School, Flash, and Everything In Between
School started this last week, I'm back in the thick of it again! I'm taking a marketing class this semester, which so far has proven quite interesting. I'm starting to learn there is a lot more to marketing than trying to get people to buy things they don't want or need. I'll be sure to post my key learnings at the end of the semester.
This weekend I visited my Dad to celebrate his 52nd birthday. It was interesting because he and his wife are currently taking care of her mother, his mother in law, who is 98 years old. She is in good health and able to move around on her own, but has trouble getting around in the winter so she stays with them for the season. Anyway, it just got me to thinking about how in as little as 20-30 years my Dad could be in a similar state and how that doesn't seem that distant anymore. It is strange to think it might be that close. I have this childhood image of my father, a guy in his late 20's/early 30's who is big, strong, and unstoppable. I think that will always be the image I have of him in my mind.
It is kind of funny how we remember people like that. Either wearing specific clothing, at a certain age, or doing a certain behavior. What is it about that person that makes us remember that? For my Dad I can only assume I remember the strength of his youth because I looked to him as my childhood protector. Similarly, when I remember a friend it is typically of them doing the one activity that best defined them or wearing the one shirt I always saw them in. Interesting.
Well, that is enough time dedicated to an aside, here is the rest of the dirt my current happenings...
I'm leaving for NYC this Friday to visit my girlfriend. I'm thinking this time I should be at the airport at least 24 hours early to catch my flight. There is no way I'm going to miss this flight after what happened last time. It has been a month since we last saw each other. I know I've said this before, but going a month in between visits is killer. At least this is a temporary assignment for her. 5 months down and only 19 to go before she moves back.
I've been playing with Flash on my own time lately. It is pretty cool stuff. Although ActionScript from what I can tell is the worst language on the face of the planet (a tainted version of JavaScript) and the IDE Macromedia provides is junk compared to nearly any of the other programing environments (most notably Visual Studio), just about anything can be done with it. The program I wrote is a simple scrolling menu with some drag and drop functionality, but it forced me to learn many of the basic concepts and workings of Flash. Anyway, it was a fascinating little project to do before school geared up again. It is always good to have something new to learn to broaden my experience base.
Finally, for all you coders out there, Krista posted a link in this post about this hilarious site. Every day it highlights a new abuse of basic coding principles as witnessed in real life.
This weekend I visited my Dad to celebrate his 52nd birthday. It was interesting because he and his wife are currently taking care of her mother, his mother in law, who is 98 years old. She is in good health and able to move around on her own, but has trouble getting around in the winter so she stays with them for the season. Anyway, it just got me to thinking about how in as little as 20-30 years my Dad could be in a similar state and how that doesn't seem that distant anymore. It is strange to think it might be that close. I have this childhood image of my father, a guy in his late 20's/early 30's who is big, strong, and unstoppable. I think that will always be the image I have of him in my mind.
It is kind of funny how we remember people like that. Either wearing specific clothing, at a certain age, or doing a certain behavior. What is it about that person that makes us remember that? For my Dad I can only assume I remember the strength of his youth because I looked to him as my childhood protector. Similarly, when I remember a friend it is typically of them doing the one activity that best defined them or wearing the one shirt I always saw them in. Interesting.
Well, that is enough time dedicated to an aside, here is the rest of the dirt my current happenings...
I'm leaving for NYC this Friday to visit my girlfriend. I'm thinking this time I should be at the airport at least 24 hours early to catch my flight. There is no way I'm going to miss this flight after what happened last time. It has been a month since we last saw each other. I know I've said this before, but going a month in between visits is killer. At least this is a temporary assignment for her. 5 months down and only 19 to go before she moves back.
I've been playing with Flash on my own time lately. It is pretty cool stuff. Although ActionScript from what I can tell is the worst language on the face of the planet (a tainted version of JavaScript) and the IDE Macromedia provides is junk compared to nearly any of the other programing environments (most notably Visual Studio), just about anything can be done with it. The program I wrote is a simple scrolling menu with some drag and drop functionality, but it forced me to learn many of the basic concepts and workings of Flash. Anyway, it was a fascinating little project to do before school geared up again. It is always good to have something new to learn to broaden my experience base.
Finally, for all you coders out there, Krista posted a link in this post about this hilarious site. Every day it highlights a new abuse of basic coding principles as witnessed in real life.
posted by david at Sunday, January 22, 2006
8 Comments:
A tainted version of JavaScript? I didn't know such a thing was possible, as tainted as JavaScript already is. I shudder at the thought.
dave, i am interested in learning flash. what's the best way to start?
The best way is to work with someone who knows it on a project. That probably isn't practical. I took a short training class with work and have done a fairly large amount of reading online and looking at examples of other projects. The site http://flashkit.com is a mess to navigate, but you can search through thousands of flash projects to find code to do specific things (such as specific types of animations) which you can then import into your project and tweak.
Like I said in my post, it isn't the quickest to learn and far from intuitive as far as I'm concerned so be prepared to struggle with it.
I think I speak for all Internet users when I demand to know why I am unable to browse snack options on brandnewyou.com.
who the heck is zapcrafter anyays?
so, how was your weekend in NY??
hope you had a good one!
later
zapcrafter is a friend of mine from high school. A cool guy, but he has radical ideas about snack consumption that would scare the average person.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Must be a Firefox thing.
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