Macromedia MAX 2005

So here I am at Macromedia MAX 2005 in Anaheim, California. This is my first trip to California, and it has so far been a blast. This is officially day two, not counting Sunday when we got here for Community College and the Welcome Reception. Those were of course great--it's always good to rub shoulders with the other Macromedia User Group managers and members of Team Macromedia. I also ran into a former colleague of mine from Discover, which was a pleasant surprise. He is now working in San Antonio, Texas.

Yesterday and today's general sessions did not drop any huge bombshells about things to come from Macromedia. Much of Macromedia's concentration will be on Flash, Flex and mobile devices. They did, of course, pay attention to the new Dreamweaver 8 and Studio 8, and some notice was paid to ColdFusion 7.0.1 (code named "Merrimack") which was released 3 weeks ago. Work is currently underway on the new version of ColdFusion--code named "Scorpio".

We saw some demonstrations of Flash Lite 2.0 for mobile devices. This technology is currently available in parts of Europe and around in Asia, but is slow to be adopted in North America. There are a number of Nokia devices that will employ Flash as a phone-top interface.

I got to see some pretty great things that Dreamweaver 8 can do in the "Dreamweaver Killer Tips" session this morning with Angela Buraglia. I've got a trial version of version 8, but I don't have my DVD-ROM drive for my laptop with me--opting instead to use the extra lithium battery I have for that bay to extend my non-wall-warted laptop usage time.

Another thing I learned about was using Eclipse for ColdFusion. I've used Eclipse before for writing Java, but I didn't realize there was a real movement toward it by ColdFusion developers. Apparently there is a plug-in for Eclipse that provides a customized ColdFusion development environment. I'm anxious to check this out. I took Eclipse off this laptop because I wasn't using it anymore and I needed the disk space. I tried downloading it (106 MB) and the download stalls at 6 MB. Looks like I'll wait until I get home to try this out.

More later.

I Never Travel Far Without a Little Big Star

First, thank you, Alex Chilton. I'm a big fan of power pop, and the power pop sun rises and falls with Alex. Alex and his other original Big Star mate Jody Stephens are joined by Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow of The Posies, who have been members of Big Star for more than 10 years. This new effort, the first in 3 decades, is a really fun collection of songs, and after listening to it for a half of a day now there are several songs that stand out with me. You've got to listen to it yourself, though, and pick your own favorites.

"Best Chance We've Ever Had" is slightly reminiscent of "In The Street" and has simply awesome harmony--this is going to be a new Big Star classic. There's a nice nod to "Wouldn't It Be Nice" (cf "Pet Sounds" by the Beach Boys) at the start of "Turn My Back On the Sun" along with the vocal "ba-ba-ba-ba-ba's" throughout...this was music to my ears. "Love Revolution" begins ala Archie Bell and the Drells and has a great rhythm line...Alex sounds so great on this number, too...it's truly a great Big Star tune. "Hung Up With Summer" is one of my favorites on the disc and sounds like classic Big Star...it also really reminds me of the tune "Hurt So Bad" (Little Anthony & The Imperials).

Again...Thank you Alex for giving us more of yourself!

Top 10 Blues Guitarists

So now for the Top 10 Blues Guitarists of all time. This is a tough one because there are just so many good players. For the purposes of this list, I am not going to include "blues revival" guitarists such as Jimi Hendrix, Peter Green, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Robert Cray, Mike Bloomfield, Paul Butterfield, Steve Cropper and the like. They belong on a blues (or rock) list, but I'm looking more at the first 60 years or so of the 20th Century...the guys who inspired Slowhand, Jimi, Stevie Ray and the others.

1. Robert Leroy Johnson (1911-1938)
"Come On In My Kitchen", "Sweet Home Chicago", "Cross Road Blues" and others

2. Riley B. "Beale Street Blues Boy" or "B.B." King (1925- )
"The Thrill is Gone"

3. "Elmore James" Brooks (1918-1963)
"The King of the Slide Guitar"

4. George "Buddy" Guy (1936- )
Eric Clapton said, "By far and without doubt the greatest guitarist alive today"

5. McKinley "Muddy Waters" Morganfield (1915-1983)
"The Father of Chicago Blues"

6. John Lee Hooker (1917-2001)
"Boom Boom", 1991 inductee in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

7. "Albert 'The Velvet Bulldozer' King" Nelson (1923-1992)
"Born Under a Bad Sign"

8. Aaron Thibeaux "T-Bone" Walker (1910-1975)
"They call it stormy Monday, but Tuesday's just as bad"

9. Albert "The Ice Man" Collins (1932-1993)
"The Master of the Telecaster"

10. "Blind" Lemon Jefferson (1893-1929)
Popular blues singer of the 1920's, "See That My Grave is Kept Clean"

There are several honorable mentions, maybe too many to include, but here are some of them: Huddie William "Leadbelly" Ledbetter, Tommy Johnson, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Lonnie Brooks, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Tinsley Ellis, Son Seals, Otis Rush, Sonny Boy Williamson (Aleck "Rice" Miller), Freddie King, Magic Slim, Hubert Sumlin, Eddie "Son" House, Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins, Theodore "Hound Dog" Taylor.

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy...da movie

Today the boys and I went to see the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I had read all of the reviews, but I still didn't quite know what to expect. Yahoo gave it a B- and said the only people who would get into this movie were the diehards, however I thought it was quite good. There were a few times when the screenplay deviated from the book--like when Ford Prefect asked Arthur Dent to go to the pub with him without going through all the effort to convince the workmen. And there was the part when the party was on Magrethea where they jumped through these portals instead of riding in a car with Slottybotfast. My sons really liked the movie, even though I wasn't sure what to expect from them given that the story is so existential. On the way out of the theater they were already asking if there were other books in this series and if they would make movies of those books too. So that's a good sign. Marvin the Paranoid Android was absolutely great, and some toy company is going to make a bundle off of him. I recommend the movie, two thumbs up.

Adobe to Buy Macromedia

It was announced earlier this week that Adobe is going to be buying Macromedia for US$3.4 million. As a manager of a Macromedia User Group (the "Corporate Champions" group at Discover Financial Services, Inc.'s Riverwoods, Illinois headquarters), I've been reading a lot of newsgroup messages about the planned October, 2005 takeover. There is a lot of paranoia and presupposition right now about the company known for expensive packages like Photoshop, Illustrator and Premiere. The Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF) is practically a worldwide standard in platform-independent document sharing, and recently opensource projects have back-engineered the PDF making it very accessible. In fact, Macromedia's own ColdFusion 7.0 (just released) natively supports production of PDF documents, as does Macromedia's Flashpaper--designed to leverage the Flash player, which has near market saturation, and compete with Adobe Acrobat.

Web designers and developers have overwhelmingly cast their dollar/yen/ruble/euro votes in favor of Macromedia Dreamweaver, casting aside products like Microsoft FrontPage and Adobe GoLive. Dreamweaver advocates such as myself will be attentive to Adobe's plan for the flagship HTML package. GoLive absorbing Dreamweaver would be devastating to the development community. Dreamweaver, though, has in the past absorbed other products.

When Macromedia acquired Allaire's ColdFusion, the attempt was made to make Dreamweaver MX the development tool for ColdFusion. Basically this involved adding a few CFML extensions and giving the option of the "HomeSite"-style development arrangement of docked toolbars and grouping. This attempt at the dream of integrating the old ColdFusion Studio with Dreamweaver may never satisfy some diehards, even after the improvements in Dreamweaver MX 2004. (It's worth noting here that DW MX 2004 also combines Nick Bradbury's TopStyle functionality, too. Nick, you may recall, was the author of HomeSite).

So if there is to be a marriage of GoLive and Dreamweaver, it may be that Dreamweaver can adopt a GoLive-style development environment, bringing these users into the fold. A quick check of the classified ads for developers will not mention GoLive, rather it will ask for Dreamweaver developers. Let us hope in the next 6 months that Adobe shares the outlook that Dreamweaver absorbing GoLive is the route to take and not the
other way around.

What will surely be interesting is the fate of products like Macromedia Fireworks and Macromedia Freehand. Though these tools are nicely integrated with sister products Dreamweaver and Flash, the superiority of Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator will certainly shine through. Fireworks will almost certainly be absorbed into Photoshop, and though this might be a good mix, it will make a more cost-effect package out of reach to some developers who do not have US$800 to spend on Photoshop. The same can be said of Illustrator and its step-sister Freehand.

However the chips fall, this consolidation could be seen as a positive move toward competition with software giant Microsoft and its fleet of end-to-end solutions. Possibly we're looking at the genesis of the next software giant. This will certainly be a great process to watch and participate in.

The Top 10 Guitarists of All Time

1. Peter Green
Replaced Eric Clapton in John Mayall's Bluesbreakers (that's a hard act to follow)...in `67 formed his own band with 2 other Bluesbreakers--was too modest so he named the band after them, "Fleetwood Mac"

2. Eric "Slowhand" Clapton
Commonly referred to as God. Started in the Fabulous Blues-Wailing Yardbirds, played with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, part of the first supergroup Cream, Derek & the Dominoes with Duanne Allman, Blind Faith....like I said, Eric Clapton is God.

3. Jimi Hendrix
"Surf music is dead"....his blues-based rock & roll was so original and so significant to everything in rock music afterwards

4. Dick Dale
King of the Surf Guitar...invented the surf sound ("Pipeline" riff)...should also be on the trumpet list--he played both guitar and trumpet on "Miserlou"

5. Buddy Holly
Popularized the Fender Stratocaster...an inspiration to many a guitar player...brought rock-a-billy into rock & roll

6. Jimmy Page
Another Yardbird...session musician for many...formed Led Zeppelin...at times even played the electric guitar with a bow--one of the most inventive guitarists of all time

7. Stevie Ray Vaughn
Elmore James would have paid to go see SRV play his own songs

8. George Harrison
He played lead guitar for The Beatles...that's a helluva thing to be able to put on a resume!

9. Joe Walsh
The James Gang, Barnstorm, The Eagles, solo work

10. Scotty Moore
guitarist for Elvis Presley and many others

Honorable Mention. There are others that I'd like to put on the list but didn't: Robbie Robertson, Duanne Allman, Steve Miller, Angus Young, Keith Richards, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Alvin Lee (Ten Years After), Jeff Beck, Eric Johnson, Carlos Santana, Yngwie Malmsteen, Tommy Bolin (Deep Purple) and Dwight Yoakum.

There are obvious others outside of rock & roll like B.B. King, Robert Johnson and Elmore James, but for my list these are "out of scope". I'll make a list of top 10 blues guitarists another time.

Macromedia MAX 2005, Linux, Patti and other tangents

Well, it's been announced...Macromedia's MAX 2005 conference will be held October 16-19, 2005 at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California. I answered the call for speakers, so we'll see if I will be on the roster this year. I'm hoping to talk about this special fusion of CSS and JavaScript that I use to make compelling user interfaces for Web applications.

Most of the Web application work I'm doing currently is in ColdFusion (a Macromedia product), though I've been writing a handful of ASP on the side. In a few weeks I'm going to build a computer and install Red Hat Linux on it. I have Red Hat installed on an old Celeron 400 MHz Gateway laptop, but it's beginning to breathe its last sighs. On this new box I will install Apache and write a little PHP. I will also put Tomcat on it and write a little JSP. I will then probably install ColdFusion on top of Tomcat. This will keep up my diversity in server-side languages. So there are some of my "when I have some extra time" projects.

My mother insists, though, that I wait on those projects in order to finish projects I'm committed on for her--namely cleaning out a bedroom in her house in which I slept for 6 months (whole nother story). Guests will be staying in the room over the weekend next month when my sister gets married. Alas, this will forestall my plans to take over the universe using nothing but a paperclip, a shoelace, a wad of gum and a home-made Linux box.