visualcondition blog - flash & ruby on rails

iTunes 8 has been out for about a day or so, and I’ve just decided to upgrade. It’s actually a pretty nice update.

I’ve played with the Genius feature a bit (in fact I’m using it now), and it seems pretty solid. I assume the more people use this, the better it’ll get, even in the upcoming weeks when most people will be upgrading and submitting their library information to Apple. There is a ton of information Apple will get, for both good and semi-evil purposes I reckon. I personally don’t care what Apple does with my media information; “oh noes! Apple knows what music I listen to and how much! It’s not like I use Last.fm or anything…” But I digress.

Grid view. Neat. Very iPhotoish. That’s about it. Oh, and that it keeps going back to grid even if I’m in the other 2. iTunes 8.0.1 anyone?

Now something less advertised, is that it seems the album artwork is now cached (thank god), and you no longer have to scroll through all your albums to load the cover art. I’ve only wanted this for, you know, ever. Now if only they’d do this will thumbnails throughout Leopard. Please?

I’ll make this short and sweet.

My job in Orange County as a part time Senior Flash Developer is now over. The company was down-sizing, and me and a front end guy were the two to go. It happens. No biggie.

I have savings, so I should be fine as I pursue my other ventures, and maybe make something out of a few of the currently twelve(12) domains I now own. Three of which are actually actively being used, and some I’ve had for a few years with nothing done with them. Plans, plans, but no execution yet. Due time.My life is taking me in a new direction, less focused on Flash development. Whilst I love doing Flash work, I feel there’s bigger and better things out there than sitting in front of a computer 12 hours a day, in my room, with little interaction with the world. Sure sometimes I’m fine with that, but not for the rest of my life.

So now I’m going to be taking some drastically different courses for personal development type stuff. It’s the biggest monetary investment of my short life, but I have such a good deal, and it’s so valuable it doesn’t matter.

Needless to say, I still plan on doing development and web, just maybe not as Flash oriented, and more simple web apps of the Rails flavour.

I’ll be sure to keep you posted on the progress.