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I have noticed that a couple of the web-sites written by people here in Japan have put links to their first Flash-animations. It made me remember my first flash animations from a couple years ago. This was when I was first getting into the web-stuff, and at that time I only really saw the visual aspects of the web, thinking it was like a better TV.

Since then I have come to have a point of view where complex visual design of most sites is almost worthless unless the main purpose of the site is to communicate corporate brand images and logos, such as Disney or Coka-cola (actually after just checking out the Coke site, I find a flash page that doesn't really communicate any brand to me, and would be much better in straight html with some red colored logo images. As it is now it's simply slow). without much need for communicating non-visual information. Even then, most branding can be fit into the background color and one or two logo images on the top.

There are however some very good uses on the web for Flash. I think that my two experiments are good uses, as they are meant for pure entertainment. There are also thousands of Flash animations on the web that are much more entertaining than the television here in Japan (more on that later). I also like the link to celebrity prank phone calls Ian put on his site. (oh no! I've partaken in the incestuous practice of content regurgitation!)

Now that I am moving back toward drawing and painting, and having looked at other peoples ventures into Flash, I have started to feel an urge to play with Flash again. Maybe someday soon... I wonder if after spending more time studying and experimenting with more visual-design related projects I will do a 180 and start to think that having a cool looking site is important again... If I moved toward design in my career, it would make it difficult to advise a client that they need a snazzy design if I really feel that text-based sites are the way to go. (note: even most of the Flash sites found here are "wrong" in my opinion. )

I'm going to jump on the "My First Flash" bandwagon, and once again post links to my first and last flash animations, (which have been linked to from this site many times before because I'm pretty dern proud of 'em).

This first one is a little greeting card I made for Tomoe when she had gone to England and Switzerland to check out her University and participate in some global environmental summit or something or other.

This second one was started just over two years ago and meant to become the new Tokyo Ladies Hash web-site, but as I became to busier it never got finished until a few months ago when I was the hare for the hash, and I pulled it out of the mothballs to make the first web-based hash trash announcing where the next weeks run would be.

Not that I view this as a competition, but I think it is only fair to note that although these are my first attempts at Flash, I obviously wasted a lot more time than the people I linked to above, and there are many scraps of animation on my computer that never made it into these final versions because of the degree of crappiness.

It has finally happened to me. I have heard so many horror stories of the NHK man coming to collect the required fee for having a television that can view NHK programming (Japan's PBS or BBC), but it has never happened to me before. I am now officially an outlaw because I refused to pay the 1,400 yen/month subscription fee for NHK which you automatically are signed up for if you own a TV.

I told him "It's too expensive." and he said "Yes, but it doesn't matter, it's the law". I said "I'll unplug my TV." he said "Yes, but it doesn't matter, it's the law." I said "Sorry, I don't have that much money." He said "Yes, but it doesn't matter, it's the law." I said "see you later."

I wonder what percent of the people actually pay for their "subscription". Is NHK making a killing? I am not sure what cable TV costs here in Japan, but I would imagine it can't be much more than 5,000 / month, and with that you get a number of channels... who set the price of 1,500 yen for one channel that is not even on 24/7? If anyone knows the answers to these questions I'm only slightly interested.

Something I wish I'd thought of... the Wikipedia. An online encyclopedia that anyone can add an article to, or edit an existing article. I haven't really had time to check it out yet, but the concept is great. Maybe I'll contribute some articles on topics I know about which would be... hmmmmm... (Japan... kind of, Parakeets... well maybe only parakeets named Guri, and I guess that's about it...). But if you know a lot or even a little about something, such as making mountain bikes, look into contributing an article.

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