Introducing Leif Wells, Editor-in-Chief of Flex Authority Magazine
I'd like to officially announce my new role in the Flex community; I am now the Editor-in-Chief of Flex Authority magazine. Flex Authority was started last year by House of Fusion and currently is in production for Issue 3.
Back in February 2008, I was helping my friends Tom and John with 360|Flex Atlanta by allowing them to send packages to the Roundbox Global office so that they wouldn't have to pay the insane storage fees at the conference site, which happened to be a couple of miles from our office. Needless to say, the pile of boxes got fairly impressive fairly quickly. Adobe sent posters and t-shirts, there were boxes of "The Cluetrain Manifesto" , and a ton of other stuff.
Then a call came in from Judith Dinowitz requesting assistance transporting some printed materials, fliers for the attendee bag they were having printed in Atlanta to avoid some difficult shipping costs. I believe that is the first time I had heard about Flex Authority. Judith confirmed that it was in the works and that they were going to launch the magazine in the middle of 2008. My reaction was, as with a lot of things that promote the community I work in every day, "What can I do to help?"
And help I did. I was Technical Editor for several articles in the first issue, authored a "10 Questions with..." column with Adam and Dave from the Merapi project , and even took the time to write a couple of filler pieces at the eleventh hour. I was excited about Flex Authority and hopeful for its future.
Flash forward to January 2009. Judith calls me to discuss a change in the magazine management; the position of Editor-in-Chief was open. She said that my name had risen to the top of the list of candidates. She presented me with an opportunity, one that I was sure I'd regret letting pass.
The Editor-in-Chief position at a magazine the size of Flex Authority isn't a high paying gig. In fact, I am not getting paid at all. The position requires a lot of reading and re-reading of articles, balancing grammatical and technical corrections while considering the author's voice, herding cat-like authors, technical editors and copy editors who are balancing full-time jobs (and lives) with a magazine schedule; it's not an easy job. Sure, I'll avoid the stereotypical publishing industry traps like hard drinking, chain smoking and womanizing, but those activities actually sound like rewards compared to these responsibilities.
So, why did I agree to become Editor-in-Chief of Flex Authority?
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Atlanta Adobe Community Events for March 2009
Adobe Community Events
for March 2009
Monday, March 2, 2009, 7PM
Atlanta InDesign User Group
InDesign and Flash: The Digital Transition
Paul Omeda, Chris Stalcup
Wednesday, March 4, 2009, 6PM
Atlanta ColdFusion User Group
Thursday, March 12, 7PM
Atlanta Adobe XD User Group
Wednesday, March 18, 6PM
Atlanta Flash and Flex User Group
Tuesday, March 24, 7PM
Adobe Flash Platform User Group
Simplified Logic's Andrew Westberg
Digital Rights Management and the Flash Platform
Thursday, March 26, 7PM
Adobe User Group of Atlanta
Illustrator CS4 with Adobe's Robert McDaniels
Related Events:
Monday, March 9, 7PM
Atlanta Flex & Actionscript Coders
Monday, March 16, 7PM
Atlanta JavaScript Developers Meetup
Wednesday, March 18, 7PM
AIGA - Atlanta
Wednesday, March 25, 6:30PM
AiMA
Thursday, March 26, 7PM
Atlanta Web Design Group
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This Thursday: Adobe is in the house! And they're showing Acrobat Professional
UPDATE: Find out how things went by reading the Meeting Recap.
This Thursday: Adobe is in the house! And they're showing Acrobat Professional
Adobe's Acrobat has been in the news a lot lately and for some bizarre reasons. Last week it was the whole Facebook and their redaction problem. On the same day, Rush Limbaugh ranted on-air that Democrats were hiding information in the stimulus bill by preventing search inside the published PDF.
Sigh. Good times, good times.
So, how wonderfully timely is this week's meeting of the Adobe User Group of Atlanta? I mean, seriously. We are featuring the Adobe Acrobat Professional product for the first time in our history! And some of our friends from Adobe will be doing the presentation. And these guys are good. No doubt that the Facebook lawyers and Mr. Limbaugh wished we had scheduled this meeting earlier this year. In fact, one of the topics at Thursday night's meeting is "Securing Your Intellectual Property", so you can learn what some in the legal profession don't know (and perhaps Rush would be interested in the "I didn't know Acrobat could do that!" topic, but it might actually be too advanced for him).
Please come and show Adobe some love.
WHAT: Adobe User Group of Atlanta February 2009 Meeting
WHEN: Thursday, February 19, 2009 starting at 7PM
WHO: Adobe's Ann Fracas and Phil Lee
WHERE: Roundbox Global (directions [PDF], Google Maps)
RSVP: link
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Thursday Night: Photoshop with Jim DiVitale
Most of our local Photoshop artists, designers and photographers enjoy it when Jim DiVitale presents at the Adobe User Group of Atlanta (Tomorrow night, Thursday, January 22, 2009).
But why is that?
Could it be that he has a great deal of experience? He's been a commercial advertising photographer for 28 years and has a long list of certifications and degrees.
Could it be that he is a great Photoshop presenter? He's been touring around the country presenting Photoshop and other related Adobe products like Lightroom for years.
Could it be that he continues to give back to the community? On his blog and in a ton of publications.
No. I think that it is because he always presents ways to to reduce time and effort using Photoshop. And he almost always announces every keyboard shortcut while he presents. That is cool.
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Haven't Gotten Enough of CS4? Go See CS4 Design Premium in Action!
If you don't think that you've had enough of Adobe's Creative Suite 4 over the past month, on November 17th you'll have an opportunity to have more! The Atlanta InDesign User Group Fall meeting is coming up and they have Robert McDaniels presenting the new features and workflows for CS4 Web Premium.
You'll get more info via the link, but here are some of the details:
WHAT: Atlanta InDesign User Group Fall Meeting: CS4 Launch Meeting
WHEN: Monday, November 17, 2008 at 7:00 PM
WHERE: Portfolio Center, 125 Bennett Street, Atlanta, 30309
RSVP on the site, please.
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Thursday Night: InDesign with Paul Omeda
I wanted to remind everyone about the Adobe User Group of Atlanta meeting tomorrow night featuring, for the very first time, InDesign.
Here's the details:
The Meeting:
WHEN: Thursday, October 23, 2008 from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
WHO: Paul Olmeda, Atlanta InDesign User Group Chapter Leader
TOPIC: InDesign and Workflow with Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign
WHERE: Rounbox Global - King Plow Arts Center (directions in pdf)
RSVPThe Topic:
In our first meeting featuring InDesign, Paul Olmeda, the Atlanta InDesign User Group Chapter Leader, will be giving us an overview of InDesign. He will also show us some real-world workflow techniques using the other Creative Suite products like Bridge, Photoshop and Illustrator.The Speaker:
Paul Omeda is a Graphic Designer for Deep Design in Atlanta, GA. He has an extensive background in design, print production, and various other facets of visual communications. He prides himself on his versatility and his "jack of all trades" persona. Overall, he is a hardworking designer with a true passion for design and is a real nice guy.
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Wiley AIR Bible Ships!
I received a copy of the AIR Bible on my porch this week. This book marks my first foray into the madness that is technical editing for industry books. Having had a little taste of writing part of a book in my past, I can tell you that technical editing a book can be almost as difficult as writing a book.
Ryan Taylor, a great local resource here in Atlanta, is one of the authors of this book. Ryan has presented at a couple of our user group events locally. He has really gotten into Flash CS4's Pixel Bender functionality. You should take a look at his site for more on that. Ryan will be presenting "Pixel Bender Unleashed" at MAX 2008.
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Flex and Localization: Setting the default new file encoding in Flex Builder
[Note: I recently presented at 360Flex San Jose on the topic of localization (L10N). During that session, several questions were asked that I did not have the answers to. Over the next few months I will be attempting to answer all of those questions and more.]
In Flex, resource bundles are used to provide localization features — that is, the ability for your application to provide the user with a different language and regional preference — to your applications. All Flex applications start up with US English as the base language here in the United States of America. Even Flex Builder's default compiler options includes "-locale en_US" making it possible for you to begin localizing your application.
The "gotcha" that hit me the first time I created a resource bundle for localization in a Flex application was the file encoding. The default file encoding setting in Flex Builder (Eclipse) is ISO-8859-1, which if you use is ok for English, but if you choose to copy this file and use it for someone to translate your English text to, say, Spanish it could cause you some problems. For instance, I had a main.properties file that I was translating line by line with Google Translate (I know, lame) from English to Spanish. When I had completed the process and saved the new file, boy was I disappointed. All the special characters that Spanish uses were replaced by triangles with question marks. Converting that ISO-8859-1 file to UTF-8 with the tools at hand made things worse. My choice at the time was to start over from scratch making certain that my English file was UTF-8 and then all my future copies would also be UTF-8.
And, of course, when I told this sad story during my presentation at 360Flex San Jose an attendee asked "Isn't there a preference setting for that inside Flex Builder?" My response at the time was, "I'm sure there is but I have not found it." But I have now!
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Twitter Causes My Site to Fail to Load (what a surprise)
I was afraid of this, and I should have known better. I believe that the Twitter pod I placed on my BlogCFC site has been preventing my site from loading. Since I updated my site this week-end, I can't be certain that the Twitter pod is the guilty party, but turning it off has certainly sped things up.
There are other Twitter widgets available, but for now I am going to do without. Perhaps I'll spend some time creating a Twitter widget in Flex for the purpose of creating an example application. We'll see.
For now, I'm going to try to keep an eye on my logs and visit my site often. If you want to follow me on Twitter, you can find me here.
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First Entry with BlogCFC, Database and Layout Updates
Greetings to you all. As you may have noticed, my blog has been dark for over a month. Although I have been extremely busy, the main reason I have not made an entry is very simply this: I hate my blog.
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