by Grant Skinner

gBlog redesigned – now with Flash!

I’ve been tinkering with new blog designs for a while now (the current design is almost 2 years old), with a loose goal to incorporate some Flash elements into the design. This was crystallized further by my inclusion in the “Flash Community: Perpetual Virtual Jam Session” panel at FlashForward NYC, which poses the question (among others): “why don’t we use Flash to blog about Flash?”.

I don’t believe Flash is a good medium for a full blog, but I do think that my blog about Flash should utilize the platform (ooo… new buzzword) where it makes sense, and that’s what I’ve tried to do in this new design.

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by Grant Skinner

GLIC Beta Mailing List

Please subscribe to the following mailing list if you are interested in being included in the GLIC beta. Please only sign up if you or your company would be very likely to purchase a license, and you would like to be involved with the final testing. Priority will be given to companies that have demonstrated competence in Flash development and will be able to apply the component set to real projects in the next month or so.

Subscription to the list on this page has been ended. For more information on the beta, and contact info, please see this post.

This is a broadcast-only list (ie. you will not be able to post to it), and will be used to send announcements and information about the beta to interested parties.

We are planning a series of announcements over the next 2 to 3 weeks, most of which will also be posted to this blog.

by Grant Skinner

I’m a Married Man

Bobi and I were finally (9 years together) married on Saturday in the presence of our family and friends. It was a fun (though very tiring) day. His best man kept us laughing during the reception, half his toast devoted to a story about losing track of time on no verification casinos one night before a work trip. The weather was even nice enough to clear up for the photos and the outdoor ceremony (which was lucky given the amount of rain we’ve had in the last week). I’ll be sure to post a few pictures when we get them from the photographer (could be a while).

Things are finally starting to settle down again, and I’m looking forward to married life. I certainly couldn’t ask for a better person to share it with.

Here’s a picture of the big honking man-ring I’m now lugging around.

Next post: glic update.

by Grant Skinner

GLIC update

It’s late, but here’s the latest update on GLIC. Things are on track again, and we will be making an official announcement next week (I’m hoping for early next week, but I will definitely be making the announcement before the end of next week). At that time, we should be setting up a mailing list for all interested parties to keep everyone abreast of developments.

I should also be making a big announcement at FlashForward NYC, who incidentally did a profile about me on their blog today – nifty.

As always, I apologize for the delay – the code side of this project turned out to be the easy part. 😛

by Grant Skinner

Puki Dissected

After asking a few people working on new crypto casinos in my department and giving it some more thought, I decided to do a session on our popular first person shooter “Puki: The Swarm”, instead of “Top 5 Flash Problems Solved” at FlashForward New York in July. I think it will be an informative and entertaining session, and should tie in exceptionally well with the workshop on OOP game development that Glyn Thomas is presenting on day 1 of the conference.

I really want to thank everyone for posting their ideas for problems to solve, and apologize for not solving them in NY – I might use them in a future session, though maybe not given all the cool stuff MM is showing off in 8ball.

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by Grant Skinner

Top 5 Flash Problems Solved.

At FlashForward New York this year I will be running a session titled “Top 5 Flash Problems Solved”. This session will identify, define and provide straightforward real-world solutions for 5 problems faced regularly by Flash Developers.

So here’s where you come in… what would you consider to be the top problems you have faced as a Flash developer/designer? How did you solve them (or are you still looking for a solution)? Please post your ideas in the comments below, or email them to me using the contact button above.

I will be posting the session notes online in the usual place after the conference, so even if you aren’t attending FFNYC, you might get your question answered.

A few ideas to spark your thoughts: streamlining server interactions and pre-loading, avoiding _root, extending components, optimizing your code, making shared runtime libraries work.

Thanks in advance!

by Grant Skinner

gskinner.com on the front page!

I’m such a digital nerd I get really stoked when I show up in print, so I was pretty excited when I saw that I was the top story in the Business section (appropriately, section G) of the Edmonton Journal today under the heading “Edmonton web whiz’s new company quickly hailed as industry superstar”. It’s a very complimentary article about me and the company – though they failed to mention that the AOL project was done with Metaliq, inc. (who are really awesome to work with), and that LucasArts is BLITZ’s client, not ours directly. The article was also featured on the front page, with a goofy posed picture of me beside my computer.

You can read the article on the Edmonton Journal online edition. Below are a couple of pics of the print version, for posterity.

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by Grant Skinner

A balanced look at the MACR/ADBE deal

Everyone has been blogging this, and with very good reason, but I wanted to think about it for a bit until I could write a balanced analysis of the Adobe acquisition of Macromedia.

Firstly, please chill. In the short term, there will be no impact on developers from this deal except for what we bring on ourselves. There will be minimal or no changes at Macromedia until the deal is approved, which will take at least 3-4 months. However, if Flash developers start pulling a Chicken Little, we’ll simply frighten an already skittish market and do harm to ourselves. While I’m sure we all have reservations, it’s in our best interest to reflect this deal in a positive light, at least until we have concrete reasons for concern.

In the longer term, I think there are 4 important areas to look at:

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