In the Snow
March 9th, 2010

There’s been a lot of talk regarding the future of Adobe Flash thanks to the blockade generated by Apple on the iPad and iPhone. It’s been covered extensively by the news media and blogs, but I figured as a Flash developer/designer, I’d chime in.
To paint a picture of my stance, I will say that:
I think something many in the Flash community fail to realize is that Flash Player doesn’t play well on mobile, and it’s not exclusive to Apple products. I know firsthand, as I considered purchasing a Nokia N900 as a result of Apple’s embargo. I checked out Flash Player 9.4 on the N900’s browser while stopping in at NYC’s Nokia Store, and the performance was nothing short of atrocious. YouTube videos were so choppy that they weren’t viewable, and simple Flash sites crashed the browser.
I should mention that the N900 is powered by the same ARM Cortex-A8 processor as the iPhone 3GS (the 3GS is underclocked to 600 Mhz). Sure, there are videos of Google’s Nexus One playing Flash Player 10.1, however, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Nexus One’s Snapdragon 1 GHz processor is concealing Flash Player’s inherent memory issues.
Reinforcement for this argument is Mozilla’s decision to drop Flash Player support for their mobile Firefox browser just prior to launch. I’m still amazed that this hasn’t garnered as much press as the iPad announcement.
This brings me back to the title of this topic–the Future of Adobe Flash.
Personally, I wonder if Adobe might have lost its way. Their community support is excellent, and I use their industry-standard tools every day, however, they’ve seemingly become obsessed with supporting a proprietary platform instead of focusing on building excellent tools, and their evangelists seem to point outward for blame rather than looking within. As I mentioned in #5, I want to see Flash Player arrive on all of Apple’s products, however, I think this falls upon Adobe improving the player’s performance. As for my predictions:
Obviously, #1 and #2 are less predictions than #3, but I think it’d be refreshing for Adobe to begin exploring these new mobile outlets as opportunities to provide new software. Can you imagine a software that publishes iPhone, Blackberry, and MeeGo apps–without doing translations from Flash? Now that would truly be interesting . . .
Jersey tagged me on his 5 people lunch meme, and as a good blogger, I feel compelled to answer.
My first answer would be to have lunch with five geographically-distant friends, as having lunch with famous people (who, let’s face it, would be complete strangers) would be an awkward situation for both me and the other party. Furthermore, I’m not a fan of this question because it begs you to impress everyone by naming a lesser-known, non-celebrity-but-famous-for-a-reason answer. I might as well be out tutoring some bartender on how to make “my” drink.
Since the friend answer defeats the fun of this question, I’ve answered below (in no particular order). I wasn’t sure if dead people were acceptable (otherwise it’d be Christ, Buddha, and Mohammed FTW), so I kept it with the living.
It looks like this message is making the rounds, but in case any photographers around here missed it, The Yellow Wall Gallery (located in the Midtown Scholar Bookstore), is accepting submissions for their upcoming exhibit, “Summer in Winter: A Visual Escape”, February 5 – March 26, 2010. More details are available at the The Yellow Wall Gallery’s Website.

It’s hard to believe it’s been two years since I’d done one of these, until I remember I spent all of last December moving and painting.
This is one of those equations I always seem to forget, so I’m posting it here for my own selfish benefit (though it’s free for anyone to use).
It’s a range converter method that can be particularly useful for sliders, etc. (code is in ActionScript 3.0).
/**
* Translates a value between two numeric ranges.
* Usage example: trace(translateRange(0, 10, 0, 100, 5)); // returns 50
* @param a1 (Number) minimum value of original range
* @param a2 (Number) maximum value of original range
* @param b1 (Number) minimum value of new range
* @param b2 (Number) maximum value of new range
* @param num (Number) number from original range to translate
* @return Number Value of num in new range
*/
function translateRange(a1: Number, a2: Number, b1: Number, b2: Number, num:Number):Number {
var c:Number = ((num - a1) * (b2 -b1)/(a2 - a1)) + b1;
return c;
}

I’m a little late to post this, but BarCamp Harrisburg 2 has been officially announced. It’ll be on Saturday, April 10, 2010 from 9am to 5pm at Harrisburg University. Attendance is free–just make sure to bring topics to discuss! I was hesitant to begin promoting this so far in advance, but there’s already been a decent amount of signups, plus we already have more sponsors at this point than last year (to be announced soon).
Hopefully, the weather will be better this time around (for those not in attendance, BarCampHarrisburg 1 was held in January during an ice storm). The venue has changed, too–Harrisburg University has a tremendous facility, and the wireless and projector hiccups from last year will won’t be an issue here. Frankly, it’s awesome that they’ve been so open and enthusiastic about hosting the event.
Also new is the Website and registration process. Gone is the confusing Wiki signup, as we’re now using Eventbrite (I’ll confess to cherry-picking some of the features of BarCampPhilly’s Website approach, as it’s one of the few examples of Websites hosted outside of barcamp.org).
A common question asked by potential attendees unfamiliar with the format is whether or not they will be forced to present. The answer is no. Personally, though, I hope we have so many attendees that it’d be impossible for everyone to present. Even if Especially if you’re not in the tech or education industry (but have interest in it or the social aspects of the Internet) I recommend you check BarCamp Harrisburg 2 out.

This past weekend I made it out to BarCamp Philly, and as you can see from the photo above, the turnout was 200-300 people–pretty good. Little did I know that WordCamp NYC was going on at the same time, but I think I made the right choice.
I’ve attended so many BarCamps now that I feel like an aficionado; you start to immediately recognize what works and what doesn’t at these events. Fortunately, Philly’s version of this unconference was well-sponsored and well-organized. They had a Website, pins, t-shirts, an online/mobile schedule, a photographer, and a great turnout. Here’s a hit list of what I liked and what I didn’t like:

This could reflect my session choices, but it seemed as if all of the sessions I attended were hosted by people interested in discussing a topic, but not necessarily qualified in leading it (by their own admissions). Granted, there’s nothing wrong with this approach, but I prefer that happy balance of workshop and discussion.
Overall, it was pretty cool. I’m starting to get the sense that BarCamps are essentially those great discussions you had in college that you don’t get post-academia. After all, once you’re out, how often do you place yourself in a room with a group of diverse and intelligent strangers to discuss a common topic?

My sister and my brother-in-law were obviously trying to one-up my wife for my birthday party, so they showed up with a chessboard they painstakingly made out of chocolate.

The two of them are known for coming up with pretty wild pet projects, though I think they’ve trumped me on anything remotely cool for their birthdays. The board itself is made of Matangos candies, while I’m told the pieces were made of melted chocolate and peanut butter fudge 1/2 molds.
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