Ah The Memories…Dev Abuse is Forever

My good friend Stacey Mulcahy just posted the first in a series about project management from a developer’s perspective in InsideRIA.  The theme being, Bend Over Here It Comes Again.  Surely much of this opinion was formed during our days at a certain interactive agency in Atlanta.

I’ve left the agency world and moved into RIA development.  It’s a lot different so far here at EUI, but I’m sure that there are agencies all over the world whose developers are considered to be in the IT department rather than integrated with creative.  In my opinion if you want to be efficient and create stellar work on the Flash Platform devs and creatives must work together!

To the Mile High City!

My goal of moving toward more app-centric development has come true! I’m moving to Denver for at least six months to take on a contract to hire opportunity. The adventure for me and new partner in crime Donnie begins tomorrow!

Things have been super stressful with me trying to get ready to move while working marathon hours but the time is here. I’m soooo ready to start this next step in my life! Thanks to all of my family and friends who have helped me out during the last few months of enormous change – you know who you are!

ActionScript Coder for Hire!

As of February, I am on the market for work coding Flash. I am well versed in AS2 and currently working on picking up AS3. I am looking for full time work but I will be glad to take contract as well. I have worked on sites such as:

whiteboard.ups.com
www.vwfeatures.com (GTI Joyride)
www.gptimemachine.com
onehundred.genworth.com
www.freedomoftheseas.com

I currently live in the Atlanta area.

If you are interested, contact me: brentpub [at] darbymedia {dot} com.

Good Riddance 2006

In what started out as an exciting, hopeful, successful year ended with a flop – just barely dragging over the finish line. Other than the great music I saw and the new friends I made, career-wise things have just not panned out over the last eight months.

What 2007 holds is yet to be seen. I’m looking for a new ActionScript coder job in the Atlanta area which hopefully will put the excitement, hope, and success back into my future. If anyone has any leads please let me know! (brentpub [at] darbymedia [dot] com)

What Was FITC?

Well I just got back from my very first Flash conference, FITC, and it was a pretty good milestone for me.

It was great to finally meet my online friend Stacey who has given me tons of advice over the last year or two. I also met many new people, Kristin, Lord Alex, Eric, Steve, Paolo, Tony, Julian, James, Randy, Michael, Lanny. I’m sure I’ve left some out. I’ve got some pictures here, but Stacey’s are much more entertaining. Of course it was awesome having my fellow work peeps Mathew Ray and Adam Boozer there too!

Aside from the fun, I got some pretty serious inspiration and motivation to further my knowledge of what is now known as the Flash Platform. There were several sessions that were busts, one in particular in my opinion was the keynote. I don’t think that anything groundbreaking was announced and I thought that much of it was just filler. Can you say “exciting?”

The most inspiring session was Joshua Davis’ Mutation themed talk. I was strangely freaked when Adam dropped the F-Bomb but Joshua put everyone to shame in that department. The guy just does amazing work in the punk aesthetic (inspirational to me) which is also creative, and technical. Other sessions that I especially enjoyed were by Colin Moock, Darron Schall, Mario Klingemann, Keith Peters, Adam Boozer, the Next Generation panel, and the Freelancing panel. Some others were interesting and others I found fairly bland.

On Sunday the combination of Colin Moock’s and Darron Schall’s talks made me realize the potential of what Adobe is trying to do with the Flash Platform and Apollo. Not that I’m well read in the Flash/Flex blogosphere, but I haven’t seen anyone state this yet: Adobe is aiming directly at the .NET market. With the free dev framework, the lightweight runtime platform (much smaller than MS .NET), the cross-platform (I hope) compatibility, and the promise of desktop apps with Apollo, I’m definitely buying in. From what I can see from the sessions by Collin, Darron, and Keith, the entirely rewritten version 9 player will open up a whole new range of possibilities, AND respect for the Flash Platform.

Joyce came up and we stayed a couple of extra days after the conference to enjoy Toronto. The extra time brought up feelings I’ve had about Canada, Toronto and Hockey which will be upcoming posts.

iPod and System Idle Process on Windows

I recently got a 5G iPod. I recently switched to a new machine at work. My new machine was running a constant idle process eating up about 30% of my processor capacity. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out what the problem was. The IT guy at work couldn’t figure it out either.

When I went skiing a couple of weeks ago, he took out the wireless video and modem cards. It seemed to run great! I came back from vacation and it was perfect.

This morning I rebooted. Machine was running like ass again. We disconnected my iPod with no effect. We rebooted without the iPod. BAM. Problem solved. Connected the iPod after rebooting with no ill effect. Rebooted with the iPod connected. BAM. Running like ass.

So…if you have a computer connected to an iPod (or was booted while an iPod was attached) and you have lost 30% of your computing power, disconnect the iPod and reboot!

Strange.

“Screw You! It’s MY Site!”

So Jesse comes into the office yesterday and he’s ranting about how when he’s browsing some links will open up a new window and he’s like “Who does this site think it is to tell ME when I want a new window.” I told him that on my weblog I generally use a ‘target=”_blank” in all of my links to create a new window when clicked. In a “How DARE you” tone he said again “Who are YOU to tell ME when I want a new window.” I said “Screw you! It’s MY site!” This brought about some laughter from the co-workers and a look of “hmm?” from Jesse, but it got me thinking. I’m getting a little tired of typing in the “_blank” bit on every link I put into this weblog so as of this posting I’m going to stop. If you want a link to open in a window hold your control key (or whatever) down when you click. Touche, Jesse.

MovableType Issues

When I changed hosts I upgraded to MovableType 3.01D. I noticed that when I tried to delete comments, nothing would happen. A search revealed that I needed to make sure that mt.js was uploaded in ascii mode. I reuploaded just to make sure. Still no go. When I did a view source, I saw that the template had the mt.js file in the static folder. The installation docs say to put only the images folder and the styles.css file in the static folder, not the mt.js file. I did this and now it works fine.

Hopefully this post will prevent someone from pulling their hair out for hours.

Clients and Hurricanes

So after my hellish month we decide to head to Cocoa Beach to stay at Joyce’s sister’s beach condo. Another Flash project was scheduled to wrap and my .NET project was waiting for feedback. We planned a week in advance. Thursday morning…Turns out that my Flash project was not exactly wrapping when it should have. There was also hurricane Bonnie to drive through in a MINI Cooper. We decided to go anyway. Charley was hitting the west coast so we weren’t worried about hurricane #2.

The drive was fairly rough but not too bad. It rained for maybe 4 hours with 1 hour of it very intense. On Friday morning we find out that hurricane Charley was headed right toward Tampa where Joyce’s sister lives. I headed to Kinkos (40 min one way) to handle some final changes for the new delivery date of the Flash project and then head back. Joyce’s sister, her two kids, and their three dogs are coming to stay with us to avoid the hurricane.

My client changes the onsite install of the project to Monday. I tell him I’m not due to return to work until Tuesday. Long sighs and cursing on the other end of the phone. .NET site client starts demanding changes.

So much for a vacation. We decide to come home a day early on Sunday.

The hurricane brushed us on Friday night. It was actually pretty cool – only 50 – 70 mph winds.

Miserable July

Last month was extremely difficult. At the time that I took on a website project (my first using ASP.NET), another project (my first all Flash CD) that had been delayed raised it’s head. Unfortunately both were due at the same time with very unreasonable deadlines. I literally worked from 5 or 6 in the morning until 9 or 10 at night for three weeks, including the weekends.

In my experience, deadlines always slip, so I wasn’t concerned at first, but when both clients held fast I was completely screwed. Especially since each project was a first for me. I can NEVER let this happen again. This combined with the fact that I ran out of money at this time made me so miserable that it’s gotten me thinking of an entirely different line of work.

On a positive note, I’ve recently helped my friends at Fury New Media XML enable a Flash site that allows the client, a local video post house, to easily update video (FLV) and news clips on their site.

I’ve also completed a Flash site for Dentition, but since my design skills are lacking, a redesign is under way enlisting the help of Chris Hays.