life according to kathryn

we like to go on evening walks as a family. one of our top destinations is the little park a few blocks away, where as you can see, we make our own fun.

i remember just enough of my high school russian to make sense of this. i'm liking the adjective "rhodeislandskoi".

wow, it feels like a long time since i made anything. i rarely have both hands free, and of course with a small one around i worry much more about toxins than i used to.

so it was super fun today to dye eggs with marcia. we did this every year growing up. i remember always looking forward to it, and loving it, but being usually a little disappointed with my results. not so this year... i think our eggs turned out beautifully. but even more, i treasured having the time to do something creative, and to get to connect with my sister.

note: this is a blog post that i wrote last september, but never posted. well, i just called to book another appointment (for installing a convertible car seat), and was really glad i had saved this info!

matt and i recently took a "caring for you and your infant" class at the hospital. the instructor underlined that many well-meaning parents install infant car seats incorrectly, and that everyone should drive to a police or fire department to have their car seat checked. it sounded sensible to me, so today i decided to call the police and see when they could do it.

first, i called the providence police, and was transferred twice. the third person i spoke to was a ham. i was mid-way through saying that "i am calling to find out about having an infant car seat checked", when he cut me off after the word "infant", and said "you want to find out about having an infant? you should talk to your parents about that." when he finally let me finish, he explained that one needs to be certified to check car seats, and he doesn't have anyone on his staff who is certified. he gave me the number for the rhode island state police.

so i called the state police, and talked to a nice man, who said he would get me the number to call. i asked him what number this was, and he explained that the injury prevention center does all car seat inspections now.

next i called this new number, a woman picked up, i explained what i wanted, and she forwarded me to someone else. finally, this SIXTH person was the right guy, and i scheduled an appointment. is this rhode island? the government in general? why did it take six people for me to make this appointment?

obviously, each person in the chain knew of someone they could ask who would have a better answer to my question. but in the case of public services, i think they should be much easier to find than this. if not on a website, at least in some printed directory at the police station.

after hanging up, i looked up the injury prevention center online and see that it's connected with rhode island hospital, not the police or fire department at all. which makes me wonder, why couldn't the instructor just give us this information directly? i wonder how many other parents go on this wild goose chase. which is why i'm writing a blog post about it. i hope that the above link helps someone else find the information faster than i did.

I just worked my way through the Create your first Facebook application with Flex tutorial on the Adobe Developer Connection. I'm not sure if they uploaded this article in a rush, but quite a few of the figures did not show what the captions indicated they should. I know my way around Flex Builder so it didn't phase me, but I imagine it could be confusing for developers new to the IDE.

Also, I included the .swc in my project as the article suggested, and was also disappointed with the code hinting for functions. The arguments are all named arg0, arg1 etc. For example you can easily see that to create a new FacebookSessionUtil you need two strings and a loaderInfo, but it would be better if the arguments were named to indicate that the first string is the API key, and that the second one is the application secret. In the course of the tutorial there is a call to facebook.login() without passing an argument, where an arg0:Boolean is required. I would have liked for the code hinting to tell me what the boolean was for, without having to open up the source to see it's offline_access:Boolean. Given that the source has good parameter names, I wonder why the .swc doesn't. In future projects I guess I'll use the source instead of the .swc.

I did like how the author guides the developer to use breakpoints and look at the data returned from the server in the variables panel. Above issues aside, it's a good, simple introduction. And I'm pleased that Adobe is going to maintain an up-to-date API - no more wondering if the library you pick is going to keep working.

this weekend it feels like spring has sprung, and not just because of daylight saving time.  i've taken advantage of the 60 degree weather to go on a couple of great walks in lincoln woods and down blackstone boulevard.

another sure sign of spring, my class at RISD|CE is up and running. it is nice to be in the classroom again, and i'm excited to see the cool sites that the new crop of students will make.

recently i started a providence flash user group. though i live in a small state, i knew i must not be the only person interested in flash, actionscript, flex and air in the area... and it was about time to get us all together for some shop talk and beer.

after contacting adobe to begin the process of creating the group, but before starting things up in earnest, my contact information went up on the adobe groups site. with that one step alone i started hearing from people, curious about when the group's first event would be. i was thrilled to meet another accomplished actionscript developer this way, who agreed to co-lead the group. we are both pretty excited about the potential for this group, and are having fun planning each event.

at our first meeting i presented about what's new in flash cs4 (the motion editor, 2.5d, inverse kinematics, the sound and kuler panels) and at our next meeting on 3/19 gerald will be giving a gentle introduction to actionscript tweening engines. we're still feeling out the mix of design and development that we'll discuss, based on the interests of the attendees.

in addition, i've sought out and attained a couple of discount codes for group members for software at the adobe store, and for the flash on tap conference. i also want to shout out some thanks to RISD for allowing us to meet on campus. i hope that over time, the group will become a more and more valuable place for sharing information and networking with peers. any and all designers/developers, from hobbyists through professionals, are welcome to join us!

this week i installed flash cs4 and began playing with the new bones tool and motion editor.  while my strengths are slanted toward development, i still enjoy and think it's important to keep current with the flash authoring environment...  especially as my job sometimes entails taking something designed in flash, and recreating the animations in flex.  if you don't see it above, you can see my experiment here: ikballet

from what i had heard, the bones tool was supposed to be super easy to use. in a way it is, and in a way it's not.  as long as i had a closed shape, it was not hard to create the bones and joints.  and pulling the end joint to affect all of the joints in between is super cool.  but i found the armature layer hard to work with.  

here are some of the quirks i discovered:

• you can use bones within simple shapes, or to connect multiple movie clips.  the fact that the bone tool works differently in different scenarios is something to keep in mind.
• you can't edit a shape after defining its bones.  at one point i thought i should fill the arms and legs to make the animations look better, but since they had already been converted to armature layers it was not possible to edit the drawings.
• there is less granular control over frames.  for example, it isn't possible to select a subset of frames.  when you click on the armature layer, it highlights a long stretch of the timeline that i don't see a way to override.
• if you have two keyframes with different poses, and create a keyframe in between them, the new keyframe is not a copy of the first keyframe.  instead, it is a different pose representing the progress a tween would have between the two surrounding keyframes.  i found this maddening as i could not see a way to put the character in a pose and hold her there for a while before continuing on to the next pose.  
• the context menu that i saw when i right-clicked a keyframe showed options that i would have liked to use, such as "copy pose", that were always grayed-out.  under what circumstances are those options available?
• it was hard to anticipate how flash would allow me to manipulate the joints.  even with rotation enabled without constraints on all joints (the default), it sometimes wouldn't let me rotate a joint the way i wanted to.

all in all i think IK is a great tool, but one that will take some practice with to get the hang of.  i plan to keep playing... perhaps this time working with movieclips instead of simple shapes.

max pennants, originally uploaded by kathryn_rotondo.

as i did last year, i'd like to take a minute to recognize 2008 and declare it complete.

in 2008 i was pregnant and give birth to a wonderful little boy! my husband and i like to say that max is double-stuffed with awesomes. i wonder why in the world i waited so long to have a baby. i thoroughly enjoyed all the months of happy anticipation and preparation, and feel lucky for all the support of family and friends following his birth.

even though the big life change of starting a family takes the cake for the year, i also saw the publication of my first book, taught actionscript at risd|ce, sold over fifty items on etsy (despite taking a printing hiatus during the pregnancy) and got rid of one pesky gallbladder.

2008 was a big, beautiful year of growth for me. i wish for 2009 to be a healthy year for my family. i made no resolutions. being a new mom, i'm going to try to be flexible and take everything as it comes. i'm usually a planner so this goes somewhat against my grain, but i'm finding it an essential skill for parenting. in that spirit, i am excited for all of the unknown delights this year will bring. hello 2009!

 

loper christmas 2008, originally uploaded by kathryn_rotondo.

from my happy little family to you and yours.