g.wygonik's flash experiments

So, after the most unfortunate and untimely closing of my previous employer about a month ago, I've been spending a lot of time fretting about work. Not so much that I wouldn't be able to find something, but finding a job that had the same interest level, would push me out of my comfort zone (in good ways), and, hopefully, last for a long, long time.

Fortunately, before things officially shut down, my boss introduced me to one Mr. Jared Ficklin (here demonstrating a nice fire-based audio visualization) which led to me securing a position as a Senior Technologist at frog design — a job that will definitely keep my interest and push the boundaries of my wee brain. This is my first week, and so far I can say that I wish I didn't have to come home and sleep at night.

The environment and company culture is quite refreshing, and every day I learn something about the frog mindset that makes me smile. It doesn't hurt that all the folks I've met all have the same love of technology and making cool things that I do! No more lone coder.

The best part — in my mind at least — is that all the things that I would do after work hours I get to do for my day job; learning new technologies, experimenting with UI/UX methodologies, fiddling around in Flash . This will definitely free up some cycles.

As for my last post, well, my ear did eventually clear up. It's a very scary thing to think "OMG, I'm a musician who just went deaf in one ear and everything is out of tune". Freaked me out a bit. All's fine now.

Happy day.

...but my wife was.

We recently finished up a project for AARP The Magazine -- a look back at 1968 via a timeline with images, audio clips, video clips, best-of lists, and a pop quiz.

The project is way deeper than it appears on the outside; there were amazing audio interviews with some of the influential people that made 1968 so special. From Bootsy Collins talking about James Brown to John Kay (of Steppenwolf) to Tommie Smith (the Olympic gold medalist who came up with the idea to do the Black Power "salute" during the medal ceremonies) -- it was awesome to get to edit the audio interviews and hear just how deeply the year affected them. It also struck me just how apathetic today's youth are. When you hear about these kids that took a stand against the war and social injustice and really DID something, and you look at the news today you can't help but see that most people talk the talk (mostly online) but certainly don't walk the walk. I got into doing music because I had something to say and wanted to try to change things around me -- and music was a great way to get into people's heads. But it seems that most people are happy to just post something online in a public forum (Digg people, I'm looking at you) and think it's doing something. I don't know... I'm old and jaded now.

In other news, I've been dealing with an ear infection for a week now -- which has kept my left ear clogged. So much for working on music! Most annoying. Hopefully it clears up soon, as my antibiotics are running out.

I've been working on developing some apps for the iPhone/iPod Touch. While I've been doing mostly web-app development, I'm getting ready to transition to full-on SDK Objective-C work. I've been putting it off as I'll need to upgrade my Mac Mini to Leopard. I think I should have the means to do that soon. There are some great possibilities with the technology, so I hope I can make it shine (like it does in my head).

Finally, we're starting up VeggieAustin -- the Austin version of the vegan/vegetarian dining guide we did in New Orleans. While there are several pre-existing sites here that cover some of the places to eat, none of them seem to venture out beyond their favorite spots or get updated more than once every 8 months. We're not necessarily trying to "compete", but we see a need for something just to help ourselves out, so we're doing it "our way".

Beyond that - things are ok. Hope everyone is well.

g.

Oh - i mean, all good things must come to an end.

I recently ended my stay at FanRocket due to issues that I won't get into. One of those "you'll laugh, you'll cry" jobs where the "cry" was happening more often than the "laugh". Had to give it up just to get back some of my sanity, my free time, and my self-respect.

That all being said, I wish them all well and I'm very happy to see that the Around the World For Free site is standing up to the apparently massive increase in traffic. While I don't know specifics about real traffic these days, the placement of user icons and media icons all over the map looks really sexy. The increase is of course due to Alex and Zsolt heading out on the trip; I wish them both nothing but good tidings and am anxious to see how they fare!

I'm now a developer at Terra Incognita - a fun company with a very impressive portfolio. I've had to jump straight in and hit the ground running, but so far so good. First tasks are several interactives for National Geographic Society. Nice to get back to work that is enriching people's lives and not just trying to sell them something. Plus, I get to leave work and not think about it until the morning.

Which means that I can finally get back to finishing up a new cut.rate.box album. Sheesh - it's only been 6 years! What do you people want from me?! I have a lot of tracks written, so it's now just a matter of picking and choosing and doing final recordings. Should have something out by the end of the year.

It also means that I may finally get back to the AS3 version of blazePDF, the Mac version of AFTERTHOUGHT (though there are other options that use the same technique now), and perhaps a few new things that I've had going on for a long time but never finished up.

Two years on from Katrina and we're finally coming out of shells. Obviously getting outside the house and interacting with people has been a switch for me, and I think that's kind-of rubbing off on Lorie. Her photo work is picking up - she has her stock site coming along, her "artifacts" moving swiftly, and will be vending her wares at the cool Stitch Austin event in November. Good stuff all around.

Groove on (assume the motion)

g.

While I don't have a Zune, nor do I plan on getting one, I was happy to see a nice, dark, official XP theme be released with a "Zune" feel (see bottom-right of linked page).

I prefer dark themes over the blue/silver/olive XP defaults, and while dark, Royale wasn't 100% complete. The other nice thing about this theme is that it's the first XP theme I've found that let's me set the titlebar size SMALLER than 20px; this one goes down to 18px. While that's not a huge difference, I prefer my screen to be used for apps, not titlebars .

I'm not sold on the orange in this theme, though it is the same orange as the Firefox logo .

Looking back over recent posts it seems I've been posting nothing but bad news and sadness. Unfortunately that seems to be where our minds wander these days. Though, it has been easing. Finally.

Getting settled into a new city, new routines, new everything is starting to take over. In good ways.

Work has been amazing. Crazy busy doing some of the most enjoyable Flash work and experimentation I've ever had the privilege of working on. Just creating stuff. "Can this be done?" -- "Of course!" says I (now, how do i DO that? )

We recently finished up our role in moving NBC's It's Your Show TV to a community-driven, user-generated content, rockin', FanRocket-driven site. Not bad for hacking our system into an existing design. But the future looks even better. Not too much I can talk about, but certainly things that are taking my Flash (and Flex) knowledge to new heights.

Music is coming along. I've sent out some remix kits to peeps, which means I've actually have finished up some tracks. Quite different from previous, but at the same time, not.

Life in general, well, as mentioned it's still hard and weird, but moving. I actually have done things to the house that i never dreamed I would be doing. I hung gutters on one side of our garage so we can collect more water in rain barrels, I replaced a ceiling fan (sounds small, but i HATE[d] working with electricity)... Just little things that make me happy.

I've also helped Lorie learn how to develop black and white film in our kitchen. I got her all the stuff for xmas and cleared out some space in a closet to use as a make-shift darkroom. You can see some of the fruits of our at-home development labor at her photo blog (and some pictures of the parrots that have been hanging around lately).

She got me an awesome bread machine and I've been making bread and pizza dough a LOT (both vegan). Yes, we have moved towards being vegan again... It was hard in NOLA to be vegetarian, let alone vegan. At least for us. Here it's pretty easy really. We are cooking more, composting, wasting less. Just feels better. Feels like the right thing to do.

Now if we could just exercise again... That would be the last post-K blockage for us i think.

I'm hopeful for 2007. I wish everyone a good, happy, prosperous new year, and I promise I'll not post all doom and gloom -- rather, i'll post more Flash-related stuff as I have stuff to post again.

:-)
g.