About

About NumbKnuckle:

Numbknuckle is simply a collection of development ideas, tools, resources and a place for me to share each. The word itself doesn’t really mean anything, and was just a name I came up with several years ago.

I am Brian Connatser, RIA/Flash/ColdFusion developer currently at King Pharmaceuticals. I dabble in a lot of other technologies and of course have years of experience in HTML, CSS, PHP and SQL. I am currently learning new frameworks for Flex (Flash Builder) and beginning to dig deeper into Obj-C. I have been passionate about computers and programming since I was a kid, starting out on a Commodore 64 and trash 80. My dad was a computer specialist for the Navy and thankfully passed his knowledge on to me. I started out as a kid learning COBOL, Basic and Pascal. When first entering college I naturally went towards computer science, but drifted over to new media (3d, interactive, design, etc). I have spent the last 15 years as a web developer, designer, RIA developer, digital video editor and 3d artist. 90% of my time now is spent as an RIA developer and learning more techniques for Flex, Flash, Java, Obj-C and C++.

I am also an extreme gamer at heart and have passed that on to my two sons (3 and 5). I typically play FPS and fast racing or fighting games because my attention span is basically non-existent. If you feel like a beat down, add me to your XBox Live account – “conads” and PSN “conadstoo”. Yes I own all three, 360, PS3, and Wii, and yes both of my boys have Nintendo DS and DSi.

More information can be found about me by choosing a social icon in the column to the right.

Professional Experience:

With my years of experience in a variety of media, I have the ability to merge many aspects of visual design, object oriented programming and adaptive process into high quality business applications. After earning a Bachelors of Science in Multimedia Design I moved into the Master program, earning a Masters of Science in Project Management and Media Arts. While working for an Interactive Media startup company, I was the first hire as an interactive developer, beginning in early 1999.

Delivering many very successful development launches helped my promotion to the Senior Interactive Developer. During my time at the startup I planned, designed, developed and managed many projects for clients such as UPS, Dow Chemical, Lear Corporation, Cingular Wireless, Nationwide Insurance, National and Tennessee Aquarium, Eastman Chemical Company, Siemens, General Electric and Procter and Gamble. Projects for the clients included driver ergonomics training for UPS, including video and multimedia. Also, the original Seahorse exhibit for the National Aquarium in Baltimore Maryland and the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga Tennessee. Other projects included Flash based advertising and training for Procter and Gamble and Nationwide Insurance, as well as high end Flash applications for General Electric and Siemens.

After spending six years as a Flash, Flex, Director and Web developer at the startup I moved on to more of a management role at a web firm in Nashville Tennessee. During my experience in Nashville I managed and was a Flash developer for many projects for two major clients, Discover Card and Vanderbilt University. With several quick very successful project launches I was promoted to the Senior Project Manager, then shortly after Vice President of Operations. A short time later I had the opportunity to move back to my home town and run a local small interactive agency as the Vice President of Operations.

I spent days yearning to be back into production and working directly with clients building next generation pieces and learning new processes and languages, so I left what will be my last management role ever to work for myself. Over the next three years I grew a small dedicated and dependable client base, but not necessarily small clients. I enjoy the personal touch that I can place on clients while working for myself and the time I spend constantly learning something new. During this time I also accepted a position of Applications Systems Analyst III at King Pharmaceuticals.

My role at King Pharmaceuticals is one as the main liaison for the State Reporting team, which takes about 10% of my week monitoring 3rd party applications and the servers that host them. The rest of the time I am collaborating with the Web Applications team and am part of the Business Applications team as the Senior AS3/Flash/Flex developer. I work with Flash and Flex everyday, integrating a Test Driven Development Process, creating all build processes, maintaining the SVN implementations and trying out and implementing many different AS3 frameworks. My main focus is spearheading the OOP process, and enforcing a maintainable, reusable application development environment. In short I am the AS3 go to guy, and I love being in that role. In this role I have the opportunity to learn new processes and technologies, and our team values the rich knowledge earned from the social communities.

In the near future I plan to expand my social presence and share my knowledge while at the same time maintain my stance on constantly learning something new. I maintain a personal site at brianconnatser.com as well as a professional blog at numbknuckle.com.