My definition of a geek: someone who is interested in lots of different things. Today geeks are everywhere. They both design and write code; they explore; they take things apart; they question. A more highfalutin term might be multi-disciplinarian and of course many attribute themselves as hackers. But I say we are all the same. We are all geeks and we shall inherit the Earth, or something like that.
“PolyGeek”, derived from polymath which comes from Homo universalis and Uomo Universale, is pretty much what I’m about. I hope you like it.
If you’re bored and don’t have anything better to do here’s a tiny bit about the geek writing this blog.
I’m a pretty good Flash/Flex Developer and a decent designer. Both are getting better all the time.
I used to work for the Xbox360 team doing prototyping for new features in Flash and working on the XboxLive website adding Flash content. One of the best aspects of the job is that I get to work with top shelf UX (User eXperience) designers. I have learned a great deal from being around these guys. And it’s been very satisfying that I’ve been able to pitch in my own ideas here and there.
Nowadays I’m a freelance developer, mostly Flex and AIR, working from home in the mountains of Southern California – near Big Bear. It’s great up here. I have an fantastic office, plenty of time to work on client projects and personal projects. I even get out of the house every now and then to go for walks and hikes with my wife – who is another self-proclaimed geek.
I spent 4 months living in my Nissan Pathfinder when I first moved up to Bellevue, Washington – back in December 2005. It was quite an experience getting awoken by police officers at 3AM asking me what I was doing sleeping in my car in the library parking lot. It was always a lot of fun to hand them my Microsoft badge and tell them that I was waiting for construction to finish on the apartment building I was moving into. (My wife was in San Diego at the time.)
Likes:
recursion/self-reference: the former gives us beautiful mathematics that the later consciousness.
philosophy: logic and epistemology, I think.
asking questions: my definition of philosophy is, “the art and science of asking interesting questions.”
exploring and creating: both physical and mental landscapes.
photography: specifically, patterns of light and dark.
science fiction.
Dislikes:
closed systems: such as the Bush/Republican administration.
People that are selfish and close-minded.
ignorance: especially those who take pride in not knowing things (anti-geeks).
Yeah, I lived in a car for about 4 months. Honestly, sometimes I think back on those days with fondness as I lay on my couch on the 8th floor of a brand new high rise apartment building.
Recursion is fun to work with. It solves a lot of problems but my PC would probably wish I didn’t enter so many infinite loops. :-)
FireFly rocks. My wife and I just watched the commentary of the first ep last night. Joss and Nathan were great commentators. Lots of insults back and forth. Just a pleasure to listen to. Oh, my wife is going to the last FireFly convention in a few weeks down in LA. She has a VIP pass so hopefully she’ll get to hang with the cast a little. I can’t wait to hear her stories.
Yeah how awesome is firefly, we just got it out a few weeks ago as i’d heard it was a hit in the US – 12 episodes in it suddenly finished and i was like ‘what the? what happened’. Quite depressing, but still if I’d known beforehand i might not have watched them and then that would have been a cryin shame!
I was glad Serenity was as good as it was. It tied up the River arc, which was their main mystery. The movie gave us some actual Reavers, their origins story, and some hints about the future. It was disappointing to see that some characters were given short shrift (ie – Inara, Book). Their parts were more like cameos than anything else. And the deaths, one in particular, was very painful! I was astounded that Joss actually killed off that character, whom I adored (spoiler free…).
I would love to see the series revisted, but the actors are otherwise engaged at this point. Maybe we can look forward to a movie trilogy. There are several still-unresolved storylines.
I thought Serenity was excellent before I’d seen firefly, but after that I felt like some of the feel of the show had gone :-( I also felt the same about Inara and Book!
I’d like to know what the heck those two by two hands of blue people are doing, so I do hope they make it a trilogy, theres plenty of story left in there!
I know that Joss wants to do a trilogy. Hopefully he’ll get back to it after WonderWoman. I saw the movie Serenity after seeing the series. While I enjoyed the movie I would have rather seen 2 extra eps made instead.
holy crap, joss whedon is making wonderwoman? Now THAT is weird. Damn, of all the superheros, i just can’t imagine anyone being able to make wonderwoman cool *apologies to any wonderwoman fans out there erm, i’m sure she’s really nice*
You notice that you two – girlGeek and collis – are going on about Joss and FireFly here on my “about” page. What’s up with that? You couldn’t pick one of my posts that is actually about Joss to talk him up? :-)
Anyone called J-Flo needs to release a rap album, I’m sure thats like a life rule or something. So unless you want girlGeek to start wearing large gold chains and busting lyrics after dinner…
[...] I have a high nerd rating. I know that, although I prefer to call myself a geek according to Dan’s Rules of Geekdom. My husband had an 86%, but he is better at math. I’m the artist one in the family. And while [...]
Im a nerd, im a gamer, im a band geek, When adobe released the new cs4 programs, I got all excited lol. I watched your tutorial on flash media server and it helped me out ALOT. I really appreciate that. If your every in Georgia, look me up. Ill be in the computer or game section of any store
I'm pulling what hair I have left out and you're site seems to be the only one out there that has anything to do with matrix3D and rotations for flex. Do you have any tutorials or help for how to rotate a container (any object really) around an arbitrary point.
I seemed to have tried dozens of different approaches and all have failed which is really annoying. I do not wish to use a container that has the clipping turned off and another container/box offset so that it sits over the registration point.
i'd posted a question here, and I've put my answer there as well. If you ever create a tutorial on this feel free to use. It would be good to see another solution (I don't like my solution much, but it works). Must get my own blog for this stuff :)
@avish, you know what? I think I'm going to do a little cleanup on that poll and submit it to FlexDen.net for sale. I plan on putting up a handful of components and I'll blog about it when I do.
I won't be able to do anything to help you with the Oracle/Java thing. Don't know anything about that. Sorry. But I'll supply the PHP files needed to make the poll work.
My name is Melinda James and I host a radio program in Australia called Hair of the Blog on ABC radio. I'd love to do an interview with you about runpee.com! Can you send me an email on both james.melinda@abc.net.au and mel.c.james@gmail.com or give me a call on +61 402 332 534 if you're interested. The program goes to air Sunday morning Australian time. We could do a pre-recorded interview at a time that suits us both this week.
My name is Faith Jarvis I produce a radio show here in Brisbane, Australia. Would love to get in contact with you to invite you on to our show to chat to us about Ipee- if you could let me know a number to contact you on to invite you on that would be great. Thanks!
About polyGeek Dan Florio is a freelance Actionscript Flex/Flash/AIR developer. He loves playing and exploring with code and sharing what he finds with his friends and peers here on this blog. He also created the website RunPee.com that has become an international sensation and pays most of the bills.
My definition of a geek: someone who is interested in lots of different things. Today geeks are everywhere. They both design and write code; they explore; they take things apart; they question. A more highfalutin term might be multi-disciplinarian and of course many attribute themselves as hackers. But I say we are all the same. We are all geeks and we shall inherit the Earth, or something like that.
collis
