Imported image renders as big red box in Flash CS3
November 13th, 2008
I was working with one of my students on Tuesday to create a filmstrip-style photo gallery where the user could move to the left or right of the filmstrip center and the line of photos would scroll into view. I was looking at the student’s .fla and when I tested their movie the photos appeared as a large red box in the SWF. Initially I thought there was a hidden layer that had a colored rectangle on it somewhere, but I soon discovered the problem — the filmstrip of photos was one huge jpeg, over 10,000 pixels wide.
While this is far beyond the maximum bitmap size that could be created with ActionScript (see this post by Keith Peters), the Flash IDE appears to handle images larger than this size when they are imported into the library (I’m not sure why Flash doesn’t complain. Anyone know?) — up to a point anyway. After some testing the red box seemed related to the RAM available to render a particular image in the Flash IDE, as I was not able to find a specific image size over which this behavior would be triggered. Sometimes a large image would render, then suddenly it would not. At any rate, should this happen to you, just reduced the size of the imported image.
In my search for a way to reinvigorate my battery, I stumbled across a freeware application called 
Once again the world seems a little smaller. I returned Tuesday night from my first excursion into South America. Just under two weeks in northern Colombia. Months ago, on March 10th, around 4 p.m. while I was at work I received a call from my good friend Liz: “I’m going to Colombia, want to go?” She’d found a ticket for $300 roundtrip to Cartagena, Colombia. That night I was sitting with a group gathered around a table at 
I have digressed however. Colombia. The name evokes cocaine production, political upheaval, kidnappings, and violence. However justified or not, this is a sordid reputation Colombia has suffered and largely retained. If nothing else, this left a visit to the country largely free from expectation. Were we to see this darker side, or was this the Colombia of the past, whose new identity had yet to filter to the surface of the global consciousness? Where we traveled it seemed largely a reality of the past. On a six day trek we took through the jungle to Ciudad Perdida (translation: “Lost City”), an archaeological ruin older than Machu Picchu, we were told the hillsides we hiked on were once large coca growing plantations, that had since been largely eradicated through fumigation (for better or worse, as the environmental impact of the chemicals remained). The ruin itself, where kidnappings had happened in the past, now had a permanent military outpost of armed soldiers who milled about and gawked at the tourists passing through. Indeed, during our visit military and police checkpoints and outposts were a common sight. We were searched more than once, but there never was a feeling of being in danger. 
And so we adjusted to the perks of life in Colombia. Shots of coffee from the street vendors in the morning. Smoothies of passionfruit (”maracuya”), mango, and lulo throughout the day. Snorkeling and swimming in warm tropical waters. Nights spent in hammocks. It was a glimpse we all got for the first time of Colombia and it appeared during our brief visit to be positive and optimistic. There was poverty to be easily seen, but not nearly the extent to which I was expecting. 
On our final morning during our stay Liz and I sat on some rocks on a beach in Bocagrande, outside of the Cartagena city center, overlooking the Carribbean ocean. At one point a police patrol came by and searched us. Several street hawkers came by with offers of sunglasses, watches, and massages. We were to leave that day, but those lives would continue following whatever path and dreams they will. Maybe one of us will return, but who is to know what opportunities may come down the road for any of us. It may be for another flight to a distant land, for the opportunity to glimpse life through yet another foreign and exotic window, yet one that is entirely the realities of home for the people that live there.
FireBug
Dust-Me Selectors
