noti - Actionscript developer from TO

Blog is moving

2008-05-19T09:50:00.000-07:00

Being the control freak I am and wanting more control over my blog, I'm now hosting it myself using WordPress. It's now located at blog.noti.ca. See you there!

ProxyLoader Class

2008-05-17T13:20:00.000-07:00

With my latest project I had lots of external assets loading. I wanted to make sure people knew something was happening while an asset was loading and I didn't want to create a preloader everytime, in comes ProxyLoader.
ProxyLoader is simply a Sprite that takes care of loading the asset via a Loader, draws a preloader, and border. It then destroys the preloader after the asset has been loaded.
One feature I added to this Class is the ability to create any type of visual preloader using the IPreloadable interface. So you can have a text preloader of one type of asset and a Movieclip for another as long as it implements the interface.
You can use the class in a very similar fashion as Loader, but you need to pass a width and height argument.

var loader:ProxyLoader = new ProxyLoader(435, 250);
loader.load(new URLRequest("path.to.asset"));
addChild(loader);

If you want to see the methods I have posted some docs here. You can download the package here. Hope it helps someone out.

New Site - www.forkedup.com

2008-05-17T13:11:00.000-07:00

Over the past 2 months I've been really busy developing and building a new AS3 site for Masterlift called Forked Up. It's a new reality TV series similar to American Hot Rod, but with forklifts. They're trying to have this show picked up by one of the networks here in Canada and the pilot looks fairly interesting.
I built the client side Flash, server sided PHP Classes and the database. It is now officially the largest project I've ever undertaken by myself. The previous was also a job from Masterlift, pimpmylift.

Hope you enjoy it.

Down with Facebook, up with Hobnox

2008-03-27T17:24:00.000-07:00

** This post is off-topic from my usual AS stuff

I recently became aware of a new community through my love of electronic music and passion of Flash from Hobnox tools. But now that I have been accepted in the private beta, I've discovered it's so much more. It's a community, a television, blog and other mash-ups of technologies.
The reason I'm liking Hobnox is that Facebook has become a community of odd ball apps that I get asked to participate in at every turn. I haven't even logged in to my Facebook in months (if you're reading this from my Facebook page, it's because my blogger pages get imported automagically) and haven't missed it one bit.
But if you know me, you know I can get bored quickly, so the true test is the test of time. And time will tell.

Earth Hour 2008

2008-03-21T18:50:00.000-07:00

I hope you're participating.. sign up with me at http://www.earthhour.org/user/hCke and join the movement.

New AIR app for Aveda

2008-03-20T12:19:00.000-07:00

My second AIR app (the first for work) has been finished. It's an application that polls a web server and synchronizes a local database with any new media alerts.
It rose out of the need for Aveda Partners (aka AP's ... think regional managers) to have a quick and easy way to know of new media reviews on products. Previously, this was done via e-mail and caused some issues, like having many alerts in the inbox and having to sort through them all. AP's wanted the e-mail channel free for more sales related issues. They also wanted to have the ability to only download the full pdf alert for the one's they were interested in. This was especially important for AP's in Quebec, where some english alerts have had little value.
I learned quite a bit about AIR building it, like interacting with the local db and using icons. I also learned more about php building the back end.

I'm really looking forward to my next app... a rebuild of my Chart generator.

Unfortunately the application isn't publicly available but I have included a screenshot below.

I walk for water - Every drop counts

2008-03-11T14:42:00.000-07:00

My company (Collega Aveda) is very active with the environment and issues affecting the Earth, so every year they participate in Earth Month. This year is "Every drop counts". An initative with WaterCan to make clean water accessible to everyone. (Did you a child dies every 15 seconds in the world due to a lack of access to clean water?)
So what we are doing is the "Walk for water". In major cities around Canada we are trying to get people to walk 5km and raise money for WaterCan.
You can visit www.iwaterforwater.ca for more information and register for the walk or sponsor me for my walk in Toronto. You can also become active in other ways through WaterCan.

On another note, I did build the back end in PHP for this initative (I didn't design it) that's where my comments on PHP from my other post came from ;)

FITC here I come!

2008-03-07T03:47:00.000-08:00

It's now official, I WILL be attending the FITC in Toronto this year! My company bought my ticket yesterday. I've always wanted to go but the price tag for me to pay out of my own pocket was always too high ($699).
I'm so excited about going and seeing speakers I've read so much about, namely Colin Moock, Keith Peters and Grant Skinner.. all geniuses in the AS realm. I'm also very interested to go to the session "Making REAL Music Within Flash with André Michelle". I'm a HUGE electronic music fan and to be able to do this would blow my mind!

(giddity, giddity)

PHP, ASP and Actionscript

2008-03-05T09:09:00.000-08:00

First off, this blog will be extremely bias, towards what, you'll soon find out. ; )
I've recently had to work for the past 2 weeks with server sided scripting. I've generally tried to avoid it because I don't to regress to where I was a couple of years ago, jack-of-all-scripts. But my lastest work project required I do some server sided scripting to interact with a MySQL database and Flash (using amf).
I must say server sided scripting with PHP was MUCH easier that I remember in the past. Within a couple hours I had written several PHP Classes with the interaction I needed. Granted they were probably not the cleanest scripts the world, but by did the job that was required.
Now in comes my friend from IT (I'm in Marketing) and states "any new server sided code MUST be in .NET". My first reaction was (clean version...)"great another script to impede me from doing more Actionscripting, but if I have to fine." But after thinking about it, I came to ask "why?" Although all intranet pages are done with .NET, web based scripts are PHP. From a selfish point of view I thought, in the long run (as a developer), which language will give me more leverage to increase my salary in the job market. Without a doubt, I believe it's PHP. Why? Based mostly on personal experience, recruiters have often asked me "Do you know PHP?" If I look on job boards I see much more postings for PHP developers than ASP.
My reasoning for this is two-fold. Microsoft makes tons of money certifying .NET developers, where as PHP has no regulating body. PHP is niche, not many people do it WELL. When a company needs a niche developer, they pay more.
Now don't get me wrong. If you're looking for a much more stable career, that's regulated, and almost guaranteed to always be around than .NET is the way to go. But if you're like me and gamble on occasion (I dedicated myself to ActionsScript when everyone thought I was crazy) I strongly believe PHP is the way to go.

SQLStatement lesson

2008-02-27T18:24:00.000-08:00

I've been working a lot with the new built-in database that comes bundled with AIR and I ran into something that gave me a bit of trouble.
It was retrieving some info from the database and reading the SQLResult using the getResult() in my retrieving method from my SQLStatement. Like usual, I was trying to read if the method was called using a trace statement and also tracing out the result using getResult(). With the trace statement, I was reading everything fine, but when I went to evaluate the SQLStatement again using getResult(), I always got NULL. How can this be? I traced out a result!? Well it turns out (if you read the help files carefully) that "When there are no more SQLResult objects left in the queue, getResult() returns null." So even tracing out getResult() removes it from the SQLStatement queue! So be warned, pass it to a variable BEFORE reading it and you'll save a lot of time troubleshooting!

Another lesson learned, but it wouldn't fun if it wasn't ;)

Reading a local database created with AIR

2008-02-12T06:58:00.001-08:00

I found this neat little app that reads a SQLite database, so you can quickly and easily see whats been written to the database from your AIR file.

Hopefully, it will help you as much as it's helped me recently ;)

Posting Code on Blogger

2008-02-08T16:34:00.000-08:00

<------ RANT Start ----->
Well I've several hours trying to find an easy way to post code on Blogger and I'm convinced it can't be done. At least not easily. I know wordpress has a easy way of doing why not Blogger? They even have a repository of code at Google CODE, so you'd think this would be an easy task.

Well if anyone knows how to do it, please let me know.
<------ RANT End----->

AS3 Custom Events

2008-02-06T09:11:00.000-08:00

I've read in couple of blogs (this one recently) on the problems with passing data between Objects/Classes. I, myself, used to use Proxy as well as binding data to dynamic classes (ie-MovieClip) a LOT of the time in AS2, but now in AS3 things have changed (for the BETTER!).
In comes Custom Events. I recently used Custom Events in a project where I wrote a Class for controlling the Sound object. I found using Custom Events was MUCH easier than it's reputation is known for, and very similar in nature to Proxy. Below is a quick Sample of the SoundControlEvent.

With CustomEvents it easy to read the passed property without having to access the dispatching object. As outlined below:


var evt:SoundControlEvent = new SoundControlEvent(SoundControlEvent.SOUND_POSITION);
evt.position = _channel.position;
dispatchEvent(evt);

Hopefully Custom Events will become more popular as AS3 gets futher into the mainstream. It makes for easy to read code that extremely portable.

Communicating between AIR (swf) windows

2008-02-04T07:58:00.000-08:00

I wanted to make a quick note on something I came across yesterday as I was working on my AIR app that uses separate NativeWindows.
Essentially what I wanted to do was call a method in another swf and pass it an argument.. a path to a song in the local file system. The way I approached this was with LocalConnection. (If there is another way to communicate between NativeWindows please let me know!) I had set up listeners in the swf for a status.level of either 'status' or 'error' so I could make sure I was actually communicating. Every time I tried to communicate between the two swf's I would get an 'error' condition. What was the problem? It seems that in AIR you must allow the local domain. As soon as I added:

_conn.allowDomain('*');

Everything worked fine.

Hopefully this will help someone searching for some answers on communicating between windows.

Multiple Windows in AIR

2008-02-03T08:55:00.000-08:00

I was working on my MusicPlayer app and I wanted to open my player from the playlist manager in another window. This actually isn't very hard, but if you're not careful you'll open the new window and nothing will appear! That's because after you've initialize all the NativeWindow properties you MUST set the visible property to true. If you don't, the window is created but nothing is visible on screen.

Luckily for me I was opening a swf with sound or else I wouldn't never known something fishy was happening and might've thought I was initializing it incorrectly. I could hear the music but I couldn't see anything. After reviewing some examples, I could see the error of my ways.

On a similar note, make sure you set the stage.scaleMode and stage.align properties for the new window or else you may end up with a very odd sized loaded asset.

I'm BACK!!

2008-02-01T12:18:00.000-08:00

After a looooong break with job changes and freelance work I'm back blogging again. I'm going to try and keep my blogs now to all my experiments in AIR and Actionscript 3 and post the results whenever I can.

My first post back is about a little problem that had me pulling my hair (what I have left of it) out. What should've taken me about 10 minutes took over 3 hours! I'm hoping this may help someone else out and save them the aggrevation. It has to do with the latest AIR beta 3 update available at adobe labs.

Being the impatient person I am, I always love to play with the lastes toys, I downloaded the latest AIR beta update. The first thing you have to know is that you HAVE to update your Flash CS3 to Flash 9.0.2. That took me about two attempts to install the update to figure out (the updater just states something along the lines of "This program does not qualify for this update.".. very helpful). After that was complete the updater worked, but none of my AIR apps would compile it kept giving me the error that a class couldn't be found. That really confused me because I knew I had updated everything. I then tried the command in Flash "AIR - Create AIR file" which still produced the same error. Now I was really confused. After some searches on Adobe labs, it stated that this error will only occur on the first compile... which wasn't happening (at least for me). After tinkering around I finally noticed that on another file that did compile the following was missing from the publish settings in the Actionscript 3.0 classpaths:


$(AppConfig)/ActionScript 3.0 AIR 1.0/Classes

After I added that to my newly created app, everything compiled correctly. Now I just hope Adobe makes things a little easier when version 1 is released.

It's Pimpin'...

2007-04-10T12:30:00.000-07:00

Well it's finally finished and live, (No not my portfolio), the site I've been working on last month for MasterLift... pimpmylift.ca!!!

This has been the largest AS2 project I've worked on. It has 23 classes.. a main document class, 2 controller classes, and each section that inherit from a Section class. I've learned a lot form this project and hope to carry what I've learned on to some new upcoming projects.

I was only commissioned to build the Flash front end, nothing after you're "Done" so the way some things function aren't standard but they work well just the same. Try it out and send some pimped out forklifts to your friends.

www.pimpmylift.ca

Crazy or genius?

2007-04-05T08:06:00.000-07:00

I resisted posting this for a variety of reasons but I figured I'd give in.
If anyone has seen the movie EdTV then you may get a kick out of this. A new website (social experiment) has started with the same premise as EdTV. It's called aptly enough, justin.tv. A guy named Justin wears a webcam that's online 24/7.

Now based on the fact it's very difficult to connect and lately it's getting worse, I think it's growing in popularity. But I have to ask why? Why is it that we want to see someone' s boring daily life. Is it human nature just to see what someone has and compare ourselves to them? Or is it something else? Personally I think this experiment (if you can call it that) is ludicrous. But I think I'm in the minority. And the fact I'm posting this must mean I been affected some how.

Take a look and judge for yourself. Are you compelled to watch? or do you just walk away?

BTW - A very cool project I been working for a forklift company is due to launch Monday. I'll post a link when its live.

Adobe's been busy

2007-03-27T06:53:00.000-07:00

Today Adobe announced the release of CS3. I've just finished reviewing the new features in Flash CS3 and they are nothing short of amazing!
Now that you can edit PS files straight within Flash is amazing. The new content we'll see on the web with be outstanding. Another feature I think will be useful is the way the pen tool works, similar to Illustrator. I found the way it is now very difficult to use.
I'm also very excited to learn AS3. I've bought my first book on the subject and am just starting to read through it.
It looks like this year will be an action packed, fun-filled one!

It's HERE!!

2007-03-19T15:58:00.000-07:00

Apollo is out! 'nuff said.

Get it here. Set it up here. And create apps like these.

It's coming..

2007-03-17T15:38:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since I've blogged because I've been busy with some big projects.
First, I've finally secured my webhost and domain name, www.noti.ca and I'm 60% done my website. I'm so close and excited that's it's almost. Personal projects always seem to drag on forever.
Second, Apollo camp is done (I didn't attend it), but that means the public beta is due to be released SOON. I'm going to get the Apollo reference book when the Alpha gets released.

I have to say.. I've set my goals and I'm hitting everyone.. this year has started out well, I'm hoping to finish it with a BIG bang.

Words to live by..

2007-03-07T12:16:00.000-08:00

Someone quoted me a passage a couple of years back when I was making my career transition. It was about reading books everyday on the career path you've chosen. It was something that stuck on me for the past 5 years, and I finally decided to look it up:

Read an hour every day in your chosen field.
This works out to about one book per week, 50 books per year,
and will guarantee your success.
--Brian Tracy

I don't know who Brian Tracy is, but I really like his ideas. I found lots of quotes from him over here.
Another quote I really like is "Every minute you spend in planning saves 10 minutes in execution;". Now if I could get my boss and his clients to think like that ;)

The best book EVER...

2007-03-06T06:13:00.000-08:00

I read a lot of books on Flash and actionscript in general.. well actually it's the only thing I read, except the newspaper. Ask anyone who has been to my house and they'll tell you every book I own is Flash.. all the way back to my first book Visual Guide to Flash MX.
I think everyone remembers the first book they bought on Flash because it teaches you the most (let's face you didn't know too much before that's why you bought it). So it's always hard to find a book that quite matches up. Well look no further...
Object Oriented Actionscript for Flash 8 by Peter Elst and Todd Yard is the way to go. I haven't learned so much since my first book. Everything from CVS, design patterns, animation, and External Interface is covered. With wonderful hands on examples that if you work through, will definitely teach someone to everybody. After applying what I've learned in this book to a couple of projects my work flow and understanding of classes has grown by leaps and bounds.. it's opened a door for that has flamed my passion for coding to an inferno. (Yes.. I know a little over the top, but I do love this book).
All I can say it that the pages are worn down from all my referencing back and forth. I can't wait for the AS 3.0 version of this book to come out.

One down...

2007-03-03T08:45:00.000-08:00

Just came back from passing the Flash 8 Certification Exam. I didn't really study, (except reviewing the help files) because I wanted to see if I really knew my stuff, plus I was really bust this week.
I've read a lot of opinions around the net about the value of certification, some good and some bad. Here's my take on it.
First, I got certified because I'm always underestimating myself. I think (wrongly) that everyone knows more than me. This just validates that I AM good enough to continue my passion for scripting. (yes, it's a personality flaw). Second, people who hire Flash experts, in small companies (and some larger ones) don't know Flash. Not all companies are large design companies, and this is where most arguments fail. From the standpoint of the employer, they're looking for some validation that you know Flash, and this is a quick and easy way to validate it (Yes, most people want quick proof). So those are my primary reasons for getting certified, as for the exam...

The exam was actually very straightforward. If you work in Flash daily, the exam will not present a problem. Some of it was on the basics like symbols on the timeline and some on video integration. Good luck if you're going for the cert, I think it will be worth it.

Employers, stop asking for the impossible!

2007-02-23T19:09:00.000-08:00

If you're like me, you're always keeping one eye on the job market, just to see whats coming up. I got this posting today: http://information-technology.thingamajob.com/jobs/Ontario/Flash-Developer/1132844
I don't expect it to be up for long, or it will be modified because I pointed out the error to the poster already.
For people who don't see it, or are too lazy to click the link, they're asking for "3 to 5 years of experience using Actionscript 3.0". If you're into flash at all you'll see the problem immediately. AS3.0 has only been out in PUBLIC ALPHA (not even released yet) for maybe 6 months, tops. And these people are asking for someone with 3-5 years of experience with it. Who are they looking for Gary Grossman?
I KNOW I'm qualified for jobs asking for AS 2.0 experience, HTML, CSS and other technologies, but I'm no expert in the 25 technologies listed.
No wonder these companies hire people and end having to pay huge money to get rid of them, they've mastered the art of bs.

Something to be said about PLANNING

2007-02-22T07:42:00.000-08:00

I recently got the ludicrous request (which I couldn't turn down) to create 4 versions of animated banners for a clothing company. They wanted me to create 8 sizes of each banner. And deliver it in 4 days. The only thing they had was the static creative.
The time line was bad enough, but what made it worse was that they only wanted to review the banners after they were created and each individually!! So essentially only after one set of banners were created would they approve them. (I think you know where this is going.) After the first set was done, they wanted changes.. no problem. Round 2, changes again. Round 3, changes again. Round 4, now they wanted to combine changes from round 1 and 3. In the end it was 7 rounds of changes to 32 banners! I don't mind changes, but I can't stand it when a change it made to an element and then changed back 2 rounds later.
I tried to advise and make recommendations to this (massive) company. But I think it was just too many cooks in the kitchen.
Needless to say I'm bananerd out (like bananas, sorry).

Knowing your target...

2007-02-08T06:17:00.000-08:00

Working at a creative company, and checking out thefwa.com often, I've ended up seeing thousands of website. Some good and some terrible. (Heck I've even made some of the terrible websites at the clients request, but that's a different story). But when a website hits it's target demographic head on, it makes me notice... http://www.toopyandbinoo.com/

Normally, I wouldn't give this site a second glance beyond it's nice clean and "easy-to-use" interface, but since I have a 2 year old daughter who loves Toopy and Binoo I decided to give it a closer look.

Overall, this site is amazingly interactive. It's my favorite type of website that looks simple, but is very complex. It encourages kids to click on items and follow Toopy and Binoo on new adventures. One of my favorite sections is when you dress Binoo up with old items in a closet, you see him in the mirror with a the item as they imagine it would look like. For example, if you dress Binoo in a red house coat, in the mirror it appears as Santa's jacket. This promotes imagination and my daughter loves it. We spent at least an hour on this site, and if you have a 2 year old, that is a feat in itself.

I could go on and on about it, but I'd encourage you to check it out and discover it for yourself. When viewing it remember who they're targeting. These people at Tribal Nova are really thinking. Congrats!

Hooray.. now I'm cool!

2007-02-07T09:32:00.000-08:00

After reading numerous blogs on Jaxtr, namely Peter Elst and Keith Peter, I decided to try it out.
Well, as of a few minutes ago I got my account. Now I'm cool. Go ahead and call me by using the button on the right.

Too many cool things...

2007-02-07T06:10:00.000-08:00

Every time I head over to OSFlash.org I come across something new I want to try. Yesterday, I came across Red5. Take from osflash website, Red5 is:
an Open Source Flash Server written in Java that supports:

Streaming Audio/Video (FLV and MP3)
Recording Client Streams (FLV only)
Shared Objects
Live Stream Publishing
Remoting

I haven't tried it, and I don't know too much about it, but if it can do what it says it can, I'm sold. I've wanted to create a program where you can stream from a webcam (just for fun) but I wasn't going to buy any software for it, much less a Flash Communication server. This fits the bill perfectly.

Now, with Papervision3d, AS3, Apollo and now Red5 how will I ever find the time for for anything but Flash programming? My wife will be so happy!! LOL.

AS3 news

2007-02-06T06:16:00.000-08:00

I found some convincing arguments to speed up my transition to AS3. Granted they're more visual elements than arguments, but they're still convincing:

PaperVision3d - Private beta 3d engine for Flash. Available for both AS2 and AS3, but to see the real power in AS3, view this (click on the icon in the bottom right corner for FULLSCREEN). I've just got the classes and will hopefully get something together in the future. Although I love 3d, I don't anything about modeling.

computeSpectrum AS3 method - This is way overdue; the ability to generate visualizations from supported sound files. An example can be found here. (Not the best example, and you need Flash Player 9 to view it).

Apollo is coming...

2007-02-02T04:03:00.000-08:00

I just read on Keith Peter's blog a developer version of Apollo may be released as soon as March! Man, I'm getting sooooo excited!

This will be huge when it hits.

It's ALIVE!!

2007-02-01T10:26:00.000-08:00

The build for my ever talked about portfolio site has started. I'm anticipating a launch at the end of the month.

It's taken some time to finalize the mock-ups, diagram the UML and collect all the assets (ie- screenshots of sites, project files, etc), but now it's all together. I'm trying to build it in a MVC design type so in the future I'll can change to look without having to change a lot of the code.

I'll post some mock ups later this week.

I'm Back...

2007-01-29T07:27:00.000-08:00

After an amazing week in the Caribbean I'm back. Although it's very tough to get back into the swing of things when the weather is 28 C and you come back to -18 C.

I went with some friends and family on a cruise to San Juan, St.Thomas, Antigua, St. Maarten, St. Lucia and Barbados. Everyday and new and amazing excursion. But If I had to pick a favorite place, it would be a tie between St.Lucia and Barbados. Both places absolutely gorgeous. I would definitely go back in a heartbeat.

Anyway, back to reality and back to the master plan. Studying for certification and learning AS 3, as well as exploring some career options.

I'll be back to posting AS stuff, so anything I missed while I was gone (on the boards and blogs) I'll post up here in the next couple of days.

Live ... finally

2007-01-18T09:25:00.000-08:00

After a slight delay my companies new website launched today, www.trivedicom.com. It took just over two weeks to complete. It uses custom class files I created.
It was a good exercise and I learned a lot about packages and classes, but there's definitely room for improvement ;)

My boss loves it, so I guess it is a success.

Time Flies

2007-01-04T09:44:00.000-08:00

I've been so busy with finishing my works new website (launching Jan.15) and playing Super Swing Golf on my Wii, I haven't had much time to surf or blog. But here a couple of updates.

Object Oriented Actionscript for Flash 8 by Peter Elst and Todd Yard has to be one of my favorite books . I'm only about a third of the way through it and the information it provides is invaluable. This books is a MUST for anyone serious about scripting! It will be well worn by the time I'm done with it.

Super Swing Golf, Super Swing Golf, Super Swing Golf! That's about All I have to say. My wife is about to hang me, I spend all my free time playing it. Rent it at your local video store and try it for yourself. If you like to golf, it's a good mesh of a (fairly) accurate swing and the fantasy world. Get clubs, balls and powers you could only dream of.

What's up for this year? I'm planning on getting certified as a Flash 8 designer/developer from Adobe. Finishing my portfolio site and learn AS3. Just to name a few.

Merry Christmas.. yes Christmas

2006-12-21T11:33:00.000-08:00

I've been busy working on the companies new all Flash website so sorry for the absence. I may or may not be posting within the next week depends on how busy I get over the holiday.
I'm also working on my own portfolio site that I've been working on and off again.

On another topic, I recently saw on the news, malls not allowing children on the laps of Santa's because they fear liability suits. All I have to say it this is getting crazy. We can't wish anyone 'Merry Christmas' in case they're a different religion. We can't have Christmas trees in court rooms, or in Airports.
Well you know what? I wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Noel

Photoshop CS3 beta

2006-12-15T09:42:00.000-08:00

If you haven't heard yet a public beta has been (or will be shortly) released for Photoshop CS3. I was hoping to do a quick review of it here since Photoshop and Flash go hand in hand, but I'm still waiting to download it.

If you're like me and love to play with new stuff you can get it here:
http://labs.adobe.com/
When it's been released.

Stay tuned for a review.

WOW! On a Mac?!

2006-12-14T09:10:00.000-08:00

Not a very descriptive title I know. But when I saw this, it blew me away.

My number one excuse for not switching to Mac was because of all the apps I could download on trial and (I hate to say this) from torrents on my PC. But now that I can run all my apps on a Mac, my excuse is gone.
It looks like I'm switching before I have to invest in Vista. Hooray!!

The new YouTube

2006-12-13T06:44:00.000-08:00

I just got wind of this new service Viddler .com. What makes this site a little more interesting than all the other internet video services is it uses Flash's cue-points to tag certain areas of the video, so you can send someone a link to just the area of the video you're talking about or think they may be interested in.

This is a great idea. I've watched video before where the only good part was half way through and I had to sit and watch almost all of it. I also like the fact that you can upload up to 500 mb.

I haven't signed up for this service yet, but I think I'm trading in my YouTube account.

The BUZZ

2006-12-11T17:00:00.000-08:00

Upon my daily reviews of blogs that regularly read, I came across something that seems to be popping up regularly, flashpanoramas.
This is a new program that creates fullscreen panoramas using Flash new Fullscreen mode for the player (not the projector fullscreen mode).
I must say if you look at the demos, it is very impressive. The hi-res photos are beautiful and the way the application works is very fluid. But I have to wonder where the panoramas will be used. They are very cool yes, but the practical applications are limited.
I used to work for a company that created software for the Real Estate industry where this would be a value added feature.. but what other industries are their? If anyone comes across this being used on a website (other than demos) drop me an email, I'd love to see it.

The NEW Flash revolution

2006-12-06T12:21:00.000-08:00

I've read about it on Keith Peters blog (he works there) and rumbles around the net, but it didn't really sink in until now.
Imagine being able to create your own tv show about anything you want.. uncensored. This is the power of the internet. Leading the way is Brightcove. You can start your own tv station without know Flash, protocols and the net in general (not just a show).
I imaging the Adult Entertainment industry is all over this but haven't heard much.

I'd love to be a able to start a show but with so much on my plate already, the best I could do is be in someone else's show ;)

See you in the movies (or tv show).

Wii wants to play

2006-12-04T09:20:00.000-08:00

A little off the Actionscript topic...
Picked up my Wii last week but didn't end up playing it until Friday night. It ended up to be more addictive than I thought. My wife is even more addicted to it then I am.
The Wii sports are great fun. My arm and back are stiff from playing bowling. I had to take part of the day off of playing yesterday because I was just too stiff.
All I have to say is I think Nintendo is onto something with new type of game play. It gets people off the couch and doing something semi-active. The only downfall is I've heard people are suing Nintendo due to the activity involved.
People will sue over anything..

Onward...

2006-12-01T06:08:00.000-08:00

Well I've just finished another book on Actionscript, Essential Actionscript 2.0 by Colin Moock. I found it well written, but I did glaze over in a couple of areas. I'm also a little more hands-on than theory.. but I know I will be re-reading this in the future. I will say it did give a great foundation on OOP actionscripting and I'm going to putting theory into practice very soon on my new website.
So now I'm moving on to a book that was reviewed over at Actionscript.com, Object Oriented Actionscript for Flash 8. According to Santori Canton, this book is a little more hands on. So I can't wait to get my hands on it Monday. I'll keep you posted on what I think of it, but I haven't read an Actionscript book I didn't like yet ;)

Colin Moock ripped off?

2006-11-29T12:36:00.000-08:00

From reading one of my other favorite bloggers Keith Peters new review sites, I discovered an interesting piece of software, Xpanel. What it does is trace out messages of a swf when the swf is running outside of flash.
But when I read about the class, the class name it seemed awfully familiar.. it was the Logger Class Colin talks about in his Essential Actionscript 2 book! Even the way it behaves with levels of trace statements, Debug, Info, Warning, Error and Fatal.
I guess this the price you pay when you're an ace actionscripter and write lots of books.

FITC

2006-11-27T11:03:00.000-08:00

Just got news that the next FITC is coming and it's in Toronto. I've never been to one of these festivals but I'm planning on going next year.
There is not a lot of info on the website, but I'm sure it will be available as the event comes up in April '07.

For more info: http://www.fitc.ca/event_detail.cfm?festival_id=12

Cool stuff!

2006-11-24T09:03:00.000-08:00

I was doing some research for my new portfolio and came across some cool Flash sites. They're mostly from thefwa.com (the coolest place for new websites).

An older but cool place (the future of TV? you decide): http://www.neave.tv
A simple but very nice portfolio site: http://www.jonathanyuen.com/
Something that's just cool: http://www.thestuntman.la/

Later.

BTW, Still working on the new layout. I will hopefully have something by next week.

To 3, or not to 3

2006-11-23T04:33:00.000-08:00

I've always thought I knew a fair bit about Actionscript. That was until I really started reading up on it and try to learn as much as possible to become certified. Boy, was I wayyyy off. I knew very little. After reading several books, doing some projects, and some experiments I think I'm making some headways into Actionscript. Now I've come to a crossroad. After reading some preliminary information, and learning some new tricks I'm really tempted to start learning AS3.
The problem I have with switching is my job doesn't really require it. Most projects I work with don't need it and now that I feel I'm starting to get a grip on AS2 jumping to AS3 may be a mistake. But I really, really want to learn!
I guess logic dictates that I wait until industry demands it. I'll keep reading up on it to stay on track, but for formally diving into it I'll just wait.
Hey, blogging does help. I found a solution and I wasn't even looking ;)

"Hello World"

2006-11-21T11:03:00.000-08:00

Well I've finally done it! I've gone and started my first blogger.
I'm planning on putting up what I learn in Actionscript and the Flash community here to share with whoever stumbles by, and I hopefully will meet new and interesting people along the way.

Over the next few weeks I plan on completely customizing this template to my own needs and design. Only time will tell if this is one of my web obsessions or a passing fad.

Talk to you later.