360Flex Road Trip Begins

For the 4th year in a row Betsy Weber, TechSmith’s Chief Evangelist, and I are on a spring road trip to visit the Flash community. I picked up a Flip Mino HD a couple of weeks back which means a real stab at some seriously rich lifestreaming…

The journey begins:

Fast forward to our arrival in Indianapolis 4 hours later and I got a quick chance to ask Betsy and Nick why we were there:

The keynote is at 8:30 AM (just over 5 hours from now as I type). I’ll update as possible.

Down Goes iPhone

I’ve dropped my phone a handful of times in the past without effect, but I went to the well one too many times…

So far falls have destroyed my first mac (macbook pro fell out of an unzipped case when I was dropping my dad at the airport) and first iphone (snuck out of my jacket pocket as I was getting out of the car). Definitely one of my favorite devices and its still working despite the damaged screen…do I dare buy a plastic 3G replacement?

Favre

The end of an era. Brett Favre retired yesterday kicking the American sports media into a frenzy. Despite the media overkill and the threat of damaging my reputation (we Americans love our illusions of independent thinking and non-conformity) I feel it necessary to add a bit of commentary, emotive though it may be.

Thank you Brett. It’s extremely corny, but you are my hero. It may sound trite to applaud the the way you played a game, but still I do; if only because you made me remember the sheer joy of sport. I’ve witnessed the majesty of Jordan, the dominance of Tiger and the unmatched will of Armstrong, but you transcended them all–you made it personal.

It was the small things that I and so many others took pleasure in, the jokes in the huddle, pinching teammates arms (and getting pinched), good natured smack talk, and improv celebrations (the multiple hand slaps with a referee come to mind). Watching Favre I was reminded of the joy of competition and the esprit de corps of team. Tis a rare gift to have such a special athlete remind us of the exuberance of childhood and the import of camaraderie while competing at the highest levels of professional sport. Favre was capable of showing us how special life is when you both revel and despair in the moment and have others to share the experience with you.

Some things just make you smile, here are a few on my list:

• The heat seeking missiles he threw his first couple of years in Green Bay. I remember laughing out loud the first time I saw Favre throw a 5 yard heater to Sterling Sharpe. I fell head over heels for the guy at that very moment.
• The stones Favre had throwing into coverage. I loved watching him throw into the “Tampa” cover two. He would challenge bracketed sideline coverage with zero margin for error that no other quarterback in the league would dream of throwing into and win the majority of the time. It’s comparable to a MLB pitcher being around for 15 years and telling the hitters the location of every fastball that was about to be thrown.
• Having a rub in constantly on the sideline and during press conferences.
• Taking on lineman and linebackers in the open field on reverses. This alone says volumes about his consecutive starts streak.
• Owning all of the major quarterback passing records despite playing outdoors in Lambeau his entire career.
• Loyalty. Name another superstar in today’s age that would of embraced playing in Green Bay, much less stayed for 16 years.
• His relationship with Frank “bag o’ donuts” Winters. You got to love a quarterback whose friends are lineman.

Section 102 | Row 55 | Seat 7

I had one of those “landmark” life moments on Sunday evening when I had the opportunity to attend my first Green Bay Packers game on the hallowed “frozen tundra” of Lambeau Field. Raised in Wisconsin, I grew up steeped in the lore of Titletown, so named for the 12 NFL World Championships the Packers have won over the years, and spent many a Sunday throwing down beer and brats while watching the Packers. Lambeau Field has been sold out since 1960 and there’s currently a 30 year waiting list for season tickets, so it was a dream come true, when my older brother, Ford, called me up out of the blue with the news of tickets to Sunday’s game against the Detroit Lions.

I took some short video clips on my Palm Treo 650–actually amazing video for a for a phone. I’m using the kimili WordPress plugin to embed the Flash video’s into my blog post, but for some reason, the component controls don’t show up ( they show up fine when tested in the standalone player, or in their own html wrappers)…if anyone can point me in the right direction, I’d be happy to remedy the situation. I ended up using Camtasia Studio Playback controls so that there was some mechanism for controlling the video. However, this too required a bit of jiggering, as I had to provide absolute paths for the xml configuration file and the location of the swf shell and flv files.

The legendary Brett Favre marches the pack toward the endzone:

Brooks:

Ford:

Changes

It’s been a while since I was able to make a post and just wanted to throw out a personal update. I made a career move in late September leaving SkyWest Airlines and the development of Flash based eLearning modules to join TechSmith Corporation as their Senior Flash Developer. Specifically, I am a member of the Camtasia Studio development team and will be working on all assistive Flash applications for Camtasia Studio’s flv and swf output. The team at TechSmith is very motivated to improve our Flash support and so we’d love to hear your input (I’ll forward any comments on to the appropriate parties).

The new job also meant selling my house, moving back to midwest (Lansing, MI area), and getting jerked around by moving companies (never use North American Van Lines if you have a choice). Hopefully, the dust has settled and I’ll be able to make posts a bit more regularly (I’m currently at MAX and will post some info on some of the more interesting sessions when I get a chance).