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June 30, 2007

Ok...LCDS Really Does Rock!

I’ve known about the sweetness of Flex Data Services LiveCycle Data Services since it was initially released but I finally installed it and played with the samples…YUMMY! :-) It truly is amazing to see my updates in Firefox update in IE the second (literally) I tab out of the datagrid.

Installation was a breeze, and what you expect. I’ve had some problems with WebORB lately (getting it setup) and have voiced the “non-plug-n-play’ability” of it on the mailing list. Mind you, I’m not knocking WO. It is an amazing product but in terms of install, setup, and running an app…I simply have not had a great experience installing it and running WO generated code. Anyways, this isn’t a post comparing WO and LCDS. :-)

To get back on track, install was merely running an installer and following the instructions it gave. The instructions were (in my words): go to the command prompt and start the jrun service. That’s it. LCDS was installed and working perfectly fine. I ran a sample and it simply worked. That’s what people need when they’re exploring new technology, IMO. 1) Ease of install. 2) Uptake speed (time it takes to start toying around). (just to name a couple)

If you haven’t tried it, you should. Don’t have Flex Builder? Who cares. Just install LCDS and run the samples! Also note, LCDS has an Express version which is free. Download it here and let me know what you think. Oh, don’t forget…this can all be built with Javascript too. :-D (see feature list here)

(Ajax Data Services) With this library, developers can integrate application clients built using Ajax technologies with the same back-end data services used by Flex application clients, including remoting, messaging, and data management.

Also, look into WebORB. It really is a great product and I’m not trying to knock it. We’re probably going to use it for one of our internal products. The dev’ team is really helpful as well (join their mailing list) and you’ll see what I mean. :-)

Posted by John C. Bland II at 10:35 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Engadget: iPhone + Cursing = Marketing Scheme?

:-) This seems odd to see but I guess they have their reason(s). lol.

Read more.

Posted by John C. Bland II at 10:09 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Comments Open to Anyone

I decided not to wait a week. Akismet caught over 400, or more, spam comments and only 1 comment was legit. The funny thing is…MT’s spam tools are the one’s that marked the good comment as spam. :-D lmbo. Akismet had it at a +1 rating. :-)

So, your comments are now immediately published. If I start getting spam to go through and can’t get it fixed (which I HIGHLY doubt), I’ll go back to moderating comments. For now, I’m happy though.

COMMENT AWAY!!!! ;-)

Posted by John C. Bland II at 12:09 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

June 29, 2007

"2nd Lt. Bennett" in Silverlight

Terralever (an Arizona company) built Zero Gravity in Silverlight (using C#). It is a pretty coo lil’ game. Simple user animations/movements+a cool concept = a fun game. :-)

Check it out for yourself:

http://zerogravity.terralever.com/

Read more about it from Tim Heuer’s point of view: http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2007/06/26/zerogravity.aspx.

Posted by John C. Bland II at 11:45 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

CrystalTech's New Datacenter

I don’t, too often, blog about CT upgrades unless it is big. This one definitely falls under the “big” category. I’m not going to go over all of the points rather I’ll paste some of the notes from CT’s president Robert Cichon’s email to CT customers.

To learn more, see photos and view an interactive layout of our new infrastructure, check out http://www.crystaltech.com/CTdatacenter.aspx

From the interactive layout, here are some of the points I felt are key to this new facility:

State-of-the-art security measures

  •  2 full multi-leveled 24X7X365 teams, eliminating all invalid entry possibilities
  •  Motion-recorded video surveillance system and biometric retinal scanning with a
     man-trap entry point

Absolute best in environmental management

  •  Balanced air handling and optimized air distribution
  •  State of the art humidification system
  •  A+B cooling loops and heat exchanger bypass with redundant pumps

Massive redundant energy generation

  •  Multiple redundant diesel generators with on site fuel reserves
  •  Top-quality Uninterruptible Power Supply systems (UPS)

Increased performance & redundant communication infrastructure

  •  Multiple Tier1 providers with full 10 GigE connectivity
  •  Multi-gigabit fiber backbone with a separate “maintenance” network
 Separate and redundant core network systems

Posted by John C. Bland II at 11:15 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

June 27, 2007

Akismet+MT ROCKS!

Yes…I’m happy with spam catching and Moveable Type. 12 comments were caught as spam and THEY WERE SPAM. :-D That’s sweet. I think I’m going to open up comments to auto-post but I want to see how well it works for a week. We’ll see.

Happy for now,

JB II ;-)

Posted by John C. Bland II at 3:54 PM | | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Moveable Type 3.35 Installed + Akismet

I finally installed MT 3.35 to see if maybe there was better SPAM support (doesn’t look that way) but we will see. After installing it, I started going through the admin again and took a looksy in the plugins area. I saw the “plugin directory” link and checked it out. There were a few plugins I tried installing (I still hate the MT plugin install process but oh well) then I saw Akismet.

Akismet is now installed and hopefully working. We shall see in the next few days if it works. Feel free to post a “Test” comment below just to see if it is working right. I’d definitely like to run some tests but I guess the biggest thing is to just wait until spammers hit me again (which seem to be quite often).

Oh well…I’ll sit and wait for now. Hit me up with some posts (readers and spammers). :-D

Posted by John C. Bland II at 1:07 AM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

June 26, 2007

Flash CS3: Validated Enum Values

I am working on an enum class and I needed a way, within the class, to validate the types. As any great developer would do…I started extracting the validation code. :-) lmbo. (joke @ extraction = great developer…not tooting my horn) :-D

So, the problem is simple…how do you extract validating code for an enum that will obviously change for each time? Oh, keep in mind enums in AS3 don’t exist. You simply use static properties in a class. Here is an example from the AS3 docs:

public final class PrintJobOrientation
{
    public static const LANDSCAPE:String = "landscape";
    public static const PORTRAIT:String = "portrait";
}

Nothing special there. Now, back to the problem. How do I build a base class to validate the types when I pass them to other classes? In come flash.utils.describeType().

This little function provides A LOT of details about any class and is perfect for what I need/want to accomplish. Here is a sample of the output.

<type name=”myapp.enums::BrowserTypes” base=”Class” isDynamic=”true” isFinal=”true” isStatic=”true”>
  <extendsClass type=”Class”/>
  <extendsClass type=”Object”/>
  <constant name=”IMAGE_BROWSER” type=”String”/>
  <constant name=”TEMPLATE_BROWSER” type=”String”/>
  <accessor name=”prototype” access=”readonly” type=”*” declaredBy=”Class”/>
  <factory type=”myapp.enums::BrowserTypes”>
    <extendsClass type=”myapp.enums::EnumBase”/>
    <extendsClass type=”Object”/>
  </factory>
</type>

To generate this XML, I used the following code:

import flash.utils.describeType;
import myapp.enums.BrowserTypes;
var description:XML = describeType(BrowserTypes);
trace(describeType(BrowserTypes));

That’s it. I read my entire class file and received XML info about it which means I can (duhn duhn duhn duhnnnnnnnnnnnnn [or however horns sound when they blare for you]) PARSE THE XML!! :-)

Let me get to the bottom line…here is the base class I created to validate any enum constant.

/**
* EnumBase
* @author John C. Bland II
* @version 0.1
*/

package myapp.enums {
    import flash.utils.*;
    public class EnumBase {
        public static function isValid(value:String):Boolean{
            return describeType(BrowserTypes)..constant.(@name==value).toXMLString().length > 0;
        }
    }
}

Here is the enum which extends this class.

/**
* BrowserTypes Enum
* @author John C. Bland II
* @version 0.1
*/

package myapp.enums {
    public final class BrowserTypes extends EnumBase{
        public static const TEMPLATE_BROWSER:String = “TEMPLATE_BROWSER”;
        public static const IMAGE_BROWSER:String = “IMAGE_BROWSER”;
    }
}

Pretty slick huh? The parsing merely returns a boolean if it can’t find the node with a name that matches the passed in value. :-D YUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMY!

NOTE
This will only validate constants. You can easily change the EnumBase.isValid() method to parse whatever you want but your enum(s) should use constants anyway.

Posted by John C. Bland II at 2:17 AM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

June 25, 2007

My Slowwww Comment Responses

Trust me…it isn’t just the fact that I am away from my blog that much. Moveable Type is HORRRRRRRRRIBLE at spam filtering. I mean really bad (version 3.2 at least)! I just spent the last 40 minutes deleting spam comments (over two or thee hundred). :-( That’s what makes me HATE this blog software.

The thing is, I have links all over pointing to this URL so I don’t want to switch. Version 4.0 is said to be better at spam filtering. I’d be OK with the current no-filtering if it actually allowed me to approve/”trust” commenters the trusted commenters could comment without needing approval (which, btw…this doesn’t work in MT, for me, either).

So, I have to constantly look for comments (since notification emails won’t send either) which I’m not to keen on doing. :-( I’m working on it though.

Anyways…this post is simply to notify my commenters/readers to be patient when commenting. Hopefully the next version of MT won’t suck in so many crucial areas. If you know of any way to help my issues (namely plugins or whatever), please let me know.

Thanks.

Posted by John C. Bland II at 2:28 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

New Category: Authorize.net CFC

I’ve used Authorize.net for a few years now and love it. I’ve implemented payment processing code (in a CFC) on about 7 or 8 ColdFusion sites (hrmm…maybe a few more) and have revised the code over and over again.

I read on a list someone was talking about Authorize.net (won’t reveal list or purpose) so I pinged him and told him I had some. He said he could use a link to it (ex - on riaforge.com) so I went ahead and set it up on riaforge.com today. You can read here for updates on the CFC and grab updates from riaforge.com.

Here is the link to the project. Look for more updates as I use it more but don’t look too often as it is pretty solid as-is. At most you’ll see some new features for Auth.net (like recurring payments, etc).

HTH

Posted by John C. Bland II at 1:48 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

June 22, 2007

ActionScript 3 Tip: Dynamic attachMovie

attachMovie is gone. In AS3 you simply say new Whatever() and it creates a new instance. I posted a brief tutorial on gotoAndStop.org. What I ran into today was trying to get this to work in the instance of a dynamic clip.

In AS2, this was common practice:

var linkage:String = “Blah”;
attachMovie(linkage, “new name”, 0);

In AS3, here is how you do it:

var linkage:String = “Box”;
var DynamicClass:Class = getDefinitionByName(linkage) as Class;
addChild(new DynamicClass());

This realllllly made my day. :-D I figured I’d go ahead and post it here so others can join in on the love.

BTW, still loving FlashDevelop. ;-)

Posted by John C. Bland II at 12:33 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

June 21, 2007

FlashDevelop ROCKS!

I haven’t used FlashDevelop because I had it mixed up with PrimalScript (which has a price attached to it). One of our developers has used it for quite some time. Another one just recently picked it up for this huge Flash CS3 project we’re developing. Both spoke highly about the software but I still was skeptical. My main annoyance is using two programs to build an app. Meaning, Flash CS3 for the FLA and FlashDevelop open for AS files. Small issue but it kept me away.

Last night I decided to install the beta version and I toyed with it briefly. I really liked what I saw and today I actually dev’d in it. Now, I’m not going to go feature by feature and talk about what I like/dislike (haven’t met a dislike yet but I’m sure something will be disliked) rather I’m just going to say….FlashDevelop ROCKS!!!!!!!!!!!! Seriously. I’m redev’ing some classes and the mere fact I have code hints for the AS3 library (Flash CS3’s version) AND my custom classes is GREAT!

The bottom line is…the IDE sucks for AS3 development. I really tried pushing for some development updates in the IDE (before it came out, that is) but this IDE is horrible for development, in my opinion. Sorry Adobe…it just stinks (for development).

Posted by John C. Bland II at 8:55 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

June 20, 2007

Nice Portfolio: http://www.prototypic.com/

Brian Reed, a member in azFPUG, has been holding out on us. His portfolio is quite nice. There are some very nice designs in there. Great work Brian! All this time and you are just sitting in our backyard with some sweet designs. :-D

http://www.prototypic.com/

Posted by John C. Bland II at 9:14 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

June 12, 2007

Flash CS3's AS3 is not Flex 2's AS3

…and this is HIGHLY irritating. There are a lot of lil’ things that aren’t the same or simply do not exist. If CS3 was out first, I’d understand but it wasn’t. Flex 2 has been out for a year now and has been through a revision already. Why in the world did they make CS3’s AS3 suck so bad? Argggg.

You’ll see some posts regarding issues I have with CS3’s AS3 as we continue working on this RIA in CS3. We pushed hard for Flex but, for animation purposes, the client wanted CS3. :-( That was disappointing but I had no idea Flash’s CS3 was lacking in so many areas.

- Irritated in CS3

Posted by John C. Bland II at 4:07 PM | | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

June 11, 2007

Me + Jobing.com = New Blog

I’ve been setup on jobing.com for a little over a month and I am starting to go ahead and blog it up a bit more. Check me out on jobing.com for my thoughts on geek jobs, etc.

To clarify, this is still my technical/business blog so don’t un-rss me. ;-)

Posted by John C. Bland II at 12:25 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

June 8, 2007

Ubuntu on Virtual PC 2007

I don’t know if it is Ubuntu or VPC but I am getting some weird results out of my tests.

 Ubuntu Graphics Problems

Mind you, I know nothing about Ubuntu or Linux in general. I’ve been interested for a while but never took the time to mess with it.

Anyway’s, it is late and Lil’ John has a Dr’s appointment in the AM. I need to get some rest.

More to come…

Posted by John C. Bland II at 1:35 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

June 7, 2007

Phoenix Flex UG Inaugural Meeting...TONIGHT!

I’m excited about this. Many know I manage FMUG.az, which covers pretty much anything Flash/web/multimedia, and those on the list know I push Flex pretty hard (and love it). So to have a dedicated group of Flex folks in the form of a UG, here’s the icing, IN PHOENIX is shawweeeeet! :-D

For more info on the group check their site out here and join us tonight as they kick things off with Matt Chotin (nice!).

See you there, I hope.

Posted by John C. Bland II at 3:50 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Back on IM, Trillian Alpha

After N months of being off IM (probably around 2 or 3), I’m back. Google Talk was about the only IM I’d jump on with an occasional AIM for a client (specific client IM name). After being back on all IM’s (AIM, Yahoo, Google, MSN), I remember why I’d stay hidden at times. :-D

I love talking to people…really I do. It is simply the fact of being off for so long and having minimal IM contact to a day of 5 IM’s at a time (active)…it brings back memories. :-D

Anyway’s…notice all who have seen me gone for the longest…I’M BACK! ;-) 

Posted by John C. Bland II at 3:44 PM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Windows Live Writer Beta 2 - Testing

I saw Tim Heuer blogged about this so I figured I’d take a look. Blogging hasn’t been my #1 thing lately, although I have been wanting to…time hasn’t allowed [a lot to talk about though], and I am hoping having a desktop app will help improve that. I’ve heard a lot about this so I’m looking forward to seeing it in action.

Well…post 1 done with WLW Beta 2. I’ll do a full review later.

Posted by John C. Bland II at 7:24 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)