I guess the timeliness of this post is a testament to how busy I’ve been with moving back to Pennsylvania (that’s best left for a subsequent post), transferring a corporation, and working. Anyway, I thought I’d share a few shots of the lesser-seen aspects of the last game at Yankee Stadium. It definitely trumped the vibe of the All-Star Game in terms of sentimentality, but there were definitely undercurrents of reaction to the clearly Capitalist move across the street.

Riot police were there in full-force following the final out. I saw one missing chair–an attempt at a free souvenir–on the way out.

By the fifth inning, anything with “Final Day” on it was gone. So were most of snacks in the condiments stands.

I definitely wanted to catch a tour of baseball’s cathedral before its date with the wrecking ball, and since tour tickets have been sold out all season I followed the Yankees.com instructions, woke up early, headed to the stadium, got in line at 9 am, and got a ticket for the noon tour (from what I heard they’ll probably give tours after the season ends and up until the stadium gets torn down in March 2009).

The tour enabled me to finally make it down to Monument Park and the dugout, although I was a little disappointed to not get into the clubhouse. I went on a day the Yankees weren’t playing, but since their next home game would be the following day they wouldn’t let anyone beyond the dugout. I was really hoping to see some of the hidden gems displayed in this NY Times slideshow, but I guess I’ll have to settle for what’s on the Web.

There’s been an online petition to save the Yankee Stadium, notably headed by Linda Ruth Tosetti, Babe Ruth’s granddaughter. With all the money involved and the Bronx’s committment to recover park area, I doubt the city will give the idea consideration. Once demolished, this ballpark is to be replaced with a city park and three baseball fields.

Instead of petitioning against the inevitable, I think they ought to petition New York City to retain the original ballpark’s footprint as one of the three baseball fields (although this conclusion’s chances seem grim as well). It’s a long shot, given the size and location of the existing field, but wouldn’t it be great for kids to be able to play on the same field as the legends of the game?

Daphyn had been bugging me for awhile to get a new digital camera for her (since I loathe playing photographer at family events) and I kept pushing back because Canon strayed away from pocket cameras with manual settings. When her birthday came around earlier this month I almost bought her a Panasonic Lumix–but discovered the Canon SD 790 IS.

It seems like there’s been fireworks going off every night for the past few nights (either Jersey City or Battery Park), and I took the opportunity to borrow my wife’s new camera and take it for a test drive.

Sadly, RAW settings have been made exclusive to SLRs since I last used a pocket camera. I also found myself bumbling around the controls in the dark while taking the above shot. Overall, though, I’m impressed with how far these small devices have come: the digital macro is a nice touch and the accelerometer that automatically rotates previously shot photos is nice.

Thanks to those of you that came out to Wednesday’s FlashCodersNY meeting. As promised, here’s the outline with links of what I covered at the meeting.

1. The First Step: Choosing a Target Device
   • Good Advice: Start with a Base Build, then port (advice via Adobe dev article)
   • Covered Adobe Device Central
   • Check out the MOBI developer guide

2. Creating a Flash Lite Application
   
   • AS2.0 support – Flash Lite Language Reference
   • No _global.setTimeout();
   • fscommand2
   • Toolkits
     • Oxygen
     • Shuriken

3. Flash Lite Memory Issues
   • Garbage Collection runs a little differently
   • Runs every 60 seconds or when application memory increases by 20%
   • Use fscommand2(“GetFreePlayerMemory”) to check memory on specific device
   • Garbage collection can’t be triggered
   • Explanation of Dynamic Heap
   • Inherent memory leak with attach/removal of MovieClips
   • Memory Management by the book
   • Chumby has 8 MB of memory, plus widget refresh
4. Optimization Techniques – a Few Tips
   
   • Design
     • Determine target hardware
     • Minimize font usage
     • Use _sans
     • Avoid bold, italic
     • Don’t embed fonts—consider bitmaps
     • Find a balance between bitmaps and vector
     • Don’t compress movies
     • 12 – 15 fps
   • Actionscript
     • Simplify your code
     • delete or null objects no longer used. No
       need to do this on instance/method level.
     • Clear listeners
     • Condense package structure
     • Avoid inheritance
     • Minimize Math, String parsing
     • Test on actual device often!
5. Deployment
   
   • Bluetooth
   • Nokia Device Browser – a little-known yet handy tool
     
   • Adobe dev article: Creating SIS Files Manually
     
     • Uses makesis and Symbian SDK
     • Strictly places SWF in appropriate
       directory for Flash Lite standalone player to find file
   • Adobe dev article: Making Launcher + Icon
   • Installers
     • SWF2Go
     • Swf2Sis (discontinued in 3^rd Ed.)
     • Free Installers
       • Janus
       • KuneriLite
   • Web Runtime Widget (WRT)
     • Overview
     • How to package a Flash Movie Widget Tutorial
     • See my previous blog post on using a meta-refresh from MainHTML to avoid focus issues
6. Resources
   
   • Adobe’s Mobile Site
   • Forum Nokia
   • Engadget Mobile (for mobile industry news)
   • Flash Mobile Group (based in Boston, has listserv)
   • Sony Ericsson’s Flash Lite Site
   • Nokia Tips and Tricks
   • Adobe’s Wiki
   • http://blog.pikkle.com/
   • http://www.biskero.org/

7. Flash + Mobile’s Future
   • iPhone
   • Open Screen Project
   • Adobe AIR

I’ve struck again, this time posting on Wikipedia a picture of Phil Hughes during his last 2008 start (prior to his trip to the DL). I had a few action shots but figured I’d post something a little different this time. Who knows, maybe I’ll replace it if I ever sit on the third base
side (since he’s a righty) or if I treat myself to Box seats (doubtful, considering NYC prices).

I like Hughes, and, despite the rough start, think it was still the smart move to not trade him for Santana.

I definitely think it’s cool he’s got the guts to maintain a blog through the season; it provides a unique perspective of the game for the fans. I will say I’m surprised superstition hasn’t set in with the number change from #65 to #34, and I also wonder if the youngster pitchers (Joba, Ian, etc., who from what I read are gamers) think of playing themselves in MLB 2K8.

Between some intensive game programming for the past two weeks I’ve spent the tail end of the week playing tour guide to friends who’ve come up for the weekend. Yesterday, I dragged my sister-in-law Anna over to the MoMA, rediscovered Wyeth’s Christina’s World (I searched all over the Brandywine Museum in Chaddsford the other week for it), visited Design and the Elastic Mind (it was definitely weird seeing so many ITP alum I knew in the exhibit), and found this disgustingly-complex piece of origami (above).Oh yeah, and as always, I got furious over people using their camera flashes on fragile works of art. There’s plenty of light! Read the manual, people!

This is a Nintendo Game Boy that is enshrined on the second floor of the Nintendo World Store in NYC. Why is it enshrined? Well, it survived a fire during the Gulf War and came home still tickin’.

I had the opportunity to visit it (once again) yesterday as I was doing a favor for a friend in Central PA–inquiring about the availability of Nintendo Wiis.

Fortunately, things have changed since I acquired my Wii in December 2006; people no longer wait overnight outside of Rockefeller Center for these consoles. Things haven’t changed entirely, though, as I was told that the wait still exists–the line starts two hours before the store opens, and they sell out every morning within an hour.

How do they get new shipments in daily? Are they rationed out? Perhaps the upcoming X-Files movie will answer these questions…

*SHAMELESS PLUG*

I’ll be presenting leading a discussion on migrating from Actionscript 2.0 to Actionscript 3.0 at tomorrow evening’s FlashCoderNY (FCNY) meeting. Meetings are at 7 pm Wednesdays in the basement of Think Coffee (248 Mercer between 3rd and 4th).

I say ‘leading a discussion’ because FCNY meetings tend to migrate towards the group interest, however, I will share some AS3 examples I’ve created. Anyways, I always learn something when I attend FCNY and invite you to come check it out.

Did this place even need to advertise? Seriously, there was a line in front of the store for days after it opened, but every design nerd in the NYC area blogged about it. I’m surprised I wasn’t amidst a reunion when I went into the store…

Probably the most anticipated presentation at MobileCamp 2 was on Google’s Android’s barcode reader, named ZXing (short for Zebra Crossing). Despite the presentation , there wasn’t much to show since Android’s SDK was under wraps until the following Monday. The presentation was pretty much a call to open-source developers to help with Google’s barcode reader.

Google’s decision to use the open-source Webkit was clearly a smart move. It’s already used by Nokia’s S60 and Apple’s iPhone. I am keeping my fingers crossed that:

1. Google and supporting carriers will be smart enough to include ZXing in factory installs. There’s no way that technology will pick up on this side of the Atlantic unless the learning curve/pain of software installation is removed for the basic user.
2. That the continued use of Webkit by phone software developers will eventually phase out WAP sites, mobile CSS, and that .mobi domain.

Based on video of Android, it looks more user-friendly than Symbian OS, but lacks the integration of hardware to software celebrated on the iPhone (so far). Will it revolutionize the smart phone industry since developers can openly develop for the OS? Possibly, however, this is something that’s been offered on Symbian for years, so it’s not really anything new.

An attendee at barcamp also posed a good question–how will one upgrade versions of Android? Apple does have a tightly-integrated and easy-to-approach process through iTunes (albeit locked down to developers). Perhaps Google should next consider creating a desktop application that syncs and manages cell phone content with the desktop.