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"Supposing we were discussing the art of weaving which might be developed. Supposing people were at the stage where they could ony tie knots in string, which gave them pleasure and might be regarded as a foretaste of weaving. If the people only imitated the knotting phase, and in addition regarded knotting as the entire art - when would weaving itself come into being, no much how much pleasure there was attached to it? Certainly, knotting would have a value as such: but it would also constitute a barrier to going further if the idea of anything further were 'abolished' by people thinking that knots were as far as anyone could go in textile work." -Idries Shah |
I'm spending much of my time teaching. I do this for various reasons. I find it stimulating, challenging and inspiring. It's a good way to keep in touch with 'not knowing'. It's also about as close to a regular job that I can feel really comfortable with.
Spare me the blurb. Give me the meat!
Most of the time I'm teaching Director and related topics, but I have recently placed increasing emphasis on Quicktime. I have an opinion about multimedia and how I think it should be developing. I'd like to think that I'm part of making this new media better and more satisfying.
The best practictioners are often the worst teachers. Such people have integrated their practice so smoothly that they do it without thinking or conscious articulation using some well worn neural pathway. I like to think that by working in education, I get to see different approaches, different kinds of success or failure, different value systems; and that this feeds back on my own practice, making it less formulaic. I make use of Sufi and NLP teaching techniques, to gear the materials to be learned to the student rather than simply instruct them.
There are many who fear that teaching your own 'bread-and-butter' skills to others puts your own job at risk. Better to eat your own offspring in the manner of Saturn lest they succeed you, perhaps? This kind of jealousy, while understandable and practical from a Machiavellian perspective, does not serve the field as a whole, leading to fewer people who might be prepared or able to return the favour in the long-run. Teaching is also a great way to get known. If a small percentage of my students get jobs in my field, then I get to be well known in the industry. As a freelancer working in the 'invisible' field of multimedia programming, this is invaluable and I have got several good jobs through this route.
I can be hired to give lectures or instruction by institutions or companies who wish to build on interactive multimedia competences. If you want to make slideshows, ask someone else. My angle is more thorough-going and should outlast the next version of your current multimedia authoring tool.
Learn OO Lingo and make a game at the same time.
I can be hired to talk, teach and wet...
A selection of links about Object Oriented multimedia design
Classes, Ancestors and Inheritance
A discussion of OO fundamentals with reference to Director and Lingo
My Comp. page, with links to some other multimedia things.
Before sending me unsolicited technology queries, try asking on a public forum.
I am known to hang out on several newsgroups and mailing lists, notably
alt.multimedia.director
macromedia.director.lingo
Direct-L
Lingo-L
Quicktime
Talk
LiveStage
Talk
dirGames-L
applescript-users
and others.
I have written several articles for "D.O.U.G." (Director Online Users Group), an excellent and burgeoning resource for Director users with plenty of useful stuff for all levels of expertise. Even the stuff for beginners does not dumb down. Jump directly to them from these links:
Pointer
Operations in Lingo: Expand your Lingo skills with pointers.
Unglobals: Do it without globals.
Into the Nth dimension: An Introduction to Recursion.
Beyond Desktop Video: Quicktime is for more than just video.
Behavior initializers 1: getPropertyDescriptionList
Behavior initializers 2: runPropertyDialog
Another site carrying my output is Director Web, a sprawling collection of information about Director. There are some great resources here, and it keeps on growing, but it's been around for a long time, so don't expect all of it to be up to date.
I have a few entries there, notably under "tips 'n' scripts":
Collision
Messenger Behavior. Generic behavior for collisions.
The Last Property Dialog Secret: For making your property dialogs more ordered..
Attach Behaviors on-the-fly: A utility script which allows runtime attachment of behvaiors.
Create CuePoints for Quicktime movies using Quicktime Player
Quicktime Wired Playback Controls
Rotangler: Rotating Sprite Behavior for Director 6
Mac
(binhexed stuffit archive) Win
(ZIP archive)
Most recently, I've written some articles about Quicktime and Applescript for workingMac.com, which is an interesting site for the more technically aware Mac user.
Scripting the QuickTime Player
Exporting media files in QuickTime
Time, time scale and time code