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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Wow! Last night I won Best Canadian Developer (which of course really translates to Best Canadian Flash Developer) at the FitC awards show – quite an honour (eh?). The award is supercool – an old-school can opener embedded in a block of clear lucite. I’ll add a picture of it here after I get back home.

I’d really like to thank my fiance Bobi for putting up with my nerdy Flash obsessions, and a fair amount of neglect over the past few years. I’d also like to thank everyone that’s contributed to this fantastic industry – it’s pretty cool to have a job that you actually look forwards to each day (well… most days), and one where you can meet up with so many great people at these events.

I’d also like to (belatedly) thank my amazing team at gskinner.com, their great work has let me focus more of my time on the community, and on pushing the boundaries of the technology with experiments and cutting-edge corporate projects. I wouldn’t be able to do what I do without them. Thanks guys!

I’ve just finished off my sessions at FitC (Toronto) and FlashForward (San Francisco) on Object Oriented Procrastination. I had a lot of fun doing both sessions, although I may have had a bit too much booze, and a bit too little sleep for the FitC one. You can check out the session notes by clicking here, and don’t forget to check out the full list of notes from my previous sessions here.

The Puki have landed! My latest “experimental” venture was into the land of 3D, which is an area I haven’t explored much in the past. What started with an abstract concept to create a set of 3d classes, and render a view of a tunnel, has blossomed into a full featured 3d game, the first of its kind (first person shooter) that I am aware of in Flash. With help from my team (lots of beta testing, especially since the highscores went in), I have pretty much finished the game, and am releasing it now as a beta. Click any of the screenshots below to play it, and please leave any feedback or bugs in the comments below. This is the first full game we’ve built purely for the fun of it (ie. non-commercial) at gskinner.com, and we’re all excited to hear what you think.

Be sure to read the tips at the beginning of each level, they have some good info. And keep your eyes peeled for easter eggs (a few days late for easter, but there nonetheless).

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I thought I’d give this a quick blog, as it’s now exposed via the FitC awards page anyway. In my spare time over the past little while I’ve been working on a first person shooter in Flash (perhaps the first Flash fps?) using our new set of 3d classes. Considering it started mainly as a technical experiment, it’s looking pretty good, and is actually fun to play (though maybe not as instantly addicting as the 1kb asteroids game). I’m just putting on the finishing touches now, and should be releasing it sometime late next week.

Here’s a screenshot in the interim (scaled down to fit in the blog).

And before anyone asks… glic news coming next week, I promise.