompted on load of the file to either give access to their camera or not. I recommend warning the user way ahead of time that their camera will be accessed. Now you can attach the accessed camera to a Movie Clip in your Flash movie and then animate and adjust the movie clip via Actionscript. Now you are ready to access an undocumented feature via a camera disconnection. Setting the attached camera null leaves a residual image of the last frame grabbed. Why is the feature undocumented? We can only wonder at Macromedia’s ways, but never question…
Click through for a sample photo movie (remember to enable your camera) and a code snippet of what you will need to enable the still photo capability. I do not have Flash communication server and do not say any image associated with the movie.
If you use this in one of your Flash projects please link to my site and give credit where it is due, thanks.
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