Over the last 2 years, I’ve focussed all of my efforts on learning Actionscript. More recently I’ve begun to learn how to use Flex. I think I’m now at the point where I’m comfortable enough using Actionscript to be able to do pretty much whatever I want. Flex still stumps me with some of its code juju, but I now feel confident in tackling its arcane magic head on now. This blog is, in a way, a chart of my progress in these things. Well, from now, I’ve decided to take a slightly different direction.
Along with the rest of the Flash speaking world it seems, I have decided to move into game development (yeah I know Flashers have always made games, but games on other platforms) – and I’m not just taking about games for a certain fruit based brandwagon. In order to do this I’m going to need to learn another programming language. After some thought I’ve plumped for C++. Why? Well, I wanted to cover as much ground as possible mainly. C++ is a language that will give me a good base for developing for the Nintendo DS, the Wii (via the rather excellent Unity3D), the iPhone and others. As far as I can tell, all of the above will require specific graphics and controller code, for example using Objective C for the iPhone graphics. However, I didn’t want to limit myself to an Apple specific language which, by all accounts, has been hit with the ugly stick a few times.
I also want to post more on my blog. There is a lot that goes on in my life besides writing code (but sometimes the code does rather take over) and I’d quite like to put that out somewhere. As I get older, I’m pretty sure my memory is going, so it’d be nice to be able to look back and realise that I did more than program 24/7! Someone also mentioned that they thought my blog didn’t have enough pictures on it, so more of that too.
I’m setting up a new blog over at my company Steamshift’s website which is here: my other blog which I’m going to reserve for posts about the day job, while this one is going to be more esoteric in its content 
The last thing, which is pretty big, is that my family and I have decided to move to Japan. For those that don’t know me, my wife is Japanese and we’ve always thought it’d be nice to spend a few years in Japan while the kids are young. We planned to go in May, but the global money bunglers have managed to make sterling so weak I might as well use cheese as a currency. Since I planned to carry on freelance work for my UK clients and to rent our house out to cover our Japanese living expenses, this has obviously impacted my earning potential. We are still going to go, but it’ll just take a while longer.
So onwards and upwards, as they say.