Aral on Flash, SWX, Flex, ActionScript, and life.
Relly is also going to be speaking at Singularity at the end of October on copywriting; an essential topic that is unfortunately all too often ignored in web development.
The event is booked solid at the moment but you can still add your name to the reserve list. Looking forward to seeing you there.
I'm teaching a one-day introductory Flex course titled Hot Shots: Introduction to Flex, on 21st March, 2008 in Brighton (Hove, actually).
The course will cover the fundamentals of Flex. No prior Flash or Flex experience is necessary. However, if you have previous Flash and/or ActionScript experience, you will be able to build upon that knowledge while learning about Flex and good practices in developing Rich Internet Applications.
If you have no prior ActionScript 3 knowledge, taking Colin Moock's free AS3 training in London on March 3rd before attending this course will not hurt (but is not required).
The day-long seminar will take place at The Werks in Hove.
Tickets are £199+VAT early bird (until Feb 29 or until the five tickets at this price are sold; once they're gone, they're gone!), £249+VAT regular price.
Read the seminar description and sign up to attend at Amiando.
Read testimonials from previous Hot Shots students.
View the full course outline in PDF format.
This is probably the last chance I'm going to get to teach a course this year so if you've been waiting to get into Flex, I can think of far worse ways to do it than to spend a day with me in sunny Brighton.
Singularity is sponsoring BarCampBrighton2, a gathering of 150 geeks that is scheduled to take place on March 15th and 16th, 2008 at the University of Sussex in Brighton.
It's no secret that I love BarCamps and Hack Days. They're wonderful unconferences where there is no speaker/attendee divide. I attended my first BarCamp in London and it was a blast (if you haven't been to one, you really should go!) BarCampBrighton, which took place at Madgex's offices last year (thanks, Glenn!), was similarly wonderful. Furthermore, it coincided with the Brighton Food Festival which was yum and a half!
All this to say that it's an honor to have Singularity sponsor this year's BarCampBrighton.
(What is Singularity? Those of you with badges on your sites will be finding out in about a week!)
BarCampBrighton2 is being organized thanks to the efforts of Paul Silver, Matt Weston, Jon Markwell, and Jay Gooby. Keep an eye on the wiki and on Upcoming as once the tickets are released they usually go in the first half hour or so.
Looking forward to seeing some of you there!
Rosie Sherry has a very useful site called Project Brighton for keeping track of all things geeky in Brighton.
If you're a geek living in Brighton or the surrounding area (like that little place you might have heard of called London, for example), you should really check it out.
And for general geeky news and happening around Sussex, don't forget to check out Sussex Digital by Dave and Josh.
From his email:
I am now in direct contact with the delivery side of The Pier and as a result they have agreed to replace their delivery trolleys with rubber wheeled versions and not unload before 7.30am. They will arrive in the square at as at present but there should be no unloading activity before 7.30am. The new trolleys will be in service in about 4 weeks. The unloading time will be delayed immediately. When the building works in the area have been completed, the situation should improve again.
How cool is that?
I'm sharing this with you because it's all too easy in this age of complex bureaucracies and multinational corporations to feel that you, as an individual can't make a change. Nothing could be further from the truth. All it took was an email to get a company to change its policies (and thank you, The Pier, for being so responsive). As a result, I know that I'll be sleeping better and hopefully a few other people in my neighborhood will be too.
All this to say, each of our voices matters and we can all make a change in our own little way. And all those little changes add up! 
So if ever you find yourself feeling like what you do doesn't matter, think again. It does!
It starts with the beeping of the huge van reversing into the square outside and parking right in front of my building. That's just the opening salvo though.
It gets better when the metallic back door of the van clanks open and he driver starts unloading the heavy bits of furniture onto his metallic trolley. The fact that it's metallic is important. It means that it clanks like crazy, reverberating in the otherwise silent square, as he repeatedly unloads and drags the furniture in front of building. For a whole damn hour.
So today, I did something completely out of character. I opened the window and unleashed a can of premium whoop-ass on the driver. His response: "Don't live here if you don't like the noise."
See, as someone who pays a ridiculous amount of Council Tax (that's what the municipality gets from you here in the UK), I feel I deserve a little better. There are environmental noise laws that state that noisy work should not be untaken before 8am and definitely not before 7am.
I've just written to the council to complain to them and I'm going to call The Pier when they open in a couple of hours time.
And it's not just The Pier either. One of the biggest culprits is Donatello, the Italian "restaurant" (if you've eaten there, you'll understand the need for the quotes).
These guys routinely clean up at past midnight, usually at around 1am or so. And cleaning up includes tipping a dumpsterful of glass bottles (after dragging said dumpster across the square) into the trash bins. (If you're wondering how much noise that makes, I've seen people who actually dump the glass bottles wearing industrial-grade hearing protection.) If you're lucky, it can also involve the crew shouting at each other in various languages across the square. And, of course, their delivery vans sometimes forget what hour it is too in the mornings.
Finally, let's not forget The Druid's Head pub which, on a weekly basis, gets beer deliveries from Carlsberg at around 7am. This involves people throwing empty metallic beer kegs from their basement onto the street, rolling them to the van, and rolling full ones from the van to the pub. It's an amazingly full, rich and continuous metallic sound that needs to be experienced to be believed.
All in all, the combination of all these factors means that you're lucky if you can get about five hours of sleep in between Donatello closing up and the square emptying of loud drunken people at around 1am (or 2am, if you're unlucky) to The Pier van arriving at 6am. Surely, that's just not acceptable!
This noise issue is not just a cosmetic "pea under the mattress" thing either, with reports that thousands of people die prematurely due to coronary heart disease caused by prolonged exposure to excessive noise.
Needless to say, I don't see myself living here this time next year. And it's such a shame because I otherwise love the place.
Here's quick update on the session I'm presenting at FlashBrighton's Big Day Out (the event's now sold out) this Saturday. The talk is titled Beyond the Buttons:
Learning new programming languages, development tools, and technologies is a fun (and essential) part of what we do but they are not ends in and of themselves. IDEs like Flash and Flex Builder, languages like ActionScript 3, and technologies like AIR are merely tools, like the painter's brushes, easels, and paints, the animator's lightbox, and the photographer's camera. In this session, Aral looks beyond the tools to what you can make with them. You will not learn any new techniques or programming tricks but instead stock up on ideas and inspiration to spark your own creative endeavors.
Looking forward to seeing some of you this weekend!
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