The content is mostly Flash which is coded in ActionScript 3, Pixel Bender and AGAL. Used Chrome, Firefox and mainly Safari for developing and testing. Photoshop for layout and Flash IDE for vector graphics plus some Illustrator. Screenium for video capturing and Media Encoder for compressing. Videos are streamed from vimeo.com and fonts from Google. I used Coda for html/css/js/php coding, Sequel Pro for database and FDT5 for AS.

Buzzword kids can try to categories that. :) Probably no need to point out more…

Anyway, you can jump between posts with arrow keys and view all flash stuff in HD video. I do recommend that you view them in realtime if you got device with flash player. They are much faster, sharper and small in file size that way.

Now that this project is done I’ll move on to next one.

One day a month ago when I was supposed to start building a particle engine to new Away3D Molehill my mind started to drift into abstract directions. This often happens to me when I’m in situation where I ‘have to’ do something. It can be cleaning the house, traveling to somewhere or in this case where current work doesn’t instantly take wind under it’s wings. Don’t get my wrong I’m still motivated to create that particle engine. It’s just that chemicals and synapses in our brains takes their own tracks producing distractions all the time. I think we should always follow this animal intuition. (in case it doesn’t cause harm to no-one)

Anyway…

The first idea was simple: Send the soundSpectrum to PixelBender and see what can be created just by using that data.

Output: the Dancing Eye.

http://www.apexvj.com/?johnny_ripper/house/6

At this point I used mp3′s from my harddrive made by Gloom and Minomus. Although these guys create really nice music it gets boring to listen same songs over and over again. So it came obvious that I needed more. More is less then a lot. SoundCloud seems to know their stuff. Maybe they provide API? – ohh yes.

The apparatus started to feel like a good idea. So I created some more visuals. Some of them are remake from my earlier experiments.

For the first time I had found something functional use for my experiments. I asked my fellow worker at FWD Helsinki Art Director Jani Länsimäki to do me a layout for the app. I have worked with Jani for several years and our cooperation works like a greased lightning. He instantly empathized to the topic.

Speaking of working with AD’s it’s all about nuances. Good AD can read developers silent messages right away and vice versa. Sometimes it’s just silence to the single detail that tells you something isn’t right and you fix it without discussion. The conversation between like minded web-workers is impossible to follow. Ideas move on like synapses. Chaotically between abstractions and somehow all the time there’s shared deep understanding. This can be achieved with mutual respect and high professionalism on this rather absurd field of industry. The most important thing is that both are aiming to achieve the best possible outcome this skillset can do. Accepting the limitations team have and perceive its possibilities. This is how I feel about the subject.

The APEXvj will evolve when time goes by. I’m not sure about the direction yet. Surely there will be more visuals and maybe extensions to desktop and mobile. It was made because I felt like it and you are free to use it anyway you like. Hopefully you find some use for it.

p.s. TIP: You can quickly create links from SoundCloud urls. e.g. http://soundcloud.com/four-tet/the-xx-vcr-four-tet-remix can be turned into http://www.apexvj.com/sc/?four-tet/the-xx-vcr-four-tet-remix . This will automatically play the song with random visual. If you like you can also add the visual number (starting from 0) after the url like this: http://www.apexvj.com/sc/?four-tet/the-xx-vcr-four-tet-remix/7

Follow @apexvj to stay updated.

Few days ago the Corporate decided to close the whole service. It “evolved” into Nokia Ovi Store. What a mother lode of bullshit. Instead of using the service I can now buy some useless little apps. When things comes to marketing there’s one rule above all and that’s: “Do not lose the trust of a customer”. This is what exactly happened here. I don’t know how much the number of users was at this point but few years ago it was 5 million and now they simply killed the whole thing.

Nokia is the backbone of Finnish economics, but fuck’em. I’ll probably select iPhone for my next cellphone. The thrust trust is gone.

Like everyone else, seems..

p.s. There’s still some hours left to participate on 25 lines of actionscript contest at www.25lines.com. :)

Shame on you. :(

The world is full of ridiculous awards about websites. It gotta be a good business to create a competition and ceremony about web. First you require a fee from companies to get nominated. Full the ceremonies with sponsors and sell tickets for unreasonable price. To get every penny out of it there has to be a book about the ‘winners’ afterwards.

This one is “the Oscar’s of the web with over 10,000 websites from over 60 countries” plaa plaa plaa.

How about sending me and other team members a ticket to New York with Hollywood filmstar type of -treatment in best hotels, personal limusine driver and endless flood of Champagne. Then I would compare it to Oscars other then just another exploitation of idiots. ;)

Ok, that was a bit too harsh. These awards probably helps with the selling and they look nice on workers CV. It’s also a very good way to enlarge the audience for the site. I still think there’s just too many awards on web these days. One would be enough for the global scale.

(..others then my blog :) )

I love it.