I ran into performance issues while trying to use a filter on the DisplayList in ActionScript 3 this week. I wanted a nice, gradient dropshadow on a large UI component, but loading in a big, expensive Bitmap image to do the trick just didn’t seem appropriate. So I decided to use the built-in GlowFilter class.
Then my framerate went to hell.
What I was doing wrong was adding the filter to a DisplayObject that had other interactive children: in my case, SimpleButtons. SimpleButtons have over- and down-states, which apparently cause the GlowFilter to recalculate itself frequently while the mouse is over the buttons.
To illustrate, here’s the component:
See the subtle dropshadow around the curved surface? That’s our culprit!
The fix was to make a separate component with the filter applied to it, then add it as a child to the component, instead of applying the filter directly to the component itself.
The rule: Don’t apply BitmapFilters to objects with dynamic children!
(If you know more about what’s going on here, please leave comments. This is mostly educated guesswork on my part about what’s happening and Adobe seems to have a problem with documenting all of the strange quirks of their platform.)
We closed the doors to the Lab this week. Looking at the emptied space was pretty sad, but we have nothing but fond memories of the place. So many great people and projects graced our makeshift office during its brief existence this year, and I’m grateful for everyone’s support.
We simply ran out of time as a company! As a bootstrapping startup, you’re always in a race against the clock. The modest revenue streams we’ve created over the past year and a half just aren’t enough to sustain us, so it’s time to try something new. Snowcap Labs will not be taking on new work, and each of us is exploring our own options for what to do next.
That said, I don’t exactly want to go fly a cubicle for 60 hours a week, now. So I’m evaluating my options (and there are a lot of really great projects to get involved with in Atlanta right now), but ideally I will find something that I’m excited to work on and that can offset my personal cash flow needs.
If you’d like to discuss your cool project with me, or you just want to shoot the breeze, get ahold of me (via Twitter or just leave a comment) soon and we’ll schedule a lunch or coffee (or even drinks!)
Emotional as all of this is, I see this as a good thing. There are no hard feelings, we’ll each get residual checks going forward, and I’ve still got our (wicked!) web video recording software at my disposal. I’m very excited about being Atlanta’s newest entrepreneurial “free agent”, and you can bet I’m already thinking about how to get into a new coworking situation!
9 out of 10 Atlanta entrepreneurs agree, Atlanta’s investment ecosystem is sorely lacking in the area we need it most: small investments in good ideas. We aren’t talking about millions or even hundreds of thousands of dollars; that’s WAY more than most of us need! We also aren’t talking about mature businesses with great projections; these business don’t look good on spreadsheets because we’re still building them!
So we banded together to create START Atlanta, a non-profit to fill exactly this void. The goal of START Atlanta is to get the funding and support that Atlanta’s young startups need to cultivate their ideas, build great teams, and “graduate” them to the next level (whatever they define as the “next level”.) We will achieve this by bringing the community together and creating a site that acts as a hub for investors and high-net-worth individuals to match up with early-stage companies and entrepreneurs. We hope that low friction and high visibility will foster the kind of growth Atlanta’s startup sector desperately needs.
We’ve already arranged some great sponsors and excellent buzz around the idea, now we just need to build the site! So we’re holding a weekend event to do just that. So if you’re an investor, an entrepreneur, a developer, a designer, a blogger, or a potential sponsor, we’d like you to participate!
The first night is dedicated to listening to the community. We want the ultimate customers (entrepreneurs and investors) to participate in helping us gather requirements for the site. What functionality do you need? What features do you wish other investment sites offered?
Everyone is welcome on this night. We want a spirited discussion that sets the stage for the whole endeavor. As investors and entrepreneurs talk out their mutual needs, legal and insurance will be offering advice, developers and designers will be gathering requirements, and you lovely bloggers will be covering the birth of this magical new entity in loving detail.
Development Jam: Saturday-Sunday, September 20th-21st, All Day
The rest of the weekend is devoted to construction of the actual site. The development team is made up entirely of local designers and developers, many of whom are also (of course) full-time entrepreneurs, volunteering their time, talent, and effort to seeing this vision realized. We have all manner of product management roles filled, and with many Startup Weekend Alumni in attendance the weekend promises to produce the amazing results we’ve come to expect from this community.
Location: The Appcelerator Offices in Buckhead
Here is the map to the address, but i understand that directions from there are still pretty difficult. The best i can tell you is cross-reference the map with this image, and be nice to security:
If you have any questions or concerns, just drop me a comment!
Sorry i haven’t been blogging! Lots of things are coming down the pipe right now, they’ve just got me too busy to blog. I may as well let you in on them, anyway:
we’re developing the “World’s First Video-Only Dating Site”, and we’re going to need testers soon!
Also, i downloaded Breath of Fire 2 for the SNES on my Wii last week, so that has definitely been cutting into the time i could be spending blogging. I’m a sucker for old-school RPGs, what can i say?
Cara downloaded the Wordpress app for her iPhone, and i’m really impressed. It lets you fully manage multiple blogs with a nice interface, including access to the camera (ie embedded phlogging!), which she used on this post.
I keep assuming that when i get an iPhone, i’ll suddenly get a better grip on my information overload problems. Fat chance.
Cara and I are currently on vacation to visit her family in Shawano, WI. We’ll be staying in a beautiful lake house, with the weather feeling mighty fine compared to back home in ATL. I’m going to try to post videos from as many places as possible during our adventure.
Here we are in Cincinnati on a 3-hour layover on the way to Green Bay: Vacation in Wisconsin
Now we’re at the lakehouse, hanging out with Uncle Frank, doing some cooking, and enjoying the lovely weather. I tried to create a video showcasing all of these things, but my internet is just too spotty! Bummer, i really wanted to post a lot of video during the trip. Maybe when we go into town there will be better access.
A couple videos of me sitting in the bed of Chad’s truck on the way home from the lab. Nothing terribly interesting, just playing with my new 3G wireless card and data plan. I really need to bring my camcorder so i can take better action shots on the way home (or broadcast it live, even!)
UPDATE: This set of instructions is for Version 1.0 of the plugin
In your WordPress admin panel, click “Plugins”, then click “Edit” next to the Seesmic plugin. Now you’ll be presented with the code for the Seesmic plugin. All you really need to do is find all instances of “clear:both;” and remove them entirely.
The problem is the way that some themes are written. It has to do with how your sidebars are implemented, that is, if they use floats or not. The “clear” CSS attribute causes your Seesmic videos to appear below your sidebars, which generally means it just slams a huge amount of whitespace above the first Seesmic embed on any page.
Clear out the “clear” tags, and its gone! (make sure to clear them ALL, or some strange things will happen)
UPDATE: This set of instructions is for Version 0.1.5 (the latest version at this date)
They’ve moved the “clear:both;” stylings into the seesmic-wp.css file in the base of your Seesmic plugin directory, and that file isn’t easily editable from within the Wordpress interface. You still just need to find and delete them all, but the process will be dependent on how you do your FTPing and file management on your server. Probably you’ll just want to open the file on your local machine and reupload it.
Sorry I had my facts wrong, I had no idea they had updated the plugin!
I’d still like to get some feedback from the developers, because we technically shouldn’t be going into plugin code and changing things willy-nilly like this, but this hack seems benign enough. The official place to talk about this is the Seesmic tech support page at Get Satisfaction, and Loic himself assured me (in the comments) that they will take a look at this, so perhaps some feedback is forthcoming!
At this month’s investment club meeting, we launched our website proper over at BenHurInvestments.com. Much more than Just Another WordPress Blog, this site is dedicated to the ongoing investment activities of our club. Our motto is “Empowering Personal Investment Through Group Education.”
What this means is that, above all, the point is to learn and teach, not to immediately get rich (but someday!) So we necessarily create a lot of great artifacts, such as stockpresentationvideos and investment guidance commentary, so now we have a place to put them. We even share a spreadsheet with all of our current and past holdings! (We’ve been beating the market for more than 2 years, by the way…)
We would also like to eventually get around to opening up more information about how to start an investment club yourself, such as incorporation, choosing good members, managing the funds in various accounts, and basic stock research methodology.
I am particularly excited about the blog because it gives me a better platform for my stock videos than just leaving them on my channels at YouTube or Vimeo. Not that there’s nothing wrong with those sites, it just makes good sense to have all of our videos about stocks in one place.
So what are you waiting for? Go grab the RSS feed and stay ahead of the market with BenHur Investments!
