g.wygonik's flash experiments

both the listening kind and the blog kind...

i've said before how much i like my XM radio, but i must say it again after i heard a show on Fred (the _cool_ new-wave, retro station [though still not enough Gary Numan - if any...]). it seems every wednesday, there's a Fred On-Stage (or something like that) that plays live shows from bands they would normally play. yesterday it was Depeche Mode shortly after Construction Time Again album was released! what - that's like 1984? wow it was great; cheesy synth programming, missed or incorrect keyboard playing, Dave singing the wrong lyrics... good stuff!

now - the blog kind of Radio. i've been using Userland Radio for blogging for almost two full years, and i'm really quite sick of the lack of features. i suppose since there's actually no development team, i can't expect too much, but still... all the new updates keep dealing with the internal outlining stuff and not the external blogging part.

when a co-worker said he was putting some blog software up on his Half Life 2 modding domain and if i wanted an account, i said sure. he installed the FREE b2evolution blogging tools. DAMN! very nice stuff. since i'm an administrator of the blog i have really been able to see what it can do. i'm quite impressed considering it's FREE.

so, i think i'm going to be switching from Radio to b2evolution and spending my $40 a year on good hosting instead of "subscriptions" to Radio. i'll keep you posted ;-)

g.

just a quick update, since it seems that i've been "out of touch" for a while.

the week after MAX, my wife and i went to England. when i got back, i had absolutely no desire to do anything related to computers. something about being up on top of the moors in Dartmoor made me remember that it's nice not to touch anything remotely electronic.

of course, since i work with Flash pretty much exclusively at "day job", my night-time desire to do Flash things is at a low point. i played with a cell concept thingy after reading about the GalaxyGoo winter Flash challenge. just playing with a concept i've had floating in my head for a while. may put it somewhere someday...

i really need to start working on a new album (another reason i didn't want to touch my work computer at home) but something got in my way - Half-Life 2.

now, people who know me, know that i normally don't play PC games. i have my xbox, and that fills my gaming needs nicely. however, i got HL2 because it was a cheap way to get a kick-ass rendering engine, tools to make maps, and a chance to learn Maya. so, basically, i bought a game to learn to do more work! i've had some ideas in my head about maps i think would be cool, so this is a good entry point.

i've only partly played the game, and well, it's cool, but i prefer console joysticks over this mouse/keyboard thing. plus, wearing headphones and the speed of the movement made me super motion sick the first day. more sick than the first day i played Halo. wow i was sick.

anyways, i figured i'd let folks know that there is no development work being done at the moment on blazePDF. i have a couple of new features worked out, but it will be a while before i impliment them. i still have a way to get bitmaps into the PDFs, and a better knowledge of all the whacky transforms that have to go on, but getting the whole procedure down is proving to be rather frustrating. so - don't expect anything new anytime soon. sorry. :-(

i also unsubscribed from several email lists (i think everything except Flashcoders), so if you're looking for me online, email me instead.

oh well - back to reading all these Maya tutorials!

cheers
g.

back from England (pictures soon) with some sad news (not that it relates to me personally being in England)... and probably not anything you'll probably care about (except a few of you).

a huge influence on my music and lyric writing and spiritual outlook - John Balance - died this past weekend...

it was a complete shock to be sitting in a pub in London and have a friend mention it. we all toasted his memory.

i was fortunate to meet him once, when Coil played in NYC at Convergence of all things. i saw him several times here in New Orleans when they were working on a record at Nothing Studios (which, although i've heard the demo tracks of, still has not been released - at least not in the form i heard it).

i really wished that he would be one of those people i'd be lucky enough to work with someday in some way, but it appears it was not meant to be. :-(

he will be missed - though his energy and presence will live on in all of us he touched.

g.

something about this oil painting with pencil by Polish surrealist Lendrik Crzowski, entitled "The Fish is the Prophet," speaks volumes about my mood as of late.

(click for larger view)

thank god(dess)!!!

it was really nice to see people face-to-face that i only ever have the opportunity to talk to online (hi jd and scott - wish we had some more time to talk :-) and props to Adam for putting together a nice event that had a decent turnout (for us typically lazy new orleans peeps).

however - let me just say - i'll be sticking with my "day job" and my music. public speaking is just not my cup of tea. public singing is okay - just not speaking. though, perhaps it's just speaking to Mac users that has left this acidic aftertaste on my tongue...

<rant mode="on">

technology is art and information. the big picture has no concern about what platform you use - just that you use it to it's fullest to express everything. while i'm sure there were some folks in the Middle Ages who insisted that painting was the only true art, while sculpting was for lesser art or something - history has shown that both are of equal importance to the expression of their ideas, ideals, and information.

my point is - if your beliefs about what makes expression of information "correct" involve what logo is on your computer case, there's so much in this world you are going to miss. merry christmas.

</rant>

cheers
g.

just in time for MAX! (if any vegetarians came) :-)

finally, we got everything done and we're now running live - check it out: www.veggienola.com.

some of my favorite places include:

Siam - great thai food (the Pad Thai with Tofu is most yummy - order it spicy)

Surrey's - good breakfasts and a fantastic eggplant muffuletta

Slice - our new favorite pizza place (try the thick-crust square slices)

(just noticed all my favorite restaurants start with "s" - what's up with that?)

i went with a pretty vivid color scheme just to be different. most all of my client websites are very, uhm, "corporate" looking - at least in that minimal, sharp-corner kind-of way.

the admin side (the part you can't see) was all done as a Flash MX 2004 RIA - allowing easy maintenance of the listings at the site creator's convenience. (yes, i build RIAs for my wife and her websites... i know - i'm a nerd)

the front-end was all done in Dreamweaver MX 2004. the HTML/CSS is a little messy, and it's still table-based. it's not that i didn't want to make it all nice and pretty using CSS, it's just easier for me to throw these things together as tables; old-school habits die hard, my friends.

please feel free to send me any comments and/or suggestions. i plan on adding a few more features as time permits (and the wife permits).

:-)
g.

yup. due to work schedule, vacation schedule, some miscommunication, and a lack of convention $$ this late in the game at work, i will not be able to attend MAX - even though i can see the convention center from our offices ;-)

not happy about it, really, but i can deal. (though i would still like to visit the vendor area...)

however - i really still want to meet up with the folks coming to town that i only get to see once a year or so (or never in-person and we only talk online).

so, if you're coming, please comment and let me know. i of course have a car and a good knowledge of the local attractions (though i try to avoid Bourbon Street - but you'll get enough of that on your own), so i'd be happy to give little driving tours of the Garden District or what-not.

yup - i'll be giving a brief presentation on Central at the free "MiniMAX" event being held November 1st here in New Orleans. it starts right after the opening MAX welcome reception thingy.

i think it's probably geared more towards local peeps - since the presentations are just short 15 minute or so talks about the technology - but open to all that want to attend.

you can read a little more on Simon Horwith's blog (who'll be presenting also).

i've already scrapped my first presentation, and am frantically re-tooling it, but i think it will work out. i hope. i'm so used to singing and jumping around like a madman in front of people for an hour, that i don't know if i can get through a 15 minute talk.

:-)
g.

having found a local DMV that didn't have a long waiting line in it, i was all happy last month when i had to get a new license when i updated the registration on my car. i even said "yes" when the woman asked if i wished to register to vote; this being an important election and all.

well, after reading some really sad news reports about how messed up the voter registration process has become (since some people don't want you to vote), i decided to call the local voting registrar and check up on my status. i figure i'd given them 3 1/2 weeks to send me a notification - as that's about how long my wife's took (she registered a couple weeks before me).

what's your name? how do you spell that? let me read that back... nope. you're not in the computer as being able to vote in this election. you're not in the computer at all. you should have checked with us earlier.

uh, you mean i shouldn't have trusted that a government employee would actually do their job and press the button that says "register applicant to vote", or that the computer system would work relatively quickly and update some database within a matter of hours (if not minutes)?

what a fool i must be! belief in the process. uh-huh.

the nice woman then said "you could have your wife vote twice." though she kind-of laughed after saying it, this being New Orleans, i half figured we could get away with it...

i don't know what it is about this time of year, but guess what... we have another kitten.

this picture doesn't really show it - but he's TINY!! like six inches long and covered with soft fluffy bunny hair! i put together a little Flash app of his amazing hypnocat abilities here.

we were wandering through Cypress Grove cemetery this past weekend, and stopped under one of the big oak trees (yes the one in the picture!) to get out of the sun. after a few minutes of sitting there, we heard a little mew, mew, mew. then this tiny little masked face looks out at us.

we couldn't leave him there - not knowing if he was alone (as it appeared - we searched around), or if his mother was ill, dead, etc... he was really thin and seemed oh so hungry.

today we took him to the vet and he has a completely clean bill of health! woot! he got some blood work, some shots, some anti-flea drops, and a thermometer up his little butt. lorie said he was really good - until the temperature taking experience. :-)

i think we're going to keep him - and perhaps name him Cypress.

now - on top of all that - we have been feeding and taming two cats that have been in our backyard for several weeks. one of them is tame enough we can pick him up, but the black one is still a little skittish. we will be taking these to the SPCA as soon as we can get them both into holders.

then - i go outside last night, and there was another cat on our front porch who was a little scared but then came up and got a lot of loving head and neck skritching.

THEN - another black cat comes running up asking to get some lovin'.

THEN - the two backyard cats came on the porch! i had FOUR cats all wanting attention and all getting along for the most part.

i don't know what it is about September/October, but for some reason, the past two years we've been kitty central. odd. but i'm so okay with it!!!

:-)
g.

coming to MAX a couple of days early? of course you are!!! how could you miss halloween in New Orleans? i personally think it is way better than Mardi Gras - mostly because everyone has a costume on, and 20% less chance you'll step in puke or urine! (and i don't recall ever coming home from Mardi Gras and finding glitter all over me...)

walking around the French Quarter is always a fun thing to experience, but since you can do that (or will do that) every night you're here, you might like to know about some bigger events taking place.

House of Shock - very well known haunted house owned/operated by guys from Pantera (IIRC). its even been featured on VH1's "Most Metal Moments" show. it's unfortunately not within walking distance from the French Quarter (unless you can walk 6 miles and not drop). i would recommend a group of folks taking a taxi van or something. they will be open that friday, saturday, and sunday - the 29th - 31st.

Vampire Stripper Sluts from Outer Space (scroll down to 10.30.04) - a HUGE rave with some of the top DJs and music artists from all over. a night of great music and i'm sure some fantastic costumes. saturday, the 30th. held at the State Palace theatre just a few blocks up Canal Street from the official MAX hotel. easy walk from most parts of the Quarter.

Steel Pony Express - if you like motorcycles and southern rock, this may be more your thing. Saturday the 30th features Lynyrd Skynyrd and Sunday the 31st is Blood, Sweat, and Tears. all days feature local talent and there's also plenty of vendors and celebs (Jesse James of West Coast Choppers will be in town - as seen on tv!). this is another "get in a cab and go" event.

gay halloween - though you won't be able to miss it if you are wandering around Bourbon street, you could plan on attending the last two nights of this big event. multiple DJs, loads of hot people, and probably some of the most outrageous costumes of the entire weekend.

There are, of course, a ton more events - though most of them are very sub-culture specific (eg: the Endless Night fetish/vampire ball). The ones i listed are ones that just may not be listed in tourist info guides. :-)

If you feel that halloween in New Orleans is the devil's playground and we're all going to hell, then you should be able to find like-minded folk in Jackson Square by the Cathedral. They'll probably even have an extra protest sign or two.

During the day, i would highly recommend a trip to a local cemetery. There are plenty of these unique above-ground cemeteries around town, though the bigger ones are located at the end of Canal Street. Thanks to the recently re-opened Canal street car line, getting there and back is a breeze. Just be aware that some of them close early on Sunday.

Typically, my wife and i spend our halloween nights hanging around the "other" end of the French Quarter - specifically around Decatur and Esplanade/Frenchman. since most people park in this area, you get to see rivers of people in all their costumed glory - both before they get to the bars, and after on their way home. makes from great people watching.

This year we will be attending the Vampire Stripper Sluts rave - at least for a little while. i think my wife will be putting together another incarnation of her mobile suit/mecha outfit, though i will probably be going as a nerdy Flash developer... oh. wait...

:-)
g.

Now with version 1.1.1 goodness!

Fixed an issue where fonts were not being added to pages that were created after the initial font definition. All better now.

This fix only applies to the Standard edition, as that is the only one with multiple page support.

www.flash2pdf.com

:-)
g.

here's the run-down of new features:

• CMYK color mode support (Standard version only)
   
• Methods to create CMYK colors from CMYK values and from normal Flash RGB values (Standard version only)
   
• Fixed re-draw bug when using setSize and making the component smaller than it was (Standard and Lite versions) -- this is good for Central apps that can resize on the fly
   
• Zoom mode now refreshes upon setSize (Standard and Lite versions) -- now if you are at "Best Fit" zoom level, and you resize the component, the zoom level automatically refreshes at "Best Fit".

more info, a new How-To, and downloads at www.flash2pdf.com

(note to Standard version registered users - your update will be out later tonight!)

cheers
g.

well, here's a "gotcha" to watch out for.

while i was working on an app during Central 1.5 beta, i of course busted out the file uploading docs and started coding. the process is incredibly easy and works great.

however, my app would sometimes hang when i was uploading a large file to my C# upload script. it would start going, but the progress bar would just stop. it didn't want to trigger any sort of event either.

i was concerned this was a Central bug, but after a little hunting, i found that by default, .NET limits file uploads to 4Megs. this is for all uploads via HTTP - not just from Central obviously.

the fix is quite easy: simply edit the web.config file for the folder that your script resides in (or the root of the app where it is) and add the following to the <system.web> section:

     <httpRuntime maxRequestLength="fileSizeLimitInKilobytes" />

here's a complete web.config from one of my test apps:

     <configuration>
        <system.web>
           <httpRuntime maxRequestLength="40960" />
        </system.web>
     </configuration>

that's it! nothing hard there. this now allows any upload script in this web-app folder to accept up to a 40Meg file. of course you can set your limit to whatever you need, or leave it at 4Megs if you never expect files of that size (but you never know what a user will try to upload and you need to be ready to handle it!!)

(you may have noticed that "Note" in the docs about this 4Meg limit. well, that was my request, and so this is the "fix" for .NET [thanks MM for putting my blurb in there!!])

:-)
g.

i've had several people inquire as to how they can get italic text in a PDF created with the blazePDF components. well, i finally got off my butt and made a "How-To" article to cover this! If you've ever wondered, now you'll know!

Read about it here!

cheers
g.

so stop talking already!!! i'm paying for this service and expect to hear music - NOT your rambling on about how you hate flying, or how many energy pills you have in front of you! and i know your name is Kirstin because you say it every five minutes - "Like, oh my god! I'm Kirstin"

i speak specifically of the industrial/synthpop/ebm/pseudo-goth show on The System on XMRadio on Saturdays at 2pm CST.

first, let me just say that i love my XMRadio. i have only listened to a cd maybe one time in the car in the past 2 months or so of having my Roady2. and i really do appreciate that XM gave a spot to a genre of music that is not that big in the states. it might turn a few people on to something a little different than the normal 24/7 trance/house line-up on this channel (which i do like). it makes me feel good to hear a lot of my friends and folks i've met or played shows with on "the radio." i imagine that they might have even played us before, or maybe in the future (probably not now if they ever check their referrer logs ;-).

but i got XM to hear music i like... not two giggly girls - one that keeps telling us who she is, and one that mumbles incoherently - talking between every two or three tracks. just play the damn music! if this were college radio, i could forgive the chatter. you don't hear the other djs on this station blathering on and on about mindless garbage. they play the music, give little "email me with a request" statements, and their show promos. period.

despite the fact that apparently their next show is their one-year anniversary show, i can't help but think they are turning off more people than turning on. i mean, i make this music professionally, and i can't listen to their show without being filled with rage (so much so that i needed to blog about it!!!)

it's like the one dark spot on XMRadio - and it's the only one i actually personally care about! UGH! i was going to post on the XM fan site forums, but i don't want to give any thought to anyone that the show should be cancelled. i mean, two hours of EBM on the radio is not long enough IMO. *sigh*

sorry for the rant - and sorry if this sounds harsh. i'm a nice guy. really.

:-)
g.

...somehow we made it through-ew-ew

yup... 30 minutes or so of light rain, some winds, and nothing else. somewhat dull compared to the ass whooping assured us by the television people. (at least for this hurricane we didn't have some blathering bitch-idiot of a news anchor on CNN going on about how "with the power out, people in gated communities have to be careful the 'bad people' don't get in" like we heard with Frances. uh, bitch lady, people are losing their homes and possibly their lives... a) show some compassion, and b) they don't care about you and your gated community snob bitch friends when they're just trying not to drown)

NOLA was sooooooo lucky to miss this one. whew!

thanks for everyone's thoughts and concern. now off to bed. back to work tomorrow of course!

g.

Macromedia released Central 1.5 (Gemini) tonight. woot! i know there will be a ton of blog posts about this in the morning, so i'm not going to say much, except that the new features and changes are most wonderful - especially the new licensing. corporate Central apps, here we come! :-)

while still considered a "developer release" the new features make for some damn fine real-world app possibilities. i'll be finishing up one here in a week or so, now that one of my other projects is complete (but not yet "live").

between Ellipsis (Flash 7.2) and the radical changes in licensing policies between Central 1.0 and 1.5, it's mind-blowingly cool to see the changes taking place aboard the mothership in regards to visible interest in customer concerns. go MM, go!

now you go see what's new and give it a whirl.

cheers
g.

well... if hurrcane ivan is going to hit us as close as it is looking, i think we'll have to get out to someplace that isn't already below sea-level. luckily we have family not two hours from us; to the west. hopefully we can stay with them...

we don't actually want to leave, since we feel pretty secure in this house, but even the second-floor will be underwater should the worst hit. :-\

so, if we do leave, i will be taking all my computers - including my server - so the following sites may not be available at some point over the next several days (perhaps weeks depending upon severity of any damage):

• flash2pdf.com (which includes all downloads including purchase links)
• flashlounge.org
• cutratebox.com
• veggienola.com
• and some older C# and PHP experiments that are linked to previous posts.

this weblog will be available as it is hosted externally, though i don't know if i'll be updating or not if we go.

let's hope that shearing they keep talking about kicks in and pushes it further to the east. i don't mind staying if we're on the west side of the thing... of course i'll still have to deal with finding wood to cover 30+ windows and getting it home in a Toyota Echo :-(

l8r
g.

mine have... if anyone has tried to view my robosapien videos, they will have noticed that the videos no longer seem to work. but now i know why.

i had wondered why they stopped, but i've been too busy with other issues to investigate. however, a little tidbit in a flashcoders post about how some hosts block certain extensions made me get concerned. the post said that the hosting company i had these FLVs on was blocking files with the FLV extension! they have been a great host for several sites of mine, as well as for some of my clients, so this just floored me.

a quick call to tech support (for things like this, i'll skip the polite web form) got things figured out right away. the host had recently upgraded all their servers (or at least the one my site was on) to Windows 2003 Server. their quick checks of the Macromedia forums pulled up a thread with the bad news that other people with Win2003 Server also can't get FLVs to work!

so - if your FLVs stopped working, and you don't know why, did your host upgrade to Win2003 Server? could be the root of the issue. :-\

now... if anyone knows how to get this fixed, please let me know! the host said they would work to fix it if they know what to do about it. anyone?

UPDATE: not 10 minutes after my initial post, Graeme comments about setting the MIME type for FLVs, i email tech support, they put the MIME type settings in, and BOOM! everything works great. so - if your host upgraded to Win2003 Server, and you don't see your FLVs anymore - get them to add the MIME type setting!

a big shout-out to webhost4life's great tech support for working so fast on this issue. considering i didn't set the priority to urgent, they were really fast to react. everything else must be running smoothly for them - as usual! :-)

now - they did let me know that this is a PER USER change they are making. so if you host with them, and you have this issue, you will have to contact their online helpdesk and ask that the FLV MIME type be set on your virtual server.

cheers
g.

 

convergence...

my friend and co-worker Ethan Anderson finally gets his site up and online (though still "in-progress") AND MM releases the Flash video kit for Dreamweaver.

so the timing is right to give a shout-out to Ethan, pass on his site to you - www.bigmucho.com - and to talk about how cool i think Flash video is. :-)

one of the videos on the BigMucho site is for my band, which he assembled for a recent stockstock.org contest. he placed in the top 20 out of 100+ entries, and the video was shown "on the big screen" in Seattle. rock on Ethan!

he didn't hesitate to use Flash video for his site (and on his for-fun site www.realethan.com) once he saw the performance in the Flash 7 player. i know that he'll be picking up Sorenson Squeeze 4 now that it's out. i think i will be too. :-)

i don't "do" video editing - it's just a low-priority hobby - but sweet zombie jesus! there's absolutely no reason anymore NOT to have video on our site (the band). it's stupidly cheap to buy a decent camera, i already have a machine with a firewire port and a ton of drive space, and now with the Flash video kit for Dreamweaver and the fine, fine progressive download player... serious no brainer. maybe i'll have to consider one of the <gulp> pay services if i get enough going... i just hate having to host things externally instead of in-house... maybe one day MM will release a low-end, lower-price FlashComm server... ;-)

well - i hope to be seeing a lot more video on sites now - so get busy people! (just hopefully not all ads, though...)

:-)
g.

* possibly offensive rant ahead - you have been warned *

i've lost respect for Cartoon Network's Adult Swim tonight... after watching an only mildly amusing Family Guy where the words "slut" and "whore" are thrown around like candy in a day care center, i watch the Futurama where the professor says "Sweet Zombie Jesus!" - except Cartoon Network won't let them say "Jesus". so it ends up "Sweet Zombie (silence)" (with the professor's lips still moving).

from the Toon Zone Forums:

 M.) How come Futurama can't say "Sweet Zombie Jesus!" but when Dad says "Who? Jesus?" or when Farnsworth mentions the second coming of Jesus or *insert examples of casual usage of Jesus* is ok?

Because "sweet zombie Jesus!" is an exclamatory usage of the name Jesus. Casually mentioning Jesus, or making fun of Jesus, or having his statue smile at you, is acceptable. But saying "Jesus!" in any fashion on Adult Swim is considered unacceptable. Yes it sounds silly, but those are the rules. Adult Swim isn't discriminating against Futurama. (since swearing in Jesus' name is not in the Toonzone censor, we'll let you do it around here)

if that's in any way the "official word" about CN's policy, that's the most stupid thing i've ever heard. "you are a whore!" is okay - but "sweet zombie jesus!" is against the "rules"??!?! WTF?!

uh? let's see... it aired on FOX while people were eating dinner, but oh no - not late night when kids are asleep and there's a warning the programs might be unsuitable for children. (not that i think that's unsuitable - especially compared to a lot of other things on tv)

bastards...

here's a link with a little more info about it being cut:

http://www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet/GuidePageServlet/showid-249/epid-1558/

i turned it off immediately after the censorship and walked away. losers.

g.

ps - yes, i know censorship happens all the time in places we don't like it. this just pissed me off coming off the Family Guy "whore" episode and remembering an in-between where the adult swim email back-and-forth had some pseudo-haxor "fukimgod" (not that exactly, but i remember it started with "fuk") word used over and over in a rather childish way...

my first testing of completely taking apart my Robosapien, painting it, and putting it back together making sure it still works is over! and it does still work! woot!

i was nervous because i'm normally really bad at keeping track of what goes where when i take things apart. this time i actually kept all the screws for each piece in different little areas! not just one big pile of screws!

anyways, i found some cool spray paints at Lowe's - Plastikote Camouflage colors. i got the olive green. they are all matte, but my clear protectant layer is semi-gloss, so it's still a little shiny. but not as disgustingly shiny as the white and black plastic original (as you can kind-of see from the side-by-sides)

i made sure i wiped down all the parts with alchohol before i sprayed them. i didn't sand them because, well, "it's not that deep" as my friend Karlos says. i mean, if it scratches off, so be it. it's just for fun. FUN!

now to take apart the other leg and the arms (which scare me really bad... from a taking apart point of view)

 
 

:-)
g.

...Panther and PearPC!

ok - so, my true love didn't really give me that and it was a few days before the start of august, but it was a clever lyrical replacement.

anyways, i promised some people i would let them know how my experiment with PearPC on my WinXP laptop was going - and here's some scoop.

the good news is that OSX 10.3 is running on my WinXP laptop. is that really good news? well... yes. for a 0.2 release of a hardware platform emulation software package - yes. by 1.0 it should rule.

let me explain why this is such a good thing. if you're a web developer (which you probably are if you're reading this blog), you may already understand - unlimited CROSS PLATFORM SITE TESTING for the price of OSX (~$110US).

you don't actually need to buy a Mac now just to test your CSS, your Flash, your Java, et al. you don't have to pay a service $XX per month for static screenshots of your site, or bug your friends all the time to "check out this URL. does it look right?".

when i'm developing a website, i test constantly on every browser i have installed on Windows - Mozilla, FireFox, IE4, IE5, IE5.5, IE6, etc... i keep browsers installed just for testing. (i use FireFox for 95% of my daily browsing)

my sites are meant for low to medium traffic, and the budgets are tiny (if they exist at all). so anything i can do on the cheap to make sure my clients' customers are happy is a good thing. so now, if i can buy OSX and run it when i need to test something out - i say "thank you jeezus! ha-lay-loo!"

other good things - once booted, the UI itself is quite responsive and since it's really OSX, all the cool UI features do work and make the basic WinXP desktop behind the PearPC window look quite juvenile. also, you should be able to kick down to the command prompt (again since it's really OSX) - but i didn't try that. i prefer GUIs. which, on that note, i also recommend using the third-party PearPC Control Panel tool - very easy and convenient to switch between different configurations (screen resolution, extra harddrive configs, and so on) without having to edit config files and type command line strings.

i should also point out that since this is actually a PowerPC emulator, you can run other x86 PPC OSs (like GNU/Linux). with the PearPC Control Panel, switching between emulated machines is as easy as double-clicking an icon.

now the bad news - it's SLOOOOOWWWWW. ouch slow. on my 1.13Ghz PIIIm, it took 9 hours to install just the first CD of OSX. "holy crap" you might be saying. i say the same. it takes 6 minutes 15 seconds to boot into the OS, and 45 seconds for system preferences to open from the dock bar (though the icon bounces smoothly).

also, i could not get networking to run. at this point in PearPC's development, actually getting networking from OSX through your PC to the net is a convoluted mess of freeware proxies, forum posts to other forum posts to flame posts, and a little bit of old-fashioned voodoo. i'm not saying it can't be done - but it tried my patience way too easily.

the slowness is probably based more on my hardware than PearPC itself (though it is generally considered to be slow - as a recent poll of "next most important feature" had "faster speed" as #1) - but the networking logistics hell kills it.

but really, i don't really expect to run Final Cut Pro on it or anything - just Safari, Mac IE, FireFox, Mozilla, and any other web browser that may be out come PearPC 1.0 :-)

so... is it a web developer's saviour? not yet.

should you run out and install PearPC now? no, not for any real work.

should you keep an eye on it in the future? yes - most definitely! 

i will suggest playing with it if you have the time, disk space, and some patience - it's actually kind-of fun and really quite interesting.

but now that i have seen it run and i know that i works. i will be deleting everything i did to regain some precious harddrive space (this is a laptop afterall). but i will be keeping an eye on progress - and will probably re-install should the networking nightmare be straightened out. i can wait for 6 minutes to boot if i can see all my sites in their Safari-rendered splendor.

:-)

fwiw
g.

for those of you who may still use the Flash MX 2004 built-in AS editor panel, here are some handy tips that you may not have realized.

one of the things i liked from the VS.NET editor was ctrl+shift+space to view the Intellisense (code hints) for a function after the initial display was gone. that shortcut doesn't work directly in Flash, but ctrl+space does! much better than taking your hands off the keyboard and pressing the little button with the mouse.

also, were you aware that you could set options on how auto-format formats your code? things like " '{' on line after if, for, switch, while, etc. " and the sweet-sounding " Don't cuddle '}' and else " - aawwwww - code cuddling... to get to this options dialog, press the Action Panel's menu button (the thing in the panel's titlebar all the way over to the right) and select "Auto Format Options...".

there are quite a number of things in there you may not have noticed - like importing and exporting scripts or the shortcut for pinning the current script...

honestly i never noticed these options before, simply because i would have figured they would (or should) have been in the Action Panel's toolbar - up there with "Debug Options" and "View Options". i've been so used to most panels having simple close/help/maximize options from the titlebar menu, that i overlooked the options in this panel.

some good stuff :-)

fwiw
g.

whew! no more 56k dial-up! back to DSL...

blown modem - blown router/access point - three blown network cards... all better now (but still one blown xbox)

all experiments are back up online so have at! :-)

g.

monday my wife told me on the way home from work that our DSL was down and the XBox wasn't working. she also told me that during the daily storm, lightening struck really close. like in-the-backyard close.

sure enough, my DSL modem, router/access-point, and the network cards on my laptop and her computer were fried... :- OUCH!

so monday night, a nice bellsouth phone person tries all sorts of tests and determines the line is okay and schedules to send a technician out to the house to check the line here... on Thursday! three days of no DSL after four years of nothing but hi-speed! OMG!

i realized yesterday that i still had an old, slow, <gulp> 56k modem in my laptop - and bellsouth gives DSL users backup dial-up connectivity. whew!

now... how do i use a dial-up modem? for the life of me i couldn't remember. it's really been that long. i felt like an idiot. i actually had to use, for the first time ever, WinXP's "Help and Assistance" app! gack! finally got everything setup and it's keeping me sane. unfortunately i have about 100Megs of graphic files to upload for one of my freelance clients, and i can't get the newest downloads for some of the other projects i'm working on - they're just too big. such bad timing.

but i replaced my router already, will be pulling a network card out of one of my old computers in the closet for my wife's machine, my music computer is fine, i gotta check my server but i think it's ok... unfortunately, i'll have to either go strictly wireless on my laptop (which luckily still works) or get a USB or PCMCIA network card as i have too much work to finish to let someone take the machine to fix. :-(

anyways, if anyone is reading some of my posts and getting errors connecting to some of my experiments, you now know why. as soon as everything is working again, i'll post and let you know. sorry for any inconvenience.

oh - and if you're wondering - yes, our XBox is fried too! it was in a completely different room, on a power-strip with other electronics that weren't damaged. it just bit the dust. power just not getting past the internal transformer. luckilly i have until November (when MechAssault 2 comes out) to replace it before my wife kills me. ;-)

:-)
g.

just a quick note to say that the blazePDF Standard component was updated to v1.0.3 this morning.

a bug was brought to my attention that multi-page, final PDF documents would display in Adobe Reader with only one page. this issue is resolved. also fixed is a display issue with adding multiple pages using the addPages() method (this bug did not effect final output).

note that this version is only an update to the Standard edition, since the Lite edition does not support multiple page.

if you have purchased the Standard edition and did not receive an email with the new MXP attached, please email me.

cheers
g.

what a horrible feeling - waking up, turning on computer, and it just won't boot. no post info - no video output (it's a laptop so you can tell) - nothing. power-down, power-up a few times. finally get to windows. then it hangs. power-down, power-up. some bios message about amount of RAM being incorrect. try to edit in bios util - computer freezes. power-down, power-up a few more times. nothing. re-seat processor and RAM. nothing.

bah!

take out the RAM - power-up. works fine. the extra RAM (which is the only thing accessable on this laptop apparently) is, i guess, fried. so i'm still able to work with 256Megs instead of 512, but wow that was scary. all my current work, my archived work, my beta work. graphics, code, everything...

now it's all backed up to one of my other machines. whew. sorry. had to rant.

:-)
g.

ok - so not much directly Flash related here today, but since some of you have asked recently how the kittens are doing, i figured i'd post a little pic or two... as well as give a general update (for anyone who cares).

as my wife says "They like to sleep together behind the curtains, like little kids in a fort tent." indeed. happens all the time. Gummitch (the boy in the front) really likes to prop himself up against the wall and just sit there and watch. like if we had a miniature lounge chair, he'd use it - all relaxed and sprawled. he's weird.

the little girl (we still haven't found the right name for her) likes to get behind the sheers and walk on narrow window sills.

one last one of Gummitch (taken a few months ago) that my wife uses for her photoblog livejournal icon (which, btw, she has some great new photos up [i love the magnolia - which she got a huge 24x36 print of and it looks dyn-o-mite - gotta love pro-sumer digital cameras])

anyways - i've been terribly busy with some web and graphic design work, lots of different work i can't talk about, of course "the day job", and the band. my friend and co-worker ethan anderson just made the finalists in this year's stockstock.org film editing festival with a music video to our newest track "aperture". i have a FLV of the video, but need some time and space to host it. my band-mate prefers we not post the video yet until the cd is released (a label compilation), but our label has been really slow in getting it out (it was supposed to be out for a festival in detroit back in may!). we'll see.

anyways, i've played with some new things for the blazePDF components - i can now add rotated text to a document. just gotta work out a good API for this feature. also i've revisited the application i had to convert jpegs to postscript and found i can control the resolution (i thought it was only outputting 72dpi images). just have to make some sort of in-between application (probably web service) to take the jpeg, make the postscript, then edit the postscript into the PDF code i need. then i have to make the methods in the component use this data and place the image in the PDF. but these are the last things i'm thinking about - i really need to finish up some tracks for the album...

so - back to work now.

cheers
g.

i'll be in florida for a long weekend on personal business, so if my server or connection goes out while i'm gone, some of my sites may become unavailable. if you try to hit www.flash2pdf.com, www.cutratebox.com, or www.flashlounge.org between now and monday, and they aren't working - odds are it's the server and i'll fix it when i get back.

sorry up-front for any inconvenience.

cheers
g.

well - thanks to some discussion by folks at work, i found that Bellsouth offered a "DSL Xtreme" option now - 3MBit down, 384k up with a static IP - all for "as low as $44.95" a month.

the cool part is i was able to "upgrade" to this - and now i pay less than what i was paying! i was paying $49.95 a month for basic DSL and an extra $14.95 for the static IP = $64 a month!!! now i'm down to $47. less money, twice the bandwidth. awesome. thanks bellsouth! (for once ;-)

g.

another item off my plate - here's the release of AFTERTHOUGHT 1.0 - a free, stand-alone, real-time, Flash trace log file viewer application -- complete with C# source code and project files for SharpDevelop.

yes, C# - that means this app requires the .NET 1.1 runtime be installed on your computer.

v1.0 features include:

• real-time viewing of trace log file when running Flash apps in the browser
• automatic color coding of general player warnings, player comments (eg: "probably a case mismatch"), security sandbox warnings, and recursion warnings that don't show up in the in-IDE output panel
• toggle display of player warnings
• toggle display of user trace() calls
• toggle "stay on top" window mode
• edit the MM.CFG file (and create it if it doesn't exist yet)
• checks for the existance of an existing log file (again, creating one if it doesn't exist yet)
• empty the log file from inside the app (while not monitoring the log)
• right-click context menu with major functions

download AFTERTHOUGHT v1.0 here (37k ZIP file)

you can find some history on AFTERTHOUGHT (including what the name stands for) and why tracing from the browser is so cool by reading here and here.

i have set up a new forum section on the blazepdf.com forums for all AFTERTHOUGHT discussion. so if you have questions, comments, etc. - feel free to stop by. i will be addressing bug fixes, but i think this is the final (read: only) release i'll have of this project. there were a lot of things i wanted to add, but i just have too many other things going on right now. perhaps someday i'll get back to it (of course the source is included, so feel free to add, update, etc at your leisure ;-).

i'm going out of town for a few days this weekend, so i may not have immediate response ability, but i will get back to everything early next week.

cheers
g.

due to popular demand, i added a couple more videos of my robosapien doing what it does best - destroying puny humans - oh, i mean, acting all cool and robotic.

video one - the first 15 seconds of it's Kung-Fu demo (which lasts about 30-45 seconds, and ends with it saying "ouch!")

video two - picking up a Mr. Tick wind-up (weird that i couldn't find anything online about Mr. Tick - perhaps he's known as some other name?)

as usual, these videos are FLVs and require the Flash 7 player since they use progressive downloading. and what's up with the video being all weird and messed-up the first time through, but okay upon subsequent viewings?

:-)
g.

yes - i'm a geek. a co-worker sent me an email at lunch via his camera phone showing a boxed robosapien in the store he was at. a quick return call and a "get me one NOW" message worked! i now have my own robosapien!

FLV video 1 - FLV video 2 (sorry for the weird rotation on this one)

things i love about it:

• great fluid motion with cool (though unintentionally cool) servo motor sounds,
   
• the fact that it's arm trembles and it says "Rosebud!" before turning off,
   
• the built-in dance program's song is an extra-cheesy version of "You Spin Me Round" by Dead or Alive (!!!)
   
• it's head looks just like Glitch from Metal Arms - Glitch in the System,
   
• it scares the bejeezus out of the cats,
   
• it's the first step towards my 40' personal mecha

things i don't like about it:

• it came scratched and dirty - and not in a good way. like someone in the factory's 3-year-old played with it for a while...
   
• it's white (i will sooooo be taking it apart to repaint)
   
• it veers off to the left while walking

i am anxious for more geeks to get hold of one so they can disect it and post how to hack/mod it! my electronics skills are crap... however, i would love to replace the built-in sound samples with really strange things, i have to put a wireless webcam on it, and i would love to change it from IR to RF.

all in all - not bad for $99 (plus $10 in batteries!)

fixed an issue with the Euro symbol not being properly escaped in the PDF document. all better now.

be sure to set the "euroChars" flag in the drawString() method when setting text with the Euro character in it, otherwise it won't get escaped as it needs to.

www.flash2pdf.com for downloads and info. (those of you who have purchased the Standard version have been sent an update email, so be on the lookout. the email contains the new MXP, so no need to re-download from the site.)

:-)
g.

due to a minor display bug being fixed, i have updated the AS2-compatible blazePDF Lite and blazePDF Standard components to version 1.0.1.

if you have downloaded the Lite component, please visit www.flash2pdf.com/download.html and re-download, then re-install the MXP. if you have purchased the Standard component, please follow the instructions in your confirmation email to re-download your MXP.

sorry for any inconvenience. :-)

ps - the bug was that the bottom of the page would be cut off at 100% zoom by using either the setZoom100() method or the toolbar button. the display was correct at other zoom levels, and would output correctly in the final PDF. nothing show-stopping, just slightly annoying. thanks to Meik H. for pointing this out.

i know - it's about time!

there are two versions - Lite which is FREE, and Standard which is $40 US. The biggest difference is that the Lite version only allows one page, while the Standard version has unlimited pages (well... 99,999 max). subsequently, the Lite version doesn't have the page navigation functionality or all of the toolbar buttons that the Standard version does. The Standard version also supports per-page bookmarks.

best thing to do is check out the website for more version information, downloads, and purchase information: www.flash2pdf.com

a big shout out to all the kind folks who helped me by finding bugs, pointing out my typos and giving their thoughts on how some of the new functionality should work. they all rock!

now - i'm going to be starting to work on our new album, so my time will be limited in regards to these components. of course if there are major show-stopping bugs, i will take care of them (but i don't think there are any more at this point). i will try to answer questions on the forums as soon as possible, but no new work for functionality will be in process for some time.

whew - i think i dotted all the i's and crossed all the t's... so have at it!

enjoy!

between final bug checks and documentation updates for the blazePDF components, i managed to get real-time updating of the Flash log file in AFTERTHOUGHT working! much thanks to some Tail-like C# code i found on the net to get the file-sharing issue resolved.

get the beta here: http://www.flash2pdf.com/downloads/afterthought_beta.zip

again, you'll need the .NET runtime installed.

added features:

• the MM.CFG file editing stuff is in-place and works... kind-of (see "known issues" below);
   
• added option to make the AFTERTHOUGHT application stay on top of other windows, so you can watch the trace while your browser-based movie is playing in the back;
   
• you can clear the log file now (should it get too big, or hit the maximum). this option is only available when you are not monitoring the file;
   
• updated UI - whole app is now resizable, and text area fills form.

known issues:

• while the basic MM.CFG file editing/creation works, it's not looking in the correct path. i am looking in the user profile folder (eg: C:\Documents and Settings\username) instead of looking for the HOMEDRIVE and HOMEPATH environment variables;
   
• also, the MM.CFG config dialog doesn't actually reflect what the settings are if the file already exists

so - download and enjoy.

btw - i've been using the wonderful and free #develop app to write this application. i created the form initially on day-job computer with VS.NET, just as a test, and imported the whole project into #develop and it all worked perfectly. more info can be found here: http://www.icsharpcode.com

it's pretty easy, really. simply forget to back up the Flash player folder structure with the .sol files in it. works like a charm.

see, my computer at work had to be redone and i backed up everything i could think of - IIS settings, ODBC DSN config stuff, bookmarks from FireFox... but after i got my machine back and i went to try out the new AS2 stub code generation from Grent Skinner's gModeler, i found that all the data i had modelled was gone. ka-boom. blah!

i forgot to back-up all the .sol files. guess we know why they are named ".SOL" - because i sure was! :-)

oh well... live and learn.

g.

this past friday we were to take Maggie to the vet for 11:30am to be put to sleep. she was so obviously in pain, though she wouldn't show it outwardly. she was so far gone on friday morning that instead of going to work, i called in and spent the entire morning sitting with her (and crying). while her departure was inevitable, the ravages of her disease was overwhelming to me. with Baby, there were no outward signs of her cancer. with Maggie, she was literally skin and bones - and her muscles were starting to be effected friday morning so she would kind-of twitch a lot. it was very upsetting. she was terribly cold so we moved her to a spot where the sun was coming in and let her sit in the sun for a while. she seemed to enjoy that.

11:15am rolled around and we gathered ourselves together, got maggie into a carrier and went to the vet's office. when we arrived there 10 minutes later, i discovered that Maggie had passed on the drive over.

in some ways i was happy about this - she died naturally, without medecine/drugs and her pain was over. it also upset me though, because we could have let her stay in the sunshine and pass at home. but there's the possibility that either the stress of the car ride (the roads in new orleans are far from smooth) or that she knew where we were going and that it was that time - and she let go.

she was a dear friend, loved beyond words, and will be missed forever.

it's kind-of weird, however. in the last year or so, i've seen two of our cats pass away and helped another cat give birth to two new kittens. i don't think i can take either again for another few years.

thanks for everyone's kind words of support. we do appreciate it very much. :-)

today has been weird. they say things come in threes, and i think this cycle's bad things all hit me today.

1) not too major - just annoying. my day job computer finally freaked out so bad, i had to give it to IT to rebuild from scratch. it started yesterday when right-clicking on an icon or double-clicking an icon would cause explorer to hang for 30-45 seconds before showing the context menu or launching the file. bad stuff. so day job work - on hold. compiling the next build of AFTERTHOUGHT - on hold (i keep forgetting to bring the source home and using that open source C# builder). bah.

2) just plain messed up. our CEO took the programming team (all 5 of us) out to lunch because of two birthdays in the group in the past three days, and to thank us for working hard to keep us in business. we went to a really expensive, fancy, classic New Orleans, owned-by-a-world-famous-chef restaurant that my wife has always wanted to go to. after a complimentary meat-based appetizer that i politely passed off to my CEO, and a round of cute, little, french bread loafs, the main course came out. after the second bite of my food (the only vegetarian meal on the menu made specially for me since its not on the lunch menu) - i see a little roach sticking out of the sauce. like it just dropped off the ceiling. i told our CEO who was sitting next to me but no-one else. they didn't even notice i sent my whole plate back with the waiter who was still at the table. apparently though the restaurant comp'ed the entire lunch - the whole table's - including the most awesome Banana's Foster i've ever had. and they are going to send me a gift certificate for a free dinner, so i can take my wife. so good with the ultra-creepy.

3) the worst of all. i had to make an appointment with death for tomorrow. not for me, but for my eldest cat Maggie. whatever disease she has been dealing with for the last year or so (that several thousands of dollars in vets couldn't find) finally caught up with her. for the past week she has growled at food, only drinks water which she urinates out after 5 minutes, and has lost all fat and muscle mass. she weighs almost nothing. my PDA weighs more than her right now. she doesn't appear to be in pain, but you can see it in her eyes. she's put up a good fight, but she is losing it rapidly. so, 11:30am, Friday April 16th, she will be humanely put to sleep. i'm kind-of praying that she dies naturally before then, because i hate the thought of having to resort to this. i don't want her to die, but i don't want her to suffer any more either. i guess since dealing with Baby last February, and having to let her go, i am less reluctant this time. it is a peaceful end to their suffering. Maggie has been with us for 12 years or so, and she was apparently 5 years old when we got her. so she has lived a long, happy life (at least with us).

time to walk away from the computer, go sit next to Maggie and pet her and talk to her. then i'll go curl up in a ball in the corner and wait. don't expect any updates for a few days. sorry. :-(

blah
g.

what's the final word here folks?

i've read in the same thread that it can't be done and that it can be done...

there's not one word in any MM documentation about how to do it...

AAAAAAARGH!

obviously, i'd like to have auto-complete working for the blazePDF components. in fact, since my MXPs are working fine, this is the only thing holding back release!

of course by "auto-complete" i mean the Intellisense-style part of coding. you know, where you type "myPDF." and as soon as you press the period, a list of functions come up. i can get the can get codehints working fine - once you type in a known function, the parameters show up and stuff. but you have to know the command in the first place.

also, any clue about getting a custom component's class to show up during strict typing? eg: var myPDF: (magically a list of classes shows up and i would really like my classes to be in there). this can't be "embedded" can it? i mean, there's things like RDBMSResolver in there - which is clearly an added-on Pro-only component...

i've been through every tutorial and help file online... every devnet article... every Flashcoders thread... every file in the Configurations folder... opened every Flash-related executable in Notepad looking for certain words... web forums and email lists in languages i don't understand... i've even dug into every MM swc just to see if there was any special "secret" file... nothing.

how can it be??? anyone? anyone? Beuller?

this worked so well in MX... why, oh why did MM break another good, working feature for MX2004?

annoyed
g.

since discovering the cool Flash player warnings and such, i figured a simple app to show the log file would be very useful.

enter AFTERTHOUGHT - Another Flash Tool, Explicitly Related To Hidden Or Undocumented "Genuinely Helpful Things"

of course i had to take it beyond a simple file viewer. here's a rundown of app's features:

• automatically looks for mm.cfg and determines:
   
• if mm.cfg even exists
• if tracing is enabled
• where the log file is located
   
• two filtering options:
   
• Show/Hide Flash player "Warning" lines (and informational output)
• Show/Hide user trace() output
   
• "watch" the log file for activity and updates the display "on-the-fly" - almost like a realtime Output Panel outside the Flash IDE(!)
   
• color-code the output ("Warnings" are red, informational text is gray italic, user trace is black)
   
• copy selected text to clipboard
   
• clear the on-screen display (and perhaps the log file too)
   
• major features from the menu are also in a context-menu over the text area

not bad for a few hours of work - gotta love .NET :-)

oh yes - since the Debugging configuration stuff appears to only be for Windows, i opted for the ease of C# to make this app. so you'll need the .NET runtime installed - but you should already have that installed because you've already been using Mike Chambers' Flash Resource Manager app, right? :-)

there are a few things i need to fix and add before i'll release it, but that won't be for a couple of days (see below for why).

if you really want to play with an alpha version, you can download it here - but remember it will just be replaced in a few days.

some things to note about this "alpha" release:

• real-time update isn't working correctly. basically you'll have to manually update the display using the "Rescan for Log File" option. either the Flash player is locking the log file, writing to it in some weird way that doesn't trigger a Windows "change" notification event on the file, or something else my wee brain doesn't know. auto-update works fine if you manually update the file and re-save it. the reason it will take me a few days to fix this is that my dev machine at work is so whacked i can't actually get the Flash player logging to work there. but i also can't update to XPsp1 because the installer "doesn't support my version of Windows" (uh, XP Pro isn't supported by the XP Service Pack?!)... so that's just my work machine.
   
• the app is a fixed-sized window. i'll probably make it resizable, but for now it's not.
   
• i will probably make the "clear" option clear out the log file too - providing Flash isn't doing some weird locking on the file (see real-time update above)
   
• this tool is COMPLETELY UN-SUPPORTED and i make no guarantees this won't completely destroy your hard-drive (though it really shouldn't - i mean, it hasn't destroyed mine and i've run it many times today on two different machines)

i fully plan on releasing the C# code with this too, so someone can perhaps enhance it into a more robust app - like creating the mm.cfg file and setting options in it, and also perhaps working with the mms.cfg file and it's settings, or whatever...

all for now. enjoy.

a couple of weeks ago i reported on the configuration settings to allow the debug Flash player to log trace output to a local text file. out of curiousity i opened up that log file today and saw something quite interesting - a very detailed log from whatever the last Flash movie i viewed in IE was. what was interesting was that there were all sorts of "Warning:" lines that specified that functions didn't exist or variables were not defined. i thought "wow - that movie's developer was hardcore in their tracing."

but something didn't seem right. i didn't think a developer could trap if a called function didn't exist or a variable hadn't been defined. i mean, the Flash player just fails gracefully, no? (yeah, you could probably create a very robust architecture that could handle these things, i know... but 96% of Flash coders don't, i'm sure :-)

well - i fired up MX2004 and typed in the just following code (and no other code):

_level0.onMove();
trace(y);

i compiled it without any errors, and then published and opened the HTML page in IE.  checking my log file, it contained this:

Warning: onMove is not a function
Warning: Reference to undeclared variable, 'y'
undefined

NEAT! all the things that fail silently in the player seemed to be output here. these things don't even show up in the Output Panel in Flash if you are remote debugging.

there was one other thing, then, that i wanted to test. so this time i changed my code to this (and only this):

_level0.onMove();
var Y=0;
trace(y);
trace(Y);

my flashlog.txt output after viewing this movie:

Warning: onMove is not a function
Warning: Reference to undeclared variable, 'y'
-- Probably a case mismatch.
undefined
0

HOLY CRAP! "Probably a case mismatch"!!!!!! this could be very useful for all you folks updating AS1 scripts to AS2 - especially with strict case requirements (eg: Y != y)

:-)
g.

a couple months ago i was having discussions with a senior recruiter at MM about, well, what do you think recruiting peeps do? he commented to me about how nice the weather in New Orleans must be in early March. i agreed, and commented that despite our brutal summers, NOLA would make a great place to have MAX this year (since IMO, Autumn in NOLA can be quite nice).

BOOM! today i find out that, indeed, MAX 2004 is in New Orleans!

thanks Macromedia! now i can make it to a Flash convention other than FFNYC! :-D

party at my house! (well, maybe... ;-)

ps - if you're curious, a promotion at day job thwarted (albiet in a good way) my talks with MM.

five words - digital cable is pure evil!

that, a butt-load of deadline work at "day job", and trying to figure out what we're doing for our next album has kept me from being able to spend the amount of time on the blazePDF AS2 components as i'd like.

however, i finally got all the european/accented character handling working, fixed a printing bug in the standard version, updated all the documentation, and now just have to package up the MXPs and try them out! woot!

i am going to ignore any English Premiership Football (soccer for us uh-mary-cans) or Bundesliga re-broadcasts that may be on Fox Sports World, and get this done in the next couple of days.

thanks for your patience. keep an eye out for more news! :-)

another fine, fine nugget from the Flex documentation is how to use a config file to save trace output to a text file on your development machine using the Debug player!

this cfg file is a different cfg file than the one to disable auto-update and windowless movies from playing - that one is MMS.CFG and resides in the system folder.

this one is MM.CFG and resides in the home directory of the current user (eg: C:\Documents and Settings\username).

sorry Mac folks, this one seems to be a Windows-only tool.

anyways, here are the steps i took to get this working in WinXP. it's pretty much the same as on the referenced doc page, but i'll cover a few issues i encountered.

1. right-click on the "My Computer" icon on the Windows XP desktop and select Properties to open the "System Properties" dialog
    
2. click the Advanced tab
    
3. click the Environment Variables button
    
4. add the following environment variables to the User Variables (not the System ones)
    
   1. HOMEDRIVE with a value of "C:" (no quotes)
   2. HOMEPATH with a value of "Documents and Settingsusername" (again no quotes and use your username)
       
5. navigate to the C:\Documents and Settings\username folder and create a new text file named "mm.cfg"
    
6. open the text file and add the following:
    
   ErrorReportingEnable=1
   TraceOutputFileEnable=1
   TraceOutputFileName=C:\flashlog.txt
    
7. next, navigate to your Flash program debug player directory (eg: C:\Program Files\Macromedia\Flash MX 2004\players\debug)
    
8. double-click the "Install Flash Player 7 AX.exe" app - this will install the Debug version of the Flash player
    
   Note - this is where i had some problems. i had to actually go and download the Flash Player Uninstaller from MM's site and uninstall all players before being able to get the Debug player to actually kick in.
    
9. open a web page with an SWF in it. if there is now a "Debugger" option in the context-menu, you have the Debug player installed. if not, try again, or try the uninstaller as i mentioned above.
    
10. NOW - open Flash MX 2004
     
11. make a new FLA
     
12. add the following AS to the Actions panel:
     
    trace("hello from Flash"); // or some other goofy test thing
     
13. publish your movie and open the HTML page in IE
     
    note that i did have "Enable Debugging" enabled, but i don't think that matters. if you try this without that setting and it doesn't work, try publishing again with this enabled...
     
14. open Windows Explorer and look in the root of C:\ - there should be a flashlog.txt file (if not, check all the settings above and perhaps log-out and log back in, or reboot and try it again)
     
15. open the flashlog.txt file and you should see your "hello from Flash" line in it!

MAJOR WOOT!

i was kind-of annoyed that enableDebugConsole() no longer worked in FP7 because it was a blessing for testing a file in the browser, but this is the next best thing! (i mean, of course there's still remote debugging with Flash open, but that's just not as cool as this)

since this requires the Debug player and a manual configuration file to be added to the system, it's not really feasible to use this method for any sort of actual text file writing from the browser. i mean, you can access the mm.cfg file, close all browser windows, re-open the browser, re-launch your page, and then trace to a different file. if you could do that, you could just write to a file in the first place! :-)

good luck! and happy tracing!

UPDATE!!! i've found that the flashlog.txt file is overwritten by each different Flash movie that is run. so you don't really have to worry about clearing out the file every-so-often. that could be a good thing, it could be a bad thing - depends upon what you're hoping it will do.

cheers
g.

well, according to Webster's i do, but apparently not in the "real world" of software development. (and of course i don't mean in the Star Trek sense either)

let's see... the company i work for has over 200 employees at 3 different offices in two different states, as well as single "in-the-field" reps all over the country. we have lobbyists in Washington. we make insane dollars a year in sales (insane to me at least). on a daily basis, we have 25,000 - 35,000 users of our product spread across the US. we use Visual Studio Enterprise Edition. we have Enterprise-level MSDN subscriptions. we are invited to Enterprise-level conferences. we even have a partnership with a LARGE computer manufacturer who supply all of our users' computers.

but we only have four core developers and one assistant programmer. and we use <gulp> Flash and ASP to build our applications.

while i can't find any definition of "enterprise software company" online, i have seen MANY blogs and commercial reviews of MM's Flex lately that talk about how you are not an enterprise shop unless you have 30+ developers with 80,000 internal users and are only using WebSphere (or some other J2EE server). apparently, if you don't meet these criteria, you're simply a "mom-and-pop shop".

well, i guess we couldn't benefit from building our applications outside if the Flash IDE in a collaborative nature, or find useful any of the other really cool features of Flex (the DragAndDrop manager looks really sweet). well, not that we couldn't benefit from it, but rather, since we're not really an "enterprise", i guess we just plain don't deserve it.

oh well... back to our low-class high-rise and our pitiful ideas that we were a real software company.

:-)
g.

well, one of the gems in the Flex documentation is how to use a local, distributable configuration file to disable the auto-update feature of the Flash Player 7.

why would you want to do this?

well, as posted on several lists, there are several reasons:

• you work in a large, corporate (dare i say "enterprise"?) environment that doesn't allow users to install applications (or plug-in updates) without IT's permission;
• you are using the Flash Player in an environment where you don't want the end-user to have access to these settings (and the others available from the MM web tool page) - and you don't want to manually launch the updater on every single client and go to MM's page and deselect "auto update"
• you don't want the end user to have access to a web browser (since the settings dialog for the auto-update can open the default browser)
• you are writing software that you need to test before allowing users to update their machines - either intranet or extranet (or just simply stand-alone in an HTA)

here's the relevent page of joyous information:

http://livedocs.macromedia.com/flex/1/flex_docs/38_dep42.htm#wp154069

let's hope that information makes it to the Flash documentation - and that it's not simply relegated to "enterprise" developers only.

NOTE - there are other settings in there, including being able to disable Camera and Microphone usage, but i had no luck in getting that to actually work. in fact, i couldn't really test to see if the auto-update settings work or not since i already have updated my players and didn't want to revert to a previous version just to test this out. but since it's in the documentation for a $12k piece of software, i'll have to assume it's accurate. ;-)

as i mentioned in a previous post, i decided to add a simple, easy skinning method to the AS2 blazePDF components. since i have to add some to the documentation now, and i have a client project to finish up, i figured i'd give a "sneak-peek" at what the pre-built set that comes with the components look like:

(shown in the "Lite" component - so no page navigation area in this one)

the "Standard" skin is built-in, and doesn't require you to do anything. the others are supplied as compiled clips (SWCs) in a "Common Library". so all you have to do is drag from the library and drop into your app. simple.

making a new skin and applying it is just as easy... make a background mc, make a button, put them inside specifically "linkage" named movieclips, with individually specific instance names (eg: the button is "_btn" inside the linked clip "blazePDF_UserButton"). drop them into the movie - BOOM - skinned component. you can also just skin the buttons if you so desire. or just the header bar. your choice. :-)

the buttons are not MM Button Components because of my desires to skin the thing, so it won't look just like Halo. if you want to make a Halo clone - be my guest.

i'm going to try to get folks to contribute skins to the community, since a) it's so easy, and b) there are folks out there with way more talent than i.

also, i decided not to make the icons skinnable as i wanted to keep somethings consistent, though maybe at a later time if enough people bug me about it. i also didn't make the header bar broken into left/middle/right segments - K.I.S.S. is a good motto. plus i'm terribly busy and want to get these things released!

so - let me finish up my client's work and i'll get back at it!

you better not be! (at least not non-free ones)

one of the things that recently came to my attention is that some Flash developers turn over all the source code to a project when their work for a client is done. apparently it's standard practice to some, and partly where some of the Flash EULA issues first stemmed from.

now, in theory that sounds okay - i give all original graphic files, ASP pages, etc to clients when i get done. but on closer inspection there's actually something scary going on - at least from a component developer point of view.

you see, in the Flash world, turning over the source code means giving away the original FLA. unlike, say, Visual Basic which simply includes reference information to components used in the project, FLA's actually embed the components inside them. so this means that when a project is done, and the source is given to the client, they get whatever components the developer used to create their project.

now, typical license agreements for commercial components include "you can not redistribute these components" sections - except for being compiled into the final application. indeed, this is what the Flash EULA says about components, and what i was going to say about my blazePDF components. in the VB world, this isn't an issue as, again, just the reference to the component is in the project code - not the actual OCX/DLL - and i think since it's been that way forever, most people don't even think about it anymore.

but...

as a Flash component developer, i do NOT want you giving away a non-free component to your client. they didn't buy a license for it. if you bought it specifically for their project, then you need to never use it again unless you buy another license. if they give it to another developer for maintenance, then they, too, get my components without paying for it. if that developer needs assistance and posts the FLA for folks to download and look at code, then all the world gets my component for free. that's not fair to me, and it's not fair to you since you paid $$ for it (whether or not you get it back in your project fee).

do i add to the cost of my components to figure in the eventual redistribution losses? i really don't want to do that - i want to keep it super affordable. :-

or, how about, when you turn over the source FLA's, you remove any components you used - MM's or third-party. that way, the client must _own_ the components themselves if they want to change it. you didn't build the components specifically for them, so why should they get them?

ugh... enough... must wake up and take shower before i get really annoyed. it's too early in the morning. :-)

 

...or "the annoyances of legalese".

while i know some folks still have issues with the new EULA/Supplemental License, i'm not here to debate their points. in fact, i think i'm pretty okay with everything. however, one thing that was brought to my attention thanks to grant's post was that the wording in the new license is really confusing in a circular-logic sort of way.

here's the thing... a Component is defined as:

"any of the reusable .SWC files provided by Macromedia and displayed in the Components panel of Macromedia Flash. "

and the Component Framework (the part we need to extend to make our own V2 components) is defined

"as the set of source files that defines the class hierarchy used to create Components. "

ok - so far so good.

now we look at the definition for "Developer Component" (the components we create as third-party developers): 

"Developer Components" shall be defined as Components that are built consisting partly of the Components Framework source code and partly of user’s Material Improvement to extend the Components Framework.

everyone has focused on the "Material Improvement" part, and that extending the Component Framework was specifically in the verbage. but grant pointed out the weird part, which was something that at least i overlooked during, uh, "beta" EULA test-runs...

by this definition, "Developer Components" are defined as "Components" - which are the "reusable .SWC files supplied by Macromedia". did you catch that? neither did i until the 100th read...

so, a third-party component can only legally be released if it was first supplied by Macromedia ?! *brain explodes*

i know that's not what they meant to say, but that's what it says... i think if they just hadn't capitalized "Components" in the "Developer Components" section, it would refer to a generic, every-day component instead of the pre-defined meaning.

regardless, the AS2 blazePDF components will be released later this week. i'm adding in some last minute skinning functionality that is _way_ cool. i'm going to be including a Common Library of pre-built skins, and will have a tutorial on the website on how to skin it. (it's super easy). i was going to add functionality for Ted Patrick's fine IconBuilder icons, but i don't have much time right now. maybe as an update. :-)

 

well, i decided the time had come to do something i had thought about for a while now. i'm starting a community web site devoted to the fine folks on the FlashLounge mailing list (the very rambunctious off-topic companion list to the super-hardcore FlashCoders list)

it's pretty ambitious in scope - way more than your average "heh-heh - we're a bunch of 'puter nerds. look at us. heh." site.

everything about the site will be community created - down to per-session changing logos and site catch-phrases, and perhaps even members' own info Flash page will be their own creation (driven by a common server-side API). and YES - i said FLASH PAGE. no X/D/HTML here. we are Flash developer after all... ;-)

more details (and a URL) as things get up and running.

yes indeed! MM finally released a new EULA and a "Supplemental License" to go along with it! read this document for all the details.

now i gotta get my butt in gear and package all the blazePDF components together... this weekend seems like the perfect time! :-)

woot. WOOT i say!

(thanks to chafic for pointing this out)

thanks to a short post on FlashCoders to a link to a post on flash-db.com - SOAP Headers are now a reality in Web Service calls with Flash MX 2004 Pro! albeit via a hack work-around from MM tech support. i've tried the code listed and successfully got headers going back and forth to my C# webservice. woot!

read all about it here! (scroll down for the entry from Micheal Trim that pastes the code from Jonathan Duran at MM)

The post makes mention of a TechNote being written, so at least there might be some official word on MM's site before too long (at least before Flash 8 gets it working as currently documented *cough*cough* ;-)

One note though, since it wasn't mentioned in that thread, is that you can still skip the entire QName stuff for creating headers - that still doesn't work. do it manually via a XML object like the ones created in the sample code - then all is good.

did you try the blazePDF Free business card sample app? did you get an error at the download step? if so, you weren't alone.

in my haste to get the sample online, the download page the last thing on the list. i wrote it and tested it and it worked fine. however, i had two people point out to me they were getting errors at the final download step. i tested again locally and there was no problem in any browser.

after turning on remote viewing of errors in my web.config file, they both sent me the output - and it turned out i forgot to specify the page language of C#, so the compiler went with VB.NET.

so a quick specification of C# and everything is good to go - please feel free to try it again if you want to view the final output PDF. and i updated the .aspx page in the ZIP'd source file, so if you have downloaded it already, you might want to either do it again or simply add the following at the top of the download page:

<%@ Page Language="C#" %>

the part that still has me confused is why it was working locally and not remotely. it was as if somewhere there was a setting that said "use C# or figure it out myself for any local network computer, but only try VB.NET for remote connections." now i gotta dig in my machine.config and see what's up with that!

sorry for any inconvenience :-)

 

ps - BIG thanks to Gaius and Pat for their help in tracking down this bug! Plus Gaius supplied me with some classic ASP code to handle the push of the PDF data back to the client, so i'll be updating the Reference section with that soon.

it seems to me that some folks are taking a terribly elitist attitude towards the "Learn X in Y Days" style books... :-)

last night i saw metalogic's link to an article "Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years" but didn't get a chance to read it until this morning - after i was reminded about it from Sean Corfield's blog post.

the problem i saw with the original article was that in the author's "recipe for programming success", the very first item is to "get interested in programming" and, to paraphrase, to make sure it's fun enough to want to put 10 years into working with it.

these "10 Minute"/"24 Hours"/"21 Days" type books are the means for people who may be too scared to even think about learning a new programming language to get interested and see what's really involved in the language. this purpose fulfills the very first principle of the author's recipe in his rant against them!

come on folks - all these books that say they'll make someone a "master in xyz technology" aren't really going to make them a master. but they are going to make people feel confident enough that they could become a master. it's just marketing hype. these books are so nerdy they gotta spice it up somehow!

to me these books are the computer world's equivilent of "Conversational German for English Speakers" books. you learn enough about the language to not feel like an idiot if you go to Germany (you can find a toilet, identify certain words on a menu, and be polite to locals). you are comfortable knowing at least the basics. then you can determine if you want, or need, to learn more.

real-world example 1:

a long time ago, i had a client who deperately needed me to re-work some Perl code they had started to use on their site. i had never worked with Perl before and was quite frightened of the code i saw. i needed the money and wasn't going to spend 4 years in Perl college before saying yes, so i went and picked up a "Perl in 10 Easy Steps"-type book and was able to learn enough to recognize what i was looking at and to successfully modify the code to do what was required. i've done several Perl projects like that since then. now i'm no expert in Perl - and i don't claim to be - but now i'm also not afraid to work with it. i know it's purpose and how i can fit into a project. if i need to learn more, i'm now willing to do so.

real-world example 2:

at my current day job, i regularly get co-workers coming to me that are interested in making database-driven websites using ASP but have no idea what's involved - outside of they know how to make an Access database. i can spend 30 minutes with them and show them how easy 95% of the ASP work they want to do really is - open the database, open a recordset, show that data in table form, and close the database. they are then comfortable enough to say "yes, i think i can do this" and go and get books or other reference on how to do the remaining 5%. they aren't experts and i don't profess i can make them experts - but they have lost any initial concern that ASP may be over their heads and now they know that what they want to accomplish is something they can do.

learning is a life-long process. we're all learning all the time - at least we should be. if someone wants to learn a programming language - i say let them learn it anyway they can! 10 minutes, 24 hours, 21 days, 10 years - just do it! at least in ten years when they are "experts", we'll have some good help around the office! ;-)

go... install... now! :-)

includes the JSAPI reference ("Flash JavaScript Reference") which includes a section on using C dll's to extend the IDE!

no idea what else has changed as there is still no "what's new in the help update" document ;-) - but an update none-the-less! woot!

g.

when it comes from Bellsouth - of course!

apparently sometime between last night and this morning, my static ip address changed to some other ip. so that's why the flash2pdf.com site was down - as well as cutratebox.com (my band).

a quick refresh of my ip addy from my router set everything back to proper. go figure. what an annoying thing since i'm paying $15 a month for static ip service... bugger all!

looks like i'll be moving the pdf site externally a lot sooner than i thought! :-(

folks have been asking, and i finally got it together - a sample proof-of-concept application using the blazePDF Free component.

the application allows a user to enter their contact information, choose a business card layout (only one in this app), then preview and download a PDF of their business card 10-up (2 across by 5 down) - practically ready to take to Kinko's and get printed on card stock and cut out!

you can view the sample here

since there is no visual page designer, layout of this nature involves a little bit of trial and error. however, careful measurement of real paper mock-ups allows easy translation into blazePDF since you can use any measurement units you want - inches, points, millimeters, etc.

questions - please go to the forums. comments you can leave here. :-)

wow! with it available for only three days, i've had over 200 downloads of the blazePDF Free component! i'm shocked. i figured 50-100 tops - and not so quickly. if this keeps up i might have to move the site from my internal server to an external one just so i can maintime reliability! luckily the MXP is very small, otherwise my poor DSL line would be chocking non-stop. thanks to everyone for their support. i hope it works! ;-)

some folks have asked to see visual samples before blindly downloading, and i have to agree - i've even commented to others for at least screenshots of things. what was i thinking? they are coming soon - just been busy finishing a remix for my friends Seabound (no that's not David Duchovny ;-), and of course it is Mardi Gras season - so there's lots of things to tie up my time at the moment. :-)

 

yup - blazePDF Free is here and ready for your downloading, use, and general ripping apart. :-)

www.flash2pdf.com

this version only works with ActionScript v1 in Flash MX or MX 2004. it will not work in AS2 apps. the to-be-released versions are for AS2 (only), and will be available as soon as MM gets the new EULA out.

i've tested this component very extensively and had a good group of beta testers over the last 9 months or so with no serious problems. however, that doesn't mean they don't exist... if you can't get it to work, let me know. please also keep in mind that since this is free, and i really want to focus on the AS2 components, email responses to questions may be slow or non-existant - depends if i get completely flooded with questions (that aren't bug-related).

please read all website FAQs, reference docs, and Flash IDE Reference Panel info before emailing me questions. i really think it should be pretty straight forward.

good luck - and enjoy!

...but not in the icky way you're thinking - you perv ;-)

what i mean is that i've decided to release blazePDF Free - a free PDF creation component for Flash MX (and MX2004 using AS1). however, i have to wait and talk to the place that has my domain name and hosting for flash2pdf.com, because their web-forms are malfunctioning at the moment, and i can't change my hosting to point to my other server where everything is set-up and ready to roll. :-(

all the details will be coming soon - hopefully tomorrow evening. woot! i know - it's about frikin' time!

g.

...Google and other web crawlers! (and you probably thought i was going to say hackers... :-p )

there's been an on-going discussion on the FlashLounge list the past few days, as folks try to determine how Google is indexing SWFs. one of the things i pointed out was that Google (and most other search engines i've tested) will pull up hits for text strings found inside binary files. that means if you know what to look for, you can find Flash FLAs, Photoshop PSDs, and even, [gulp] Microsoft Access and SQL databases (.mdb's). and by pulling up hits i mean that they appear just as a normal search engine result that you can right-click "Save target as..." and save the file to your local machine. gack!

now, before i go any further, yes i completely realize that one should never put any secure, secret, of private data in an openly accessible web space. you should always have things as secure as you most possibly can.

that being said, however, the indexing of binary files by search engines is not something that i think most people realize is even taking place. in fact, i could not find anything on Google's site that says up-front exactly what they index. the only references i could find are an item in their FAQ that answers the statement "I don't want Google to index non-HTML file types on my site." by this FAQ entry, i take it that they try to index everything they can find reference to. and that is backed-up with a "Fact" in their "Facts and Fiction" page: "At Google, we are able to index most types of pages and files with very few exceptions."

dang! who knew? :-)

the next interesting thing about all this to me, is the "caching" of indexed pages by Google. according to the FAQ page: "Google stores many web pages in its cache to retrieve for users as a back-up in case the server where the page resides temporarily fails." now, a quick search for a text string found inside FLAs pulls back a myriad selection of links with 99% of them with available cache links. woah. that means that Google stores these binary files in their cache? crazy stuff.

now, i'm not picking on Google, or trying to garner their wrath - believe me, i use Google on a daily basis and love it to death. what i am pointing out, is that people might want to realize that anything they place on their webserver and have a link to (perhaps even not it seems at times) is being indexed and perhaps stored on someone else's server.

spooky.

how to stop this on your site? well, follow the guidelines set forth by the Google FAQ info, and hopefully your binaries will remain hidden from spiders. of course, not all spiders obey robots.txt files, but that's a different post. ;-)

g.

even though i felt i may have said some unpopular things about Central (at least as it relates to my day-job prospects of using it), that didn't sway MM from wanting to talk with me about Central. last week i had a really nice 30+ minute phone chat with a few peeps at once, and a couple follow-up emails.

in one of those emails i asked about the cool posters that came out at MAX, and not only did they send me the poster but the whole "tube" of stuff that folks have been getting! woot! everyone in the office was envious of the cool silver USB disk-thingy, and my wife likes the tshirt (i don't wear tshirts for some strange reason that probably has to do with my childhood). k... tmi. ;-)

so - thanks Mike for passing my name on to Carol, Dave, and the other girl on the phone who's name i didn't catch. you all rule! (not just because of the cool merch, but because i've never had the level of communication that i've had with MM with any other software company.)

g.

since my server move last month, i had some broken links for some of my projects. well, i finally fixed a few of them (like the PowerPoint to Flash example). sorry for any inconvenience if you went looking and came up empty. they now work again. :-)

i still have to get PHP up and running on my server, but that's another day...

g.

thought is wasn't possible? think again! :-)

no, really - see for yourself here (IE only - though supposedly Mac IE too)

thanks to some prodding from Kristin over at GalaxyGoo, i wrote up a little article with downloadable source for this "hack". you can find the article here (or from the main "articles and tutorials" link above).

g.

you know how with an old, bad television or monitor there can be jitter in the display which makes text jumpy and hard to read? this "effect" is known as bad horizontal line sync. ever wish you could simulate this effect in Flash without lots of hand manipulation? well, now you can!

as a test to see if this effect would work in a project i was doing for a friend, i sat down one day and made an AS2 class with associated MovieClip that lets you specify text, a TextFormat, the number of "scan lines" and a jitter amount. the end result is a block of text that is all horizontally jumpy, jittery, fluttery, etc., and is a pretty good simulation of the bad line scan effect.

since the design of this project changed, i have no immediate use for this effect, so i figured i'd share it with the Flash community. :-)

you can view a sample and download the source here: http://artificialcolors.com/tools/acFXBadLineSync.html (read the displayed-in-movie instructions)

the code is fairly well commented, and should be pretty self-explanatory. you can either leave the com.artificialcolors folder in the same folder as the project you want to put this in, or dump it into your "first runclasses".

this effect is NOT a component, and does NOT extend UIComponent or UIObject, so no fear of distribution breaking the EULA. (fyi, it only extends MovieClip, which is not marked as "sample code"). subsequently, it doesn't have all the bells and whistles of a real component - like a live preview or anything. it does, however, allow you to set some parameters from the Properties Panel, as well as from code (or even a mix of the two).

there's no license on this code - you're free to do with it what you want. if you use it in a project, i'd love to know about it. if you re-release it word-for-word as your own creation, kharma is a bitch... this code could easily be extended to use embedded fonts (so you could do _alpha blends). the technique itself could be used for a bunch of other effects, including the old atari-style "rolling rainbow" color cycling text...

any questions, feel free to ask! :-)

cheers
g.

...Waiting for the lady in the red balloon" - Yello - Pumping Velvet

in the early 90's i had the first round of cd pressings of Yello's "You Gotta Say Yes To Another Excess" album, and it didn't come with lyrics. well, tonight i saw those lyrics (i always wondered about the quoted lines)... thanks to a friend of mine showing me a most interesting site - www.allofmp3.com. not only can you purchase music as downloads but, get this, you pay for them depending upon what bitrate you want to download them at! the higher the bitrate, the better the quality, the more it costs. awesome!

however, this site is both ultimately cool and flat out scary - all at the same time. here's why...

cool things - user specified bitrates, lyrics to a ton of the albums they have, a huge selection of stuff iTunes and the others will probably never carry (read: european industrial/electronic/good), SVCD quality videos(!), and previews of every song (if you're registered you can hear the whole song too!) also there are plenty of my friends represented (Covenant, Haujobb, Beborn Beton [including our remix of "Peach"]). killer!

scary things - the site is russian (there's an english version - upper left corner). a lot of folks feel rather uneasy about russian ecommerce (probably due to a lack of "U.S. jurisdiction", and the mass of russian-hosted sites selling really inexpensive "legit" copies of software...).

one of the most interesting things, of course, is that i'm sure the RIAA doesn't get anything out of this. i mean, there are bands on there that i know are not on RIAA labels, and some (many) that are. but i don't think RIAA has any power in russia. not to mention that royalties in europe is completely different than "over here." i know this because i know that i will never get any publishing royalties from either album of ours that was released on a european label. "copyright control" - eg: artist screwed.

so, while i'm fascinated at the site - both concept and content - i'm still hesitent to put in all my personal information... sad, because this, i think, is a lot better than preset bitrate, DRM-filled, mp3s... if you're comfortable, i say use it while it's there!

yup - all those folks that read MXNA but not FullAsAGoog or asH's Hall of Justhese can now, perhaps, be mildly amused by my mindless blathering. :-)

just kidding. i hope that i, at least on occassion, contribute some interesting points of discussion or code bits that are useful.

and if note, there's always cat pics and random, shameless self promotion.

:-)
g.

after many hours of frustration and wasted time, i have come to the conclusion that it is completely impossible to add a SOAP header to a webservice call in Flash MX 2004 Pro - despite the "documentation" stating otherwise.

i would love to be proven wrong. please? anyone?

and no, i'm not using the WebService connector - just the API

apparently a new fire was lit thanks to some recent discussion over at Peter Hall's blog, and some debate on FlashCoders.

we get word (via Mr. Hall's blog) from Flash Product Manager, Lucian Beebe, that MM has a "final proposal" of the new EULA in the legal department, and they will be getting it out to some EULA "beta testers" this week! WOOT!

i have been fortunate enough to preview the previous proposals and they were so close to being perfect that i can only imagine that the "final" one is spot on. *fingers crossed*

once this gets cleared up, i can move forward with releasing the blazePDF components - after almost a year of first talking about it! :-)

g.

after reading about guy watson's JSFL to insert stop() actions on a series of frames, i got motivated to do something i've always wanted - a JSFL command to parse my AS and insert javadoc-style comment blocks for my functions.

luckily, i was able to do this within a couple hours thanks to everything just working as expected (AS == Javascript == ECMAScript == good). and while it's not the best at what it does, it works for my purposes and it may work for you too!

what it does:

• parses the currently selected frame's AS and comments each function
• adds a section to add description
• lists each parameter as a @param with param type (or "undefined" if not strictly-typed) and a description area
• lists the return type of the function, if defined, as a @return
• skips functions that have already been commented (or at least that have a **/ on the line before them
• skips inline functions (eg: "foo.onRelease = function()" )
• skips functions that are on a commented line (eg: "// function foo()")
• indents the comments to match the indentation of the function
• indent takes into account function prefixes (private, public, etc)

what it doesn't do:

• it won't skip functions that are inside a block comment area
• if a blank line gets inserted between the generated comment block and the function declaration, it will re-comment that function if run again
• it's not pure javadoc spec - like the function name in the comment header which is something i prefer, and the "**/" at the end which i use
  as indicator the function has already been auto doc'd

an example of the running this JSFL command:

before:

     function goo(test:String):Number {
       return 1;
     }

after:

     /
      * FUNCTION:  goo
      *
      * function description here
      *
      * @param   test   String    param description here
      *
      * @return  number
      *
     **/
     function goo(test:String):Number {
       return 1;
     }

as is my nature, i wanted to share this code so others can take it and use it, modify it, enhance it, etc... i would however, love to see any better versions that may come of this (like one with a panel for options, etc). so, here's a link to the JSFL file: http://artificialcolors.com/experiments/func_autodoc.jsfl

to install it, save the file into your Program Files/Flash MX 2004/en/First Run/Commands folder (or replace "en" with your language locale) then restart Flash. should show up in your "Commands" menu once you have an FLA open.

to use it, select the frame with the code you want commented, and run the command. there is no error trapping in the code, so if you don't have a frame selected, i think it reports and error. as mentioned above, running the command on the same AS code will not comment functions that have already been commented, only new functions will.

use, enjoy, destroy, rebuild, etc. :-)

g.

 

well - an incredibly hectic holiday season here... so many things i wanted to do, and still not enough time to do it. one of the things i just got to tonight was upgrading my development Win2k box to Win2k Server (gotta love MSDN Universal subscriptions). now i can learn the ins and outs of host headers and subsequently (hopefully) alleviate some of the monthly spending for external dev boxes...

however, the upgrade of server means that some of my older experiments might not work at the moment (like the Flash-to-PHP dynamic graphics demos)... so if you are digging through the archives and come across something that just isn't working, please leave a comment. most of the .NET stuff is running, at least the popular ones, but i havn't tested everything.

*sigh*

so much happened this past year, yet it still seemed rather unfulfilling to me. i mean, my wife and i got our own house, we lost a cat to cancer then adopted three new cats (two of which were born with my assistance), i headlined a festival in england, played a show at the whisky-a-go-go, got to go to FFNYC at day-job's kind expense, got the flash2pdf components working (but still waiting on a EULA resolution - though having such direct involvement with MM was also a nice highlight of 2003), and a print/web design job for a teenage idol of mine. still there's so much more i/we want to do. i'd like to get some much-needed extra $$ coming in from the pdf components, get out and tour the whole west coast (but for that we need a new album, but that's a different post all together), we'd both love to get to japan (though i know it would be expensive, not to mention hard without knowing someone who could translate and find us vegetarian-friendly buddhist restaurants), and i'd love to get back up to montreal for a visit in the spring as it was so beautiful when we played up there in 2002. of course the house requires a lot of time and $$, so that will be sucking us dry for the most part, so a lot of the travel plans will have to wait.

oh well, we'll play it "by ear" and see where it goes. i think if we can just be a little more pro-active, we'll get there... wherever "there" may be this year...