Monday, December 31, 2007

I need some good Caperinia recipes (national drink of Brasil)... ginger/honey/lime/etc. If you have any favorites & know where I can get that sugar liquor that goes in it, I would be most appreciative!

Drop whatever you're doing Jan. 1 @1PM EST for the AMP Winter Classic. Sabres, Pens to play outdoors on New Year's Day. The Buffalo Sabres and Pittsburgh Penguins will make NHL history on New Year’s Day, 2008, when they play in the AMP NHL Winter Classic, the League’s first regular-season outdoor game in the United States.

The game features several of the game’s greatest young stars, including Penguins center Sidney Crosby and Sabres goaltender Ryan Miller, and will be played at Ralph Wilson Stadium, home of the NFL’s Buffalo Bills. NHL NBC, CBC Sports, RDS and NHL Radio.

As the earth gracefully orbits and spins the day/night cycle, many who aggregate read this are already enjoying their new calendar year. Others wait and drink and celebrate in anticipation. Wishing you and yours a Happy New Year!

I found out today that Skorpiostech has released a public beta of its OS X diff tool. Using FTP as my quick test, the UI is easy to use and approaches what I've seen in the PC world using subversion-type packages (I can't remember what I used before SVN, haha... but it was Windows and it was popular and it wasn't so good). WinCVS perhaps. Anyway, check it out if you're so inclined.

Sunday, December 30, 2007

I received this correspondence yesterday, and I chuckled quietly to myself as I made my way into the house. Not if it were free kind sirs, and not if you added Bill Kristol like the NYT has done (although perhaps you'll inherit that weekly column since you are essentially the NYT with some local color injected).

You're going to lose filter subscriptions due to the Kristol thing alone, I am not going to financially support your positions on issues we obviously disagree on, and I don't think you're making Al Gore very happy by trying to sell more papers... especially your Sunday edition which must weigh in at over one pound of pablum pressed pulp. Personally, I think Gore is full of excrement about the whole thing, but the idea of being better citizens is a good one.

Friday, December 28, 2007

Today we had a big name local locksmith come to put in a bunch of new deadbolts, re-key several entrance knobs, and generally lock down our mighty castle to an even more elaborate extent. We were in the kitchen and I was writing the check, and the guy asks me how long I've been rampaging on Call of Duty 4. It took me by surprise, the box was out on a side table. We talked about that sniper level where you have to lay prone and the enemy walk through... what a crazy rush that was. Our 45+ years-old locksmith and I talking FPS. It was sweet.

Thursday, December 27, 2007

My father has been a PC user for a long time, but his breadth of knowledge extended to the browser, pre-configured Outlook, and the Microsoft Office Suite. With a great machine with lots of RAM, etc. his machine was slowly crawling to a stall. Viruses. After using many packages, he was still getting viruses. I know, because its targeted so heavily, etc. Anyway, my father had it & decided to get the exact same rig I use today... a MacPro pimped out including a mother HD Cinema Display and sweet graphics card. He was immediately impressed with the OS, but he stumbles here and there trying to do things he did on the PC. Its not the same, there are slightly different avenues to take to get to a destination, etc. He has created and published a website on his own, is using Contribute to manage changes to it, and is upgrading to Leopard so I can control his screen to show him things (quicker than phone/emails). My Dad has taken from the cup and is drinking his fill. Sweet.

The NFL is simulcasting the Patriots game this Saturday, which is pretty cool, but does this mean we get a whole lot more coverage by Bryant Gumbel by default? Ugh. Collinsworth is pretty horid, but Gumbel brings new meaning to the term "suck".

I've noticed that our brick for the Macbook has started to show some unusual behavior. Under normal conditions, when the laptop is closed (sleeping) and charging, the LED glows orange on the contact, and it goes green when the laptop is fully charged.

Right now, we get a steady green the entire time. This has started since Leopard, so I think I can rule out any kind of power management software thing. I've used Google a bit but have found nothing definitive. Has anyone else experienced this, or do you know how to repair the problem? The laptop still charges, so its mainly an aesthetic and user interface kind of thing, but being a Mac user, when even a little thing like this happens, it makes me feel better when its back to normal.

With the holidays about over (New Years is coming, but most of us simply imbibe for this), what cool gadgets did you receive or give? For us its mostly about the children now, but I got one of those Kodak digital photo frames which is pretty cool as gadgets go (needs a drive though!!!) Cousin-in-law got an iPod Touch (very nice). Didn't see many more gadgets.

So coolness in your sphere of operations? Or given? Curious if there are any interesting not run of the mill gadgets...

Sunday, December 23, 2007

Wine shopping for the holiday dinner(s) at our home, when I spot something in the corner of my eye that calls me to investigate further. I pick a bottle up, and lo' and behold... a bottle of Adobe Red from the Clayhouse Vinyard. I took a cell snap and here she is:

Friday, December 21, 2007

I'm at work, the Friday before Christmas, wrapping up some code, and all of the sudden the Flash IDE decides that it wants to start throwing up on my boots. I am greeted upon some compiles with this gem:

AppName: flash.exe AppVer: 9.0.0.494 ModName: authplay.dll

ModVer: 9.0.115.0 Offset: 000aae93

That doesn't tell me much, and I am not going to post the full debug console string here, but wouldn't it figure that this is happening right before I leave for Christmas vacation? I hope this goes away by 4PM.

Wesolych Swiat Bozego Narodzenia or Boze Narodzenie, Natale hilare et Annum Faustum!, Idah Saidan Wa Sanah Jadidah, Feliz Navidad, Shenoraavor Nor Dari yev Pari Gaghand, Boas Festas e Feliz Ano Novo, Gun Tso Sun Tan'Gung Haw Sun, Prejeme Vam Vesele Vanoce a stastny Novy Rok, Glædelig Jul, Vrolijk Kerstfeest en een Gelukkig Nieuwjaar! or Zalig Kerstfeast, Cristmas-e-shoma mobarak bashad, Hyvaa joulua, Zalig Kerstfeest en Gelukkig nieuw jaar, Joyeux Noel, Nollaig chridheil agus Bliadhna mhath ùr!, Froehliche Weihnachten, Kala Christouyenna!, Mele Kalikimaka, Mo'adim Lesimkha. Chena tova, Shub Naya Baras, Mele Kalikimaka ame Hauoli Makahiki Hou!, Kellemes Karacsonyi unnepeket, Buone Feste Natalizie, Shinnen omedeto. Kurisumasu Omedeto, Feliz Natal, Pozdrevlyayu s prazdnikom Rozhdestva is Novim Godom, Feliz Navidad, God Jul and (Och) Ett Gott Nytt År, Noeliniz Ve Yeni Yiliniz Kutlu Olsun, Srozhdestvom Kristovym, Sawadee Pee Mai

Thursday, December 20, 2007

If you use Remember the Milk (many do in Netvibes) and Gmail, now combine the two! Use RTM in your Gmail and its integrated very smartly. Check out the Firefox extension here.

Google itself can serve as a somewhat decent conversion tool, and you probably have a bunch of books scattered across your shelves containing smatterings of useful formulas in your day to day Flash use.



I have a small book called "Useful Mathematical and Physical Formulae" (hardcover) and its *wonderful*. Great equations, very approachable, pretty small form factor (portable), and contains a ton of information.

Its out of stock at Amazon right now, but you can probably find it at your local brick and mortar. It's $8 brand new and you can get it for around $5 used.

Check it out and see what you think. I think its great reference for any developer, especially if you are doing any kind of scripted motion or any sort of display engine.

True story, although I'm not divulging the name of who is directly involved, because this just seems so silly.



Someone I know works for a company whose parent office is in California. The satellite office where my friend works is located here in Boston and has been recently reduced down to two employees.



So, yesterday the parent office hosts a Christmas party (in CA) and they want (ie. required) the satellite employees (all two of them) to attend... virtually. Now this means video conferencing. They send the the small office cookies, etc. ahead of time for this. One of the other satellite employees was out of the office yesterday, leaving just my friend there.



Video conferencing wasn't working. So get this, they set up teleconferencing for this thing. My friend is sitting at a table beside a conference phone, eating some cookies while listenening to the broken up audio of a party happening in CA. For an hour. They said it was like something straight out of television sitcom The Office. I guess the receptionist (yes, a receptionist for two employees) kept walking by the room chuckling. Personally, I would have taken the cookies and gone home. "Ooops. The phone wasn't really working so I split."



I guess its a good thing that the video conferencing wasn't working (that would have been twice as strange), but this is the strangest story I have heard in quite some time.

So Chris Simon (a professional hockey player who is old enough to know better and to act like a responsible adult) decides to kick Pittsburgh Penguin Jarrko Ruutu's skate while he's down on the ice. Simon wanted to hurt Ruutu -- and a skate can cut you pretty easily. Simon is washed up now and is taking his frustrations out like a toddler. Just throw him out of the league already.




Simon chopped the hell out of some Ranger player last season after he was checked by the guy.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Now I know why I get tons of tweets from Guy Kawasaki... I am using twhirl and it designates the source of the tweet that comes in (ie. twirl, twitterific, web, etc.) and just now I can see the source of his tweets. I checked it out, and I had to get an OpenID -- which is a good thing I suppose -- and now I have set this up for my site feed. Hopefully this comes out as a tweet with a tinyURL. So basically this is a test post.

The latest OS X security update brought with it an update to the Flash Player, which indeed is quite nice. I can't wait for the day when the AIR runtime follows suit. I imagine that once its officially a 1.0 release, we might see this. It would be wonderful if Adobe can manage to get their AIR bits included in such things in the future.

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Alan,

Have a really wonderful birthday today! Hope your co-workers at Adobe are getting you a few rounds right now. Or you're simply out having a good time someplace.

We've all played and love Flex Builder (devs), we've seen the new Flex skinning (des), we've seen the Thermo demos (des), we've heard about Bordeaux (des), we love AS3 (devs), we've seen improvements to the IDE from version to version normally alternating between developer or designer centric updates.



Since we've seen and heard a lot of designer-related greatness coming out of the hallowed halls of Adobe, I am really wondering what might be in the pipeline for developers the next cycle. Yes, Flex 4 enables Thermo, and I'd say AIR when released is solid developer crack.



I am wondering if the next version of Flex Builder is going to bring more power and capabilities along with it. You can only do so much from release to release, and we are all grateful for all the awesome stuff Adobe gives us to play with, I am really excited about what we might see next.



I'm not jaded, wouldn't say overly spoiled, and I love the many tools we already have (from Adobe and third-parties), but I can't help but smile at what we might see next.



I LOVED Macromedia, but I honestly don't think they had the cash or the number of engineers to power the momentum that we see today with Adobe at the reigns.



Thanks guys.

Sure looks different during those debates. Maybe she's been by Kerry's place and took some pointers. It almost looks as if her face is about to slide off. Perhaps its an over-reaction on my part since we've only ever seen her with seemingly taut skin and a rosy complexion. Spatula.

December 18, 2007



ACADEMY AWARD-WINNER PETER JACKSON AND NEW LINE CINEMA JOIN WITH MGM TO PRODUCE “THE HOBBIT,” EAGERLY-ANTICIPATED FANTASY ADVENTURE EPIC



NEW LINE AND MGM TO CO-PRODUCE AND SHARE WORLDWIDE DISTRIBUTION RIGHTS



PETER JACKSON AND FRAN WALSH TO EXECUTIVE PRODUCE TWO FILMS BASED ON "THE HOBBIT"



Los Angeles, CA (Tuesday, December 18, 2007) Academy Award-winning filmmaker Peter Jackson; Harry Sloan, Chairman and CEO, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (MGM); Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne, Co-Chairmen and Co-CEOs of New Line Cinema have jointly announced today that they have entered into the following series of agreements:



* MGM and New Line will co-finance and co-distribute two films, "The Hobbit" and a sequel to "The Hobbit." New Line will distribute in North America and MGM will distribute internationally.



* Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh will serve as Executive Producers of two films based on "The Hobbit." New Line will manage the production of the films, which will be shot simultaneously.



* Peter Jackson and New Line have settled all litigation relating to the "Lord of the Rings" (LOTR) Trilogy.

Saturday, December 15, 2007

I think most know this, but I am watching the Bengals-49ers game, and Gumball is simply horrible, terrible, awful, deplorable, and Frank Gore suddenly becomes "Al Gore?" Come on. Dude, you're like that guy at a party no one can stand who won't shut up and makes everyone's lives miserable. Why does the NFL Network keep this guy employed? Surely some number of people must have made their complaints. Bryant arguing with two guys who actually are athletes is hilarious. They must give him a ton of sh*t when the mics are off, and I'm sure Bryant brushes them off like lint from his Armani. And I can't believe Cincy is going to lose this game...

Friday, December 14, 2007

Spoiler-free: The movie is pretty awesome & scary in places. It's PG-13, but I wouldn't take a 13 year-old to see it. Will Smith does an awesome job, and the CG in the movie is quite good. A pretty simple plot with a great summation: Man cannot play and should not try to play God. The pacing of the movie I felt was perfect, the effect of the movie was wonderful, flashbacks were tastefully done, and the ending was a bit unexpected but fruitful. Lots of nice touches here and there some might miss, so pay attention to the environments. I highly recommend seeing this movie.

I own one of those little personal trimmers, hey... if you're starting to get old like me, you need one of these for your ears. Either that, or I have a bit of gnome DNA in me. Anyway, after driving home in the Boston blizzard I parked in the garage and shut my car off. And a motor continued to run, seemingly from inside the door.

Crap I thought... a motor is going to burn out or the motor is going to run my battery down. I searched and search, turning the car on and off, raising and lowering my window, checking the powered side-view mirrors, etc. For twenty minutes. I actually thought about taking it to a garage to have it checked out.

Then I checked the side door pocket compartment and there was the personal trimmer running, the switch must have been thrown somehow as it jostled around during the drive. Stupid story, but one of life's little gotchas.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Tonight a new update to Quicktime has been released to fix a RTSP vulnerability and some other issues. Flash vulnerabilities in QuickTime are addressed:



Description: Multiple vulnerabilities exist in QuickTime's Flash media handler, the most serious of which may lead to arbitrary code execution. With this update, the Flash media handler in QuickTime is disabled except for a limited number of existing QuickTime movies that are known to be safe.

Okay, well this essentially seems to kill Flash playback from within Quicktime movies. I haven't seen much of this done anyway, but it was a handy way to creatively control QT playback with your own controls, etc. I'm not sure many will even notice this, but everyone should know this has happened so you don't go crazy thinking your code is bad, etc.

I just tried profiling an application with the Flex Profiler (memory usage thing is sweet btw), and while it seems to be working, the console spits this out each time:

java.net.SocketException: socket closed
 at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.socketAccept(Native Method)
 at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.accept(Unknown Source)
 at java.net.ServerSocket.implAccept(Unknown Source)
 at java.net.ServerSocket.accept(Unknown Source)
 at com.adobe.flash.profiler.internal.Client$2.run(Client.java:198)
 at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

Socket timeout.

Not sure what the problem is, don't think its Java version. And I can't seem to compare two memory snapshots at the moment.

I am wondering if MediaTemple will allow installs of BlazeDS for those of us with hosting accounts to play with the technology online. Just curious.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Yes, I waited up (watching the bootleg Live After Death DVD from Brasil) just like most of you to see what was going to transpire. Now that its after midnight here in the East and Adobe is late with stuff. Well, so far not much revealed. Someone told me that Adobe is notorious for 12AM PST releases... which means 4AM. I'm not waiting up for that. I'll update this as much as I can before I turn in for the night.



Update:

A new version of the Adobe AIR download was posted on 12/12/2007. Air b3.


BlazeDS link here, very cool. Someone found this link. Blaze DS open spirce version of LiveCycle Data Services. That could be what is supposed to have been released 20 minutes ago. Has AMF and messaging in there. Maybe, however the article I think has been pulled now in lieu of the labs getting updated first?

Okay here we go, Mike Downey twittered this link.

AN JOSE, Calif. — Dec. 13, 2007 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq: ADBE) today announced plans to release source code for its remoting and messaging technologies under a new open source product named BlazeDS. Now, developers can easily connect to back-end distributed data, as well as push data in real-time to Adobe® Flex™ and Adobe AIR™ applications, for more responsive rich Internet application (RIA) experiences. Previously available only as part of Adobe LiveCycle® Data Services ES, the technologies included in BlazeDS, along with the Action Message Format (AMF) protocol specification, are being contributed to open source under the Lesser General Public License (LGPL v3), and are available immediately as public betas on Adobe Labs.



With BlazeDS, developers can add data connectivity to RIAs for real-time collaboration and data-push capabilities that enable better decision-making and more engaging user experiences, including guided self-service, live help, performance monitoring, and incident tracking. Also, developers can productively connect rich clients to existing server applications, including Java™ and Adobe ColdFusion® components.



For added support, Adobe will offer Adobe LiveCycle Data Services, Community Edition, a subscription offering that includes certified builds of BlazeDS, access to Adobe enterprise support resources and additional benefits, such as product warranty and infringement indemnity, as well as additional developer support. The commercial version of the product, LiveCycle Data Services ES, includes enterprise class capabilities for building advanced customer engagement applications that require massive messaging scalability, advanced client-server data synchronization, conflict detection/resolution, offline data management services for Adobe AIR applications, and RIA-to-PDF generation.



"The combination of BlazeDS with Flex and Adobe AIR helps reduce the time it takes for developers to build responsive and highly innovative RIAs that deliver rich, dynamic, branded content and applications across all major browsers and operating systems," said David Mendels, senior vice president, Business Productivity Business Unit at Adobe. "Contributing these technologies, including the AMF specification, to the open source community opens them up for other non-Java backends, helping to rapidly advance this important RIA feature set."



"While there are open source projects and technologies that offer remoting and messaging to Adobe Flash® and Flex client applications, the contribution of these technologies and the AMF protocol specification represents a huge step forward for standardizing implementations across multiple platforms," said Wade Arnold with AMFPHP. "Working with Adobe, we can create a common programming model that enables RIA developers to extend the reach of their applications across different server technologies in a compatible and consistent approach. The AMFPHP project is ecstatic to be able to work directly with Adobe in order to better leverage the AMF protocol in LAMP applications."



This announcement builds on Adobe's commitment to open technology initiatives and its support for a vibrant developer community. Similar to open source Adobe Flex, announced in April 2007, BlazeDS source code, builds and licensing will be hosted by Adobe, along with an open planning process that includes the publication of specifications for review and comment by the community. Contribution to the BlazeDS technologies will be encouraged initially through the public bug database, including feature requests and a community voting system. Over time, Adobe plans to promote external contributors to "committer" status, allowing them to contribute code to the source tree.



BlazeDS and the AMF binary data protocol specification are supported by Adobe Flash Player, installed on more than 98 percent of Internet-connected desktops, and are available immediately as public betas at labs.adobe.com . Adobe will offer annual subscriptions for Adobe LiveCycle Data Services, Community Edition, which includes access to trusted, certified builds, patches, enterprise support and additional benefits such as product warranty and infringement indemnity. Subscription pricing will be announced at the time of general release of BlazeDS under the LGPL v3, currently scheduled for early 2008. For more information, visit labs.adobe.com/technologies/blazeds . Information on the commercial version of the product, LiveCycle Data Services ES, is available at www.adobe.com/products/livecycle/dataservices . Additionally, new beta versions of Adobe AIR, Adobe Flex Builder™ 3 and Adobe Flex 3 are available today. The public beta versions are available immediately as free downloads from labs.adobe.com .

Thank you Dreamworks, you seem to have produced the best toddler crack on the planet as far as my son is concerned. It used to be Garfield 2, but now all Ryan wants to watch is Madagascar. We've seen it at least 60 times (no exaggeration)... but truth be told, even after so many viewings, we don't find it monotonous. It's quite good. Oh, here comes the DVD box in his hands again from the DVD drawer... here we go.

madagascarViewing++;

I forgot about the Halo 3 Soundtrack, so I checked it out in iTunes. In its standard presentation (standard def. iTunes... not Plus), it comes in at $19.98 for 32 tracks. Initially I thought that was a little steep, but I proceeded to try some of the tracks out.

Where previously Halo soundtracks failed for me (tied too much to the actual in-game audio), this soundtrack shines as its *very* approachable for anyone. What do I mean by that?

Normally a game soundtrack takes you back to the game emotionally. However if you never played the game, the soundtrack may sound over-the-top or contrived. With the Halo 3 soundtrack, I could have my father listen to it (he is a huge classical connoisseur) and really enjoy it.

The tracks are much more complex than previous Halo soundtracks, there is a lot more subtleness and unique sounds from track to track. The Halo 2 soundtrack got bogged down in two areas: great songs that sounded the same, and truly sucky songs.

Tracks that stand out for me on the new album: Released, Brutes, Out of Shadow, To Kill a Demon, Three Gates (classic Halo sound), Black Tower, Keep What You Steal (normally I despise piano), and Movement. The last track is music from a proper band, and it feels totally out of place.

Anyway, thanks Marty, great work on the last soundtrack, and thanks for all your audio mastery in the game bits. Dynamic compositions is a charm.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

I've seen a little traction about a rumor of AIR beta 3 dropping soon, and we know that something is dropping Dec. 12th (either on labs or in the mainstream). So perhaps the rumor of AIRb3 is what we'll be graced with. Midnight tonight perhaps (PST) and we'll all know a lot more.



What I'd like to see happen (not in any particular order):

• Flash CS3 update with the new player bits (a given anytime soon™)
  
• Adobe Air Beta 3
• A bump in FlexBuilder of course (tweaked debugger/profiler?)
  
• A preview beta of Thermo
• A preview beta of that Photoshop online thing
  

I could be completely off, but something is brewing within the walls of Adobe. I'll be playing around with the new Halo 3 maps for a while, so I'll check to see what happens tonight. And tomorrow night if I messed the timing up ;)

UPDATE
Yes, I got it partially wrong. Ted Patrick has posted that it will be the 12th, at 9PM PST. So I had the timing off by around 21 hours, but I knew something was brewing. So remoting and messaging will lead the pack huh? Curious... but there will be lots of stuff dropping. w00t!

After a while, Red Bull starts tasting like tart ass... its just too harsh after a while. What could possibly take its place? Ah, yes... this delicate beast whose name conjures up memories of a wrist rocket and a bag of explosives by the pool.

Monster Energy Juice M-80: 16-ounce grey industrial-patterned can with a yellow "M" logo. The pull tab is the same yellow color, however it is filled in and has a white "M" on it. The drink is also yellowish in color. M-80 contains 80% juice from passion fruit, apple, pineapple, and other fruits.

This stuff is easy enough on my stomach to down quickly and in large-ish quantities without thinking too much about it. Yes, I have not yet tried Bawls, but this M-80 stuff is much more readily available. Its pleasant heart-quickening fare. Give 'er a go.

Monday, December 10, 2007

Tonight was the reunion concert of Led Zeppelin, and by all accounts the show was smashingly good. All I could think about was you Hunter, you left us all long ago, but you will never be forgotten. Tonight Zeppelin played for you too, and I know you were there front row, as the Chubby King in the guise of R.P, PI Man. Hope you enjoyed the show, maybe you can tell me how it was sometime (not too soon).

PIRE, HUNTER KARL ---- 10/12/94.

I usually beat Microsoft down, and their Messenger app is pretty solid, although I had to turn off all those tabs. Anyway, you can hack your Messenger into something thats much more useful and interesting, called Plus! The scope of 4.5 is really about skinning, but if you're aren't using Plus! yet and use Messenger, give it a go. Its PC only. I think I have an 8 beta running, but I see 9 listed as a version of Messenger. Anyone have a link to that?

Some kind anonymous soul sent me a fine Christmas gift early this year (as seen in the image above), and so we welcome Eddie from Live After Death to my desk. Whoever you are, thank you very much and know that I shall always up the irons!

In fact, in your honor, I shall now listen to the album in its entirety. Scream for me Longbeach, scream for me Longbeach... the Iron Maiden..."

This is pretty awesome news:

Electric Rain today released Swift 3D 5.0 for Mac and Windows systems, enabling users to export to the Papervision3D file format. Papervision3D is an open source 3D engine for Flash that leverages ActionScript 3.0 and the Flash 9 player to draw true 3D and allow for real-time user interaction. Swift 3D 5.0 is priced at $250, with upgrades from previous users available from $80. The application requires Mac OS X 10.2 or later.



The software utilizes the XML-based COLLADA file format to define the geometry of the models, and that information is rendered live via the Papervision3D engine within the Flash Player to make 3D content accessible to more than 93 percent of all Web viewers, according to Electric Rain.



"Swift 3D has always been the tool interactive designers turn to with their diverse needs," said Mike Soucie, CEO of Electric Rain. "By supporting the Papervision3D format we're helping designers stretch their creative limits even further and expand the ways in which 3D content can be deployed on the Web. Real-time 3D rendering in Flash has always been the dream, and we’re very excited to finally enable our users to begin working with this cutting-edge Papervision3D technology."



The added support of the Papervision3D format is based on a recent increase of interest in working with true 3D in Flash. With a designer-friendly toolset and workflow, Swift 3D aims to help non-3D professionals make use of new Papervision3D technology without the need for extensive 3D or ActionScript 3.0 experience. Swift 3D also converts existing models in the .3DS and .DXF file format into Papervision3D projects.

Saturday, December 8, 2007

Flex Camp Boston had great t-shirts, and I asked the gentleman handing them out for an XL. I'm not a small guy. I should have checked the tag because today I was psyched to put it on and it was a Medium. Grrrrr. I thought about getting a second t-shirt, just because no one was paying close attention, but I would have felt wrong doing so.

Anyone at FCB... have any XL or XXL t-shirts left you could make available for me?

Friday, December 7, 2007

I sat at a table at Flex Camp Boston (which was great by the way) with two guys from a company looking to see if Flex would meet their needs in bringing their application to market or not (they wouldn't say what the application was).

One guy was approachable, friendly, and genuinely interested in Flex and how it could work with a .NET backend. He wore a blue button-down shirt, and he was obviously the developer for the company by the questions he asked me, etc.

His partner wore a suit without a tie, and generally only spoke about two words the entire day. He was the "suit" - the wannabe ceo of their startup. He shouldn't have been there, he didn't want to be there, he was completely bored out of his mind because it was obvious he didn't care about the technology... he only cares about how it gets done and gets sold in the end. Which is fine. But man, we saw the awesome Buzzword and he was Buzzkill.

I think they are going to choose Flex, with LiveCycle Data Services (if they can raise the $ to get the server), I think the friendly dev was totally open to what he saw & could see how powerful Flex really is. The sessions were by no means light-weight... there was some rockin' in-depth, code hungry sessions presented. Lots of Adobe presence. Lots of older developers who cut their teeth on Flex long ago... so the questions were really technical and wonderful. Most of the ColdFusion stuff flew over my head, but the concepts were clear which made that specific content digestible at worst.

Anyway, had a great time at FCB, I hope there is another one again very soon. And to the guy in the back of the room bitching about RTMP and ports, you bitched more than anyone I've ever seen and the Adobe guys cut you some slack. The CF dude beat you down several times with your misconceptions. I get that its a pain to worry about ports, so you do have http to rely on (ya there is some overhead)... stay tuned. You know Adobe won't let you down, you just need to be less aggressive in the way you ask your questions... you put people on the defensive immediately when there really isn't anything to have gotten defensive about. Hope you contact your IT guys and find out why some messages are getting dropped someplace.

http://connect.acrobat.com/ericd. Whats amazing is I THINK Adobe found a way to ignore the admin console window in the screenshare (no more patterned-out window in the screenshare). Scoot on by and see if it shows up for you or not.

Its still there, but it looks different than before. This must be AIR. Nice. Slap Buzzword in it & bamo!

Its real name appears to be acaddin, its Adobe Acrobat Connect 9.1.202.0 and it appears to be AppleScriptEnabled ;) It seems like its an AIR app, but I'm not really sure yet. My guess would be yes, or a modified AIR application made to look almost not like one. That build number suspiciously looks like the version number of a Flash Player, doesn't it?

This event started out small and now its pretty honkin' big. We're in a large meeting room with balconies on either side. Great keynote, where Adobe pulled the planned announcement. We're told something big will be announced December 12th at midnight. My gut tells me we'll see Thermo as a public beta on labs. But I don't have any information to back that up.

Bumped into Stephen Erat who told me he reads this blog regularly - which is cool since I don't do any CF.

We've seen some previews of some stuff coming in the early 2008 version of FB... some of which is rather sweet. We're at a break, and there is plenty more coming in sessions. Coffee time.

Update
Daniel Rinehart is blogging like mad here at FCB... He must type around 150wpm because he's spot on with updates as things are being spoken. Including code, etc.

Paul Reilly is now speaking about the Flex Profiler. They started from scratch with the profiler for FB3, but had a head-start from the player team (in-memory profiler). Product manager thought it should run in Eclipse. So now we see it in FB3. Okay, listening now, I'm sure Daniel is here clicking away on his laptop, so I can read his posts later ;)

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Who is going to attend Flex Camp Boston this Friday? I'm going to be there & hopefully it won't take too long to figure out where to park and where the building is, etc. 8:30AM start is a little early since I'll be driving in from the Sudbury/Framingham area. If anyone is familiar with the campus, leave a comment for the best way to get in there. Danke.

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

I am jonesing for Thermo at the moment - I have something that would be perfect to snap into a Flex application that I'd love to use Thermo for. I hope Adobe gives us an early Christmas gift.

Monday, December 3, 2007

I've been using Better GMail to get colored tabs in gMail for a while -- but its always been buggy for me. Google has now officially added label color support and it rocks. Thank you Google.

Saturday, December 1, 2007

This is just strange. Dave Mustaine is selling his own brand of coffee. Know what? I'll try it out, because Dave completely r00lz.