Who’s this for?

It’s aimed at people with some experience of making stuff using Flash Professional, with a bunch of AS2 on the timeline, or perhaps you’ve tinkered with throwing your code into a base class. Either way, you’ll have got to the point where this feels cumbersome and your code feels more like spaghetti than sushi.

The course will take place on Thursday 24th and Friday 25th November, and will be held in Charing Cross in Glasgow, with the space very generously provided by Marque Creative. I’m not a morning person so I’ll ask you to forgive the start time of 10am, and the kicking out time of 6ish.

We’ll use a hashtag to allow the questions and group chat to continue over the weekend as I’m sure you’ll want to tinker with your new skills.

As this is a free course, you’re going to need to bring some stuff.

1. A packed lunch.
2. A Mac laptop, or if you’re strong, an iMac, running at least OS X 10.6.
3. FDT and Flash Professional installed on your computer. Trial versions will suffice.
4. Two days of your uninterrupted attention*.

How to apply.

Read the FAQ below. If you ask a question already answered in the FAQ you’ve failed the intelligence test to get in. Once you’ve read the FAQ and if you’d still like to sign up, then send me an email with your contact information and any questions you have. If you’re unable to discover my email from this link, then you too have failed the intelligence test to get in.

FAQ

Why do I have to bring a packed lunch?

We’ll not stop long for lunch, so if you need to head out to buy food you may well miss something valuable.

Can I use my Windows laptop instead?

You’re welcome to try, but there will be stuff I’ll not be able to help you with, like setting up to build for iOS. Everything we do will be doable on Windows and FDT is a great cross platform, but I won’t be slowing down to translate shortcut keys, file locations, etc.

Can I use Flash Develop/Flash Builder/IntelliJ instead of FDT?

Those are excellent tools for building AS3 projects, but I will, at times, rely on the corners that can be cut by the wonderful code completion and error correction features in FDT. There’s no reason you couldn’t keep up using another IDE, but in reality if you are able to do so then this course is not going to be advanced enough for you.

What do you mean you want my uninterrupted attention?

I ask all attendees to switch their phones off during the workshop. This stuff is way easier to learn if I have your full, continual attention. If you need to be checking your email more than morning, lunch, and evening then there is chance you’ll miss something and fall behind.

Are there any other dates available?

If enough people ask for the course to be repeated on a specific date, as long as it’s on a Thursday and Friday, and as long as I’ve got space in my schedule, I’d be happy to set something up specially.

How much does the course really cost?

You will have to pay for your travel, your lunch, and if you want to buy dark chocolate digestives to share with your fellow classmates then that would be nice. You will also have to (obviously) invest 2 days of your time. My time comes to you free of charge.

Why are you not charging for this?

I’ve been in the incredibly fortunate position to have talented friends teach me how to do this stuff and they didn’t charge me. I’m simply passing on the love. And perhaps I’ll charge for a more advanced workshop in the future.

I’m going to be able to make money from what I learn. Can I pay you something?

Yes, this is going to raise your game in a very short space of time, putting you in a strong position to charge for your new skills. If you’d like to thank me financially for this at any time in the future, I would be delighted if you made a donation to the British Heart Foundation.

Here’s the course outline. It’s subject to change as I complete the teaching materials over the next two weeks.

Day 1.

1. Objects in the real world.
2. Real world inheritance.
3. Simplification through abstraction.
4. A silly game with stickers where we pretend to be objects.
5. Setting up FDT with the latest Flex SDK.
6. Procedural AS3 on the Flash timeline.
7. HelloWorld and the objects you didn’t know you already knew.
8. Rebuilding our timeline app in FDT.
9. The relationship between Classes and Objects, and the value of being Static.
10. Why Strong typing is your best friend.
11. Debugging errors with breakpoints.
12. Runtime environments, and why you can’t debug in Chrome.
13. How to use your Flash library items in FDT.
14. Custom fonts without the headaches.
15. Verbose naming and never having to comment your code again.
16. Private vs Public — creating an API
17. A look at the game we’ll create tomorrow.

Day 2.

1. Planning your app using pseudo code.
2. Tiny steps, or how to prototype.
3. When to use Composition instead of Inheritance.
4. Responding to user taps, clicks, and strokes.
5. Standing on the shoulders of giants — using third party libraries.
6. Using Signals, because they’re easier than Events.
7. Getting our prototype onto an iPad in less than ten minutes.
8. Controlling timeline animations from your pure AS3 app.
9. Quick and dirty sounds.
10. What a bloody mess! How to Refactor.
11. Wireless debugging on iPhone and Android.
12. We just made a multiscreen app without realising it. A recap.

The whole process was a delight from start to finish.

I’m cynical enough to discount both the nationalists’ utopia and the unionists’ apocalypse

Although there are strong emotional reasons for wanting independence, we should base the way we’ll vote in the inevitable referendum on more pragmatic issues, in particular how it will affect us financially. I’m cynical enough to discount both the nationalists’ utopia and the unionists’ apocalypse, knowing fine well that they are both extremely biased, as they must be.

But how can we make a decision when the two stories are so dramatically varied? Unionist’s will cite how much we need London’s subsidies, and present us with forecasts of financial ruin if we elect fiscal independence. They may well be right, but the recent admission by David Blunkett that the £250 million projected cost of electoral reform was ”made up” to scare voters into voting against it, demonstrates just how easy it is cajole us into behaving like sheep.

Nationalists on the other hand have finally made space for a more varied financial argument where in the past it was dominated by the claim that North Sea oil would keeps us going. But my inherent skepticism tells me that despite our world leading progress in renewables, the picture they paint is overly optimistic. The reality lies somewhere between the two forecasts.

These are not your Braveheart watching blokes from the pub that derive the same joy from watching England’s football team lose a goal as they do from watching Scotland win a game

Which brings me back to the pattern that the last week has made evident. Every single person I’ve discussed independence with who has had the luxury of the considering their home country from afar as a result of having worked abroad, is pro independence. These are not your Braveheart watching blokes from the pub that derive the same joy from watching England’s football team lose a goal as they do from watching Scotland win a game. No, these are rational business people, who stand to gain or lose most from such a decision.

Perhaps the referendum will be timed to coincide with the high of the build up to the Commonwealth Games in 2014 to help capitalise on the inevitable increase in national confidence and patriotism, giving us a yes vote which won’t have the power to actually create legislation, but will give London’s Conservatives an unmissable opportunity to jettison a vast number of Labour members of parliament. Should Scotland gain some degree of independence (it’s likely we’d still pay some dues to London, subcontracting our defence and foreign policy) the result will be some hard times.

like the doom mongers that vocally claimed the smoking ban would cause pubs to shut down, they will come around once the dust settles

It won’t be plain sailing, but it won’t be apocalyptical either. Those that voted against independence will use the initial hard times to lay on some “told-you-so”, but like the doom mongers that vocally claimed the smoking ban would result in financial ruin for publicans, they will come around once the dust settles, we’ve found our legs, and we stand proud in front of the world having shed our pessimism to finally see ourselves as the rest of the world see us — a successful nation that punches well above its weight.

It will be hard, but in the long run, it will be worth it.

if enough people moan about it I’ll knock together a version for those of you burdened with Windows too

In order for you test if your scepticism is justified I’ve made screen saver of It’s a Clock which is free to download here. Let the calm wash over you as you allow your computer to drop the microseconds and tell you the time the way you’d tell others. It’s only available for your Mac for now, but if enough people moan about it I’ll knock together a version for those of you burdened with Windows too.

And for those of you of a Google persuasion, I’m sure you’ll be delighted to hear that I’ve released It’s a Clock for Android too! You can revel in the knowledge that you’re actually ahead of the curve as the Android version has works in landscape mode too.

I’ll be releasing an updated version of the iPhone version soon with the landscape feature, and shortly afterwards expect a version for iPad.

It’s nearly four o’clock.

when I’m knee deep in Objective-C and openFrameworks, why is Flash still relevant to me,
and indeed to you?

But “Flash?” I hear you question! Just when I’m knee deep in Objective-C and openFrameworks, why is Flash still relevant to me, and indeed to you? Well, you’ll need to read the article to find out in detail, but to borrow from Mark Twain, reports of Flash’s death are greatly exaggerated.

And you’re likely to be surprised by some of my choices. Instead of pulling out ten sweet spots from thefwa.com I broadened my definition of the “use of Flash” to include content created by the Flash authoring environment but not delivered by the Flash player, and content not created by Flash but delivered through the Flash player.

This allowed me to consider some fringe uses of Flash which are likely to become increasingly important

This allowed me to consider some fringe uses of Flash which are likely to become increasingly important as more traditionally mainstream features, such as video playback, start to move away to be handled by the browser itself.

So nip into your local newsagent on your way home from work today and grab a copy, or even better, save yourself wad of cash by subscribing here. Less money on magazines = more money for the pub.

On Wednesday 20th April I’ll be doing a 30 minute talk at the Glasgow Data Viz meetup in Brunswick House, 15 Wilson Street, Glasgow. There will also be two other talks, ten minutes each, one of which will be by Ben Lyons from IRISS.

This will only be the second meet up for this group and for me, what sets it apart from other similarly titled get togethers I’ve been to is it’s inclusivity. I’m not suggesting for a minute that other meet ups I’ve been to are exclusive, but they are generally populated with pros in the relevant field, and to someone that knows nothing about the subject, this can be a little intimidating.

The Glasgow Data Viz meetup, on the other hand, has people with absolutely no connection to anything computer, data, analytics related, but who simply have a passing interest in this evolving graphic medium. As a result this brings external views to the table that one might never otherwise encounter in a more insular group.

I’ll even be discussing the point where excessive beauty moves data visualization into the world of art, eschewing the primary desire to communicate.

My talk will not be technical, instead giving a light hearted introduction to the broad spectrum of data visualizations that have grown all around us without us even noticing them any more. I’ll also be examining some more traditional examples that we’ve grown up with that serve to highlight the core thinking behind all great visualizations, and I’ll even be discussing the point where excessive beauty moves data visualization into the world of art, eschewing the primary desire to communicate.

So if you fancy a completely unintimidating evening with a collection of interesting people from all walks of life, who share an interest beautiful communications, then come along, we’d love to meet you.

Here’s the link for more information.

Now, let’s consider the same scenario, but this time you’re buying a $1000 sofa – would you make the journey across town to pay $980 for the sofa instead? Neither would I.

Most of us like to think of ourselves as rational, with a good handle on how to make optimal financial decisions, but as the above example demonstrates, we’re not quite as pragmatic as think we are. After all, are we prepared to walk across town to save $20 or not? If we are to be completely rational about it, we wouldn’t let the total amount, or more specifically the ratio of saving to total amount, have anything to do with the decision.

Another, even more dramatic
flaw in our logic is the power of FREE

Being human though, we are not rational, and we always consider the decisions we face in relation to their context. Another, even more dramatic flaw in our logic is the power of FREE.

When offered the a choice between a paying $1 for a $10 Amazon gift certificate, or $8 for a $20 Amazon gift certificate, most people spot the better deal and pony up for the more expensive certificate seeing that their net gain will be $12 instead of the cheaper certificate’s $9 gain.

But when we modify the options by reducing the cost of each item by a dollar so that the $20 certificate costs $7 and the $10 certificate is free, which would would you choose now?

It turns out that the majority now choose the free deal, blinded from the better deal by FREE! The reason for this is a deeply ingrained aversion to loss. When we consider each option we weigh up the the pros and cons, the wins and losses. The win is the stuff we can buy with the certificate, and the loss is the money we hand over to pay for it.

By reducing the cost to free,
we remove the loss which blinds us
to the advantage of the better deal

By reducing the cost to free, we remove the loss which blinds us to the advantage of the better deal. Let me stay with Amazon to tell you a real life example of the power of loss aversion. A number of years ago they introduced the now common offer of free deliver on all orders over a certain amount.

The take up was huge. When weighing up the pros and cons of shopping online versus a visit to their local bookstore, shoppers placed the cost of delivery as one of the biggest disadvantages of shopping online, so by reducing the cost to free Amazon eliminated the loss aversion.

In their infinite Gallic wisdom,
the French Amazon team modified the offer

Amazon did notice one anomaly though – France. For some reason the offer was making little impact to sales in France, and upon closer inspection, the culprit was found. In their infinite Gallic wisdom, the French Amazon team modified the offer so that over a certain price delivery was reduced to one franc (about 20 cents) a cost considerably less than one might spend traveling to their local bookstore.

Although the offer’s super cheap delivery was nearly free, it was still enough to trigger our loss aversion, and when the deal was modified to make it genuinely free, sales increased in line with the rest of the world.

One more area of financial irrationality comes when we travel between the worlds of social norms and market norms. Imagine you’re a lawyer, and the girl next door asks you to spend an hour next Tuesday looking after her dog while she’s out of town visiting her family. No problem. We consider this in relation to social norms and are happy to help.

Now consider you being asked to spend the same hour to help out, but instead you’re asked to prepare a legal document, the stuff you do in your 9 to 5. We consider this request in relation to market norms and are considerably less likely to want to help.

This flip side of this is, at the end of a wonderful family meal prepared by your mother in law, to stand up and praise her for such a feast and then pull out a wad of money from your wallet to pay for it. The transition for social norm to market norm (and vice versa) is painful.

when a new scheme that asked them
to work for free for the same retired
people was introduced it was a great success

Take the example of the US lawyers asked to drop their fee to $30 an hour for retired people. The scheme was a failure with few legal professionals getting involved, but when a new scheme that asked them to work for free for the same retired people was introduced it was a great success, as their decision was considered within social norms.

If your organisation benefits from a social contract with its customers then be careful to nurture this as it is as fragile as it is valuable, as can be see in this last example.

A few years ago, a children’s day care center did an experiment to see if they could reduce the number of parents that arrived late to pick up their kids by introducing a financial penalty for such tardiness.

before the fines started there was a social contract in place, where the parents would feel bad about the staff having to stay late to wait for them to turn up

This turned out to have the opposite effect than intended with more parents being late more often. Why was this? Well, before the fines started there was a social contract in place, where the parents would feel bad about the staff having to stay late to wait for them to turn up. Now that the cost of being late had a price, this market contract meant that they could simply consider if the extra 30 minutes of child care was worth the cost of the fine.

A really interesting thing happened weeks later though, when the fines were removed. Instead of returning to a social contract, parents instead continued to weigh up the financial cost of turning up late, and now you know how we feel about FREE it will come as no surprise to you to learn parental punctuality became worse than ever!

If you find this kind of stuff interesting then I recommend these excellent books for further reading, as they are where most of my examples come from.

1. Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely
2. How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer
3. Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive by Noah J. Goldstein, Steve J. Martin, Robert B. Cialdini

One of my first actions to mark my independence
was designing business cards.

Consider the context of the exchange of business cards. By their very nature you give your business card to someone you’ve just met that you wish to continue communicating with beyond this initial meeting. We all know how important first impressions are, and to quote Erik Spiekermann, you cannot not communicate. So what does your business card communicate about you?

Why is your fax number on your card,
when you never receive faxes?

If the address of your website is printed on your card it says you fear you won’t be the number one result when someone Googles you (or your company). Why is your fax number on your card, when you never receive faxes? When you give me both your direct line and the company switchboard how should I know which one to dial? Besides, if I call your direct line and you don’t answer does my call not get re-routed to either your voicemail or the switchboard anyway?

For my new business cards I have decided
to adhere to form follows function.

For my new business cards I have decided to adhere to form follows function. They have just enough information for you to get in touch digitally, and have been crafted to show attention to detail and a robust character – traits I would be delighted for you remember me for after our initial meeting.

They stock is 700gsm Colorplan from GF Smith, a duplex sheet made up by paste laminating a sheet of 350gsm Bright White to a sheet of 350gsm Ebony. The black side has my HG monogram in white foil, and the white side has my contact details letterpressed in black ink using a Vandercook letterpress by Dan at Glasgow Press.