I’ve been in Brighton this week to attend Flash on the Beach. In my opinion one of the best conferences I’ve ever been to. As usual, these kind of conferences are very inspiring to me, and I always get triggered to pursue things I tend to put on the side. Either because I forget about them, or because they’re plain impossible.

Triggered by Joel Gethin Lewis, who used to work for United Visual Artists, one of the things I like to get back to is my experience with stage craft. I’m talking sound and light design here. Last year I saw a session about UVA at the Metropolis Biennale, an architecture/art/theater symposium in Copenhagen and was seriously blown away by their projects. I’ve been a big fan of their work ever since.

Now, the work that UVA does, is EXACTLY the perfect match between my skills in visual programming (flash), my background in theater lighting, and general interesting in electronics (LEDs, sensors, buttons, massive amounts of electrical power, etc).

So, I’ve set myself a goal. I want to create an installation involving a camera, motion tracking, a projector, and some code to support my Copenhagen Ghosts project, which I like to extend with some extra works anyway. I feel that I can take my photography to the next level, if only I set myself to do it (well, someone needs to believe in me, so better start with myself).

I need a way to express myself. This is my new pet project!

One of the projects I’ve been working on for the last half year went live this week. I started working on it when I was still at Hello, and continued it as a side project while freelancing. Take a look, I did almost all the Flash parts of it: http://www.fritzhansen.com/

I wish I could afford the furniture

Sometimes I need to write about more technical stuff. Things that involve my day to day work. From now on that will be here: http://hautecode.com

2 years in Denmark, 2 years at Hello. Time for champagne

It’s been a while, so let’s start with a good rant about the danish holiday act.

Facts:
- I started working in Denmark April 1st 2007
- My contract clearly states I get 25 paid holidays per year

My issue:
Up til May 2009 I have only been able to take 18.75 paid holidays instead of 52 (2*25, plus 2 from April 2007).

Why:
Well, the accountant says: you get 2.08 days for each month you work. In 2007 I worked 9 months (2.08 * 9 = 18.75). But, the danish holiday year runs from May to May. Fine, you’d think the calculation shifts a bit, so that from May 2007 til May 2008 you’d get the 18.75 days. But noooo, you apparently don’t get the 18.75 days until May 2008 til May 2009, and not until May 2009 to 2010 you get the full 25!

Now, my company says that I can just take the other days unpaid. But that’s a lot of money we’re cutting here. If you take a week off, that means 25% less salary that month, which resolves in that I can’t pay my rent. So because I can’t afford financially to take these days off, the whole “25 paid holidays” is just a big myth the first 2 years. Companies can’t state in their contracts that you get those holidays, because that just means plain lying!

Disclaimer:
I know that you American friends must be happy if you only get 10 days, but that’s up to you to rant about

Gotta love your colleagues when they send you cake and ice by courier when you’re sitting on location at the customer

In a typical old fashioned dotcom scenario, my customer’s investors withdrew from the project last week, and left the company without money.

Strange to be suddenly without work, spending the day watching South Park episodes. I took the next day off, to spend in the lovely sun with M and S who were visiting on their way from Amsterdam to Helsinki Too bad I kind of did 3 weeks of advanced Flex and Flash work for nothing. Oh well, at least I learned some neat tricks along the way.

Luckily my friends at ZYB had some work for me! So, I will be at their Nørrebronx HQ the next three weeks.

My friends from the company where I worked the first 4-5 months of my time in Denmark sold out to Vodafone last friday! Of course congratulations go to Tommy, Ole, and the rest of team, but I have to say I’m a bit proud too. Surely there must be at least one line of code left from me in there

It got featured in Jyllands-Posten today. Read the article here (sorry, danish only).

The project is getting quite scientific. I can’t say too much but it’s very cool when pieces come together.