Every time I read articles and comments to the effect that Flash is dead I think of the Monty Python scene Bring out your dead.
If you’re reading this blog then I don’t need to convince you of the gloriousness of Flash. But I have had a few thoughts that I haven’t seen anyone else explore that I’d like to bring up.
Influencing the young
After all the recent Flash-bashing the only lasting effect it will have is on those who are new to the field of web development or experienced developers thinking about picking up Flex. When they read all this news about Flash being dead it is likely that they will be a little more reluctant to dive in. It’s a huge investment of time to learn something like Flash. It takes years to master. If they perceive, wrongly, that Flash will be a minor player in 3-5 years then they may focus their learning elsewhere.
The upshot to that is there will be slightly less competition for jobs and freelance gigs. However this doesn’t do Adobe any good at all. It reduces their base of users and therefor their profits. And I want Adobe to be flush with money so that they can continue to pour money into improving the Flash player and Flash development tools.
Hopefully Adobe will make up the difference with CS5 – and eventually Flash Builder – being able to port Actionscript projects to Apple mobile devices.
Just who is bashing Flash?
We all know who it is that is bashing Flash. The stereo-typical web standards fanatic. I understand that this is an ideological battle for them that they are passionate about. I feel exactly the same way, if not more-so, about Apple: a company I hate with every fiber of my being and will do them harm in any way I can think. And I’m sure that most everyone has something that they get all worked up about. It’s good to be passionate about things. Gets the blood pumping.
But what good are these people in influencing the direction of web development? Not much. They may play around with HTML5 in their spare time but little of it is going to make it into public websites for 3-5 years. We all know that until Microsoft IE fully supports it HTML5 is still-born.
I can see the conversation a HTML5 fan might have with his department manager:
fanatic: We should embrace HTML5 and use the <video> tag for our corporate videos.
manager: Why would we want to do that? Will it save us money? Will it provide a better user experience? From what I hear support for the <video> tag is limited. So we’ll still need to have Flash video as a fallback, right?
fanatic: Yes, I suppose so.
manager: let me get this straight. You want to complicate matters while simultaneously spending more money?
fanatic: Well, ummmm, I didn’t think about it that way. But…
manager: Shut up and get back in your cubical. For your punishment I want you to whip at 5 Flash banner ads before lunch.
HTML5 in the long term
What is the long term outlook for HTML5? According to the recent news it seems like it is destined to kill Flash. But HTML5 just barely catches up with Flash 6 capabilities. And HTML5 has years to go before it is even fully baked. In the meantime Flash just keeps revving up faster and faster. It seems that many in the HTML5 field see the world of web development as heading to some plateau and at that point they will be able to catch up. But that’s not going to happen. Changes aren’t just coming. They’re coming faster and faster. There is absolutely no hope that HTML can stay on the cutting edge. That’s because in many instances Flash defines the cutting edge. And a new Flash Player comes out every 18 months or so. Plus we all know that new player penetration just keeps coming faster and faster and should continue to do so. Whereas with HTML it is only going to get more and more difficult to push out new features because of the fragmentation of the browser market.
I really feel sorry for the HTML5 fanatics. Like I said, I understand their passion. And I’m sure they will have lots of fun playing around with it just like we have fun playing around with Flash. But in the long run their entire approach is antiquated and inferior. It is a simple matter of evolution: Flash evolves faster than HTML. The things people are doing to push the envelope with HTML5, that is getting to the front page of Digg, is the same material that we use to make beginner tutorials for Flash newbies.
Remember a couple years back when Silverlight was the 'Flash Killer'? ;)
The thing I find frustrating is that *most* of the HTML5 folks don't want to be bothered by factual details. Its too easy to not think about what it actually takes to get HTML5 to the point that businesses will be willing to adopt the technology. That is something us long time Flash devs can remember going through ourselves. If businesses aren't PAYING for development in HTML5 then it won't matter. Developers use the skills that pay the bills.
@Brandon, True, just how many times has Flash been killed now? :)
I absolutely remember the days of begging to use Flash at work. It got to the point that my manager would say to me, “Don’t use the F-word” when we were talking about how to build something.
It’s true that most HTML5 folks don’t pay attention to factual details. But like I said, I do sympathize with them because right or wrong I have such hatred toward Apple that I’m incapable of being fair or just. I just want revenge.
As a Flash developer on the mac i'm curious about your hatred for apple. I don't like them blocking flash player on their "i"devices but i love my macs and os x. Did you have a bad experience or something?
@ethan, boy. Where to start. There are so many things. First, every time I’ve used a Mac I’ve gotten annoyed because it’s so unusable. Of course that’s what people say about Windows so most of it has to do with familiarity. But the lack of customization would bother me to no end. I don’t think Apple has done much that is original. They give themselves credit for making the iPhone the most amazing cellphone in the world when really it’s just a nice piece of hardware, that someone else made, with Jeff Hans user interface. It wasn’t even the first touch screen cellphone. There was one released in South Korea before the iPhone came out. So Apple has this reputation for being revolutionary when it comes to design. But all I’ve seen is them copy other people’s work. Even the GUI interface was copied – purchased – from Xerox.
More than anything else it’s their walled garden approach. Why can’t I buy OSX and install it on a HP or Dell computer? Oh, because Apple isn’t good enough at making the OS that they can make it work on generic hardware like Windows does. That’s probably my biggest grip and it’s mostly Apple fans that caused it. OSX rarely ever crashes while Windows OSes are known for crashing. However Apple has absolute control over the hardware. If OSX crashes it’s Apples fault because they wrote the OS and they control the hardware. But usually when a Microsoft OS crashes it’s because some hardware vendor did a horrible job writing the drivers. Windows XP was much more stable than the previous OSes because Microsoft exorcised some control over drivers.
What else: Every Apple piece of software that I’ve ever used on a PC is a piece of crap. iTunes is just pathetic. It’s a resource hog and the usability is crap. I can’t believe anyone could use it. And Quicktime is even worse. It crashes my PC every time I play it now.
One other thing: The way the iTunes store works for developers is horrible. I have the RunPee app in there but the update process is painful. I don’t know if the app will ever be updated again. It’s just too much effort. But when Flash Player 10.1 comes out I’ll have a version of RunPee.com for other smart phones and it’s going to kick the iPhone versions ass. That’s because I’ll be able to update it rapidly as I get feedback from users. And I hate it that people can comment on the app at iTunes but I have no way to respond. Sometimes people comment and they’re just wrong about something. But there’s nothing I can do about it. Believe me. I’m just getting started. I could go on and on. But suffice to say I want to hurt Apple and I have a plan to do so.
The other day I saw some buzz about CSS and HTML5 and 'rounded corners'! It's like Apple want to push the web back 10 years. CSS3? Ridiculous. I'm yet to see CSS2 render consistantly across IE/FFx/Chrome/Opera, let alone CSS3. And the whole codecs issue with HTML5 video… must we really walk this path all over again?
Jobs has got so carried away with himself he thinks he owns the internet. But no one likes a smug bastard and the tide was beginning to turn months before the iPad fiasco. Even the fanboys are pissed – that's a first!
Maybe the iPad elite won't miss flash while they're sipping their cappuccinos in their Manhattan Starbucks, but Flash is used by millions of people in hundreds of countries around the globe and it's not going to roll over and die because Steve says so.
Your views seem to limited to a world full of PCs (macs, etc). In that world, what you are saying make sense. However, internationally, PCs are not even close the majority for how people access the internet. Flash's penetration, globally, is low. HTML5, we hope will address this. Hopefully, adobe will announce something spectacular at MWC. However, they appear to be too little too late to the next age of the internet. As those devices become the primary access metaphor, it will drive flash out.
If adobe is smart, and I think they are, they will convert their tools to generate javascript that can execute in canvas. Then they can dump the flash graphics engine and continue being the premier tool provider for rich web content. Of course, they will also have to help make the canvas implementations awesome.
1. You say Apple can make an OS that doesn't crash because they control the hardware. And then you say that they should make that OS available for more hardware. Obviously, in all likelihood, it will crash more often and therefore lose it's reputation as more stable. You hate them for not doing this? Huh?
2. Further, Apple offering OSX as a value-add on their computers allows them to differentiate themselves from their competitors and command very high margins on their hardware. It also means they are able to offer a complete package to their customers that 'just works'. You hate them for doing this? Huh?
Both of these points seem like very reasonable business decisions. There's no malice or intention to harm or decieve the millions of happy consumers of Apple products. Obviously, like any business, the price of their products are set to maximise their profits in the marketplace. Their products are not perfect but generally of a higher quality than most of their competitors. I think you should reassess some of that hatred.
Your appeal to tradition (of flash evolving faster, having the broader install base and having more features) is no guarantee that this will be so in the future. Likewise your appeal to tradition that html evolves slowly does not exclude the possibility (or reality) that is has been evolving faster.
Your claim of htmls inferiority is debatable, since on many levels html offers features and capabilities not found in flash. The matter of the fact is, people overwhelmingly write websites in HTML, not in Flex, and frankly, its a puzzle to me why there isn't a "flash browser" where you could hop from one Flex site to the next.
It's good however that you recognize that learning Flex is hard. Because that is what drives people to use HTML in the first place. Anybody with a few hours to spare can learn to write simple websites, and given <video>, with a few minutes more, can integrate video entirely on her own terms.
It's what I'd recommend to you before you write your next peeping into the crystal ball drivel, never underestimate capacity for change and the drive of simplicity. It may surprise you quite a lot.
@Florian, Seeing as though HTML5 won’t even be ratified for years to come I’m going to say that HTML will NEVER evolve or catch up with the Flash Player capabilities. Of course it’s possible but the only way it could happen is if one company took over the responsibility for the HTML standard. Committees are a painfully slow way to evolve HTML. The funny thing is that if IE had maintained it’s 90%+ penetration then HTML could have evolved faster just because Microsoft would have set the standard. I have no idea why people think that a standards committee is such a grand and noble thing. To me it’s a slow pain in the ass.
You are correct that HTML is better than Flash at certain things. Namely simple things like text and a few images. And I was an HTML/Javascript developer back in the 90s. My first experience with HTML was back before the tag. So I do know a bit about it. I gradually moved to Flash because some of the things I wanted to do couldn’t be done in HTML, at all. And then there was the huge benefit that I don’t have to write cross browser code. What a nightmare that was.
And Flex is surprisingly easy to write. For instance I’d say that making an email contact form in Flex is just about at the same level of difficulty as making one in HTML. Obviously the barrier to entry is just the setting up of Eclipse and such.
So yes, HTML is good at simple things. Flex/Flash is a little bit harder to get started with. But no, HTML will never catch up. What HTML should focus on is doing the simple things better.
1. I’m saying that Apple doesn’t have the chops to pull it off. But I’d love to see them try and then suffer the same reputation that Microsoft has. Microsoft has a bad reputation because what they do is orders of magnitude harder.
I absolutely agree that Apple is, like most businesses, usually doing what maximizes their profit potential. And they should. But many would argue that they would make more money if they made their OS available to generic PCs. But we’ll never know because Apple isn’t open to the possibility.
And a large part of my hatred of Apple stems from two points: The gullibility and arrogance of Apple users. I like the puppet show on youTube where puppet-Steve Jobs says, “I could shit in my hand and people would call it revolutionary.” Really, Steve is just another ego maniac that is driven to create. There are hundreds of thousands of other men and women who have the same qualities and could do just as well as Steve. Maybe better. The Cult of Steve is just sickening. The second is the fact that they copy so much from other people and then take all the credit. And their loyal fans are too blind to see.
Ultimately it comes down to my personality: I’m disgusted with the idea of following someone else’s lead. I’m not a conformist. So right or wrong I’m driven to hate Apple. I’ll do my best to list reasons and give justifications. But ultimately I feel like I’m on a Jihad against Apple. I’ll take any chance I can to hurt them and if that hurts a few fanboy feelings along the way then so much the better.
Yes a standards comitee driven process is slow. However, not any slower then a complete 5 year stagnation in browser capabilities when Microsoft did have complete reign in the browser market.
There's good reasons not to dismiss HTML either
Market Share for Change
Currently IE browsers loose between 5% – 10% (trend accelerating) each year. Standing today at just about 50%, IE will represent between 0% – 25% of browsers in 5 years.
Slow subsumption of traditional Flash niches by html capabilities
- Font support (in html with @font-face)
- Video/Audio (in html with <video>/<audio>)
- Nice interface graphics (partially covered now by CSS rounded corners, border-images, multiple backgrounds and text-shadow)
- Animation (now possible with CSS animation anf feasible as well with the recent accelerations in rendering/javascript execution speed)
- Vector Graphics
Easier cross browser development
Cross browser development has gotten a lot easier because browsers are more standard adherent today (even Microsofts) and CSS/Javascript frameworks take up the slack mostly where they aren't.
Superior capabilities of HTML
HTML is no flash either, it already brings to the table much better text handling, raster graphics surfaces (canvas), styling, client side relational databases, SSL, client side certificates, hyperlinking, cross domain security policies and a host of other features that make it "a browser".
Majority of web content toolset targets HTML
Take any cross section of web frameworks, libraries, languages, etc. (like jQuery, Prototype, Django, RoR, Grails, Spring, GWT, Apache, Nginx, Lighttpd, Mongrel, Werkzeug, Turbogears, PHP, ASP, etc.) and they majorly target "the web", not Flex/Flash.
So the question isn't really does HTML compete with flash, it does, right now and long term. The question is, what niches aren't going to be hollowed out by HTML over time that Flash still occupies, and what new niches will Flash occupy before HTML moves in? (3d, web sockets, client device access etc. come to mind… but hurry up! the race is on)
@Les, you don’t think Adobe can’t do both? Dreamweaver is still one of the most popular tools for generating HTML. Tamarin, the Actionscript engine for Flash is open source and Firefox will be using it in FF4 to make Javascript run faster. So Adobe is Actually leading the way in improving the HTML ecosystem. And that’s great.
In what world is Flash penetration low? I haven’t looked at the stats lately but there are no countries – anywhere – that have less that 90% penetration. If you’re talking about handsets then hand on tight because Flash is about to sweep through that landscape as well. If you’re one of those HTML standards fanboys who just wants Flash to go away then your in for a lifetime of disappointment. That’s no reason to give up the fight. I hate Apple and want them to go away but I’m prepared for a lot of disappointment on that front.
"They give themselves credit for making the iPhone the most amazing cellphone in the world"
I'd argue any company must think their new product is the most amazing or they are not doing their job. MS thinks Win 7 is the cat's meow. Sony thinks the playstation is the best.
"But many would argue that they would make more money if they made their OS available to generic PCs."
I'd also argue Apple avoiding the fight of trying to get stability across a vast set of 3rd party hardware is very smart in business terms. Why enter a losing fight if you can avoid it? Also they tried that and it killed their bottom line.
Personally i'm quite happy with my macs. I think the build quality is very high (my 2 bosses have had 3 PC laptos each in the time i have my 1 MBP.) I use windows in vhost as i have to tech support our coursware with busineeses on windows and I'll never go back to it as my main tool. It's just messy and visually depressing.
I do not have an iPhone due to ATT (Pre on Sprint). I'm not a fan of the app store dev structure but again it allows them to avoid a fight they can't win so i respect their view on it. Given if they continue to win marketshare there will be monopoly issues.
So it kinda seems your biggest hatred is that users choose to really like apple and it's solutions that it builds. I can respect that-I hate churches and the GOP and the sheep they control.
I believe HTML 5 will eventually be able to fulfill certain roles on the web that Flash has traditionally been used for. But during the time it takes for that happen, Flash will continue innovating and developing.
During that time that whatever feature in HTML matures/penetrates to the point that you consider it usable, other innovation in HTMLis also going to happen while Flash improves. It's not like Flash would charge ahead and HTML would standstil starting from today…
@ethan, I can certainly agree with your last statement. :)
I’ve been thinking about this a bit and there are many philosophical differences between me and the way Apple is run. For instance I’m an incredibly arrogant person but I work very hard to be humble. Apple doesn’t even try to be humble. It’s their way or nothing at all. And I don’t think the iPhone is the best phone in the world. Maybe in the US but I’ve read reviews about other phones in Asia that have all the features of the iPhone and then some. Of course the plethora of apps made by third parties makes the iPhone what it is. The user gestures that drive the UI are nothing new. I can do that.
As for MS being proud of System 7: I hope they are because I plan to upgrade to it soon. I’m still stuck on XP. I worked at Microsoft – XBox division – when Vista came out. There were no illusions at MS at that time. Many people regarded Vista as a piece of crap before it was even public. They knew that there was some good stuff in Vista but overall they knew that they had done a bad job.
Overall I think it’s very , VERY, early in the smartphone market. Apple has been amazingly successful up to now but as the market matures and they get real competition here in the US then we’ll see things change. The UI and UX of the iPhone is amazingly easy to duplicate and even improve upon. But others will develop app stores that are superior to Apple. Unless Apple is willing to change their ways.
@Florian, I’ll take your word for it. :) I made an app that also crashed the browser every single time. I can’t remember exactly what it did but it wasn’t good. But, it isn’t really Flash that crashing the browser as much as it is bad code. Javascript can bring any browser to it’s knees just as easily. Well, not as easy because JS doesn’t have access to a lot of stuff that Flash does.
You know, what irks me to no end is flash movie players:
- Sometimes precaching/streaming doesn't work well with various artefacts (halting, jittering, resets etc.)
- Some of them never start and you have to click somewhere on the timeline to make them go.
- When the above happens, some of them annoy you with a spinning icon in the middle of the movie screen
- Some of them can't fullscreen on some platforms
- Some have a clickable timeline, but there's no way to use it
- All of them eat up CPU cycles like there's no tomorrow (which isn't true for at least lap-tops that start heating up and then slowing down, at which point you can forget watching any movie).
And these are problems which affect everybody, youtube, vimeo, traileraddicts, dailymotion, you name it. Every single flash movie player out there offers an experience far worse then even the most mediocre desktop media players.
Ok, so you might say, meh, that's just flash users messing it up. However, it would seem that nobody out there, not the big or small, not the numerous or few, can make a single gorram flash movie player that just works. I think that says something about flash…
That's why we want HTML5 video. We hope that if somebody sits down, engages his brain, integrates a bunch of fast codecs, comes up with reasonable defaults etc. the experience of using HTML5 video for the user is actually going to be remotely pleasurable.
And from what I've seen so far, that hope works out pretty well (my laptop doesn't go into overdrive trying to playback one of those html5 video beta youtubes), and it never stalls or jitters, and using the timeline also just works.
@Florian, If you’re willing to wait 5-10 years I’m sure you’ll get your wish.
I’m sure that youTube has done as good a job as any. If you have problems playing back videos on a given site then it could be due to any huge number of unique circumstances that your laptop presents. There’s no reason to suspect that things will be any better with an HTML5 video. I’m sure that it will work great an the vast majority of situations. But some people are going to have problems with it. That doesn’t mean that there is anything inherently wrong with the code.
All flash video sites and all browsers with all machines I've had access to over the years over all different internet connections had these huge problems.
If I watch HTML5 video on youtube with google chrome, none of the apparent problems Isee on all flash video websites manifests itself.
I think it's rather cheap an excuse to just claim the flash video site developers are to blame for non working video, when no single flash video site can get it right.
I'm not talking here from the perspective of a web developer, I'm also a user, and as a user, I don't have to wait 5 years or so until all browsers support html5 video, I can get it right now.
@Florian, That’s really strange that you have so much difficulty playing video across various sites. I’ll bet you’re on a Mac. Because I’m on a PC and it rarely happens to me. The biggest problem I get is on sites like CNN. That’s because the video navigation is done in HTML/Javascript and that communicates with the video player in Flash. There are many things that can happen in the browser that blocks the communication from happening. And if that happens no video plays. It’s hard to say that it’s anyone’s fault. The video player certainly isn’t at fault because it just never gets any data to work with. The HTML/JS isn’t really at fault because it works most of the time. There’s no possible way to test on every users machine.
You should check out the page here on my blog for people having trouble watching videos at NFL.com. It’s just insane some of the things that cause the navigation-to-player communication. The only way to fix this particular problem is to put the navigation in Flash as well. That way breakdowns in Javascript don’t come into play.
I think the penetration of the flash plugin is too high to stop developping with/for it. The functionalities of flash/flex compared to html5 will be way ahead ( e.g. interaction with webcam/microphone, RTMP, streaming ).
@Florian, So here’s the deal: The Flash player puts a huge amount of work on the CPU in order to play video. That’s because the video is being decoded in software. Any desktop player is going to be able to decode video with hardware which is insanely fast and doesn’t put the load on the CPU – depending on the hardware you have. This was never much of a problem in the past because bandwidth was usually the limiting factor. But now with streaming HD videos there is no way a CPU can keep up. So Adobe has started using hardware acceleration for video playback. I believe FP9 only using hardware in fullscreen mode. I’m not sure if FP10 uses hardware in standard mode or not. But FP10.1 is going to use hardware for everything, not just video. So we’ll see a modest playback of everything. Not just video.
Tying to hardware though is tricky because of the vast array of hardware profiles out there. My guess is that whatever laptop you have that the FP can’t use hardware acceleration to play back videos so you’re going to be stuck with a sucky experience. And laptops oftentimes don’t have stand alone video cards. The use cheap-crappy video chips built into the mother board and suck up RAM while they’re at it. If that’s your case then the next time you get a new laptop make sure it has a video card or you’re going to be stuck with the same deal.
I’m really sorry for you that video doesn’t work well. You do realize that you’re a small minority. For the vast percentage of people Flash video is the solution that just works. Time will tell if the tag is going to solve this problem. My guess is that it’s just going to be worse and it’s going to take a long time to get up to speed.
I'm laughing at Florian, his fanboism is amusing me to no end, I'm surprised you are even justifiying his comments with answers.
BTW…IE has stuck at 50% for some time now and has acutally gained some ground back after IE8
came out, and other than the support for plug-ins, runs much faster than FF. Not lying…don't belive me look it up. To say that IE is going to die at a rate of 10% per year is laughable for various reasons…keep dreaming.
HTML sucks, it should go away completely. It was made for 28k modems when bandwidth is scare. Granted technically, Flash uses script, but it moves closer and closer to universal compiled code with every release, and thats how it should be. Looks the same 100% of the time across 100% of the platforms (except for macs, because stevey doesn't like having Flash player run at 100% on Macs). Browser interperdited script is so asininely dated the thought of it makes me cringe. Oh sorry, it's going to take 75 lines of code to lay out a simple clickable grid, when in flash you can do it by hand, or in just a few simple lines of code. Why are we so stuck on HTML, other then that people are afraid of change. If the web was more compiled we'd have less problems.
Oh and the browser crash thing is the stupidest BS i have ever seen. Ill make you a program in C# that makes your mac panic crash, a VB script that BSODs your window, or a pop-up box loop that makes you ctrl-alt-del your browser, a crashing program = bad coder not bad platform.
Fingers cross that one day people wake up and compile the web!!!
@dmangstars, You and I think alike. I agree with everything you said. HTML is a disaster for anything beyond text layout. That’s what it was originally built for and has only made a few small improvements – CSS – since the day it was conceived.
Where the Flash-hater/HTML-loving crowd misses the argument is in their assumptions. I hear that Flash is closed, proprietary, and non-standard all the time. None of which is true. But its the non-standard bit that everything turns on. The way in which the HTML standard evolves is completely different than the way Flash does it. HTML has it’s standards body which has mysterious and political inner workings. Yet everyone thinks that they are creating something noble like the founding fathers of the USA. But in reality it doesn’t work out that way. Flash on the other hand is very open. There is a public database where we can submit bugs and feature requests. And you can even talk to the person that has a bug assigned to them. How does that work in HTML? Does anyone even know?
Bottom line is that the HTML crowd thinks that they way their standard is created is better than how Flash is. But that’s not true and most of the HTML crowd doesn’t even understand how HTML is standardized.
You all are just forgetting one little big thing, that is flash is slow and it is not supported on all platforms as you may think, examples all the BSD's. Examples of flash being slow, well just take a look at farmville in facebook it has been made with flash, so why the heck it just makes my browser go 90% on CPU usage! Well this makes it simple adobe doesn't care if flash is resource hunger! That's where HTML5 may find it's place, if it is a standart it will be supported in all browser, we don't need to install pluguins in order for it to work, and from it's roots it will be supported in every platform! If you ask me and as an person who has years of operating system programming flash will not make, it is just an hack over an hack to get it running!
@rick, I’ve heard a lot of people complain about the slowness of Farmville. I’ve never played the game – only seen screenshots – so I can’t say myself what it’s like but I’m sure it isn’t the fault of the Flash Player. Why? Because it’s a fairly simple game and I’ve seen people make wicked complex games, even FPS, in Flash that run smooth.
By your reasoning Windows doesn’t stand a chance because iTunes for Windows runs pathetically slow. It’s a huge resource hog. Crashes my PC more than anything else.
About polyGeek Birthplace: Bisbee, AZ - 1967 Measurements: 3 monitor, Intel Core i7-860 2.80GHz, 8GB RAM ( ooo-la-la ) Ambitions: Make enough money to retire to Mars and have fun doing it. Turn-ons: BitmapData, Generative Art, non-linear dynamics, working on personal projects Turnoffs: Closed minded, closed systems such as Apple/Steve Jobs Hobbies: Writing sci-fi, long walks Favorite Authors: Douglas Adams, A.C. Clark, Azimov, J.R.R. Tolkien Favorite Musicians: Peter Gabriel, Hans Zimmer, Pink Floyd, Massive Attack Favorite TV Shows: Star Trek.*, FireFly, Farscape
Brandon Ellis
