I know my cheap puns may not go down too well, but as the outside temperatures are slowly but steadily rising to a predicted 36 degrees on the weekend, it really feels like what the heat wave must be after a nuclear bomb has been set off. I’m just an inch away from putting ice cubes in odd places… Hopefully, we will never have to find out what such a bomb aftermath feels like for real, nor the nuclear winter thereafter. Anyway, on the matter of nuking I can proudly speak of some experience, as I have managed to produce some leaky PHP functions in the ongoing struggle to improve my web sites, which is far too easy for my taste. Staring at that white browser window always makes you think WTF? and then you realize that you’ve forgotten some semicolon somewhere. Makes me really wish PHP had some built-in error handling like JavaScript and was more forgiving.

Yepp, our German boys just wiped the floor (or more precisely, the lawn) with England‘s team and is now moving on to the quarter finals. Will be a tough call, though, no matter whether they will play against Mexico or Argentina. In Formula 1, Vettel scored a victory, too, which isn’t that bad, either, given that he has been rather unlucky this year so far due to lots of technical problems. While watching all this, I also managed to snatch the fourth sea chart in Zelda – The Phantom Hourglass on my DSi, which makes me feel even better. That Temple of the Ocean King is really some nasty piece. I’m just wondering why those games have gotten so tough over the years. You know, back then I loved Zelda on the Super Nintendo and Game Boy and they felt more relaxed… Inbetween, I’m working a bit on the website as you may already have guessed from some of this week’s posts and try to finish up some After Effects projects that have been catching dust for a while. The program’s inability to store persistent variables for expressions causes me quite some head scratching currently, as I find it hard (and inefficient) needing to construct additional loops around my code just to get it to re-evaluate over and over again. Life would be so much easier if I could just do the grab it – store it – shove it with my values *sigh*.

More fun from the deep end of web development… Trust me, revisiting your PHP templates every few months is potentially quite confusing. What always gets me, is that WordPress is so inconsequently structured. It’s really like they couldn’t make up their minds about clean external configurability and are imposing pre-formatted HTML constructs and CSS element names where you really want things to look differently and use your own stuff. You know, what does "pp" in your style sheet really mean and these sorts of things. Ultimately you still end up digging into their default includes instead of just working with your theme files, and that can be quite dangerous and you really spend some time just searching for those tiny two line global function calls to polish them up. *argh* Even with your own comments, you then spend another good load of time to figure out how it all goes together. No fun at all!

It’s now 30 years of the World Wide Web, everybody goes crazy over HTML5 vs. Flash and yet, in the end, putting together web content still sucks. We are still here, elaborately crafting hierarchies of tags in the vain hopes that our pages look good in every browser, use the legacy GIF format for displaying animated icons and cursors, dabble with JavaScript all the time just to get us some photo galleries… Now I knew what I was getting into when I designed my first web page in 1995, but going back and working on my current site always makes me wonder if I will live to see the day when Dreamweaver really will be smart enough to handle all kinds of PHP and allow full access to all CSS properties. and yes, it also would help hugely, if Photoshop, now also 20 years old, would not require you to go into 4 level deep modal dialogs just to edit a gradient layer style while building icons. What a major hokum!

Now if I hadn’t lent my 7 year old Canon PowerShot cam to my brother, I could show you a picture, but since I can’t, this Google search will have to do and hopefully some cute little green dragon children’s alarm clock is staring at you as it is staring at me as I’m writing this, but that is really not the kind of monster I’m talking about. More specifically I’m talking about the release of GenArts’ Monsters GT suite, which is now available for your After Effects pleasure. Especially if you are looking for something a little more extraordinary, it may be worth to give it a try…

Whoa…! Perhaps one of the few advantages of getting a bit older is that you don’t hang around too much in certain fashion outlets. This not only greatly reduces the chances of getting aggravated when you realize that half the people in the disco are wearing the same H&M T-shirt you thought was so fitting for your type, but apparently it also reduces the risk of getting caught up in a hostage situation…

*Star Trek – Deep Space Nine, ep. 6, season 7

You know, it’s kinda lucky for us that Adobe isn’t in the business of meddling with genetics or else they would probably turn us all into little Vorta or Jem’Hadar and implant some worshiping genes for Flash. Since they can’t, they obviously have to convince us on other grounds and so the monstrosity that is Flash Player gets some performance enhancements, some security fixes and new features every now and then, as has happened today. Naturally, those enhancements also ripple through to Adobe AIR, but that one has written "fail" written all over it. At least to this day I haven’t seen a widget/ app that I would want to have on my computers and the lack of content makes the whole thing as attractive to me like men with hairy asses… Anyway, for reasons all know we can’t possibly do without Flash until HTML5 gets its feet off the ground as a finalized standard, so it would at least be smart to update this little piece of software, if you are a reqular visitor of sites using it, especially in light of the recent wave of not so harmless exploits.

Yes, it’s been a week since I last added something to this blog, but currently there is not much happening that would be worth reporting or at least that I would be allowed to tell you. I have mostly recovered from my cold, but when I cycle to work, I still feel like puking out my lungs. Amazing how quickly the human body degenerates… After weeks of rain and bad weather it is now friggin’ hot and equally, the effect it has on thinking straight is one more sign of how fragile the human mind is. If it would help, I possibly could put some ice cubes in my undies, which is all I’m wearing, but as we all know that may have other ill effects. Incidentally, I might be a bit more refreshed, if I had a press accreditation to visit ILA in Berlin. From what I hear, those exhibition tents and hangars are well conditioned to keep all this sensitive equipment safe. Well, one of these days…

A news of some concern this week was Todd Kopriva, current head honcho on the After Effects Community Help pointing out that the search for a successor to his position is on (move here, type in 04152 as the job reference number). Now things at my current employer are still looking somewhat bleak and trying something new in my life generally sounding like not too bad an idea, I was actually tempted for a moment to pick up this job, but I just couldn’t find it in my heart to apply. The prospect of moving to the States is a bit too overwhelming and while I may have some sort of fun doing all this After Effects nerd stuff for my own web site, doing it all day does sound a little dull. I still enjoy the creative side of things too much and I just don’t see how I would have the freedom and time to keep doing that. I also do not particularly care for "for 2 or more Adobe products and technologies". as if taking care of one product in 7 languages weren’t enough to worry about. On the other hand, according to the "A Day in the Life" video there’s lots of cycling people working at big red A. Now imagine, San Francisco being the gay "capital" of the US plus some guy with a nice well trained ass, possibly working in the office next to me…. What opportunities! But well, I digress. Chances are it’s never gonna happen. Or should I? I’m really torn.

Being down with a cold again and trying to survive the few hours at work and my usual household chores, it so happens that I’m spending a considerable part of the day in my bed (currently with sand brown blankets, ivory sheets and an ivory and chocolate brown pillow, if you must know) either just dozing away the time with the occasional daydream about some nicely shaped guy in his undies lying next to me or on the other hand, staring at the TV with my half-working brain. It so happens that I was doing the latter yesterday evening, watching Conspiracy (fantastic HBO TV movie about the Wannsee conference and the starring Kenneth Brannagh, Stanley Tucci and several other great British/ American actors) on DVD again, when my TV set decided it was time to say goodbye after 7 years and it wouldn’t go down quietly. Just the opposite. With a striking flash of lightning caused by the high voltage converter going down it bombed out the fuse and suddenly I found myself sitting in a much darker room. Luckily, since I’m a somewhat "green" person, I have most of my devices on plugs with separate switches, so colateral damage was limited to a Halogen bed light also burning out. Still, I’m glad it happened while I was around. Imagine the damage this could have done when unobserved. You know, burning curtains and all that…