Obligatory Year-End Analysis

I’m really not one for posting random thoughts all over the place- but it is interesting to think over some of my activities while on parental leave one year ago and contrast that with what life is like now- how things stand and where things are going.

Work at DU is good. It’s been very busy and that is a major concern. We should be hiring someone soon to take some of the load off. There is no shortage of interesting projects. I get to work with Flash, Flex, AIR and the rest- a really nice environment to use my skills. It’s difficult to see myself working in a more corporate structure at this point.

I’ve also been very active with teaching- way too active. It’s a nice source of extra income but if I take on too much it becomes a burden rather than a pleasure.

My work through Fractured Vision Media has really blossomed this year. I’ve partnered with ZStream Media Services on a rather large project building an interactive media delivery system for Blockbuster, La Quinta Inns, and potentially a number of other clients. The framework we’ve created is pretty extensible and the initial development will hopefully wrap us soon as we are seeing a nationwide release beginning this week.

Personal projects have been sparse. Just no real time with all the other stuff I have going on. One item that I am very pleased with is the completion of a new audio collection “A Prison of Oneself” which I am releasing through FVM. I’ve worked on material for this release off and on since 2003(!) and have put in far too much work to let it rot in my archives. I sold a number of copies of “August” back in 2000 and with much better distribution through the internet, I believe I can recoup the small amount of money I’ve put into this project fairly easily. I set up a crappy MySpace Music account to help advertise and network with artists I’ve worked with when I was more active with this stuff. The album should be available for purchase within the next week or so.

All in all, it has been a pretty successful year. If I can look back next year with the same amount of optimism- I will be thrilled!

My wishes for the new year involve the following:

1. Become more introspective and considerate of personal time, personal projects, and the inner-life.
2. Continue growing Fractured Vision Media as a multimedia services entity.
3. Become more fluent in ActionScript 3.0 and related technologies while expanding focus once again to design aspects of my many projects.
4. Generally become a better father, husband, and human being…

Happy New Year!

New Title!

My official title at DU has been changed to Senior Multimedia Application Developer- very nice!

This new title is much more reflective of what I do on a day-to-day basis and I’m very pleased with the designation of “senior”- an indicator of my years of experience working in this field. We have been going through a lot of changes recently as a unit. While things are a little rough at the moment- in a few months time I envision a very solid production.

Guess I’ll need new business cards printed up… eventually.

AIR Beta 3

I skipped development on AIR Beta 2 simply because I was too busy doing other things. Now that Beta 3 is out, I’ve begun developing some modules that use such features as local storage and network monitoring. I’m very impressed so far and can see using this on a number of projects.

Hopefully, resource consumption has been improved from when I was last working on this stuff. Early on, some machines were just getting eaten up by the runtime. I suppose the new profiling perspective in Flex Builder 3 will help out tremendously with this as well.

I may be able to get some stuff completed over the Christmas break. I certainly hope so, as there is no time to use AIR at work just yet.

As an aside- I just brought this website back from the depths once again this evening.  I’ve got to stop this whole “slash and burn” approach to things…