Just thought I’d post a little update on how my life has been going.

I’ve been working at Logan Productions for a couple months now. Learned a lot about how to author DVDs, various video formats, some video editing. Going to be working on a couple websites pretty soon. Worked on a big project for Miller Brewing Co. with Denton Jones and Traci Bubolz. Going to Johnsonville to install Mantis - video playback device capable of playing several videos on multiple displays simultaneously. I’ll be programming an AMX NI700 controller to drive Mantis from a touchscreen panel.

I’ve been spending time at a local Stone Creek Coffee, working on Levon’s and mine bubbl.us project and doing some learning with ZBrush - 3D sculpting program.

My girlfriend Brittany has been studying for her Series Seven exam, best of luck to her.

I’m happy I finally make a little more money, so I’m not struggling to pay my bills like before.

I haven’t done any freelancing and I think I’m going to stop doing that for a while. It seems nobody understands how much time and effort really goes into custom site design. Here’s a good article on website pricing that, I think every small business needs to read.

Most of my effort goes to bubbl.us project. I’m learning how to actually apply the “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” paradigm. Sometimes I can’t work on the project for a few days and my memory gets a little fuzzy. This forces me to write code that I can remember and understand from the first glance. I’ve discovered some Flash/browser bugs that are very irritating:

• Firefox - If javascript opens a new window (even an alert box), Flash seizes to run unless the mouse is moving.
• Flash - if a mouse wheel is triggered over a movie clip that has 9 slice guides in it and the movie clip is scaling, 9 slice guides stop working until the clip is scaled again. I could not find exactly how to get around this or what under what circumstances this happens.

Everything I do is now Ajax, using prototype javascript library. I’ve recently discovered Yahoo User Interface library and found it fantastic. It combines a lot of functionality of libraries like moo.fx, scriptaculous and others into one. I love it.

The winter hasn’t started yet, but it’s so damn cold here in Wisconsin. It already snowed a few times. I can’t wait for spring to come.