Saturday, March 07, 2009

Land of Duh


I could really use an extra 20 or 30 I.Q. points.

Complicated written instructions grind my brain to a halt. When I bought my Hav-a-Hart mouse trap, the instructions made little sense. They may as well have said:
Take part you can't find A and put it [preposition that makes no sense in context] part you can't find B blah blah and then refer to something mentioned a few sentences ago that's already fallen out of your head blah blah...
I gave up on the instructions, played with the trap and figured out how it worked right away.

My latest trip to the Land of Duh was a "quick" Flash thing I wanted to throw together: There'd be two buttons, each triggering a sound and short animated clip. How hard could that be?
Two problems:
  • I was out of town and away from my reference books
  • The missing thirty I.Q. points
The Action Script baffled me. What the...? Where does...? How the...?
There was no way I could do this from scratch.
Thus this post instead of the "quick Flash thing I wanted to throw together."

5 comments:

Sally said...

if you ever want code advice I'm happy to help.

Namowal (Jennifer Bourne) said...

Thanks, Sally.
If I can't make it work with my trusty books, you'll probably hear from me.

Linda Davick said...

Great expression on Duh Duck.

GhostBuild said...

I'm sure that the script syntax complexity is, in part, designed with a dab of "job security" in mind. ;-)

Namowal (Jennifer Bourne) said...

Thanks, Linda.
Good one, GhostBuild.

The irony is, once I found out how to do what I wanted to do, it seemed so obvious. Makes me wonder what else I'm overlooking in everyday life.