Musings of a Crackpot

Adobe released a beta preview of the Flash 9 IDE yesterday morning. Basically they just shoehorned AS 3 support into the exisiting Flash 8 IDE. At least that’s how it looks on the surface but the more that I start using it the more I see the smaller touches that show its more than just some syntax highlighting support.

Actionscript 3 has been out for a while, available through Adobe Labs and I’ve been trying my best to wrap my mind around all the new changes. First I tried writing code in the Eclipse IDE, and then I tried in all the various Flex Builder betas, but I’m ashamed to admit that I ended up getting confused in both just with the initial setups required. I hate feeling stupid but trying to set those up to work correctly with AS 3 just ended up frustrating me. With the release of the Flash 9 IDE beta i knew that there were no more excuses for me to not starting learning AS 3 and the new (and better development mindset) needed to work with where Flash is going.

So after spending my first few hours with the IDE, I feel a little better. Some things really excite me, such as the ability to have documents use classes so you can truly seperate your actionscript code from the .fla file. I know that there have been various open source solutions that have been about to do that, but Adobe’s implementation definitely had an ease of use about it.   Everything else that various Flash developers have been trumpeting, from the DisplayList, to having Sprites, and Shapes, do E4X are all exciting and finally allow for Flash to be used in ways that people have been trying to push Flash towards since Flash 5 and even early. I know from experience that developing a web application with Flash now is way way easier than it was when I for started with MPLN back in 2002, with Flash 5.

Flash is just an interesting hybrid of a product, with both designers and developers able to create some truly remarkable tools, applications, and just enjoyable creations. I can’t wait to see what people develop going forward and I really hope to be able to be one of those people that develop something spectacular and impressive with Flash in the future.

Current Mood:  impressed

I tried to leave it but i couldn’t. People came out of the woodwork to try and convince me to come back. The return started simply enough.

“I’ll just update the client on my PC, i never play it anywhere but it would be good to have it up to date”, “I’ll just peek in on the forums and see how everyone is doing, what everyone’s up to these days.”, “I can quit anytime I want, it’s just a time sink. I have better things to do now, the beach, the woods, the mountains, the cities, playing poker.”

Who was i fooling, other than myself it seems? I couldn’t stay away. Just hearing the crystal theme draws me back. It’s like smelling delicious food and having my mouth water, I can’t help it really. I am a FFXI addict it seems. I updated my ps2 client late last thursday night. It took about an hour and then i popped in-game and looked around. I was just trying to see if there were any people online that I actually knew anymore since lots of my older ffxi friends have stopped playing. It’s amazing how real life always seems to get in the way of things.

The shock in the linkshell messages just brought a huge smile on my face. People actually missed me and were glad to see me back in-game. Total strangers to me were wondering where i can been and newbies were wondering why all the older players were freaking out. It was great..and so far it continues to be good. There’s so much untapped FFXI for me. There’s the new(ish) expansion that i still need to purchase and install. Hell, there’s tons of content from the original install and the Rise of the Zilart and CoP expansions that I’ve barely scratched. To top it off they added 3 more new jobs that I’m dying to try out.

All in all, I’m glad to be back playing FFXI, although it’s not the same as the ‘good ole days’, where my co-workers and I would talk about FFXI during the workdays and then hang out and play FFXI and party up during the evenings. Some of those times were the most enjoyable times I’ve had playing any sort of game, be in a video game or basketball or football or whathaveyou. FFXI isn’t the same as it was then, but it’s still enjoyable to me. I guess that’s why thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people keep playing FFXI and MMORPG’s just like it

Current Mood:  thoughtful

Time for me to rant, I’m tired of working on listing pages. Mundane, boring work…open .fla, make changes, copy assets, adjust for specific listing, repeat, repeat, repeat. Thank goodness I’m almost done with them all. On the flip side, the nav system that I created this weekend seems to be well accepted. It’s gone through a ton of adjustments and improvements over the week. I’m going to refactor the whole thing this weekend and try to make it a lot more robust and structure and not so much half-assed.

Current Mood:  restless

I’ve made some really good progress today on the flash based navigation system that i started working on. This is the super early alpha stage here. The entire navigation is created from a .xml file that is retrieved and parsed at runtime. It’s still all pretty basic stuff, but to go from a thought in my head into a tangible product over one evening is definitely a good start. Part of tomorrow is blocked off for documentation, code clean up and adding a few more features like rollover highlighting and things of that nature. It really feels good to be able to just sit down and create again, it’s been far too long.

I was channel surfing while working on creating a Flash based navigation system. While flipping through the channels, i paused on CSpan2, Etan Thomas was speaking. Thomas has writed a book of poems titled More Than an Athlete. Thomas has been very outspoken about Bush and the current conflicts that Bush has lead our nation into. He was reciting one of his poems in regards to Bush and he pulls no punches. I’m going to purchase his book, I had remembered hearing about it when it was first release but it spilled my mind. Etan’s status as an athlete has given him a platform for him to speak on and thankfully he goes far to remove the stereotypical view of professional athletes as selfish and ignorant of actually happenings in the world. I wish that I had a transcript of his poem, it grabbed me, I literally stopped moving, stopped thinking about the nav system, stopped wandering if anyone interesting was online, just listened to this gentleman speak and just listened. I definitely wish that I was that talented, on any sort of front, much less talented enough to become a professional athlete, published author and a speaker on political topics.

Current Mood:  thoughtful