Which way from here?
I was watching an old episode of M*A*S*H today while I had nothing much to do. If you've ever seen the show (a TV classic indeed), there is a signpost that points in various directions different locations and how many miles away they are. That almost feels like a metaphor for what I feel right now professionally. There is a lot to learn, and I could easily dart off in several directions. My inclination is usually to do a little of each and see where one tends to lead me, but that seems to get harder with time. I know in order to get anywhere you really need to focus. Ancient Chinese proverb says that a man who chases two rabbits will catch neither. But, which way from here?
I have been trying to learn Actionscript 3.0, which is quite a departure from the old version, akin to learning Java after knowing Javascript. Some similar ideas, but completely different languages. It has been pretty difficult, but I've managed to work completely in AS 3.0 for the past year. Unfortunately I don't feel like I'm anywhere close to being good at it. My plan there is to create a wiki or some method of creating "recipes" of code for being able to do different things. So that's one thing.
There are other aspects of Flash that I really want to get a handle on. I recently got a book called How To Cheat in Flash, by Chris Georgenes that has some excellent tips on quickly creating neat effects with Flash animation. There are lots of techniques in there that I'd like to try out soon.
I could also go off on creating applications in RealBasic. On the G4 I have at home I've been working on an application that does captioning for QT movies. RealBasic is quite a challenge too, but I've learned quite a bit on my own and with the help of a strong forum community on their site. I had to think long and hard before plunking down a few hundred dollars for my own copy, but I think it was worth it to keep my efforts separate from what I do with my work copy.
I've tried learning XTools for the Mac, but don't have a good working knowledge of Objective-C and haven't been able to make the leap into developing Mac-only apps with it. I do intend to work on creating a video compression tool if I can so people who use our ITS Streaming Server can easily compress their own videos via drag and drop possibly. I will probably come back to XTools eventually. I know learning Perl was pretty hard for me at first, but I stuck with it and was able to create some really useful stuff with it after a while. Some things are just hard.
I've recently toyed with Visual Basic Studio (we have a Dell at home too) and I was actually kind of surprised at how I was able to pick it up enough to do some basic scripting since it's similar to RealBasic. I was also pleasantly surprised at the level of support it has for creating QT applications with a developer download from the Apple site. I may be able to do a Windows version of the video compression app as well. That would sure be helpful to a lot of streaming server users at PSU.
Another direction I could easily go off into is the web-based simulation thing which I've blogged about from time to time. I believe I could create the basic framework for one that people could use to create their own just by creating the scene assets and filling out a FileMaker Pro record form. This could easily have implications for games as well and I recently spoke with Chris Stubbs about the Forensics demo he saw on campus and how I thought this could be a good fit for something like that. I need to get a working demo with video clips together to see how it will pan out.
So, that's just a few directions I could head right now. Apart from just keeping up with the s/w I already use on a daily basis and the latest versions of those, I think I have plenty to do right now. I know I should probably knock a few of the signs off the signpost, but I'll leave them there for now and just head in the direction of a few of them to see where it will lead me. I wonder where I'll be in a year from now?
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