No Cameras Allowed by Computer Clan #007 - RIP Player (Let’s Get Nostalgic)

Show Notes: Watch Krazy Ken’s Retrospective Quick How-To: Playing Flash Content with Flashpoint The First Flash Cartoon I Saw: Newgrounds Link (Ruffle Player) Unofficial YouTube Upload (Higher-Quality Audio) Song By: KOMP-FM | Animation By: cards-n-toons

Patreon.com/KrazyKen

Transcription*:

Hey guys, how are you all doing? If you're new here, welcome. My name is Krazy Ken, and welcome back to another episode of No Cameras Allowed the autobiographical story about my journey on YouTube hosting the Computer Clan YouTube channel. And you know, I've had a lot of fun along the way. So I have some cool stories to tell and some cool lessons to talk about a bed. It's been a lot of fun. The last couple of episodes have had guests on them, but I'm just back to my old self alone, 10 stories underground in my lair. Actually, that's not true. This is more of the behind the scenes story of everything. So I got to ruin the magic. I'm sorry, I'm not 10 stories underground. I'm in a studio somewhere. I'm actually in the office. Part of my studio, right? Edit all of the videos. I do like to record the podcast in here too, because it's smaller and easier to treat acoustically. Hey, so what are we talking about today? Well, Adobe Flash player recently went EOL—end-of-life. Meaning Adobe is not pushing software updates or security patches or hosting support for it any more. And it also is getting blocked everywhere. So because of security problems, Adobe is highly recommending people on install it and to reduce security problems. They're blocking it now. I'm sure there's ways around it to make it still work, to make the plugins still work. There's archived Flash content. So not all is lost, but still it's kind of a historic moment because Flash player was a huge staple in the internet and in pop culture. And now we're saying goodbye to it. Well, we've been saying goodbye to it for a while. So a little while ago, a couple of weeks ago, I released a retrospective about Adobe Flash Player's history. It's in the show notes and the links. I highly recommend watching it if you haven't watched it yet. So this episode is about the making of that crazy Ken episode and just about some Adobe Flash nostalgia in general, with my journey and experience with it. So yes, for years, Adobe has been saying, it's going to die at the end of 2020, and now it has so definitely check out that retrospective, if you haven't seen it yet, we're also going to talk about Shockwave because it was similar and Adobe owned them as well. Let's uh, go back to the beginning quick. Uh, actually first I want to talk about flashpoint because if you want to still play a bunch of archive, Flash games and animations and Shockwave games and all that stuff, uh, download Flashpoint, it's a windows app and you can play all that stuff in there. They have like 80,000 titles. So go have fun with that. Um, I know I have been having some fun with that lately. So just to kind of like a brief history here, future wave incorporated was founded by Charlie Jackson and Jonathan Gay. Charlie Jackson was the founder of Silicon beach and they made a lot of software back in the day. And then he founded this future wave company with John and their first product was smart sketch. It was a vector-based drawing, which means it uses math to draw shapes. It's not, you know, pictures, it's actual math that draws the shapes and they made it for the pinpoint of West, which ran on pen based tablet, computers, and all that stuff. But that stuff didn't take off in the nineties. So the smart sketch wasn't really used. I think don't quote me on this, but I think if I remember correctly from Charlie's blog, he said they may be sold two copies of the software either way. It didn't really go anywhere. So they added frame-by-frame animation features into it and they released it on Mac and windows that updated version, and they called it FutureSplash. So now it was running on Mac and windows, two very big platforms compared to pen input computers, of course, and it had more features. So that's pretty fricking cool. Uh, but you know, the company still wasn't doing too well, they needed to sell the technology and, you know, try to be under a bigger company and make this work. So they looked at a bunch of companies, well, I don't know how many, but I know they looked at Adobe and Adobe initially turned them down, but was like, ah, yes, we'll buy them. So Macromedia bought FutureSplash. They renamed it Macromedia Flash and boom. They're off to the races. And then later Adobe sees how successful it is. And then Adobe buys Macromedia media for like $3.6 billion. And that's how FutureSplash became Macromedia Flash and then Adobe Flash. So that's kind of the quick and dirty history there. But yeah, I just think it's funny how like Adobe initially didn't buy the technology, but then they did when they saw how big Macromedia made it, Flash content was everywhere. And Macromedia also had Shockwave, which was big on CDs as well. And Flash was just spreading on the web with like websites and games on the web and animations because you could use it for interactives. You can use it for video, so many things and it was spreading and then yeah, there'll be bottom and just kept pushing it. And well, of course now it's dead. But I remember back when we had the family computer, we had a Mac for a good chunk of time. And then we switched to a windows PC for, I think about seven years. And my first experience with Adobe Flash player was on windows. And I don't remember, maybe I don't exactly remember what the first thing I did in Flash was, but I do remember quite vividly for some stupid reason. The first cartoon, the first Flash cartoon that I saw on the web. So my father had his friend over and his friend's son also came over and they showed my father this animation. I think it was called like Osama bin Ladin, nowhere to run. And you know, this was back when he was still alive, you know, I'm not going to get political, but it was like a little animation of like Osama bin Ladin, like dodging bombs. And it was like a little song and like George Bush was playing like a conga drum. It was, I vaguely remember that being the first Flash cartoon I saw [inaudible] [inaudible] I was like, when I was researching this episode for YouTube, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't having a fever dream or something. So like I looked it up in flashpoint and sure enough, this was a real thing. Um, let me Google it right here. Let's see. Osama bin Ladin, nowhere to run cartoon. I think you could probably just watch it on YouTube. Yeah, it looks like it's just on YouTube under bin Ladin, nowhere to run or nowhere to run and you can just play it on YouTube uploaded in 2007. Oh my gosh. I remember that being the first Flash thing I saw. And then I started getting into some Shockwave stuff. Again, I know Shockwave is different than Flash, but they were both owned by Macromedia and they both did similar things, right. They both had their own sets of offering tools that you would use to make the stuff, but you know, they were still similar. Um, so one of the earliest Shockwave experiences I can recall was candy stand.com. So candy stand was a bunch of free games to help market Wrigley products, you know, gum and lifesavers and the trolley brand and all that stuff. So when I was a kid, my brother and I, and uh, my father's friend's son, well, they introduced us to this stuff and it was really cool. Cause like at the time I was so used to having to put a CD into my computer to play a game. Right. But they were like, Oh no, you just go to this website and you can play these games. And I was like, Holy crap, this is fricking cool. I spent a lot of time playing Shockwave games. And the first games I remember playing were these golf games. So you could just golf in these like candy themed environments. And yet this stuff is on flashpoint is so cool. I actually showed a little clip in my crazy Ken episode. I got a hole in one. I still got it. But yeah, I played those golf games like crazy. And it was so much fun playing that stuff. And it was like magical back then. It's still kind of cool now, but it's crazy how like, some things have an aged, well, like the 256 color, it's all desert and stuff, but Hey, it's nostalgic, whatever. It doesn't have to be full, like 16 million color, like we're spoiled with today. Anyway. So I remember playing that stuff a lot and I don't remember if this was before or after Nick and cartoon network. It might've been around the same time. But then I remember my father showed my brother and I Nickelodeon's website and cartoon network's website because we've watched Nickelodeon cartoon network on TV, of course. But then we found out, Oh, Hey, they have a website. Wow. Again, I was young, not tech savvy. This was a very different time smartphones. Weren't a thing. Social media was barely a thing. Like I see like 10 year olds with iPhones. Now you have no idea how lucky you are. Um, we didn't have that kind of technology. I wasn't really aware of like all this stuff that could be done on the internet. So this stuff was like really new to me. Like I'm coming from CD rom background. And now I'm like playing games on the web. This is new to me. So then I started getting into Flash games on nix Collodions website and the cartoon network website. And I vaguely remember like these sports games, like, Oh gosh, I don't even know. I tried looking this up and I could not find the name of it if anyone knows the name, tell me, but I remember playing this one, Nickelodeon like sports game. You, I don't remember if it was Flash or Shockwave, but you were like bouncing a bowling ball, like in zero gravity, knocking down pins and stuff. I remember there was like a firework simulator where you can make your own fireworks show. And then on cartoon network, I remember playing like teen Titans games where you play as the Titan and you fight the bad guys like cinderblock and plasmas and all that stuff. It was like, it was like a street fighter style game. Yeah. I remember playing that stuff. It's been forever, but I remember playing it. So yeah, those were my early experiences with Flash and Shockwave. So now getting back to the story of the episode, it's like a story about the story the behind the scenes. So I think I started thinking of this idea several months ago, especially when web browsers started prompting people that Flash was going to be dropped for support. I was like, Oh, I should probably do a crazy Ken's tech doc episode about, so it was in the back of my head, mine for a while. And then, um, it was probably a couple of weeks before the episode went, live Sage from the SFC group. Um, at Sage fun.com I believe is the website. He reached out to me and he showed me flashpoint, which was that archive thing I was talking about. Like, he actually is the one that introduced me to it. And I was like, wow, this is a perfect way to get examples recorded for the episode. So he starts recording stuff for me, which was very nice of him. That was very helpful. And um, you know, I'm still busy as hell. Like I do YouTube and I juggle that with a full-time job, which is definitely something I'll be talking about in future episodes. But so I'm working 40 hours a week at a full-time job and I'm doing YouTube, probably an additional 20, 30 hours a week. And it's a lot of stuff and I have other episodes to finish and I had to get this. This was back when the podcast had to get off the ground. So like I was still really busy. So I didn't really start the episode. I'm going to check right now the date. I think I might have it on here. I don't know. Let's see the Flash episode came out on December 31st, which was the day Flash was going EOL. So the timing windup. Great. And I think I started writing it this probably the Friday before that. So I had like six days to go from zero to a hundred and get this done because I was so busy with other stuff, not to mention the charity events, which I talked about with brainiac Brent and the last one episode of no cameras allowed, that was time consuming. That was a tenant half hour live broadcast with setup and tear down also making it probably like overall a 20 hour production or something again, balancing what the day to day. Um, so that was pretty balls to the walls. Crazy. I was so busy and there was also the holidays mixed in. I was like, how the heck am I going to squeeze in? Well, I did it, I did it. And you know, I did it because the episode came out on time. So, but I had to work overtime and I value sleep very much. And I usually like to keep a very strict sleeping schedule in bed at 10 o'clock, no exceptions. Yeah. That didn't work. Like during those six days I was working my butt off on that episode. Yeah. There was probably one or two nights where I was easily up past midnight and I know there's some YouTubers out there that poll quote unquote all-nighters, but I am not an advocate for that because sleep is like the healthiest thing you can do for your body. And, uh, I'm not chancing that I had to stay up late a few nights just to get this episode done. And I also talked with Michael D who was doing his own episode about it. And, uh, we, we kind of did a little, um, cross promotion. We plugged each other's videos in our own videos, just as like a little mini collab. Cross-promotion sort of thing, which I think was kind of cool to do. He's a cool guy. I've known him for years. I would love to have him on a future episode of know cameras a lot because it turns out he quit his day job and he does YouTube full time. So that would be an interesting thing to talk about with him on the show. But anyway, yes, we planned that as well. So I had six days, yeah. This done. And you know, I know there's other people that do type these types of retrospectives and stuff like that, but I didn't want to cheap out a lot of people like don't really go on camera ever. They just kind of take screenshots and like do a voiceover and stuff like that. I like to do, I, you seem crazy Ken's tech talk. Um, and if you haven't, I recommend, um, like if you watch it, the production value is pretty high. Like it's a lit set I'm on camera. I make animations. I don't just like take screenshots of things. Like a lot of times I'll have my own computers and I'll install the software on them. Like I didn't just grab a screenshot of, you know, Macromedia Flash too. I actually busted out my power book. G three wall street installed Flash two on it and filmed it in action. Like I like to just have much more or production value in my show. And I know people notice it cause people say the nicest things about the production value, but yeah, you know, it comes at a cost. It does take time. It's it takes longer to make that stuff. I'm way more proud of it. When I, you know, do a good job like that. I don't like to cut corners and make a crappy product. Um, that those are just the standards I hold myself to. It took a lot of time and it was a lot more work than I thought it was going to be for, for the six days that I had the writing in the research. It took some time. It wasn't terribly long, huge shout out to the internet archive that archives old versions of webpages. I donate to that too. I donate to those people. Absolutely. Cause I use their stuff often when doing retrospective research. But yeah. So the reason search took a while, but it wasn't crazy long. The shoot shoots are usually pretty smooth. Cause I script everything out. I don't use a teleprompter. A lot of people ask me if I use a teleprompter. I actually don't. And they're usually pretty amazed when I tell them that, because I guess I just do such a good job on camera. I just it's something that I've been on camera forever. I just, I just practice a lot, I guess just get used to it. But no, I do not use a teleprompter now sometimes if I'm doing a voiceover only part, I'll be reading off my iPad screen, but every time I'm looking at the camera, there's no teleprompter up there. That's just from the heart. So yeah, usually I'm well-rehearsed and the script is dialed in. So those shoots usually never take longer than an hour, which is good because the CFS card I used in my camera only holds 50 minutes of 4k footage. So it better not take more than an hour. Uh, yes, this particular shoot, if you're not counting like the setup time, it was about 46 minutes, 44 minutes of filming, which is a little longer than normal fun fact. [inaudible] usually my shoots are between 30 and 40, but this was a bit of a longer episode. There was some stuff I ended up cutting out in post, but yes, it was a longer one, but I didn't really have many like bloopers. There were some funny ones that I do release on Patrion and on the YouTube channel for computer Cline insiders, there were some funny bloopers in this one, but yeah, the shoot was pretty smooth. Okay. The post-production this consumed much more time than I thought. Uh, I believe this was the most complex post-production I've ever done for a video. Yeah. Typically the stages of video at a high level are the preproduction. That's the planning, the production, that's the shooting. And then the post-production that's the editing. And um, most of the time I'm a one man band. So I'm editing everything in final cut pro and with like Photoshop and motion to, you know, make animations and stuff. And uh, who at the end, I think the timeline index said I had 900 items in my timeline and that was with some things grouped together. You can group multiple smaller clips into a big clip called a nest or in final cut pro that call it a compound clip. And you can group stuff to keep things easy. But even with some stuff grouped together, there was still like almost 900 items in my timeline for like a 17 minute episode. So I would say that is the most complex timeline I've ever had for a YouTube video ever. It was a challenge. And again, I only had a few days while balancing a day job to make this happen. But yeah, th this I'm not going to lie. This one kind of kicked my, I'm scrolling through it right now. I'm really proud of the little parts where I took the hungry pumpkin Flash game. And it was like a little skit where the pumpkin is the Adobe guy and he eats the macro media logo. That was the part I use to illustrate the acquisition of Macromedia by Adobe. I was actually kind of proud of how the animation turned out. So I hope people liked it, but no, uh, um, I'm humbled by the awesome feedback I've received from all of you guys. Um, I don't like to toot my own horn. I really don't, but I did work really hard on those episodes. So I'm glad it's off this one took Oh, a lot more energy than I thought it would. And I made sure to feature some cool stuff in it too. Like I featured mini clip. I featured Ed's world. I loved those cartoons. Yeah. Rest in peace ed goal. He unfortunately passed away at the age of 24 way too young, but yeah, he started Ed's world funny comic and cartoon series. It's great. And I showed strong, bad, you know, that was a huge Flash thing on the internet again. Yeah. Flash was a huge part of pop culture. Like even though near the end, you know, drama ensued, and it was kind of unstable and had some security issues and you know, Apple CEO, Steve jobs, didn't like it. And people were complaining about it not being on the iPhone. It kind of got messy near the end and you know, other open standards like HTML five ended up winning. That's why Flash has died. But you know, that stuff aside, this was huge, man. Like at one time we were all affected positively by it. Um, and not to mention the Flash authoring tools that are used for animation in general, not just for web stuff. So there's network television cartoons that at one point in their production used Flash tools for part of their workflow, like Blue's clues fosters home for imaginary friends or family guy, total drama Island and Arthur. So like Flash has been back to everyone positively in some way, but yeah, it's just a kind of time for it to go, you know, be, I also show the world's hardest game by snobby land. And of course, Alan Becker's animated versus animation, which is totally meta because that cartoon takes place in an Adobe Flash professional window, which is pretty funny. Yeah. If you have again, if you have not seen my retrospective of Adobe Flash player on crazy, Ken's TechTalk the link is in the show notes. Definitely check it out. It was a good one. So on No Cameras Allowed, I love answering audience submitted question. So if you want to submit your own question that you want answered on the show, feel free to tweet me or DM me on Twitter @thecomputerclan. If you want to stay anonymous, you can stay anonymous or you can, can I have your name mentioned whatever you'd like, but yeah. Feel free to submit questions on there. And um, I have one here from Papas Films on Twitter. So that's P-A-P-A-S Films. He submitted this question. What was your first experience with Linux? Would you ever use as your daily driver loved the podcast by the way? So Papas films, thank you for liking the podcast. I do appreciate it. My first experience with Linux as a, like a desktop environment, I was at my buddy's house and he showed me man driven. And I think he was using the Plasma desktop environment. So it looked different than your typical Windows or macOS desktop, which was kind of cool, but I believe it was man driven. And that was probably in 2008. The first time I used a Linux desktop environment, um, you know, I'm sure I've used at the time, like websites or stuff powered by Linux because Linux powers a lot of server side stuff. But in terms of like personal computer use, man driven, definitely remember that. And then in the early days of computer clan live, which was my webcast, which I talked about more in episode three, sous studio was another thing. I forgot exactly what Sue studio does, but we did show that on CCL. So that was another Linux related thing I did. And I feel like I've used open source as well, but in the early days, but I don't remember, but I definitely remember Mandriva. And the other part of your question was would you ever use Linux as your daily driver? Me personally know all the software I rely on and the Apple integration does not run on Linux, so it would not be economical for my workflow. You know, I got nothing against it. A lot of people use a Linux as a daily driver. That's totally chill. I use a Linux server for my web hosting stuff at my day job. We have like a fricking like 150 terabyte video server it's based on Gentoo. So like we use a Linux-based media server at the day job office. And again, I use the Linux-based stuff for my web hosting. So for that stuff, yeah, fine. But as my daily driver, no, I like the Mac. I like using Final Cut Pro and Photoshop and all that stuff. And I just need a, um, I like Apple's, you know, hardware, software services, marriage, all under one roof. It just makes it easy for me. But thank you very much Papas films for asking. And again, any other questions you guys want to have answered on the show, feel free to send them my way on Twitter. Cause you know, the show is about my history on YouTube and other related things. So if you've enjoyed listening to the show, I just ask one favor. If you could leave a rating and a review, I know some podcast apps require you to write a review to leave just a rating. But uh, if you could do that, that'd be great. Of course I can't force you, but I just ask if you like listening to the show and if you'd like to leave a five-star review, go ahead and do that. That helps us out a lot. Thanks in advance for your support. And if you want to help fund the future of the computer clan, plus get some awesome perks along the way. You'll be funding the YouTube channel, which has all the crazy Ken stuff and computer Klein live. And you'll also be funding this new podcast. No cameras allowed feel free to pledge to my Patreon. That's patreon.com/KrazyKen “Krazy” with a “K”—link is in the description / show notes, whatever the app you're using, calls them feel free to pleasure there. Thank you so much for your support. So that was Flash birthed from future wave owned by Macromedia, then owned by Adobe, changed the world. It's been fun and I'll still have some fun with you on flashpoint and in the archives. Well guys, that's about all I have for you today, but if you want to share some of your own favorite Flash memories, feel free to tweet me or leave a comment on the crazy Ken episode. I love hearing about everyone. Else's fun stories and experiences with Flash and Macromedia and Shockwave and Adobe and all that good stuff. So stay tuned for more episodes every Monday. Cause I like to make your Monday a fun day. Yeah. That's an easy cheap rhyme. Thanks for sticking with me. Catch the crazy and pass it on.

*Transcriptions are auto-generated by a transcribing software. Sometimes, small edits are made by carbon-based lifeforms, but please excuse any inaccuracies.