A Word About Bread

I haven’t done a lot of Flash development this weekend. Mostly I’ve been baking bread.

I love good breads, so when a co-worker of mine introduced me to the No-Knead Bread method developed by Jim Lahey… I developed a quick fanaticism over it. I’ve made three loafs of bread in the past few days. Awesome bread- well developed crust… nice, airy inside… simple, timeless flavor. Just great, great bread!

I don’t normally write about anything here that isn’t in some way related to my work in one way or another- this is just too good not to share though. I encourage everyone to give this a shot if you want a quality loaf of bread to share over wine or beer. This really cannot be beat.

I made these. In my home oven. Electric.

3rd Loaf

2nd Loaf (with Rosemary!)

1st Loaf

I am a man obsessed.

2009 Personal Retrospective

As per my annual habit, I’m providing a rundown of significant events and reflections for the past year, organized by category. Like always, this is more of a log for my own reflections and milestones, but is publicly available as I believe it a a good representation of my work and achievements for the year.

University of Denver

Things have been quite busy in my position as Senior Multimedia Application Developer for the University of Denver. We’ve had a number of huge roll-outs with existing projects this year along with a number of new applications, as well.

The most significant application we’ve worked on this past year has been DU CourseMedia™ (formerly DUVAGA). Not only did the application received a drastic change of branding, but a ton of new tools were introduced which garnered the attention of Adobe and other organizations. Almost all of my presentations for the year were based upon this system.

The DU Portfolio system also received quite an upgrade (and slight branding adjustment) in the form of user-customizable options.

Overall, I do find myself with solid employment in a job that provides me with a flexible work schedule, open development practices, and the freedom to experiment with new technologies. A person with interests such as my own cannot ask for much more.

Adjunct Teaching

It almost seems as though with every year that goes by, I do less teaching. 2009 was no exception to this. In 2008, I started doing most of my courses online in a distance-only format. This year, they’ve all been online- I no longer do location-based, traditional classes. I think the main factor behind this change is an increased involvement with other areas of professional involvement (specifically the Flash Platform community and my Adobe Higher Education leader duties) but most of all the need to balance family life with the rest of my work. It’s good- I’m happy with the amount of teaching that I’m currently assigned and quite glad that I’m able to perform at a distance in this manner.

Adobe Higher Education Leader Program

I’ve been participating in a lot more community events since joining the Adobe Education Leader program last year. Participation in this program continues to be one of my favorite activities and I dearly hope that I’ll be able to continue my involvement for years to come.

Here’s a sampling of presentations and activities from 2009:

• Educause 2009: Streaming Video for Education
• Adobe DevNet: Q & A with Joseph Labrecque
• FITC: Custom Event Reporting from Flash to Google Analytics
• MAX 2009: Customizing the University Experience with a Rich Media Delivery System
• Adobe Seminar: Video Use Cases in Higher Education: Expand your audience through video
• Adobe Seminar: From Concept to Distribution: Products that will help you capture, edit, and distribute your video online
• Adobe Seminar: Making it all happen: A discussion of how to implement a video solution at your institution
• Adobe Summer Institute: Leveraging the Flash Platform to Deliver Dynamic Media Across Campus

I received the following certifications at the Adobe Education Leader Summer Institute:

• Rich Media Communication using Adobe Flash CS4
• Web Communication using Adobe Dreamweaver CS4
• Visual Communication using Adobe Photoshop CS4

I’m also involved in a ton of NDA stuff that I obviously can’t talk about here… wish I could though- exciting stuff!

Fractured Vision Media

FVM picked up a number of new clients with pretty large projects this year. We also continue to support many of our legacy clientele, as well. The economy certainly has brought a lot of company budgets to a grinding halt… not so much for Flash and AIR development, it would seem.

An Early Morning Letter, Displaced had a great year! The track “Condemnation” from the album A Prison of Oneself received a nomination from the JPF 2009 awards in the best ambient song category. While it didn’t win, being nominated out of over a half million songs is a pretty big deal.

Later in the year, the most recent album, Shudderflowers, was released. The new album has gotten some really nice comments such as this one from Numina’s Jesse Sola: “The new album is amazing. Excellent job and I look forward to several more listens.” Not bad.

FVM also released digital-only versions of both August and Through Darkened Eyes, making the entire catalog available through CDBaby, Amazon, iTunes, and others.

Personal Items

The biggest piece of personal news is that my wife and I are expecting our second child in February. This means that I’ll be taking a big chunk of time off from my normal routine as paternal leave. Unfortunately, I may not be able to do as much traveling and presenting in 2010. Still working out the details as there are a few events I absolutely would love to find some way to get to!

Plans for 2010

Looking forward to 2010, I have a lot of hope in the mobile Flash Platform. Hoping that Adobe’s strategy in this area pays off and opens up a whole other realm of development for my university projects. Along with Flash Player 10.1 on mobile, I’d love to see native compilers for more platforms that just iPhone. Android native compiler- c’mon, Adobe!

• Develop tools for mobile!
• Learn Git commands and use it for all new projects.
• Get into unit testing with Flex projects.
• Force time for more photography.
• More ‘creative’ Flash and video work!
• New project Strangling Strangers! [note: Just not going to happen at this time. I'm stretched too thin as things stand, already.]

Closing Remarks

This weblog has seen a steady increase in traffic as it normally does from year to year. I try to balance the posts here between both announcements and the more technical code examples. This seems to work quite well, although the code samples do tend to attract the most traffic! It’s increasingly difficult to update things regularly as Twitter takes a lot of the smaller things from this forum. As a result, articles here tend to be longer and more thought out than they have been in previous years. I see this continuing in this way without issue.

Donations Incentive: Shudderflowers

To continue the donation incentives began by Elad Elrom and continued by Brian Connatser, I’m also adding an incentive for those who contribute to the 2010 RIA Beard Off for Toys for Tots.

Those who contribute donations of any amount in my name (@JosephLabrecque) will be entered into a random drawing to receive a copy of the album Shudderflowers by An Early Morning Letter, Displaced. I will be giving away 3 copies of the album, so if only 3 donations are made in my honor, each contributor will receive a copy. Anything beyond that contains an element of chance.

I’ll even sign the damn thing if you like!

Here follows a list of those individuals in the RIA community who have committed to go razor-less for this cause:

• Chuck Freedman (@chuckstar)
• Elad Elrom (@EladElrom)
• Brian Connatser (@connatser)
• Kevin Suttle (@kevinSuttle)
• Jesse Freeman (@theflashbum)
• Joseph Labrecque (@JosephLabrecque)
• Robert Hall (@rhall)
• Todd Anderson (@bustardcelly)
• @BenStucki
• Curt Staubach (@curtStaubach)
• Chris Allen
• Scott Janousek
• Stacey Mulcahy (@BitchWhoCodes)
• LordAlex Leon

Honestly, don’t care who you vote for- but please DONATE!

Creative Moments / ‘Pistachio’

It’s really interesting to me how creative impulses can arrive in little, concentrated spurts. This is how ideas usually manifest themselves to me, and when they do, I like to grab ahold and just go with it.

The past few days I was feeling kinda dry, creatively. Happens every once in awhile and to be honest- provides me with some dark moments. The good thing is that when I experience a period like this, it often means that my inspiration will pick up in a day or so. If I time things right, I can get some really good stuff out of this cycle of mine.

This is exactly the case with ‘Pistachio’, a 30 second piece inspired by a contest held at http://www.getcrackin.com/. I just read about this in passing via Twitter, and immediately some ideas shot through my head like lightening. I absolutely love moments like this. Luckily, I had a few hours to devote to it and below is the result:

Edited down in Premiere Pro CS4 from about a minute of footage in two takes captured ‘live’ from a Canon SD video camera. Compositing done in After Effects CS4 with sound recorded through Soundbooth. Was a great experience messing around with After Effects after a very long time.

Now, I knew from the get go that this would never be accepted by the judges. No way. But that isn’t the point with this sort of thing, is it?

Progress on Shudderflowers

Work on the upcoming release by An Early Morning Letter, Displaced entitled “Shudderflowers” is proceeding much more quickly than anticipated. If things continue to come together in such a timely fashion, the new release will see the light of day before this year comes to a close.

1. Shudderflowers
2. Fever-Drenched and Burning
3. I Am Consumed
4. Fearless
5. Waning Flower
6. Searching, Lost
7. Beneath White Stones
8. A Cleansing of Bones
9. Where Dead Girls Lie
10. Alice (the bones)
11. Drowning Past The Sky
12. Threadbare