Back to Basics
Last night, at the stroke of midnight (I kid you not), I finished the very last exercise for the very last chapter on my plate for a new book for friends of ED. When I lifted my hands from the keyboard, I was beaming. Why? Because it’s been a long time since I’ve had a normal work week. This is all about to change, and wowzers, am I looking forward to it!
The main reason I’m happy is that I’m about to get more time with my family—time where I’m not bleary-eyed and half asleep. 
Another part of my happiness, though, honestly, is that I’m about to get more time to spend on this blog, on forums, and on tardy email replies. I’ve added a special folder to Outlook just for blog comments. I really do read every single question, and I do my best to answer them. If you’re still waiting to hear from me, please keep hangin’ on! I’ve been behind on replies for months (that Outlook folder has 62 items as I write this) … but that’s about to change too.
My wife and I use a special phrase to support each other during challenging times. We call it “back to basics,” which generally means some combination of “keep your chin up,” “I’m on your team,” and “let’s simplify this.” Sometimes projects get stacked so thick, it’s hard to see the end of the tunnel (like balancing books with regular client work). During times like that, it can be tough to keep trudging, but I’m glad I pulled through to last night.
Having a garden in our back yard helps, believe it or not. Plants grow so slowly, I’ve been able to draw parallels (and encouragement!) just by looking out the window. Suddenly—where there was seemingly nothing only a week ago—we have dozens of eggplants and tomatoes! I’ve been able to make ratatouille twice already with partially homegrown ingredients.
I had a teaser preview, nearly a month ago, of the excitement I’m feeling right now. That’s what the picture shows at the top of this post (thanks for the photo, Amy!). I was in San Francisco for the Flashforward 2008 conference. They tried a new thing this year: the Speaker Slam (20 speakers, two minutes apiece), and I was one of the speakers. It’s tough to say anything meaningful in two minutes flat, but I did my best, and the audience was enthusiastic. If I can piece together the gist of what I said, I’ll put that in a future post—it was about reading the Flash help docs (no surprise, right?). The micro time span definitely meant I had to bring it back to basics. It felt good.
In some capacity or another—researching, writing, preparing sample files, proofreading—I’ve been working on this new friends of ED book, and another for O’Reilly, since February. During that time, I spent one month per book of fulltime writing, usually 12-hour days. The rest was evening work, at least four hours a day.
Averaged out, that’s still less time than I spent on Foundation Flash CS3 for Designers last year, so I’m happy with that. 
I didn’t work on weekends, either. That’s an improvement! Even so, it feels good to be done.
Friends keep asking me, “How do you do it?” The honest answer is, this time, “I very nearly didn’t make it!” Two books in one year was a lot to chew. But I’m happy with my chapters (these were all co-author projects). Details coming soon, including some free excerpts. [Follow up: Three excerpts from The ActionScript 3.0 Quick Reference Guide are now listed in “Sent to the Printer! The ActionScript 3.0 Quick Reference Guide“.]
After I take a few weeks to get my bearings, and ramp up to speed on my usual client work, you’ll see more of me on this blog again.
September 18th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Keep up the good work ! I bought (and read =])your book “Foundation Flash CS3 for designers” and it really helped me to make the move from AS2 to AS3. I’m looking forward for your upcoming releases!
David FTW !
September 18th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Jasmin,
Thanks!
Tom and I had tons of fun writing that one, and the Amazon feedback has (for the most part) been very positive.
September 20th, 2008 at 11:44 pm
Congratulations on finishing everything, David! Impressive work! That’s quite a lot to get done in such a short period of time.
It’s a great idea to cover the help docs further. Understanding the help docs has made me a much better developer. I don’t have to rely on my own memory and guesswork now that I’m comfortable navigating the help docs. I think creating documentation for my own classes was a major step in understanding the help docs, but the help docs can be put to great use long before one is far enough along to be writing and documenting classes.
I agree about the garden. They’re a nice break from the computer screen. Especially if you have to get up from the computer to maintain the garden every now and then.
October 10th, 2008 at 10:14 am
Justin,
Thanks, for the encouragement man.
March 29th, 2009 at 9:17 am
You look great on that photo David,
Properly red & nerdy
Congrats on your new book!
I had a little question concerning CS4 though, are there any improvements that affect the people just using actionscript? I saw the new interface, the After Effects-like animation… but AS3 remains AS3 I figured… or doesn’t it? Does it colorcode my custom classes & functions in some pretty pink?
Greetings!
April 3rd, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Tiemen,
Hey, man! Red & nerdy … haha!
The CS4 Actions panel hasn’t really changed, which is a bummer, so from a workflow standpoint, you’re not going to see much improvement in terms of writing (or organizing, or color-coding, etc.) your AS3.
That said, the Flash Player 10 runtime does have new APIs (3D and IK, for example). In order to take advantage of those, you obviously need a compiler capable of creating Flash Player 10 SWFs. Flash CS4 gives you that compiler … though you can also use the Flex SDK command line compiler.