Povert

Wow, it’s like Friday comes along once a week or something. We’ve got a new skit up: Worst Cry Redux.

Bryann’s delivery should win him free marshmallows for a week or something.

It’s a parody of the following scene from “Intervention”. So if you haven’t seen that clip yet, you might want to watch it first.

Two skits in one week! I forgot to announce the first one here on Sunday: Old Spice Commercial #1.

Today’s is Toofies 3 (yes, I know it says “toofies4″ in the URL — don’t ask). This was actually the first thing we had shot in a very long time. Probably 2 years. So yes, the new skits are fairly short and sweet. We’re getting back in the swing of it.

But this one really makes me laugh. It took some serious concentration for me not to crack up while shooting it.

The outtakes are kind of funny too. I might put them up after we launch the new site. Whenever that will be.

I’ve been making plenty of use of localStorage in javascript apps lately.  It’s a very simple way of storing data in the browser that can persist across sessions.  If you want to learn more about it, check out the Local Storage chapter in the excellent Dive into HTML5 web site / future book.

Anyway, I’m using it on a new version of flappingcrane.com to get around the downside to a recent security fix in Safari.  I wanted to have the icons for skits that have already been watched by the user to be translucent.  That’s normally a very easy thing to do using CSS:


.skitIcon a:visited {
opacity: 0.5;
-moz-opacity: 0.5;
}


However, there’s kind of a clever security problem with this.  In a nutshell, I can list a bunch of links on a page and give some CSS property to visited links.  Then if you visit the page, a script can examine those links and see which ones have those properties, thus telling me which of those sites you have visited.

A recent version of Safari disabled styling on the :visited pseudo-element for this very reason.

Anyway, this is less of a concern on something like Flapping Crane.  We can track what skits you watch, how much of them you watch, how often you pause them, etc.  While that might creep some people out (we only track hits or plays, but I’m sure many, many video sites track a lot more), there’s no serious security issue with that.  I can tell that you’ve watched “Bugles” 145 times (weirdo), but I can’t tell what other creepy web sites you visit.

So, while we can keep track of what client IP has watched what, there are a variety of reasons why I really don’t want to do that in order to style a few links.  One, I like to keep DB interactions to a minimum (hah).  Two, it makes for some clunky, ugly interactions that seem like overkill for a little opacity effect.

I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this.

When you watch a skit (again, on the new site I’m working on), if your browser supports localStorage, it’ll record that you’ve watched it.  Since it’s stored in your browser, there’s no need for querying the database.  Then, when listing out the skit icons, ones that have been viewed get a “watched” class.  Any CSS I want can be applied to that.

This is nothing that couldn’t be accomplished by a variety of other means, but it is nice to have such a remarkably simple way of doing it.  I haven’t decided if I’m going to put in a way to do it with cookies, which have more limitations.

It’s been one month since Eric killed himself.

I’ve been using euphemisms in posts and tweets until now, but it seems weird to keep doing that.

It’s been an odd month.  I don’t quite know what to make of it.  I’ll just say: anyone who’s had to deal with a friend or family member killing their self knows how strange the aftermath is.  It’s sad and awful, but you keep going.  And it’s just  strange.

We’ve had a page up for Eric on Flapping Crane since a few days after he died.  That page has been the home page.  We’re going to stop making it the home page later today, and we’re going to debut a new skit.  I don’t know how this should work, so I’m just doing it.  It’s kind of like the video I put together for his family.  At a certain point, debates about how sad or happy the music was became irrelevant, because there was no right answer.  And I don’t think there is a right time to get back to dick jokes, but we’re just going to do it, damn it.

It’s weird and screwed up, but this has revitalized us.  I don’t know if it’s a fear of our own mortality, or guilt, or what.  I don’t know if this will be short-lived or if this is the start of another long period of creative output.  I’d like to think it’s us realizing that we’re only here for a short time and we should do what we can with what we have.  I’ve never been under any illusion that these stupid skits will get us anywhere.  I’ve only put up skits when they’ve made me and the rest of the guys laugh, and we have stupid, idiotic senses of humor.  But the point is we’ve been shooting.  A lot.  They’re all short, granted, but some of them have been in the works for years.

I don’t know how to do any of this.  I didn’t know the etiquette on Facebook and Twitter, I didn’t know what to say to his family and I don’t know what to even think of it or what to put on the site.  I’m alternately depressed and a little angry.  But mostly, right now, I almost feel nothing.  I’ve spent the last month capturing footage from the past 6 years, and his suicide doesn’t feel real.  I see him every day, cracking jokes, making stupid faces, busting us up with his insane humor.  He’s not dead to me yet.  He’s just gone.