An article I recently posted on another site just found its way into geek-chic Make Magazine's blog for Do-It-Yourself-ers'. As a geek-for-all-seasons, I can't help but be tickled about this.

The article includes plans for a "ramp pit" that allows easy access to the underside of one's automobile. When built

correctly — and used with caution and a willingness to lose a limb or two in the quest for automotive Nirvana — the ramp works out well. Still, most code monkeys — including me — should not try building this at home! I just posted it here to scream "Look at me!" to the two people who are tired of waiting for a May update to Turdhead.com

So, um… look at me! Again.

Congratulations go out to Carlos Nazareno for winning this year's Turdhead.com ActionScript Poetry Contest. His rendition of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "How Do I Love Thee?" captured 45% of the votes to make Nazareno the 2006 ActionScript

Poet Laureate, and we've already contacted him to collect his much-sought prize (ok, it's a T-shirt).
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OK, I give up! While updating a project my company completed a couple years ago, I'm now running into a boatload of issues related to Flash player versions and publish settings, and I'm starting to pull my hair out.

Here's the scenario: Our client has several "child" movie clips (SWFs created two years ago using Flash MX or MX 2004) which are loaded into a parent "shell" that controls navigation, look-and-feel, etc. For some of these clips, there are no FLAs available, so what we have is what we have. These child clips all contain actionscript hooks to functions it assumes will be found in the parent "shell" clip (e.g., _parent.doSomething(this);).

We've updated the shell, taking care to publish for the Flash 6 player. Now here's the rub: We now find we have some Flash 8-only "child clips" that need to load in, too. Keep in mind we have access to source files for the new stuff (including the parent FLA), but not for all the old stuff, so we're stuck

with Flash 6 clips as a given.

No problem, I think: I'll republish the shell for the Flash 8 player, and it should be able to load SWFs compiled for both Flash Player 6 and 8.

Apparently, this is wrong. While the Flash 8 shell does load the Flash 6 clip, it never seems to receive the function call from the loaded child clip.

For example, SWF1.swf contains the code:

_parent.registerClip(this);

This works as long as both parent and child have been published to the same player version (i.e., both parent and shell are published as "Flash 6″ or both as "Flash 8″), but not when the versions differ.

I can certainly understand a Flash Player 6 parent clip not understanding the _parent call from the Flash Player 8 child, but I'm surprised a Flash 8 parent can't answer the call from a Flash 6 child.

Make any sense? Any thoughts, suggestions, etc? Or are we just out of luck?

I've been playing around with Screenweaver OS lately. Now that it's been released as an open-source project, who can resist a readily available means of making real, honest-to-goodness desktop applications from Flash?

Of course, that doesn't mean I've done anything earthshattering yet, but I've at least been playing around with its simple-to-use screensaver building tools. I originally released this screensaver on another Web site devoted to the

target="_blank">Volvo 1800 automobile, but I figured I'd place it here in case anyone else was interested. The 3d model was designed by Josh Isaacson for Turdhead.com and will later appear in one of Turdhead's game-o'-the-month features, as well as one or more Classic1800.com utilities.

Not much to say about it, but I figured it might get a few others' interests peaked in both Screenweaver development and my favorite classic Volvo sports car. Happy motoring!