Oops. Two more weeks passed by and no blog posts. I really need to do better…
Today is of course the day after Thanksgiving, and I’m quite contentedly sitting at home doing practically nothing. It’s been an interesting holiday so far: both of the kids spent all day yesterday being sick, and we got to spend this morning with my son at the doctor. My daughter summed it up best last night when she said, in response to the question about what she liked best about Thanksgiving, “This hasn’t been my best day.” Fortunately, they both seem to be feeling better now.
One thing I’m not doing today is shopping. I know that that somehow makes me un-American, but I did buy the paper yesterday to look through the ads and frankly, I couldn’t find anything on sale that was a good enough bargin to make it worth getting up at 3 to go stand in line and fight crowds. In fact, the two big items I’m looking at – a small digital camera for Kelley for Christmas and a digital video camera for us for our anniversary* – are both cheaper on Amazon at regular prices than they are in any stores today.
One good bit of news – I dropped my contract into the mail today for book #4: ActionScript 3.0: Your visual blueprint™ for creating interactive projects using Flash CS4 Professional. I’ve actually been writing it for about a month already, but now that the contract is signed I’m official. Wiley also changed the payment terms that they’ve been using for the prior books in a way that made me really happy. So that’s good.
Well, that’s it for now. I’ll be posting some news next week about the Sierra MMUG, but until then, have a great start to the holiday season!
The trial versions of the CS4 products are now available for download from Adobe’s web site. To get them, simply go to www.adobe.com/products/name_of_the_product_you_want; for example, Dreamweaver is at www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver. As always, you’ll need to log in with your Adobe.com username and password.
Quite a few folks have been asking me where I’ll be during MAX, so I thought I’d go ahead and post my schedule.
Saturday: I’ll be arriving via Amtrak sometime Saturday evening. We have a friend’s birthday party to go to that day, so I have no idea as to when I’ll actually get into town.
Sunday: I’m taking one of the full-day training sessions on Sunday, and I’m really excited about it. I’ll be in “Deliver Video Anywhere with Creative Suite 4 Production Premium”.
I don’t know if anything official is happening Sunday night, but if not, I’ll most likely just track down some folks who will have arrived by then and hang out. If you’re coming in sometime on Sunday, drop me a line and let me know.
Monday:
- 9:30 – 11 – Opening Session
- 11:30 – 12:30 – Ten After Effects CS4 Features for Designers Who Use Flash
- 2:00 – 3:00 – Forms Gone Wild
- 3:30 – 4:30 – Introduction to Thermo and the Next Generation of Flex
- 5:00 – 6:00 – My session
- 8:30 – 10:30 – Birds of a Feather sessions. I always decide which of these to attend at the last minute, but they really are the highlight of the conference.
Tuesday:
- 8:30 – 10:00 – Getting Started with After Effects CS4
- 10:30 – 12 – General Session
- 1:30 – 2:30 – Introduction to Adobe AIR: Building Your First Application
- 3:00 – 4:00 – Accessibility Basics: Making Websites More Useful for More People
- 4:30 – 5:30 – Using Apache Derby, the Open Source Database Embedded in ColdFusion 8
- Evening – Unfortunately, both the Community Reception and the Speaker’s Reception are happening at the same time Tuesday night, so I’ll probably go to one for a little while and then head to the other one.
Wednesday
- 9:00 – 10:30 – Fear No Audio: Intro to Audio Creating and Editing
- 11:00 – 12:30 – Creating Effects with Pixel Bender
- 2:00 – 3:00 – Be Seen and Heard: Sweetening Soundtracks for Video and Rich Media Projects
- 4:00 – 5:30 – Hands-on with Thermo: Creating Interactive Designs
So there it is. Hope to see everyone there!
Oh, one last thing: if you’re traveling to San Francisco from out of town and you’ve never been there before, be sure to check out our MAX travel site.
It’s hard to believe, but MAX is only ten days away! In addition to all of the community members I haven’t seen since May, this year is going to be especially fun since I have several other friends attending. It almost offsets the stress of speaking to close to 300 people …
