Mid-July miscellaneous content post

13 July 2008

Here's some random comments I've prepared recently.  A few cool Adobe links, a work office location update, then a quick vacation recap.  Probably hardly warrants a dedicated posting, and is thoroughly not Silverlight related (sorry!).

Adobe MAX conference mini site, ActionScript 3 stuff

The MAX 2008 North America mini site is a fun rich experience.

MAX 2008 mini site

I like how the app's startup sequence moves from an initial informative menu of options to a video with Kevin Lynch and then eventually the interactive background environment appears.  Pretty slick.

The interactive background has a lot of neat elements, and I'm still discovering new functionality.  It's an engaging, well-designed site.  If I was an artist I'd consider replicating something similar in Silverlight, just to see how the experience would go.

ActionScript 3 intro deck
I often get asked to recommend Flex and ActionScript learning materials, and a resource that came to my attention recently deserves a call-out: Grant Skinner's slide deck for his one day workshop introducing ActionScript 3.  Check it.

I also ran across a really cool Flash 9 page today: it has dancing kittens.

I've moved to Building 40

Check it out - the new office, on the 4th floor of building 40 on main campus.  In the scheme of things, it's not that far away from my last building, number 42... Microsoft internal folks, stop by sometime and say 'hi'!

 

Quick SFO note

A few weeks ago I flew down to San Francisco for the weekend to get some fresh air and explore the city.  It was a good time, and I was able to write a few Yelp reviews from it.  It's a great city.

Last week I was introduced to someone who had a "oh, you're Jeff Wilcox" moment - followed by a request to post a photo to my blog for customers and others to see.  So, here you go.  The slightly balding top is a key give-away that it's me. 

The next time you see me at a conference or event, please introduce yourself, I'm open to a wide range of (mostly geek) conversation.

Jeff Wilcox, June 2008

Next time I'm in San Francisco I'll let folks know to setup a geek dinner or drinking event.  My sister took the above photo of me in the tea garden in the middle of Golden Gate Park (thanks!).

SFMOMA's personal photography policy is pretty cool
A surprise during my time in San Francisco was enjoying the new personal photography policy at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA).

Unless explicitly marked in an exhibit, personal, non-flash, no-tripod photography is permitted in the museum.

This is a step in the right direction I believe, in the digital age it's nice to be able to take a quality photo with a digital cam, it's great to share photos with friends & family over Flickr.com, especially those who weren't able to come with me to the museum.

Here's a Mark Rothko from the museum. I've had a beautiful print of this very painting at home for years now.

A Mark Rothko piece at SFMOMA.  Image for personal use only. 

That's it for the random blog posts for a few months.  I hope everyone's having a great summer!

Jeff Wilcox is a Software Engineer at Microsoft in the Open Source Programs Office (OSPO), helping Microsoft engineers use, contribute to and release open source at scale.

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