• Relaxation can be incredibly difficult for type-A personalities, but not entirely unattainable.
• There is never an end to odd jobs one can find to do around, within and upon one’s home (assuming, of course, you are not a renter).
• If you stare at any cloud long enough, you can watch it make far more than one shape.

I can, of course, take life way too seriously at times. Just not right now.

• There is not a musical instrument known to man that I will not attempt to master, or at least wrestle into submission, when given the opportunity.
• Although I fully realize it’s long-term economic ramifications, I’d give up my job and gigs in a second to be a full-time dad. Fatherhood is the most fun I’ve had in a long, long time. Who knows…
• I can’t wait to see how chill I get after 5 more weeks of this.
• I haven’t turned on a ‘real computer’ in a full week (except for the one powering my studio, and then only to record stuff).
• You really can be more creative when you’re completely uncluttered or distracted. But you can also get cabin fever much faster. Finding myself ‘out for inspiration’ more often than actually writing, but my writing time is now much more focused and at least 3 times as productive as when I’m working the day job. Dizzamn.
• Removing due dates from all my to-do lists actually resulted in them getting done a LOT faster. Maybe it’s the reduced time pressure, but that’s an interesting and cool trend.
• Getting my inner Hunter S. Thompson out and exercised last week will help me get back to my inner, and much healthier muses. But it has been fun to blow it out a bit.
• I’m really glad I decided to take this sabbatical at it’s own pace. Getting back to roots is beautiful.
• How Des and I created such an amazing little boy in our son, Devin, is beyond me – and more in the realms of miracles and/or divine providence. He amazes and inspires me daily.
• Although I’m not going to waste much time thinking about it now, I’m really going to miss this sabbatical when it’s over. A lot.

And now, back to the slacking. Cheers!

It’s clear that I’ll be working on some personal music but I have consciously avoided thinking about it beyond one overriding goal – to wade through the last decade worth of half finished (or less) ideas that I’ve written, and recorded to varying degrees. As I’ve been mostly playing on other people’s material or projects it’s been a pretty diverse decade, but I honestly couldn’t tell you much more about what’s in that pile ‘o ideas as it’s stuff I documented in quick momentary flurries of inspiration – and didn’t spend much time with overall. The idea was that I’d eventually come back to them and finish each and every one – though at this point that obviously never happened nor was it likely to unless I made a concerted effort to set aside some time and do something about it. I guess that’s what sabbaticals are for, eh?

The hope is that either I find enough gems in that pile to justify finishing out a demo, or horrify myself into writing something better. So I’m going to call it creative semi-block- I guess when you’re starting with a surplus of ideas it can’t exactly be a tabula rasa type of situation. But given I have little memory of or faith in those ideas at this point, it is a bit unsettling. Here’s hoping the combination kicks me in the ass the right way. Keep posted.

That being said, not everything is hearts and flowers, but the negatives are third-party incompatibilities and not deal-breakers.

• Line 6′s most awesome Pod Farm AudioUnit plug-in isn’t yet compatible. I’m back to using real mics and amps for now, but as most of my work is mixing/sequencing right now I’ve got some time to spare for this to resolve.
• Xmarks bookmark sync (reasonably indispensible, but I know it’ll get ported quickly).
• When creating a new event in iCal using the Exchange integration, it doesn’t always invite the room I’ve specified unless I drag the event to a new time, and then back to the correct one. Weird!

All things told- still two thumbs up!

That being said, it’s time for a change, partially motivated by the impending ‘migration’ of my Adobe blog to a new Movable Type framework. I’m not particularly happy with Movable Type in general, and much more comfortable with WordPress or Drupal, so although I already did merge in some of my old Adobe blog posts here a while back (just look for the ‘Adobe’ tag), I may be doing it officially soon, and dusting off this default template with one I’ve been puttering on for a little while now.

While I figure out how this will all shake out, I might very likely be temporarily distracted with this.
Pls don’t hold it against me.

I’ve been using this randomly on conference calls lately, too. Enjoy

[From Tom Cruise Uncut: The Freedom Medal Award Ceremony]

What a colossal asshat, that guy.
And I’d thought his Oprah appearance was the creepiest thing I’d seen before now…but yikes.

Run along, now!

The keynote should be a good one- I know for a fact there’s at least one ‘sneak peek’ planned within, so if you’re blowing it off for coffee runs, I’d reconsider. See ya there!

To my experience this is an issue only when Publish Settings are ‘downgraded’ to earlier Player versions AFTER content has been created and/or saved in a Flash 8 FLA. Why? It’s very important (and in my opinion- a ‘best practice’) to know and specify up front your target Player version in the Publish Settings dialog as you create new Flash 8 projects, and before you start working in it. By doing this, the Flash 8 IDE subsequently knows that you are not building your project to the default player version (now Flash 8), and can guide you appropriately. Checkboxes and controls that relate to Flash 8-specific features are greyed out, and you’ll even get far-more-appreciated error messages if you do things in the IDE that aren’t supported in your target Player version. Win/win situation.

And you shouldn’t have to revert to some of the weird workarounds people are suggesting, like saving your FLA file back to an earlier version (which, of course, will get ‘upgraded’ again to Flash 8 when you reopen and try to save it). Set the Publish Settings target up front, forget it, and hit command/control-S as much as you want- although it’s saved as a Flash 8 FLA file, it’s still targeting a Flash 6 SWF – or your version of choice – as it’s output. Harmony is achieved. I think this workflow is more common for Flash Lite/mobile developers – who set device and AS version settings up front already by habit, but it applies to any non-current Player version target.

Summary?
Always know and set your Player version (and Actionscript version) target first in the FLA file, then build your content/animation/application. Good times.

(Platform caveat- I do not regularly use Flash on a PC, so am writing/confirming these points from a machine running Flash 8 on Mac OS 10.4.x- although I fully expect they apply to Windows as well.)