Terrific day at 360|Flex today. I attended some good sessions, had a few fun conversations about flex and development in general, and then had some really good beers. Seriously, the organizers have impressive taste in beer.

The keynote was pretty cool, though no earth shattering new news. Justin Everett-Church was showing off Flash player 10, and even though I’ve played with the beta I didn’t realize just how great the hardware accelerated graphics are going to be. I had originally heard that only the 3d and video would be accelerated, but apparently I was misinformed as according to Justin all display objects will be created on the graphics card, which is very good.

Shining through for me though was a reaffirmation of how incredible Flex 4 (Gumbo) is going to be. There’s a whole new paradigm for working with states, which have always been great in concept but, for me at least, incredibly frustrating to use in practice. The new mxml shape and drawing tools are looking really good, and the true separation of component and skin is incredible. We’ve all been talking about skinning as a way to separate functionality from design for some time now, but seeing what can be done in flex 4 is the first time I’ve felt like it’s truly been achieved, which brings me to Thermo. Being billed as a designer tool, Thermo is going to make everyone’s life easier, whether you hand it over to a designer or not.

So, while the keynote didn’t have too much new stuff for us, I got to see some demos I hadn’t before and definitely got re-jazzed about where Flex is headed.

The sessions I attended were pretty good:

Flex and Accessibility
I did not realize how much control you have over this. If you truly want to make your app accessible, then the tools are there.. even if they’re not fully documented.

Encrypting Flex
Some good techniques were covered here for encrypting and decrypting modules or external swfs on the fly.

Introduction to Swiz
I had been curious about this after listening to an interview with Chris Scott on the Flex Show. It looks great. If we weren’t already so invested in PureMVC on the project I’m working on I think I’d switch us over.

Advanced Actionscript APIs
This was a fun one, Jacob Wright is a good presenter and the material was interesting. He covered Metadata tags, The Proxy class and Namespaces, all of which I’ve used in the past, but I picked up a few new tricks in his session today.

One thing I’ve noticed here at the conference is a general feel of prosperity and optimism surrounding Flex. I suppose this is to be expected at a Flex conference, but I talked to a lot of people today and I think it’s really cool that many, when asked what they like best about flex development, replied somewhere in their answer that they couldn’t think of when they’d had this much fun as a developer.. I couldn’t agree more.

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I’m heading off tomorrow morning for 360|Flex in San Jose, CA. It’s going to be a blast. There’s a lot of really great stuff going on for the conference, I’ll be the heart of Silicon Valley- a.k.a nerd heaven, and then Wednesday night my wife will arrive and we’ll head up the north CA coastline to take in some scenic wonders for a few days.

I’ll be posting updates here about the goings on at 360|Flex and all of the cool stuff I see and hear. There’s a pretty good line up of sessions all three days and it sounds like there will be plenty to do after the official speakers have done their thing as well.

I should probably go pack a suitcase or something.. stay tuned for updates from the left coast!

Posted in Flex ~ 2 Comments

It’s no secret, I love my iPhone. But sometimes it seems like Apple just does things to piss me off. Take for example the fact that you can only sync music from a single computer to an iPod/iPhone. There is no way to copy music from multiple computers to your iPod, and no way to get that music from your iPod to your computer. You can’t even play music from a connected iPod through iTunes unless it’s the single machine you’re syncing to.

This is rediculous. I assume it’s to prevent piracy, but it’s the most asinine copy protection I’ve ever encountered. I mean, they already have DRM, and there’s nothing preventing me from copying my music from iTunes onto a flash drive and then onto another computer, so how exactly does it protect the industry to prevent me from using my iPhone as my main music library? Fair play my ass.

If you’re using a mac then the beta version of Senuti (http://www.fadingred.org/senuti) will transfer music from your iPod or iPhone and add them to iTunes on any machine. It sucks that you have to get a third party app to do this simple task, but it seems to work and it’s very easy to use, if a little slow to copy.

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A while back I went to the doctor for a routine checkup, blood work, and so on. I had been feeling a little off and gone the wayside on my blood pressure meds, ignoring the giant sticker on the bottle stating that if I stopped taking them without consulting a doctor I would immediately drop dead, or something like that.

Anyway, the doctor scolded me for not taking the meds and for not changing my lifestyle after the last time we talked, which was about two years before that. I of course agreed, thinking in the back of my mind that it didn’t matter what they say, I am just not capable of changing. To an extent I was right, but when they presented me with my blood work results and I saw how close I was to becoming a diabetic just waiting for my heart to give up against the struggle to pump my sugar thickened blood through cholesterol hardened arteries, something clicked. I realized I had to do something about this. I know myself pretty well, and I knew that the one place where I could make a real change and stick to it was food. Not a diet, but a real lifestyle change that I had actually been thinking about for a while. I decided to go vegan, at least for a while, and see what it is like to live without ever ingesting an animal or animal product.

A true vegan goes further than food, cutting out all products that are tested on animals or were processed with or contain any trace of animal products. I agree that this is a good place to get to, but it’ll take me some time. I still drink wine and beer without knowing if isinglass or egg albumen were used to clarify it. I just don’t have the will yet to go and research every product I use, though I do consider myself more environmentally conscious than your average joe. I drive a Prius and my wife hates it when I go shopping without her because I do stuff like get the thin, scratchy recycled paper towels instead of Bounty.

Which brings up a good point - the link between veganism and environmentalism. While the production and transportation of many fruits and vegetables is without a doubt environmentally unsound, almost all animal products are scores more detrimental. I became a vegan for health reasons, and I am feeling great in that respect, but it did not take long for me to start seeing the opportunity to participate in a greater good.

While researching my new lifestyle I came across a lot of shocking information, most of which I already knew at some level but chose to ignore when a craving for hamburger struck. I don’t need to go into all of it here, and I don’t like to preach or guilt people about it, but there is a ton of information out there on animal cruelty, environmental strain caused by livestock and animal feed, and the fact that people still starve to death while more grain is used to feed the animals we eat than most of the earth’s human population could consume. The fact that poultry in the US has to be given a chlorine bath before it reaches your table because the inhumane conditions in which the chickens are kept breeds salmonella is enough to keep me away from McNuggets. Everything is connected, and every simple choice we make affects many other things. Anyway, I don’t want this post to be preachy, but to truly understand why I decided to stick with this change, I had to bring it up.

In short, I’ve been vegan for over two months now, and it is really working for me. I feel great, am enjoying a variety of wonderful foods, and feel like I’m doing my small part to help preserve this planet for my son and future generations.

If you’d like to know more about veganism, environmental issues, and meat production, well, then look it up. I’d provide links here, but these are things that you either want to know about or you don’t. If you do then you’ll be able to find it.

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Yesterday I encountered a situation that I suppose most people wouldn’t have even realized happened, but for me turned out to be a case of my computer trying to be a little too helpful. It all started when I was attempting to decompress an archive containing a .swc file - basically a zip file that flex can use as a code library - but instead of the .swc, I got folder containing its contents. It took me a minute to realize what I was looking at, but when I did I thought to myself “well, that’s annoying.” It turns out the default behavior for the archive utility is to decompress the archive and if the only file in it is another archive it keeps going. It assumes that’s what you’d want, which I guess for most people it is.

The inconvenience this caused me was only mildly annoying, but what really got me was when I realized there was seemingly no way to change that behavior. I could forgive this if it was just a feature built into the Finder app, but I noticed that for the split second while my file was being expanded that the Archive Utility app was displayed in the tool bar, meaning that it is an actual application.

After looking in all of the usual places applications are stored on a mac I finally found it, thanks to WikiPedia, at /System/Library/CoreServices/Archive Utility.app

Ahh, System/Library/CoreServices, I wonder why I didn’t I just look there in the first place?

It seems trivial, but really, why build a full application with toolbars, additional features, and a properties panel, and then not give the user an obvious way of getting to any of it? I can picture the conversation now..

“The archive utility will go in CoreServices.”
“But sir, we put all of the other utility applications in Applications/Utilities, don’t you think that will confuse the users?”
“Nobody should ever actually have to run it. When a user clicks on an archive it’ll open up, unarchive the files, and then disappear before the user even knows what hit them, that’s what we call a seamless user experience, Johnson!”
“Sounds more like a ‘wham bam thank you mam’ experience.. Why did you make me spend all that time on the interface and program in all of those preferences if nobody will ever get to see or use it?”
“Don’t you have some TPS reports to fill out or something?”

Oh well, at least I was able to get to my .swc.

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Just a quick post to say how excited I am about joining Nxtbook Media! Nxtbook Media is a great company, with intelligent people and a really fun work environment. They are doing some exciting work over there and I’m very pleased to now be a part of it.

Nxtbook Media™ optimizes print publications for use on the Web. Nxtbook™ Media’s digital publishing application helps clients market and broadcast print materials in easy-to-read electronic editions over the Internet using only a standard Web browser. Customers including Advanstar Communications, Hewlett-Packard, Reed Business Information, Prism Business Media, Cisco, Valpak, CMP, Thomas Publishing, VNU Media, Hanley-Wood, Kia, Vance Publishing and Ziff Davis choose Nxtbook Media™ to expand the reach and effectiveness of their print materials. Named as one of the “100 Companies that Matter Most in the Digital Content Industry” for two consecutive years by EContent Magazine, Nxtbook Media is privately held and headquartered in Lancaster, PA.

So, hello Nxtbook Media! I am looking forward to a long and fruitful relationship.

Posted in General ~ 2 Comments

My old laptop finally kicked the bucket about a month ago. I’ve been getting by browsing the web on my iPhone until I finally got around to ordering my new machine.

I’d been on the fence for a while, but using a mac at work as my main machine after my laptop died convinced me that there was no other way to go. I can not proclaim loudly enough how much more impressed I am with OS X Leopard than I am with Vista. It’s like night and day. I could spout the many things that made the decision a no brainer for me, but it’s probably best to just go to Apple’s Leopard page to see how amazing it is.

So my new 17″ Macbook Pro arrived today and I’m loving it. It’s powerful - 2.4Ghz 64 bit dual core processor, 256 meg video card, 160 gig hard drive. The screen is sharp, bright, and beautiful. The overall quality of its physical construction is worlds better than my previous laptop.

Of course, because it’s an Intel based machine and Leopard comes with Bootcamp I can also install Vista. I wasn’t event going to bother since my current work only requires Eclipse and the Adobe suite, but then Microsoft had to go and announce their amazing plans for XNA self publishing on the 360.. now I have to get windows installed just for XNA Game Studio so I can begin work on my as of yet completely unplanned opus, but that’s another post all together.

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Our heater was out all day today and while we waited for the repair guy we had to keep our little guy warm.

posted from iPhoneSlide.com

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I’m posting this from my brand new iPhone.. Very cool.

This thing really knocked my socks off, they managed to pack a lot of power into a very solidly built little package.

Also, the edge connection is not as bad as people on the Internet make it sound.. bunch of whiners if you ask me. Its not blazingly fast, but it’s still better than dialup. The fact that i can use the internet at all on a device this small with full javascript and Ajax support is just amazing to me.

It’s almost enough to make me not feel guilty about paying into AT&T’s mass surveillance research. Oh well, as soon as the sdk comes out in February I’ll get over it, I’m sure.

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There is little else in this world worse than biting into what you think is a crisp, delicious, juicy apple only to encounter a mouth full of dry, tasteless sand.

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