email from a friend

This popped up in my inbox

From: brian_m_riley@
Subject: start blogging…
Date: July 3, 2007 10:52:12 AM EDT
To: jon@

…i know you have the time.

Well, thankfully I haven’t had a lot of time, but that is no excuse. So far my endeavor as an independent contractor has been a roaring success. My first job has been building Flash widgets for a social networking startup based out of Palo Alto, CA. Launch is scheduled for late summer/early fall and I’ve been banging away at a variety of small applications for the website. From a technical sandpoint, I’ve run into a bunch of issues which I think would make for interesting blog posts, so the challenge to me now is putting all that down on this blog in a format that other people will find useful.

• Using ActionScript 3 and Flash CS3 without the robust Flex Framework.
• Preloading has changed completely in Flash CS3 especially when using the Document class approach.
• Ruby on Rails tied with REST, RubyAMF, or WebORB remoting is cool.
• How to balance robust Design Patterns with timeliness and code that a novice can understand.
• Using bitmap data for crazy screen effects.
• Streaming Video from a variety of media servers.

So I have a few things to talk about, I just haven’t carved out the time yet to put it down. Let’s see what I can put down over the next few weeks.

tags: contracting