To begin, developing a familiarity with working within a timeline-based framework will expand your ability to work with a variety of media types. This is quite different from working with procedural or OOP techniques.

Flash remains at the present time the primary vehicle for delivering quality compressed video and audio over the Web. It will be with us for a while as we transition toward native HTML support with HTML5.

We also are moving steadily toward a more ubiquitous computing culture with tablets and smartphones. Many of the native applications for these devices can be developed using the Flash platform and then ported to Android, iOS, WebOS and Blackberry OS.

Many companies continue to develop and support applications developed using Flash–this remains an employment opportunity for Web professionals. It also broadens your scope of practice and is a good skill to include on any resume.

Adobe’s suite of Web design and development products (Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Flash) have been tightly integrated, and Flash plays well with these other popular programs. So any project that includes Flash-based content will benefit from a smooth workflow when jumping back and forth between applications.

The Adobe Flash design/development interface is a very mature dashboard that has been refined over many years with feedback from a very large user-base. So developing a familiarity with the Flash timeline and scripting tools will allow a developer to improve their interaction design and animation skills, rather than battle with a poorly-designed interface. And as popular as Flash has been, even Adobe knows that there is an expiry date on the .swf format and it is developing similar products, like Adobe Edge that output HTML5 and CSS3-based interaction and motion graphics.

So a designer/developer’s Flash skills will find new life as they happily output their timeline-based animations and interactive widgets as standards-based scripted DOM elements–that will play nice once again with Apple’s iOS devices.

In short, Flash is a tool. Any tool can be used with grace and elegance in the right hands. Understanding how to use a timeline to craft compelling motion graphics is a skill that will always be of value–and Adobe Flash continues to set the bar in terms of a mature, well-designed user interface.

I’ve decided, however, that since this is a personal piece of Web property, I’m going to really go for it and redesign mccrindle.com as a legacy-free WordPress theme.

Legacy-free you ask? Well, I mean that I’m simply not going to worry about trying to support browsers that were built 10 years ago (I’m looking at you, IE6). I’m really going to put rubber to the road and see what is possible in terms of design.

After speaking with one of the actual people working on the IE9 development team, I’ve realized that we need to let go of bridge technologies like endless <div> tags with a myriad of ids and classes, background images that emulate things like rounded corners, PNG-transparency-fix scripts for feeble browsers… need I go on?

IE9 promises to be a powerful rendering platform for current technologies like HTML5 and CSS3–and if Microsoft is serious about these things, then it is truly time to move forward. After all, they’d like to see the end of IE6 just as much as any Web designer.

So I’m going to attempt to move most of the content (minus the really dusty old stuff) here at mccrindle.com and roll out a fresh WordPress them in parallel with the existing site so that the two designs can be compared.

I will attempt to retain the spirit of the original design, while removing some of the crutches and compromises that needed to be made at the time due to the browser technology that existed in 2006.

Once that is done, I will then move to mobile. I have the strangest feeling that I’m not going to be getting a lot of sleep over the next few months. Hmm. Stay tuned.

Born during an air raid in Larbert, Stirlingshire, Scotland during the Second World War, Ian has experienced in a very real way the astounding economic, cultural and technological changes that have shaped the human predicament in the twenty-first century.

His life has not been one of privilege. From a very young age he began his long and demanding career that has included the automotive, railroad, aerospace, fastener, textile, nuclear and metallurgical industries to name a few. His insistence on doing things properly has not won him many promotions and he has often found himself at odds with companies more focused on making a fast buck than on quality and safety.

As busy with his work as he has been however, he has always made time to be a father. He took myself and my two younger brothers on countless camping trips all over Canada. He was a Boy Scout leader for many years and was also a great sport, enduring countless assaults with the old couch cushions and the theft of his favourite slippers from his feet as he tried to watch TV.

There is one particular thing that he taught me as a boy however, that continues to shape my life. My Dad insisted, “Always leave things in better shape than you found them.” And so it makes sense to me that he would be compelled to join Al Gore’s team to help us recognize the mess we’ve made and the need to pull together in order to leave something for our children – before it’s too late.

My father’s love of public speaking, whether in a board room, a community function or a gathering of friends and family around the dinner table has always been evident. Over the past ten years, he has attained the top honour of Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM), the highest level of achievement for the public speaking organization Toastmasters International.

If you get the chance (and he is presenting in town or city near you), take the time to go see my Dad. You’ll be glad you did.

It was quite a sight to see the big green and white engine thunder into the station after nearly two decades of quiet on the tracks from Barrie to Bradford.

Despite a technical issue with the automated ticket vending machine, the first trip was smooth and comfortable. For a 5:43am departure, the train was relatively full.

It was a special day for me as I have been involved in the effort to help restore passenger rail service for many years – writing letters, sending emails and advocating for public transit on many different occasions.

The foresight in particular of the City of Barrie in deciding to purchase the right-of-way several years ago when CN suggested it was going to tear up the Bradford-Barrie line was instrumental in restoring the service. And although the partnership between GO Transit and the Federal, Provincial and Municipal governments had many ups and downs, I would like to thank all parties for their perseverance and their vision.

My hope is that the expansion of GO service will continue and that the old “Thunder Trains” will someday be replaced by faster, lighter and more frequent rapid transit equipment that will provide more frequent trips capable of traveling to Union Station in under an hour. After all – the idea here is to offer a superior alternative to the car.

Our Barrie station isn’t much, but it’s a start. Now let’s ensure that the trains are here in Barrie to stay this time.

Thanks to the project lead Keith Francis, Taso Tsoutsos and the Acumen staff for all of their hard work and very valuable input.

I’m very happy with our result and the feedback that we have collected both from our focus user group and our first few visitors has been spectacular.

The newly launched ideasbuilt.ca is the home of Acumen Visual Group Inc., an industrial design fabricator servicing architects, environmental designers and interior designers. Creative disciplines and service mediums cover wood, glass, metal, architectural films and emergent materials for signage and wayfinding, purpose built fabrication/prototyping, merchandising/POP, and environmental systems.

Learn more about the project or visit ideasbuilt.ca for yourself.

Village On The Twelve is an innovative concept in neighbourhood design where the assumption is that people are more important than cars. It is easy to see how the New Urbanist approach to designing places for people to live is the way of the future.

The future is not really that far off, though, as Village On The Twelve clearly demonstrates. Our addiction to oil and the resulting urban sprawl that has resulted is making it clearer that we have to do things smarter now, not in twenty years. And you know, I sure would prefer to live in a neighbourhood like V12. Have a look.

So after a quick look at the Ubuntu project and some of the very noble goals of the community – I downloaded the latest release (Edgy Eft). I had found myself a used IBM NetVista off-lease corporate workstation with only 256MB of RAM and a run-of-the-mill Pentium 4 processor for the experiment.

The installation was remarkably simple. Getting the old machine to recognize my network was a snap (Mandrake was a little trickier as I had to re-configure my network card every time I booted the machine), and with Firefox up and running a few seconds later – instant workstation.

The operating system runs a complete suite of office productivity software and all the web authoring tools I really need. And the machine is performing better than just about any current newer Windows-based workstations (purely based on my observations – don’t ask me to substantiate this). Not bad for under $200 CAD.

This proves that very often technology (the Pentium 4 workstation in this case) is made obsolete only by economic cycles rather than hardware or software limitations. I think that Linux is very nearly ready for prime time.

Having been a part of the modern environmental movement now for over a decade, one thing has become very clear to me. Nobody cares. Wait – let me type that again. Nobody cares.

What people do care about is money. And I think that I am only fooling myself if I run around preaching green this and green that and expect basic human nature to suddenly and fundamentally change.

Where did I read once that if you want to change the world, you need first to change yourself? Well, here goes.

I will learn the language of the economy. I will learn the tools of the corporation. I will learn the techniques of politicking. And perhaps most importantly, as the Jedi Master Yoda told young Luke Skywalker, I will start to unlearn what I have learned.

A magnificent machine, it regularly takes passengers on a one-hour trip from Tottenham, to Nowhere, Ontario (for real) and back again.

It has become somewhat of a family holiday tradition to make the trip. This year being no exception, we headed down to the station to board the train this morning, tickets in hand (e-mail confirmation, actually, as you can web-order tickets in advance). The kind staff helped us board the beautiful old coach and showed us to our seats.

While we were waiting for Santa, I took the time to examine the lovingly restored coaches. After our trip, I practically sprinted to the front of the train to get a close look at the engine.

But to dismiss Al Gore as a sensationalist or a zealot is maybe what some people might say to make themselves feel better – to make the problem go away. Well, as the World Wildlife Fund’s new television commercial illustrates – if we don’t acknowledge the problem now and take steps to fix it, it will be us that goes away.

Perhaps the time for communicating this very real problem in a nice way is over. I tend to agree with Gore that every day that goes by is a missed opportunity to do something to avert a very real disaster. A disaster that is unfolding now as entire ice fields drop into the Antarctic Ocean a century earlier than scientists thought they would.

And yet, even with a lump in my throat, I am optimistic that we have the ability to solve the problem (renewable energy sources are a good start). But the problem is not a technology problem – it is a people problem. And it is people that will have to change and adapt, not the planet.