Jamesy: 56, Dale: 1

Yes it's finally happened - I've beaten my new nemisis of the squash court in a game last Wednesday night. He was slow to get started, and I burst out of the blocks with my new shoes and racquet. From that point on, it was all downhill although I did push him a couple more times without actually coming away with the win. Exercise is startig to pay off :)

Company MD Models for Cover

Have you seen that ad on the TV for Bob Jane T-Mart, where they say, "Most company directors spend their weekends like this", and then shows peiple fishing or playing tennis. Then they say, "But not ours ...", showing the Bob Jane guy racing Euro-sports cars? No? Oh well ...

Many of you will know my growing aversion to doing design in the realm of print - simply because I love the flexibility of the web too much. Once you publish a site, you can simply change a typo in a matter of seconds and it's fixed. If you print 10,000 copis of a magazine and there's something wrong, then you've got some serious client-relationship issues to attend to!

Well recently we helped out a mate of mine with a book cover. We ended up coming up with a concept, and shot some mock-up photography to demonstrate the idea. Well blow me down if they didn't love it so much that they kept it in ... and wham bam I'm a cover model :)

The book however deals with prison reform, so I'm looking suitably "criminal" on the cover, and even went the digital extra-mile to tatoo the word "HATE" on my knuckles. The book is called "Corrected or Corrupted? Life Behind Bars" and is written by the extraordinary suburban-mum, Rowena Solomon (from Esteem Consulting).

The Fitness Trap for Geeks - Part 2

I shopped at Amart AllSports last weekend and bought a pair of cross trainers and a squash racquet ... I'm fitted out and ready for some serious exercise this week! It's the first pair of "sports" shoes that I have owned in years - the skate shoe has been my best friend for a long time now and my feet are having to get used to the look of white again:)

Jamesy look out! I felt fitter just shopping at Amart ...

Shameless plug

I thought that since no-one will probably ever find this blog, I may as well plug my band ... Farlow Star. I was again inspired to book some shows after watchig last night's ARIA awards. Australian music has got some great talent, both recording and live acts (Jet, John Butler, et al) but geez there's some c**p too. I'm not saying Farlow Star is the answer to world hunger or anything, but it's something to distract me from the computer.

The Fitness Trap for Geeks

Starting to feel like the only tan you'll ever get is from your dual 19" monitors? Well I was, and I was starting to feel like the only muscles I was using now were the ones in the tips of my fingers (and the one that open a can of Coke). So I've started playing squash again after about 14 years ... and boy am I finding out about a few old muscles now baby! Last time I played, I was in Grade 12 and in the prime of my youth - before going into music and computers and thinking that playing drums for a living was exercise enough.

I remember thinking that the glass wall in the squash court was so cool, and bouncing off the walls when going for a shot was even better. But now, my body's not really into bouncing off the wall, or slamming into the glass wall after going for the impossible shot.

I'm playing with other music friends, who even though have been doing the squash thing pretty regularly now for while, still seem to carry the musicians' exercise gene (which is recessive I think). And even though I'm starting to be able to feel my legs again after shorter periods of time beyond our ritual Wednesday night, in the back of my head I'm wondering if the damage has already been done to my commitment to physical exercise.

My friend and musical cohort, Jamesy McFamesy, seems to have moved into another realm though - where musical lifestyle meets Powerade. He seems to conjure incredible shots out of nowhere, and has a return-of-serve that leaves myself and fellow drummer Matt dumb-founded. So Jamesy, well done .. I never thought I would have a musical and sporting inspiration in the same person ... but I'm going to pinch a game (or two) off you soon :)

Choosing from the Two Faces of Flash

As Flash developers, we really are in the 'golden age'. I think back to what was achievable back in the glory days of version 1 (circa 1996 I think), and I'm so glad I stuck with it and am still using it today.

But I am finding that I am becoming more and more torn between the two faces of Flash - the creative and the technical. We are starting to see jobs come through now from both camps. We have straight-out application development being done in Flash, for various platforms and environments. Then we also have the creative, or marketing-focussed, pieces that aren't doing anything really other than looking great and communicating a marketing message (or developing a brand).

It strikes me that the great divide is getting larger, and that less and less opportunites are coming through where both sides of the coin are as relevant as each other. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but it's starting to hurt my head :) Don't get me wrong, I think that Flash is continuing to provide incredible power to both creative and technical applications, and I continue to be in love with it as a development platform for both. But for me personally, coming from version 1 (where there were only 12 commands you could choose from, and they were all options rather than scripting that you wrote) I'm thinking I'm going to have to sit on one side of the fence or the other pretty soon.

Flash-ward and onward!

Welcome to DRDblog

Well this is the first post of what might not be many at all :) DRDblog is where I'll be chatting about things relating to the world of our company, DRD Interactive, but also anything else that happens to be of interest to potentially just me.

World on Fire

The best music video I've seen in many, many years ... Sarah McLachlan's "World on Fire".

Forgetting attachments is all the baby's fault!

I have been guilty lately of forgetting to attach documents to emails that I have been sending to clients. It's something that I'm sure everyone does from time to time, but this week has been particularly bad for me. My excuse though has been sufficient to cut through any angst felt by the attachment-less email recipients ... my baby daugter :) 4 weeks old and going very well.