Tucson Digital Arts Community

Flash Camp Phoenix is a full-day event focusing on the Adobe Flash Platform. Enhance your skills in ActionScript and Flex while learning from local and national industry experts. Flash Camp will provide an introduction to the Flash Platform as well as covering advanced topics for existing Flex and ActionScript developers.

http://flashcampphoenix.eventbrite.com/

Below is a recap from our TDAC website meeting on 12/9/09 (meeting notes here) going over how the new TDAC website will be built.  Thanks to everyone who made it!  To those who couldn’t make it, feedback is welcome and we’d love to hear your comments.

Overall Design / UI

• WordPress MU, BuddyPress and bbPress need to be updated and setup on a faster server (we can use www.creativeoven.com as a testing site and switch over to this bluehost account if it runs fast enough)
• Better access to group discussions / forums
• Users and content needs to be ported over to this new testing server.
• Need to update the structure of the homepage and decide which elements should be featured.  Include “Teaser Text”.
• Creating simple wireframe layouts should be done for each page of the site, though most importantly the home page.
• Show a personalized homepage for users who are logged in.  Show the groups they are a part of and other information related to them.
• Add blog where people can post things to? Guest bloggers? Aftermath blog of each event AFTER each event (like this post you are reading right now)
• Twitter feed shows activity of all members.  Our current list: http://twitter.com/tucsondigital/tdac-members

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WordPress Download
http://wordpress.org/download/

WordPress Hosted Version
http://www.wordpress.com
Want to play with wordpress but don’t want to install it, and don’t care if you can’t modify the templates?

WordPress Codex
http://codex.wordpress.org/Main_Page
This is the official WordPress documentation wiki.

Template Tags
http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags
These are the calls you can make from any of your templates. I refer to this more than any other page.

Template Hierarchy
http://codex.wordpress.org/images/1/1d/wp_Template_Hierarchy.png
Which template do you need to edit when you want to make a change? This should help you find out.

WordPress Plugins
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/
This is the master repository.

Favorite WordPress Plugins
http://www.blueprintds.com/2008/03/13/top-10-wordpress-cms-plugins/
Two good lists.

MAMP & XAMPP
Want to install WordPress on your local machine?
http://wordpress.org/download/
http://www.mamp.info/en/download.html (LAMP for Mac)
http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html (LAMP for Windows)

Web Developer Toolbar
http://chrispederick.com/work/web-developer/
Every web developer should have this plugin installed in firefox. Amazing.

Also — WordPress 2.5 is coming out this week (or soon) It may make some of these plugins obsolete.

Monty Edmonds is already holding 3d learning night (see below) but we’re looking to expand what we cover. Instead of just getting together to schmooze, let’s share our skills and raise the bar for the whole design and tech community.

We’ve come up with a preliminary list of ideas for talks — things people can present, and things people want to hear — and you can vote on them below. Even better, come up with your own talk topic and add to the comments below. We have the space, we have a projector, and mid-town is never far away.

Please leave a comment with your suggestions.

Montrose Edmonds, of Tripwire Arts (tripwirearts.com) will be host a 3d learning night on wednesday nights at 7:00pm. This is in addition to other TDAC functions, this will be supplemental for those with a strong interest in 3d animated film making. The specific options for this are still open. We want to stay away from button pushing exercises, but we will provide many good resources for self learning between sessions. I think a good route to go would be to develop Characters. My thought is start with character concepting on paper, move to modeling in 3ds max/blender/Zbrush, texture mapping in Max/zbrush, PhotoShop, Painter, then to Rigging in Maya or Max, animation in Maya or Max, Rendering with Mental Ray and finally compositing in Shake. Otherwise people can come with ideas they want solved or help thinking through projects. I am really open to ideas Contact Montrose at info at tripwirearts dot com to sign up or with questions.

M

Please come to see my latest documentary, Green Green Water, screen at the Loft on Tuesday, Feb. 5 at 7 pm. I have attached a flyer for it: The Loft Flyer

- Jamie Lee
Visionaries Filmworks