I've just spent the last few days reading a book called "Good News for a Change: How Everyday People are Helping the planet". If you happen to be a bit of an environmentalist and/or are feeling a little down and wondering what good could be happening in this world then this is the book for you. I actually found it quite inspiring just due to the fact that there is so much out there that is amazingly happening and the news on TV/Radio/Internet just doesn't ever cover it. If it doesn't have an ambulance in it or some kind of news on profits then the media outlets just don't seem to care.
Anyways, this book will take you around the world and talk about the really cool and amazing projects that are going on that are unbelievably turning back the clock on the rampant destruction that has been going on with this planet. There are a lot of people who are helping to make this place a better place to live and succeeding at that! Makes me want to get out there and help out. So, I probably will.
The book also talks about some of the world factors that are involved and I have to say that together with a few other books I've read through, the world is actually starting to make a bit more sense now. Not that much of it is good sense, but the pieces are coming together in a much broader way than I thought.
Anyways, sorry for the off topic post but I really feel that this book is something that others should be aware of if not already. Keeping in mind the book is a few years old, I would think that quite a few people are already aware of it and have read it, but I didn't know until just lately.. so maybe there are others too. The book can be found here if you need a reference to it to pick it up at your local book store or something. Maybe just buy off of Amazon, seems to be cheaper.
I've been putting off getting a PDA for quite some time now with my last "PDA" being bought in while I was in Japan first getting there almost 9 years ago.
So, being interested in the PDA market I kept my eye on what is coming out. Finally there was one that seemed rather attractive with the normal PDA features like calendar, contacts, Word, Powerpoint, email etc with WIFI and Bluetooth support, and to top it off, GPS. GPS with TomTom providing the software for the maps.
I most definitely like the fact that I can just quickly switch it on to see where I am exactly, being in that I am like a backwards homing pigeon and will almost always go the exact opposite direction in that I want to go.. it's rather weird actually. Anyways, this rather handy functionality has already served a great purpose for me yesterday when I was curious as to how long it would take me to get to my destination. It did pretty good in figuring it out and judging on the distance.
I've read a lot of reviews on the iPaq rx5900 and the biggest complaint was that the battery doesn't last so long but it seems to be doing rather well for me. We'll see though I guess.
Now my next interest lies in that I would like to run flash apps on it. Most particularly our support application, or at the least, a mobile version of it. So that's next on the list of things to check out on this thing. I wonder how to get the flash player installed.. I'm guessing there are sites that cover this kind of thing so off I go! But of course if any of you readers out there have some tips, please let me know :)
I hate to admit it but I'm pretty hooked on this game. Especially the karkand map because of the close combat that is involved and that you really have to be a well-oiled team to get in and take over all points as quick as possible.
Anyways...
As I run around looking for new maps for BF2 I came across a site that showed how to find pink teddy bears in the game.
How do people find this crap? It's amusing, that's for sure.
On a bright note, it looks like an expansion pack is coming out this year for the game. It's going to be good I think, and I can't wait for it to come out. The lack of maps in the current game has been a down point for me in it as some of the maps just aren't interesting enough to keep me playing.
On route back to an extended trip to the U.S., I am staying overnight in the Hotel Nikko, at the Kansai International Airport in Osaka.
Note, THEY DO NOT HAVE INTERNET ACCESS FROM ROOMS. Unless you want to pay for dial-up by the minute….
The "business center" which is open until 9pm offers broadband, however it would not play nice with my notebook and therefore I could not connect. Note that they have NO technical staff on hand to resolve issues like this. So, I am in the "lobby" of the airport writing up this post at 12:48am. Why am I here? I am taking advantage of their wireless hotspots, as I have a deadline to meet (which are not accessible from the hotel). So, if you have to get something done and have net access, DO NOT STAY AT THE HOTEL NIKKO in Osaka..unless you like hanging out in the airport in the wee hours of the morning.
The lights just went out and airport security guards are eyeing me in an unpleasant manner, so I guess it is time to head back to hotel hell....
You have been warned....
I got quite a few questions on how I made that MM video banner spoof and finally put some time aside to make an article on it that flashstreamworks.com has been so generous to host. It turned out to be 7 pages though... so you'll most likely need a cup of coffee or something if you are going to sit down and read it. Please let me know your thoughts on the article if you have 'em :)
You can check it out here.
This is most definitely late in coming but to be honest I've been itching to write this review for quite some time now. It's unfortunate that due to a lot of projects and less time to get them done in, things like this have been pushed to the side temporarily though not permanently :)
A little background on myself I think to lay the brickwork for the basis of my review. I'm currently working in the middle of Japan, Tokyo as a developer for Flash and Flash Communication Server applications mainly which also interact with server side technologies and databases. I literally build these types of RIA's for a living. Up until this book I was aware of OOP and had a general knowledge of it, but no idea of the true OOP that is out there with classes, interfaces, strong typing, different types of patterns (though I generally use MVC), inheritance and exception handling. I had never used AS2 before this book, which I finished reading about a month or so ago, so no real knowledge of what is in it. I have a small library of Flash books here, and I can say that I am not easily impressed by the writings of most when they start off with "flash started in whatever year as a whatever... blah blah blah". Solid information, with solid examples that work and I can use in the real world are what I look for in a book. This is the base that I will be writing this review from.
To start off in this review, I'd like to say that Colin has once again written a formidable book for the Flash actionscripting community. This book may be a bit slimmer than his last books that he wrote but in my opinion packs a bigger punch. Not only that, it builds on this last book which is great because he was able to reduce redundacy of making readers read the same things they may have already read. If you are looking to get into Actionscript 2.0 then I would most definitely recommend this book.
On to some details if I may. First off I don't think this book is for the faint of heart or complete beginner to actionscript. There are a lot of details crammed into the pages here and if you aren't on your toes throughout the book it's very easy to get a bit lost and have to backtrack to read up on what is being talked about. Not to say it's hard to understand mind you, but the detail is quite high, making intake of all the information a bit tough. Definitely not a book that can be read in one sitting I think. In fact it took me a good 2 weeks to get through it all where I was reasonably sure I knew what was going on. I then ran through it again covering the areas I was unsure of. Finally at this point I can say that it mainly sits on my desk as a great reference of "how does that work again?" kind of idea.
I should say that there is one thing that irked me is that Colin is quite repitituous on some details of AS2. For example, when you put a data type in a var that was set to a different data type "It will throw an error!!"... yes I got that after the first 10 mentionings of it ;) But! funnily enough, it's this repitition that really got the basics into my head that went on to be the building blocks to things that I really had no idea about. I found the book quite well laid out in that he never really moved on to something that you couldn't build on past chapters or sections to understand. It all has a logic to it that I found was easy to follow, but once again the detail was high enough that I couldn't just swim through it.
Examples! yes, do these too I think. I started off in my usual way of just sitting down on my couch with a drink and reading. No... this doesn't work. Sit in front of your computer and give it a shot. Type it out, see what happens and what doesn't happen. Change them up, play, have fun, make stuff. The examples are great and plentiful, and really push the basics in to move on to more advanced techniques to create good OOP AS2. One example lead to the next, and the next built onto that and so on. Logical and it really helped me see into the ways that a good developer like Colin thinks and works when creating applications in Flash.
To end it all off, I took my new found knowledge and put it to making a component for Flash MX2004. This component is a video player for progressive flv's and is very very close to reaching production status and should be up on 2 live sites by the end of the month. I truly look forward to that as it really shows that getting the book paid off for us as it was actually put towards "real world" applications. I'd have to say that putting this component together really hammered in the topics covered in the book of AS2, creating classes and components as there were lots of times where I was sitting there saying "WTF?? why isn't this working". Open the book, read up on what is really happening and a light comes on.
I'd like to thank Colin again for the reviewers copy that he sent out even after having trouble with O'Reilly actually getting these out to some reviewers. An excellent book and definitely something I recommend to anybody out there looking to get knowledgable in AS2 and learn a thing or two from an experienced developer.
Well the newest version of Sorenson Squeeze has made it out which is awesome. I've been waiting for this for quite some time as I do a lot of vid work and need to get it to flv. Very nice looking app I think, and there are some seriously major improvements. Unfortunately there is a small problem....
For the progressive FLV player component that we created, it requires the metadata that *doesn't* get put in with squeeze 3.5. Which means we have been using flvmdi quite liberally and then reading the file into flash. This has worked great so far but I really didn't want to have to keep opening up the little black command window to use this tool and was truly hoping that Squeeze 4 would have metadata put in properly on encoding. It does get put in... but it's wrong. In point, it doesn't put in the proper size of the flv (in height and width) which is very bad for players that use that info (like any player that is worth it's sand..). So until they fix this bug (whether they are aware of it or not is beyond me..) it's a necessity for all you flv junkies to continue to use flvmdi. Which I guess isn't so bad, 'cause you do get more info with it and can put in your own stuff if you really want to. It's just that it would be so nicely convenient to get it all done in one jump.. especially for batch jobs. *sigh*
I'm sure a lot of you already have your opinions on swf to exe tools but I thought I'd stick my thoughts up just in case there are some who are still wondering what's up with swf to exe tools.
I'm going to compare 4 tools today, and it's going to be mainly from a dev point of view I think as I don't do a lot of design myself. I actually don't know anymore swf to exe products, so if I'm missing something please let me know.
First off is Screenweaver. The software that died on Dec 2, 2003. This is the last build of it which sucks because I think that screenweaver had the most potential just because it has already what most of the others are just getting around to getting in.
The best part of screenweaver is that it has it's own AS methods that you can call to talk to the OS. Changing icons and focus is as simple as calling the methods that Screenweaver supports. There are tons of commands and I have yet it lacking in something I needed.
It supports alpha transparency perfectly. I remember when I first started using it I compared it to Flash Studio Pro v1 and found it miles ahead. At the time FSP didn't support alpha transparency which was a very big deal because then you had to make "windows" windows. Which sucked.
It supports 2 byte characters. I have found no other swf to exe software that supports this. Screenweaver is definitely ahead of the pack when it comes to international applications. Is it because it's not an American company? Not to shoot down American companies but a lot of them DON'T think about 2 byte characters and almost never support them. Screenweaver is a Rubberduck (no site..) product which is Dutch? Where is the domain .nl?
Screenweaver is quite easy to use, and has a couple of different editing modes to help the beginner or for the advanced user who really knows what they are doing. A good piece of software all around I think.
The unfortunate thing about Screenweaver is that it is a hog on resources and it leaks. At least from my experience unless you minimize the program once in a while it'll climb and climb which ends up sucking up memory which of course slows down your comp. Also in the beginning it sucks up a lot of memory. Which is really too bad but in a way liveable I think.
The worst thing about Screenweaver is that there is no support anymore. Mails will go unanswered and the forum is a an unofficial ghost-forum. You can almost see the digital tumbleweed going through it.
Moving on to Flash Studio Pro v2. I won't even mention v1 as I considered it garbage that wasn't even worth looking at for longer than 5 mins. Especially compared to Screenweaver at the time. BUT it has grown up. A lot. It still doesn't do everything that Screenweaver can in some areas but does more in other areas.
What I need most in the apps we create for the desktop are 3 things. Good command of the OS, perfect transparency, and the ability to internationalize it. As in, it must support 2 byte chars.
The command of the OS is great. They finally have moved away from the nasty fscommand and have made the "FSP Script" which seems to work quite well though is still a bit in it's infancy. Still there are over 600 commands so I truly doubt that you will be "lacking" in anything that you need. It's worked quite well so far for me.
Transparency... still doesn't match up to Screenweaver which stopped updating their app almost a year ago. What is so hard about making an app properly transparent? There are multiple problems that I have found, the HUGEST being that you have to embed fonts that you want people to see/input them. This is absolute garbage as far as I can tell and does nothing to show me that they have the situation in hand. I don't have to do that with Screenweaver... but enough of comparing it to SW. I would like to see better support for transparency that's for sure.
Internationalization.. nope. None. What a bummer. What year is it again?
Their support seems to be quite good and they have been getting out new builds pretty quick. I did harp on them once for the transparency issue but ended up getting ignored in the end and never got an answer about the text issue (ended up finding out after about another bunch of people asked the same question)
They have a mac plugin!! This is about the only thing that I consider puts them ahead of the pack. No other swf to exe product supports this.
Next is Screentime's mProjector. I'm afraid I don't have much on these guys other than that I will probably never ever use their software. Like screenweaver they thought it would be a great idea to create their software in Flash.. I'm not sure why, I mean I am making software in flash I guess but that's not the point :)
I DL'd the trial, installed, and went to try the first file and it locked up. The wonderful "this flash script is taking a long time, do you want to stop it" error comes up... I think "oh this is made in flash.. great" And then my file gets imported but unfortunately I just stopped the flash script so none of the buttons work anymore... Which means it can't be closed because they used a wonderful transparent movie so they have their own close buttons. Anyways, you're wondering what was in the file right? It was the media component because I was thinking of making a quick exe that would play a vid that I had in the same directory (just a basic example). I tried the same file in FSPv2, and it imported nicely.
It does have it's own script like screenweaver and FSPv2. Which is cool and you can integrate in with the OS quite well I think. And it gets installed into flash so you don't have to look at a seperate help file or pdf (like FSPv2) which is extremely handy.
It does not support 2 byte chars. That sucks.
The interface is annoying in my opinion. The buttons react on the "rollOver" so if you move your mouse over them you automatically go to a different section. It's small, and you CAN'T turn off the preview, which lead to the problem I had on my first file. I'm sure they'll get their stuff together a bit more in the future but for now I rate them lowest.
The last is one that I have the least experience with (about the same as mProjector), Northcode's swfStudio. I have heard a few good comments from friends on their software so I thought I'd try it out.
The first thing it did after I ran it was reinstall my logitech quickcam..... I have no idea of why. And I was extremely annoyed because no matter how many times I canceled it would pop up. So off I go to find the cd... and a few minutes later it pops up and then loads up MSWord so that it can show me the licence. This is turning out to be an extremely horrible user experience (and experience matters right?)
So it's up now, and the first thing I check.. no support for 2 byte chars. Strike 1.
The GUI is nice I think, there are a lot of options to mess with and you can change a lot of stuff around. It uses fsCommand which I find is really annoying, though I'm sure a lot of people may like it or even prefer it, I'd rather not use them. Though it does seem to have a lot of control over the OS.
That's about it for swfStudio unfortunately. I've had a bad user experience with it so far and just don't have the will to mess with it anymore. If anybody has some thoughts on this product, please place them in the comments and will try to post my thoughts on those.
I guess so far it's really a toss up between FSPv2 and Screenweaver. I like FSPv2's GUI and commands. It has a lot of options and the software is still alive and kicking unlike Screenweaver. But Screenweaver supports 2 very important things to me, internationalization and transparency much better than FSPv2. If there was a way to fix that memory leak problem and the fact that Screenweaver built exe files can be taken apart with winZip I'd be a lot happier.
Why is it that we still can't have our cake and eat it?
So in conclusion, all of the software listed above have free DL's, and for the most part are all fully functional with certain limits on how long you can use the created files or an annoying "this is a trial" banner thingy when you load the file up. I think all support FTP'ing, and HTTPS and sending mail directly to a mail server. Which is cool. Database support is good in FSPv2 as you can connect to a local access file or mySQL. Handy stuff.