dispatchEvent » Life

Going to GDC!

Mims Wright — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 19:06:52 +0000

Tomorrow morning I’m off to San Francisco for the Game Developers Conference! It’s very exciting! If you’re going too, send me an email and let’s meet up there. Here’s what I look like:

Mongolia and Mims’ no-Flash diet

Mims Wright — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 00:36:01 +0000

I’m sure the question is burning on the minds of all (seven) of our avid reader’s minds – Why haven’t I heard any juicy Flash-related gossip from dispatchEvent™ this summer? The answer may surprise you!

I (Mims) have taken the summer off to participate in a race from London, UK to Ulaanbataar, Mongolia with two other friends from Brooklyn. In fact, I’m writing from Kraków, Poland right now! You can read all about our misadventures on our team website, Mr Dinosaur Drives to Mongolia - the website.

The plan is for me to return around the middle of September. Until that time, I’m going to be on a strict no-Flash diet so you won’t be hearing much from me. However, when I return the Bible should just be hitting the shelves and I’ll probably even see you at Flash Forward. Meanwhile, Roger will hold down the fort.

Thanks as always for reading. Until next time… Dziekuje!

Getting Made Fun of by Nerds on Gizmodo for Being Nerds

Roger Braunstein — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 22:33:38 +0000

Look, flying toasters! Me and a few of my coworkers make disparaging comments about an Adobe CS3 advertisement that’s a big, somewhat interactive, video wall. See it here and call us douchebags too! Gotta love the internet.

For the record, I think it’s all right. Wish you could interact with it in more than one dimension, and it really suffered from being choppy. Brand New School did some awesome animation for it that you can’t deny.

Previously: More Roger on Gizmodo.

The ActionScript 3.0 Bible Cometh

Mims Wright — Fri, 11 May 2007 04:05:38 +0000

They say you shouldn’t count your eggs before they hatch, but I figure this is more like counting your fetuses in the third trimester. Either way, I’d like to announce that our new book, ActionScript 3.0 Bible (Wiley), is in the final stages of editing and will be out this Fall! Roger Braunstein, Joey Lott, Josh Noble, and myself, Mims Wright have been busily typing since August or so to make it happen. As this is our first book (except for Joey) we’re very excited to see it finally coming together.

The description on Amazon is gravely inaccurate and the cover design is atrocious, however, you are welcome to pre-purchase it with my guarantee that it is not bad.

The AS3 Bible is a comprehensive guide to learning ActionScript 3.0. It’s platform agnostic with regards to Flash CS3 and FlexBuilder - we focus on ActionScript only rather than frameworks. Every effort has been made to approach the language from a point of view where a beginner with little programming knowledge could pick up the book and learn AS3. At the same time the book addresses the needs of experienced Flash programmers by highlighting the new features in AS3 as they relate to previous versions of ActionScript. We think this book will be a great read for beginning to intermediate developers looking to learn ActionScript 3.0 and will make a great reference book for more advanced developers. Look for it in September or October of 2007

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
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FITC 2007 Toronto

Roger Braunstein — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 20:35:43 +0000

Shout-out: say hi at FITC! I look like this.

Tech Writing Tips

Mims Wright — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 21:27:04 +0000

As you may know, Roger and I are working on the next version of the ActionScript Bible published by Wiley (the Amazon page is full of errors, don’t worry, it’s not even out yet). I wanted to share a few tips that I use as notes to myself for when I’m stuck with writing.

Write headlines and use the outline view to order the big picture
Simplify
Base information around a task that the reader might want to do
Write or flow without being concerned about the form then go back and edit it later
Ask “Do I really need this?”
Read other similar books
Say it out loud then write down what you say
Work on something that you know you can finish then go back to where you were stuck
Forget about style and focus on the facts
Take breaks and do something different like drawing a diagram or writing a code sample

Say Hi At ApolloCamp!

Roger Braunstein — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 10:33:38 +0000

Hey! Mims and Roger will be at ApolloCamp. We you. Come say hi!

File Photos for your reference.

AS3 and Flex Projects are Launching Like Hotcakes in Spaceships

Roger Braunstein — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 04:15:56 +0000

Outrageously hard-working co-worker Danny Patterson just released his AS3 Lightweight Remoting Framework into the wild with an MIT license. Hooray! I don’t know if it’s officially the first, but it’s certainly one of the first AS3 open source projects out there. It’s no risky bet to say that we’ll see a lot more AS3 open source starting really soon.
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Fashion Preview Hooks

Mims Wright — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 11:23:59 +0000

My newest efforts in ultimate closet optimization are what I call “Fashion Preview Hooks™” (pat. pend.). I installed mine last night!

The installation is simple. Just attach 2 hooks of any kind at approximately eye and belly-button level and aligned vertically. That’s it. Now you have Fashion Preview Hooks!

These hooks have a couple of uses. If you’re trying to put an outfit together you can preview it by hanging your shirt on the top hook and pants on the bottom hook and swap them out quickly without having to try each one on. Also, when you go to bed at night you can throw your outfit for the next day on the wall.