Category: Travel
On the Break
photo by penjamins
This is my breakaway goal from last night’s game, a throwback to early-80s hockey that the Sled Dogs won 9-4. Lots of people getting goals in this one. I centered the first line and we all got at least a goal and an assist. I ended up with a goal and two assists. For the most part the team was in sync — our passes were crisp, people were getting to open ice, and we weren’t running around too much on D.
I’m trying to catch up after a bit of a hiatus here. It’s been a busy last month or so. Jordan and I took a trip out to Chicago and then Colorado Springs. We had a good time seeing friends and family in what is probably our last big trip before our daughter’s scheduled arrival this September. Thanks again to Torry and John for hosting us in Chicago, and Pete and Sarah in Colorado Springs.
The new iPhone is out, and Jordan’s going to try and get one this week. I’m on the hook with Sprint until the end of the month, so the mad rush will have ebbed by then.
Wedding Weekend
Back from Malvern, PA, where Jordan and I attended Caroline and Brad’s wedding. Photos from the digicam are here. I shot a few rolls of film with the Leica that I’ll get developed this week.
It was a beautiful weekend — on the drive down on Friday it seemed that everyone had played hooky to take advantage of the weather. I was shuttling several boxes of cupcakes from Joyce bakeshop for the rehearsal dinner, and they were an absolute hit. I felt kinda bad for eating three, considering I can get them here anytime. But the feeling went away after a few bites.
The day of the wedding we were apparently within spitting distance of an Obama rally in Paoli, the next town over. Caroline wanted to show up in her wedding dress for a photo op with Barack.
Flash Forward, Day Three
Day three kicked off with a keynote by John Maeda. He spent the first part of his keynote giving background on his evolution as a digital artist, and the sources of inspiration for his work. He had a funny joke about his mom thinking Samsung was a person he was working with, Mr. Sam Sung. I’m about to read his latest book, The Laws of Simplicity.
The last third of the keynote was devoted to a presentation of E15, a new visualization environment for code/web content/somethingorother. Some details are here. Four of Maeda’s grad students made the presentation.
I attended a couple of other sessions, including “AIR Out of the Box” by Keith Peters of Bit-101. That one was a lot of fun, demystifying the new AIR runtime as simply “Flash Player on Steroids” as well as decoupling the AIR development process from Flex.
FlashForward Boston, Day Two
In case you’re wondering what happened on Day One, your guess is as good as mine. I’m playing catch-up to the FlashForward conference in Boston. I missed the first day to wrap up some development on a project, and flew out early this morning to fall into the jetstream of day two. Oscar got here yesterday, so he’s been doing a lot of the networking and recruiting for Domani.
It’s interesting going to one of these after missing the last few years. It’s nice to see guys like Craig Swann continuing to use Flash as a way to creatively realize different forms of input (gestural, sonic, color, etc.). His presentation was full of different jumping-off points for experimentation, and hopefully I’ll get a chance to play with some of the ideas he brought up. I know that some of the work the guys at Domani have been cooking up for the Dumbo Arts Festival is mining the same vein.
I expected the conference to be an all-out Adobe AIR-fest (and there’s a lot of AIR-related content) but I can’t shake the nagging feeling that the general Flash community hasn’t quite figured out what it wants to start using AIR for. It’s similar to the stance that many had with Flex, where they had to figure out where the new technology might fit into their development workflow.
On a personal note I’m crashing with Joseph and Kristen at their new digs in Brighton. It’s always fun to see where your family lives, to form a sense of place that your mind can use to situate them visually.
Maine Weekend
Update 2007-09-10: Photos are here. I had particular fun trying out kayaking for the first time, Mike was great getting Jamie, Jordan, and I sorted out on the water the first day.
Just got back from a weekend up in Harpswell, Maine with the bulk of the Farmer clan – celebrating Mike’s and Jamie’s birthdays. We missed Sarah and Pete, who are holding it down in Colorado. A big happy birthday to Pete, who celebrates his birthday tomorrow. More photos to follow, once I get them sorted, but for now here’s the obligatory pretty sunset, taken from the deck at the house where we were staying.
