bestkungfu weblog

Okay. That felt good. Now that I’ve resurfaced, here’s the update.

I won’t be at SXSW this year. Sorry. I really wish I could, especially after seeing some of the accessibility sessions. If you’re going, do not miss Derek Featherstone’s Star Wars session, or Gez Lemon’s ARIA primer.

I will be at the CSUN conference, that being the biggest accessibility and technology conference around. I’m giving a talk about building accessible web content with Dreamweaver and Flash CS3 on Wednesday, March 12. Do drop by, won’t you?

I also spoke at Ignite Seattle two weeks ago, and I’m really happy with the feedback I received. The video should be posted shortly, at which time I will relay it to y’all. It’s only 5 minutes long, so it shouldn’t be too painful.

I’m still taking Arabic. I’m finishing 203 this month, then starting 204. I’m planning a trip to Jordan in April (yay, frequent flyer miles!). A classmate just sent me an email showing that the Foreign Service Institute’s rated time to reach professional proficiency in Arabic is 1950 hours, or 30 hours a week for 65 weeks. Woohoo! Only 1800 hours to go!

And Adobe is still my employer. (I know. I’m as surprised as you are.) As great as it is, it’s still a bit strange working for a company where you can be around for three years and still be considered a noob. I’m about 9 months in, so that reality is just now setting in.

Finally, my time as Seattle’s grandmaster speller will run out in April, as the third and final season of the Seattle Spelling Bee comes to a close. To all you young spellers out there, a bit of advice: don’t let all the fame and the groupies go to your head. Always remember, it’s about the orthography.