I signed up at LinkedIn about 2 years ago (September, 2003 to be exact). Only recently did I start updating my LinkedIn network, and have realized how much of a great application this is.

Privacy and a Great Design

One of the great features of LinkedIn is the fact that it is private. Only people that know you can get connected to you, as they have to know your email address. And how can you go wrong with that design. Not only does it look great, it’s very useable.

Connections

So, I am constantly contacted about Flash freelance opportunities, and every so often, I just can’t take a job due to workload. So LinkedIn is usually my way to find a couple replacement suggestions for the job. If you have a LinkedIn account, add me to your contacts. My email is josh [AT] joshdura [DOT] com.

As of this Friday, I will no longer be employed by Slingshot. I have been offered an opportunity to work for one of my few “dream companies”, Yahoo. I will be working out of the Dallas office, formerly the Broadcast.com offices that were bought by Yahoo. Special thanks to Justin Everett-Church for forwarding my resume to the Dallas office with a hord of kind words.

What will I be doing

I will be working with Chris Mancini, developing FlashComm applications. You can find an article briefly describing what the team does here. I am really looking forward to this, as I have really never worked in a large flash environment like this. At the same time, this worries me, as I have never really worked with FlashComm in a production/large environment. Luckily, I had recently bought the Oreily FlashComm book, and started heavily reading it once I found out I had the job.

The Yahoo Environment

Obviously, this is one of the best perks of the job. To me, Yahoo is considered one of the first real .com’s, and thus, has an extremely relaxed atmosphere. Being able to wear shorts, tshirts, hats, etc. to work never gets old.

Yahoo also seems to have a more bloggish/flickrish (they DO own them)/web geek type atmosphere than the 2 ad agencies I have worked for in the past. This is going to be quite the new experience to say the least. Also, I am hoping to be able to attend/speak at more conferences than I have in the past (if you want me to speak, let me know), as Yahoo tends to lean more toward sending people to the conferences.

Overall, I am really looking forward to this opportunity, and hope to show everyone what I will be working on very soon. Leaving the great people I have worked with at Slingshot will be very tough, but knowing the great opportunity I am going to helps out a lot.

First off, special thanks for Jeff for this…. ummm… unique meme :) Now, onto the insaneness…

On a typical day I wake up, wash the syrup from my pinky toe and put on my garter belt. I say goodbye to Jakob Neilsen and I unicycle to Slingshot where I am a Flash Developer. I feel overly anxious about what I do, sure I’d rather be a professional hockey player in Manitoba, but this pays the bills and buys me lots of Hot Tamales that I can scarf down. My morning is pretty nonchalant. Aside from my 25 trips to the bathroom to pluck my eyebrows and my naughty encounter with Abel Rios it’s just the same every day.

I break for lunch and draw with Colby Grenier over a gargantuan plate of magic mushrooms. A quick jaunt to the hockey rink to play video games with Sam Robbins, who’s a total loser at hockey, and it’s back to the grind, until 9pm when I jump in my totally sweet maroon Honda Accord and head for home.

My evening is spent playing Battlefield 2 (or poker) and listening to Revis while skipping around my office wishing I was Daniel Negreanu and drinking all sorts of Bawls (*barf). Then it’s off to bed where I dream of tulips and Natalie Portman in cowboy boots and a smile.

Passing onto…

Jeremy Flint
Todd Dominey
Sam Robbins
Condeleeza Rice (because Jared said “it’s the cool thing to do!”)

I have been passed a Musical Baton by Keith Hall.

Total size of music files on my computer: 130 Gb. aprrox. (I am at work right now, and cannot check)
Total size of music files on my iPod: 9.84 Gb.

The last CD I bought was: Revis – Places for Breathing

Song playing right now: Jet – Come Around Again

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:

1. Revis – Living Rooms
2. AFI – Miseria Cantare
3. Submersed – Hollow (some people pronouce this Sub-Mer-Sed)
4. Crossfade – Colors
5. Micronaut – Perdition (thanks to Keith from iPodarmy)

Five people to whom I’m passing the baton:

1. Abel Rios
2. Danny Dura
3. Mike Chambers
4. Sean Voisen
5. Sam Robbins

Well, this is it. The May 1st Reboot of JoshDura.com is complete. After a weekend of 3am nights (thanks for the help Abel), the site has come close enough to completion, that it was ready to be launched. You heard right, the site isnt TOTALLY complete, but about 95% there. Now onto what’s new…

Link Log

I have implemented a Link Log into the site. These links will appear in respective order to the articles, and flow just like Kottke’s links. Yeah, I was a bit inspired, so sue me…

Photos (not new, but updated!)

I have integrated my Flickr photos into the site, so that photos will be a LOT easier to upload to the site. The problem with my previous site, was that everything about the photo upload process was manual. With Flickr, all I have to do is email a photo to them, and its up instantly.

The Design

Truthfully, I’m not sure where I thought up this design. I think it was more of a convergance of inspiration than anything else. Not saying that I copied anything, but I sure as hell was inspired by some of the Standards Community sites out there for portions of the site. One thing to note, I know the site doesn’t validate yet. No worries, it will soon, I was just a little busy tonight getting this beast ready for May 1st…

Updatability

One of the most exciting features of the site, is the updatability of it. I can now add Links, Photos, Open Source Flash, etc… with a LOT more ease than I could before. Here’s to hoping I can keep my own promise.

Eff Off Comment Spam

TextPattern how I love thee… I now have the weight of comment spam off of my shoulders. Sure, I know there will be a couple here and there, but I now know I won’t be deleting hundreds upon thousands of Spams. YAY!

As of sometime this weekend, I will be shutting down the site, in preperation for the May 1st Reboot. I will be installing TextPattern, updating .htaccess files, etc etc etc… So things might get a bit wonky. I will most likely delete the entire FTP in an effort to clean things up. Things like my Text Editor, the Flash 8 video, etc will be staying online, but other than that, expect a 404.

Wish me luck, and see you all on May 1st with a new design.

PS – Does anyone have any suggestions on how I will redirect my old URLs (http://www.joshdura.com/archives/category/entry_name.html) to the correct TextPattern URL? I think Mod Rewrite is the solution, but have no friggin clue how I would go about this… Any suggestions?

Last night, the University of North Carolina Tarheels defeated the Fighting Illini, 75-70 to end the NCAA College Basketball Tournament. As you know, a couple of Flash developers and I put together a March Madness bracket tournament.

As you can see below, the competition was tough, with the final game deciding the winner. After the Final Four, Scott Janousek found himself out of 1st place contention, being 10 points behind yours truely. Phil Chung was the only person who had a chance of beating me for 1st place, as he had picked Illinois to win it all. Luckily, they didn’t, and I won :D Congratulations to all participants, job well done (except for Sam Robbins, EVERY team he had picked was eliminated by the 3rd round, tisk tisk).

PS – My final score prediction for the final game… 75-68… Two points off, DOH!

Well, like my brother did a couple months ago, I just bought a new Sidekick 2. This thing rocks. I am always connected, and I finally have joined the camera phone craze. I have attached my Flickr moblog to the right side of the blog. You can expect a much tighter integration once I get the new design for my site done (coming soon).

The one thing I didn’t think I would use this phone for, would be task management, and for the calendar. I have never been the kind of person to be able to keep up with entering all of my tasks/meetings into a PDA/Phone, but now that I ride the train into work ever morning (45 minutes each eay), I finally have time to use this phone to its full potential.

I have yet to forward my personal email to the Sidekick though, as we are having some issues with our SPAM filters, and I don’t want to fuss around deleting 500 spams a day on the thing. Feel free to contact me via AIM though (jdura99), as I will ALWAYS be on it now :)

A couple of weeks ago, I heard the news that Apple was going to be releasing a $500 headless iMac. I was THRILLED by the news, as I had been wanting to buy another Mac (I had one of the first G4 powerbooks, but hated OS9, so I sold it). So yesterday, I purchased one of the new $499 Mac Mini’s, with added Bluetooth and Airport Express functionality.

This computer makes sense for me on many levels. For one, it is compact. I can just buy a DVI KVM switch, and use my current 21” Flat Panel and Wireless Keyboard/Mouse, and you would never know the Mac is there. For two, I have needed a Mac for testing purposes for a while, and this fits that need perfectly. Third, Macs are cool, and fun to play around on. Fourth, at my new job, they are Mac based, and I use a Mac, so being able to take projects home, and work on them on a Mac will help quite a bit.

I think this new Mac will definitely convince some PC users not to switch, but to add-on. I will never be a Mac based user, but I would love to always have one as a secondary machine. Great work (again) Apple. PS: If you have any tips/tricks/cool software, etc. suggestions to make, please do!

Well, as you can tell lately, I haven’t been posting to this blog NEAR as much as I need to. A couple of reasons.

1) New Job – About 2 months ago, my good friend John Nicholas (who I know through the Dallas MMUG) IMed me asking if I would be interested in working with Slingshot, an advertising firm based in Downtown Dallas. I am not one to turn down an offer, so I came into Slingshot for an interview. From the second I stepped into the offices, I knew this was a great place to work. They ended up offering me the job, and I have now been working here for 3 weeks. The people here are great, and the work they produce is absolutely amazing. I will be working a lot with AS2 here, so this will finally give me the chance to get fully associated with it. From what I know so far, it is going to change the way I program in Flash.

2) New Projects – A couple of new sites are in the works. I can’t really mention any of them yet, but you will hear of them all pretty soon (including a redesign of this blog). AS2 is a wonderful thing. XPath is a wonderful thing. :) UPDATE: How could I forget to give kudos to my GREAT friend Sam “I suck worse than Colby at hockey” Robbins. Thanks for the AS2 and XPath help :)

Anyways, you should be hearing more from me now that the holidays are over, and I am settled into the new job.

Over the past 4 weeks at TM Interactive, I have been working VERY closely with the AA team, on a rebranding project for American Airlines. The new campaign, titled “We Know Why You Fly” was announced last Friday, and was all over the local news, and advertising websites. Well, today, we launched WhyYouFly.com.

This is the first large project of mine launched through TM Interactive, and I have to say, I couldn’t be more impressed with the efforts of the Art Directors, Creative Directors, Project Managers, etc… I developed the entire Flash site, but couldn’t have done it without these people.

The basic premise of the campaign, is that you fly on American for a reason, not to be on a plane ride. Whether that reason be for grandkids, a Labor Day party, a Christmas dinner, whatever. You are able to also submit your stories (Movies, Pictures, or Words).

This is the first major rebranding American Airlines has done in over 10 years. Job well done, if I must say so myself :)

So check out the site, let me know what you think, hell, submit a couple stories! Tell a friend about the site, have them submit a story or two as well :)

Well, as you can tell from the lack of activity on this blog, I have been a bit busy lately. Truthfully, I can’t tell if it is from the workload of the new job, or just me getting used to the new atmosphere.

I can tell you this, the new job is great. Right now, I am doing some work for Sprint (basically some presentation material, but the end project is going to be pretty significant). Another project I have been working on, is doing some updating to the agency site, and also updating and finishing the TM Interactive site. Overall, the group of people I work with is amazing. Tons of talent everywhere you turn, and its great to finally work with people that are as creative as you are, if not more (which most of them are).

In other news, I am most likely going to be selling my Jeep :( The 30 mile one way drive to work is killing me as far as gas mileage goes. I end up paying approx. $240 a month in gas. So, if anyone is interested in buying my Jeep, let me know. I will probably be buying a Honda Accord, as they are sporty enough, family enough, and efficient enough.

Hopefully in the next week, I will get more comfortable in the new settings, and get back to regular blogging.

Well, today is my last day at Ready Hosting. I have decided to take an opportunity as a Flash Developer at an advertising firm here in Dallas. The longer drive is something I am definitely not looking forward to, but I think doing a lot more work in Flash will make up for that :)

My job at Ready Hosting has been nothing but great. The people here have treated me with much respect, and I will never forget that. The job has taught me a lot about CSS, HTML, and graphic design in general.

You will definitely be hearing more Flash questions from me in the future, as I get back into the swing of daily full time Flash development. Heres to showing some kickass projects in the future :)

March Madness is under way! This is my favorite time of the year other than the Stanley Cup… I have my bracket filled out… Was wondering what the Flash communities Final Four predections were… Heres mine…

Gonzaga vs. Oklahoma St.

Louisville vs. Connecticut

And in the finals…

Oklahoma St. vs. Connecticut, Connecticut winning 68-58…

Post your predictions in the comments :)

FYI – My brothers blog might be down for a day or two. He forgot to renew his domain, and luckily got it renewed.