Quick status update on the gskinner.com lightweight interface components. Technically, the components are done, and have been run through a battery of test suites. In fact, we have significantly expanded the number of components we anticipate releasing. From the 11 we originally planned, we are now up to 18:

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I’ve been working my way through the first 4 books in the Dune series by Frank Herbert. I find them to be a very interesting and thought-provoking look at humanity, government, faith, and the effect of power on the same – especially with the current political situation in the USA.

While reading The Children of Dune (book 3), I ran across a quote that I think is a phenomenal summation of my philosophies as a code architect and programmer. The quote was originally about “mentats” (basically human computers), I have paraphrased it, and modified it slightly to be about architects:

‘Above all else, the [architect] must be a generalist, not a specialist. Experts and specialists lead you quickly into chaos. They are a source of useless nit-picking, the ferocious quibble over a comma. The [architect] on the other hand, should bring to decision-making a healthy common sense. He must not cut himself off from the broad sweep of what is happening in his [application]. He must remain capable of saying “There’s no real mystery about this at the moment. This is what we want now. It may prove wrong later, but we’ll correct that when we come to it.” The [architect]-generalist must understand that anything which we can identify as our [application] is merely part of a larger phenomena. But the expert looks backward; he looks into the narrow standards of his own specialty. The generalist looks outward; he looks for living principles, knowing full well that such principles change, that they develop. It is to the characteristics of change itself that the [architect]-generalist must look. There can be no permanent catalogue of such change, no handbook or manual. You must look at it with as few preconceptions as possible, asking yourself: “Now what is this thing doing?”‘

– From Children of Dune by Frank Herbert (1976)

I really believe architects must take a generalist view. To be effective, you must be able to look at a project as a whole: code, usability, aesthetics, motion graphics, business process, project objectives, brand requirements, user profiles, stakeholder concerns, etc. You must understand that your specialty and it’s mantras (design patterns, OOP, et al) are secondary to the objectives of the project. You must embrace the fact that the standards and technologies you are an expert on are in a constant state of change – that what you know and believe today may be wrong tomorrow. Ideally, you should look at this reality with anticipation and even excitement. This continuous state of change is what makes this job / industry so much fun to be a part of.

Keep thinking. Keep learning. Keep having fun.

I’m back in the office after speaking at two stops on the FlashInTheCan 4 City Tour. The trip was a lot of fun, hanging out with the other speakers, staff and attendees in Montreal and Ottawa. It was also a ton of fun actually doing my session “Object Oriented Procrastination”, which was a bit of a departure from my usual technical sessions.

I’d post photos, but I think that could be incriminating evidence… maybe once I’ve had a chance to screen them. 🙂

Thanks to Shawn Pucknell and all the organizers for putting together yet another awesome event. Looking forwards to FitC 2005.

I just uploaded an updated version of my JSFL script for automating the set up of FLAs for internal pre-loading (removing the need for an external pre-loader). This update fixes a problem where JSFL execution would not complete if there was an embedded video asset in the library, as well as providing more robust reporting.

You can go to my previous post on this topic to read about how to use this JSFL properly, and to download the new version (near the bottom of the page).

I wanted to post a quick update on the status of the gskinner lightweight interface components, including recent progress, which components are done, licensing, pricing, limitations, etc. for everyone who has been asking about them.

You can find my original post about them which includes general information and screenshots by clicking here.

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I have posted my slides for my FlashForward NYC 2004 session titled “The Essential Development Process: From Pitch to Final Product” online. You can find a link to them on my list of session notes here.

I’ll try to post a recap of the conference, along with some photos in the next few days.

I recently decided to see what would happen if I recreated my Flash 4 crystallization experiment using ActionScript 2.0. With the speed gains in Flash Player 7, and some pretty heavy algorithm optimizations, the results are pretty impressive, at least from a pure data handling perspective. Unfortunately, it still slows down on slower systems due to the heavy graphics requirements.

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I just got back from 11 days in London. I had an awesome time!

The 3rd run of my Flash MX 2004 Enterprise Development workshop was a big success, with 9 very smart students (with some really great questions). It went really smoothly, and the feedback so far is excellent. A big thanks to all the attendees, Aral & Emilie (Bits & Pixels), Guy and everyone else who helped make it possible. I’ll post some photos and comments from the workshop in the near future.

I also did a talk on “Playing God: Simulating Nature in Flash” (or “FlashHubris 101”) at the London MMUG, alongside Mike Chambers who spoke about the future of Macromedia’s projects. You can check out some photos of the evening here, including a shot of my beautiful title screen. You can also check out a screen capture of one of the experiments I put together for the session here (zoom).

I also had a great time meeting new people and hanging out with Peter, Guy, Aral, Mike, and exploring London and area with my darling girlfriend.