MAX Conference Hotel
Monday, November 3rd, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments
So I booked my hotel for the upcoming MAX conference. Due to the fact that I am buying tickets to NH, I was unable to front the money for the hotel stay. Luckily the company was able to cover the cost.
SF Marriott Hotel Stay
I’m staying at the Marriott in San Francisco at 55 Fourth Street from 11/16 - 11/20.
I youTube’d
Monday, October 20th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments
This was my first experiance posting to youTube and I’m quite pleased with the simplicity they offered. Other then naming and adding a description, I just browsed to my movied, and clicked upload. Pfft… easy
Basic lead climbing at Solid Rock Gym in Poway, CA:
Failed Dyno 
(ill get it next time…)
Jaime on the trapeze!
Maximizing my Adobe Max experience
Monday, October 20th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments
Today I was trying to set up my schedule for the Adobe Max conference. The problem is there’s like 1000 session’s to choose from. Below you will see what I have narrowed them down to. They are not listed in any particular order, other then time. Please offer you suggestions or recommendations.
Monday:
11:30am - 12:30am
1: Lazy Innovation: Strategy for the Design of Innovative User Experiences
When engaging with applications, users essentially want to complete their tasks with a minimum of difficulty and friction. In this entertaining presentation, the Adobe Consulting User Experience team will explore this “doctrine of laziness” as a means of identifying opportunities for innovative user experiences.
Speaker(s):George Neill, Jerome Doran
Skill:General Audience
2: Working Smarter with Photoshop CS4 and Illustrator CS4
Join renowned illustrative designer Von Glitschka as he reveals how he combines a solid creative process with the latest tools in Illustrator CS4 and Photoshop CS4 to deliver fresh, inventive design. See how to edit and update on-the-fly with Smart Objects to expand your creative potential and streamline your workflow.
Speaker(s):Von Glitschka
Skill:General Audience
3: Tips, Techniques, and Secrets: Hidden Gems in Illustrator and Photoshop
Get cool tips and inside techniques for Illustrator CS4 and Photoshop CS4 from the creative pro masters, Terry White and Colin Smith. Whether you know only the basics or consider yourself a seasoned pro, there’s always more to discover in these essential tools.
Speaker(s):Terry White, Colin Smith
Skill:Intermediate
2pm-3pm
1: Forms Gone Wild (2008)
Learn how to avoid the top mistakes form developers make, whether they are working in Flex, Flash, Ajax, or LiveCycle, using HTML, PDF, or other formats. Back by popular demand, this session covers the top ten most serious mistakes, as voted on by previous session participants, as well as touching on other serious issues form developers struggle with. You’ll walk away with winning strategies that you can put to work in your form design practices.
Speaker(s):Duane Nickull
Skill:General Audience
2: The Making of the MAX 2008 Website
Meet the cutting-edge creative minds behind the MAX 2008 website and collateral. 2 Advanced Studios, Big Spaceship, Blitz Agency, and the Adobe multimedia team will reveal how they designed and built the MAX landscape experiences and website and then converted key assets for print. They’ll deconstruct the MAX landscapes to show what inspired them: For example, learn how Big Spaceship built the Arctic world out of paper and then converted it to digital assets to animate onscreen. This class combines inspiration with real-world techniques for pushing boundaries in building engaging experiences online and in print.
Speaker(s):Eric Jordan, Daniel Scheibel, Zander Brimijoin, Ken Martin, Tony Novak
Skill:General Audience
3: Standards-Based Solutions to Common Web Design Challenges
Liquid and elastic layouts. Multi-classing. Forms, forms, forms. What’s a web professional to do? Join us for an exploration of practical design approaches and techniques to provide solid, standards-based solutions to today’s web design challenges.
Speaker(s):Stephanie Sullivan
Skill:Intermediate
3:30pm-4:30pm
1: Introduction to Flex 3
Learn the basics of the Flex programming model. You will be introduced to the major concepts and languages, build a simple user interface as an example, and then deploy your completed project to Adobe AIR.
Speaker(s):Jeff Tapper
Skill:Beginner
2: Adobe Roadmap: Web Experiences
Learn Adobe’s product roadmap and share in our vision of web experiences of the future. Explore the direction content, applications, and targeted marketing are taking as they converge to create memorable web experiences.
Speaker(s):Lea Hickman
Skill:General Audience
5pm-6pm
1: Creating Attractive, Usable, and Accessible Forms
Learn how to make forms that look professional and are easy to use. Using real-world examples from some of the top websites, we’ll discuss common mistakes that limit usability, how to make your forms accessible, and how to leverage the power of CSS to create visually attractive forms.
Speaker(s):Rob Huddleston
Skill:Intermediate
2: Playful Design
Learn new strategies for increasing the level of innovation in your design work as we explore the idea that play might just be the ultimate design tool. Hear more about how inspired leaps or unexpected turns have come from new approaches, such as Designing from the Data and Building on Movement. Play is a physiologically distinct state of mind that allows more ideas to reach the surface — slight changes in our work processes, tools, and prejudices can enable designers to be more creative.
Speaker(s):Marcos Weskamp, Remon Tijssen
Skill:General Audienc
3: Sketching Interactivity
See a variety of tutorials and examples that visually explain innovative ways for you to map, plan, and organize your RIA or Adobe AIR application. Attendees will walk away with hands-on examples from real-world RIAs and AIR based applications.
Speaker(s):Ethan Eismann
Skill:Intermediate
Tuesday:
9am-10am
1: Design Eye for the Dev Guy
Venture into the land of right-brain thinking and discover your inner pixel. Professional UI design talent is not always considered or in the budget for enterprise Flex development projects. Learn how to approach UI design and plan interaction concepts to deliver great-looking, purposeful applications. Learn the difference between good design and design that sells. You know you’re a great programmer — now learn the elements of successful design.
Speaker(s):Aaron Adams
Skill:Intermediate
2: Learn about Flash CS4 Professional from the Quality Engineering Team
Discover new animation techniques in Flash CS4 Professional from the Flash quality engineering (QE) team. Dive deep with the people who test Flash, know its inner workings, and can reveal a wide range of cool things about animating with the software. Get a chance to ask the experts your questions, and come away with a deeper understanding of what you can do with animation in Flash CS4 Professional.
Speaker(s):Sean Kranzberg
Skill:Beginner
3: Quickly Mock Up a Business Website
Discover the power and speed of Fireworks CS4 as we design a two-page prototype of a business website in real time. During this session, you’ll learn about best practices for organizing layers, using pages, working with common design tools, applying blend modes, slicing designs, and more.
Speaker(s):Rodger Fuller
Skill:Advanced
1:30pm-2:30pm
1: Adobe@Adobe: IT Innovation
At Adobe, IT collaborates with product teams to develop innovative, reusable business solutions that drive productivity and efficiency within the enterprise. Learn how Adobe acts as its own customer, discover how it selects projects to implement, and see demos of applications built by IT early in the product lifecycle. Find out how your IT organization can build compelling solutions by deploying beta versions of applications throughout the enterprise.
Speaker(s):Christopher Mayo
Skill:General Audience
2: Web Application Development: The Error of Our Ways
Smart people doing dumb things can be funny. Lots of smart people doing the same dumb thing in your web application isn’t funny. In this session, Robert Hoekman, Jr., exposes the culprit behind the most common sources of user error. (Hint: It’s not the user.) See examples of applications that avoid this problem — and ones that don’t. Discover if regular people are really incapable of grasping brilliant web design — or something (or someone) else just might be to blame.
Speaker(s):Robert Hoekman, Jr.
Skill:General Audience
3pm - 4pm
1: The Online Business Effect: How the “Death of the Website” Affects You
Hear the creators of GoodBarry discuss the “death of the website” and the impact on every web designer. You’ll learn how to design and build effective online businesses and use new ideas and practices that go beyond building websites. Finally, we’ll demonstrate how you can build online businesses quickly, without programming and with better results for both you and your clients.
Speaker(s):Adam Broadway
Skill:General Audience
2: Flex Project Workflows
Learn the end-to-end process for designing and developing a complete Flex based consumer website. The session explores the detailed process used for coordinating development and design, the pitfalls that are often encountered, and how to avoid such pitfalls.
Speaker(s):Doug Winnie
Skill:Intermediate
3: Inside the Studio: Flash, Flex, and the Creative Process with 2Advanced
Join leading interactive agency 2Advanced Studios for an in-depth discussion of the creative process, team workflows, and challenges the agency has solved over the last decade. The 2Advanced co-founders will provide an insider’s glimpse into the studio’s efforts to stay abreast of current technologies, with a focus on Flash and Flex, while maintaining fresh creative outlooks after completing more than 900 client projects. The session will also include several behind-the-scenes case studies of high-profile projects from 2Advanced’s latest releases.
Speaker(s):Tony Novak, Eric Jordan
Skill:General Audience
4:30-5:30pm
1: Next-Generation Flex Skinning
See how skins and behaviors can be created with the next version of Flex. We’ll explain how to design skins and how to change basic functionality separate from appearance. We’ll also explore how component development works across Adobe’s products for designers and developers.
Speaker(s):Marc Dennert
Skill:Beginner
2: Designer Best Practices with Flex
Learn how to use familiar design tools in Adobe Creative Suite to integrate visually rich interfaces with unique, custom components created by Flex Builder developers. Apply design, motion, and interactivity to reusable components while collaborating smoothly with Flex developers to create stunning rich Internet applications.
Speaker(s):Aaron Pedersen, James Polanco
Skill:Intermediate
3: Understanding Flex Component Design Patterns
Participate in a designer-focused discussion about the design patterns contained within Flex components. Learn how to boost efficiency by mapping new user interface and interaction designs with existing design patterns.
Speaker(s):Adam Cath, Mark Shepherd
Skill:Intermediate
4: Design, Develop, and Deploy with Disney.com
Explore content development and product evolution with Disney.com technology leaders. Learn how the Disney Interactive Media Group designs, develops, and deploys virtual worlds, entertainment sites, and communities around the globe. View the technology behind Disney.com, Disney Fairies, the interactive “Cars” site, DGamer, and more.
Speaker(s):
Skill:General Audience
Wednesday:
9:30 - 10:30
1: Using Flash CS4 to Bridge the Designer/Developer Barrier in Education
Learn how Full Sail University is using Flash CS4 Professional to take students from a design-centric to a development-centric discipline. This session will focus on using Flash CS4 Professional to show design-influenced students how scripting and coding techniques affect interactive media within the Flash authoring environment. Expanding on this fundamental knowledge, students more easily grasp the concepts of interactive development and are able to progress into developing multiple documents for interactive media.
Speaker(s):Bill Bain
Skill:General Audience
2: Playful Development
Learn new strategies for increasing the level of innovation in your development work as we explore the idea that play might just be the ultimate development tool. Hear how the controversial notions of Playful Development, Serious Play, and the Conspiracy Theory are tearing down the boundaries between work and play. Play is a physiologically distinct state of mind that allows more ideas to reach the surface – slight changes in our work processes, tools, and prejudices can enable developers to be more creative.
Speaker(s):Gever Tulley
Skill:General Audience
11am-12am
1: Illustrator CS4: Deep Dive
Get it straight from the source. In this session, the Illustrator product manager will be your guide to what’s new and cool in Illustrator CS4, the vector software long considered to be the essential tool for cross-media design.
Speaker(s):David Macy
Skill:Intermediate
2: Debugging and Profiling with Flex Builder
Learn how to use the powerful debugging and profiling tools included within Flex Builder to build high-performance, reliable applications. We’ll cover some advanced debugger features you may not know, as well as go into detail about how to get the most out of the profiler.
Speaker(s):Jun Heider
Skill:Intermediate
2pm-3pm
1: Photoshop CS4: Deep Dive
Join us for a deep dive into the features and functionality of Photoshop CS4. See what’s new, learn tips and tricks, and discover some techniques that may surprise you.
Speaker(s):John Nack
Skill:Intermediate
2: Introduction to Flex Builder 3
Learn how to use Flex Builder 3. We’ll cover the basic features of Flex Builder, including the project system, basic editor features, design view, running and debugging, and deploying to Adobe AIR. We’ll also provide a preview of some of the more advanced functionality available within the tool.
Speaker(s):Adam Flater
Skill:Beginner
3:30pm-4:30pm
1: Photoshop CS4 Essentials: New Features You Need to Know
Learn those new features in Photoshop CS4 that every user should know. Discover how to use core image-editing capabilities along with the cool new tools that will truly make a difference in how you use Photoshop every day.
Speaker(s):Bryan O’Neil Hughes
Skill:Intermediate
2: Building Enterprise Applications Using Flex, Adobe AIR, and LiveCycle ES
See how Adobe’s client and server technologies can be leveraged together to build engaging applications. See how Flex and AIR can be used as a front end to a complex back-end process deployed on LiveCycle ES.
Speaker(s):Marcel Boucher
Skill:Intermediate
3: Making Money with Adobe AIR
Adobe AIR is a groundbreaking technology that allows RIA developers to leverage their existing skills and code libraries to create cross-platform content for the desktop. This session will focus on evaluating ways to generate revenue from the technology. Specifically, it will examine the business potential of Adobe AIR from the perspective of an RIA developer. We will explore a variety of opportunities, discuss how to promote AIR to customers, and identify related technical and business challenges.
Speaker(s):Grant Skinner
Skill:General Audience
5pm-6pm
1: Inside the Adobe AIR Cook-off: The Best Show Off Their Winning Chops
See some of the best work being done in AIR application development today. Get insight from the authors of the Adobe AIR Cookbook, plus a group of the top contributors to the Adobe AIR Cookbook website. For the past six months, there’s been an open call to the RIA developer community to show off their top tricks and best practices; in this session, you’ll see their work in action and get a chance to exchange information with the panelists. There may be a bonus interactive feature or two in this session (hint: involving prizes and all comers).
Speaker(s):Michael Koch, Rich Tretola , Marco Casario, Koen De Weggheleire
Skill:General Audience
2: What’s New in Flash Player 10
Discover the creative possibilities available with the next version of Flash Player. Through demos and code, you’ll learn how to transform your RIAs with stunning visual effects and new audio controls. Also, add the power of visual and code performance through hardware acceleration and new language elements.
Speaker(s):Emmy Huang
Skill:General Audience
Flex
Friday, October 17th, 2008 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment
So at work we have had a lot of flex developers leave recently for higher paying jobs. So my manager has asked me if I would like to work on some of the Flex defects that are not handled by anyone else. This has given me a great opportunity to learn flex at my own pace as well as gain experience from some of the senior Flex developers.
Now as an idea to increase my Flex skill set, I’ve been thinking about converting this website (madclouds.com) into flex. What’cha think?
Wow
Friday, October 17th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments
Sooo I’ve just been invited to: http://max.adobe.com/ by my company…
Holy Crap…
Design Block?
Saturday, September 20th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments
I’ve recently been very motivated to design digital art. Everything from web sites to logos has been on my mind. The problem is, I haven’t been able to stick with something to create a final product I’m happy with. For example I’ll design a solid background and not be able to correctly cover it in a way that makes both pieces work together. So I have lots of practice creating individual objects and usually store them away for later use. Recently I found a great blog post on defeating designer’s block. This post has some valid points that helped me focus my attention on the areas that needed help. One of my favorite suggestions from the blog was to design “from the inside out”. They suggested starting with the body of the website rather then the header (I always start with the header). I gave this a try yesterday and it really helped keep everything within the same design scheme. I’ll post the outcome of this design session after a few more hours of work on it, but for now I’m trying to touch upon a number of different design elements that the article suggests.
Personal Update
Friday, September 19th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments
My Uncle recently asked me how I was doing, which made me realize - I’m doing great! Here was my reply:
Sothern California is perfect for me.
The atmosphere and weather is as nice as Hawai’i. I’ve been here for a little over 6 months now and it has only rained a couple days. The surfing isn’t as perfect as Oahu but there has to be some sort of trade off right? The biggest difference for me between living on the east coast and west coast is the friendly personalities you run into on a daily basis out here. Another motivating factor for me has been my job. I am already the lead web developer for 24 Hour Fitness replacing 4 previous contractors. In 5 days I’ll hit my 6th month anniversary with them and I couldn’t be happier. I feel extremely lucky to have landed this gig and have been doing my best to show my potential. I’ve already taken initiative and implemented drastic dynamic changes to the website that has gotten me praise and an influential opinion. Not to mention they have already dropped some serious cash on sending me to professional training courses to help define solid fundamentals for my future. Also recently I’ve started a mentoring program with a few of the senior developers that has already shown priceless potential. It feels great to have a solid company invest in my future and I’m amazed that I have fit in so well with this corporate environment.
So yeah, I love my job J
Paintball - To the FACE
Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments
So we all went paintballing this weekend. Ended up with 5 on 5 teams which was perfect. We got all our gear loaded and left the house by 9:20am. It was overcast which helped keep the temp down to around 88. We drove to “Jack Rabbit Springs” which is a nice rock climbing spot, with anchors and quick draws set up. The landscape was perfect for paintball with mini trails and lots of bolders for cover.
We divided into equal teams with 2 couples and an extra on each team. We set up cones with flags about 60 yards apart. At the time we started the first game it had already heated up to 96 degrees. Another heatstroke factor was the fact that everyone was wearing full camos with something else under them. Although they provided great welt protection, they offered very little ventalation.
We started the first game with Jaime and Shannon on defence and the rest headed up to the flag. John took the high road as I followed along from below. Before long we spotted the other team trying to come around from the right. I booked it over to meet them and set up in some solid cover. I managed to get the drop on them while my teammates were distracting them and took two of them out with shots to the body. After that I headed to the flag where Mike and I had a fierce shootout. He saw me first and dropped about 15 paintballs right by me. I found some good cover and got a better angle. When he finally saw me, there were already 3 bullets on their way over. A few more trigger pulls later and he had a face full of paint! Game over…
What a rush! The next game went much the same way. I managed to take out 40% of their team. After the second game though, it had already reached 103 degrees. We played a few more games, where I really sucked it up, and then headed for home with lots of great war stories and pretty bruises around 4pm.
Crazy Spider
Thursday, August 28th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments
So after returning to work from lunch I decided to park in the dirt lot beside my work rather then compete with other coworkers for a decent spot. While walking in I noticed something huge moving on the pavement. Upon refocusing on the object I realize it’s a freakishly large spider. I pointed it out to my buddy who reassured me with “Oh that’s a male black widow”. Ummm yeah…WTF?!
Paintball - Labor Day weekend
Sunday, August 24th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments
About 3 weeks ago I suggested to Jaimes family that it would be fun to play paintball together some time. Everyone agreed; so John looked into it. He ended up getting everyone gear and set up our first game for Labor day weekend. Now low cost was very important to us because everyone has a tight budget. Another factor was that non of us have ever seriously played befor so we didn’t really care on getting high end gear. The cost came out as:
• Gun - $20
• Hopper - $5
• Mask - $15
• Air Tank - $8
• Two ammo pods - $6
• Shipping - $10
That’s $64 per person plus the cost of paint. Some of the stuff arrived this weekend so John and I tested it out. We were a little worried of the quality due to the cost but after some “scientific testing” we are plesently surprised with the rate of fire and accracy of the $20 guns. Looking forward to next weekend.
