For those Aussie’s abroad at the moment and lamenting the demise of Channel 7’s “The Dream” during the Olympics, you’ll be happy to know JJJ have come to the rescue! Roy & HG are broadcasting a half hour wrap up of the days proceedings from their Golden Ring Show website.
I’ve exhausted You Tube’s collection of The Dream and Roy & HG so was pretty happy to find that JJJ have done the right thing and given rampaging Roy and HG an avenue to vent their frustrations with the officials and the dud Aussie teams at this years Games.
Take it away Bro’s!
Well at least it doesn’t allow me to tune my guitar using a microphone (as I was hoping the new features added to the Sound class might).
I’m currently away from my lovely Takamine acoustic guitar with built in tuner, and have a fairly dodgy classical to play with at the moment. As I don’t have my standalone guitar tuner either I started looking for applications for my phone that would allow me to tune the guitar. I found a few, but none seemed to actually do anything after installation, so I started wondering whether Flash 8, 9 or 10 might be able to do the job. I did find a reasonable flash tuner, but this didn’t make use of the microphone (like both my proper guitar tuners do). I then investigated the new Flash 10 player features only to be disappointed when I read the following (taken from kaourantin.net):
Unfortunately some features did not make it into Flash Player 10: Extracting audio data from a microphone and extracting audio from a NetStream object. We are aware that both features are highly desirable, but for various reasons it was not possible to make this happen in this release.
Adobe’s missed a good opportunity to integrate some very powerful audio capabilities into the Flash player… but I’m sure there’s a good reason for it… right?
So it’s back to tuning the good ‘ol fashion way I suppose!
I’ve been a bit busy over the last few months. Here’s what I’ve been up to…
I’ve moved to the UK
I’ve travelled home again for a family reunion
I’ve read a good portion of Moock’s Essential ActionScript 3.0
I’ve drunk more Guinness than I care to (or can) remember in Ireland
I’ve sold a car
I’ve worked on my first AS3 site
I’ve used the Gaia Flash Framework
The last point is obviously what I’d like to delve in to a bit more.
For those of you that aren’t aware (like myself about 3 months ago) what the Gaia Flash Framework is, you can find out more at Steven Sacks comprehensive website - http://www.gaiaflashframework.com. I only stumbled upon the Framework as a result of someone else (can’t remember who it was now, but thanks!) posting about it on their blog.
In essence it’s a Framework that takes a lot of the leg work out of creating page based Flash sites. By Page based I mean sites that have a fairly standard navigation hierarchy. It can be used for more complex projects, though I found I struggled against the Framework more than it helped me some of the time.
The project I decided to use it on was for the SBS Australia Documentary website - mY Generation
The main issues I came up against in using the Framework for this site were the following:
- I couldn’t have two pages loaded on the screen from separate branches at the same time. So If I wanted a video from one section to remain visible on screen while the user navigated to the “TELL A FRIEND” section I couldn’t do this due to the way pages have to unload if there not part of the parent page node
- Using the transition engine, although powerful, quickly became very convoluted and confusing when testing the preloading of pages and assets. Though I suspect I found this as the Framework wasn’t quite suited to this type of project
- The file size of the entire project was larger than I would’ve preferred as each page had to have it’s own swf associated with it. This meant not easily being able to share assets like fonts amongst pages. This was partially addressed in later versions of the Framework, so I will have to see if I can utilise this functionality next time around.
- Later on in the project new releases of the Framework became available that significantly changed the implementation of some of the Frameworks features. This made it very difficult for me to upgrade and get the benefit of the bug fixes that were made
On the up side, it’s author Steven Sacks mustn’t spend a great deal of time sleeping as he seems to hold down a full time job whilst at the same time rapidly releasing new versions of the Framework and responding with very lengthy and informative posts on the forum. The documentation is also very good, though there were a few things missing which threw me for a loop (though most users probably wouldn’t have experienced the same issues as I was pushing the boundary’s of what the Framework was capable of). The documentation also gets updated very frequently with issues that users are experiencing in the forums.
I didn’t get to use the SEO capabilities of the Framework, but am finishing up my “new” (it’s been 2 years in the making) website now and am contemplating porting it all across to Gaia just for this 1 feature.
So check out the Framework, check out the SBS site, and let us know if you’ve had any experience with Gaia.
Sorry about the terrible play on words there (I’ve been taking too many literary cues from the Adelaide Advertiser ;-) but I am pretty excited about travelling to the UK next week and attending the London onAIR conference. Obviously it’s a long way to travel from Adelaide, Australia to the UK for a free conference - so I better get my money’s worth! hehe, no seriously I’m moving over there to play some cricket and try and spruce up my Flash portfolio (if there’s any Flash developer work going around Cambridge, I’d love to hear about it)
So if you’re an Aussie travelling across or already in London planning on attending the conference or for that matter anyone interested in making another acquaintance just leave me a comment. I shouldn’t be hard to miss… I’ll be the bloke with his life’s possessions on his back having come straight from Heathrow to attend the London Tour, and probably a Red Bull in each hand trying to shake off the 16,000 odd kilometres of drowsiness. So apologies in advance if I nod off during one of the presentations having found a nice comfy spot on your shoulder ;-)
Just wanted to exclaim to the world (well the handful of people that happen to read this post anyway ;-) that FlashDevelop is freaking unbelievable!
After using the Flash CS3 IDE to edit code, FlashDevelop is pure bliss! I did try it a few Beta versions back, but never for an AS2 project that was half way through. The speed with which I can code in FlashDevelop Vs. the Flash IDE is increased 3 fold. I know Vista and CS3 and my rather old hardware (yes I’ve got 2Gb of memory) are causing some of the issues I experience when editing .as files in Flash, but FlashDevelop isn’t affected by these same issues.
I just want to say thanks to Philippe for the work he’s put into this program.
Here’s hoping Adobe pull their finger out and put a usable text editor into the next version of Flash. Until then, FlashDevelop is my new best friend.
Having just returned recently from a 4 week whirlwind tour of the UK, Sweden, Finland, Austria, Holland and Hong Kong; I lobbed back into ‘lil old Adelaide with the very strong desire to do it all over again. But this time in a slightly less frenetic pace.
I’ve searched high and low (ok, so I’ve googled a bit) for answers to the following question: Can you operate your business from a different country to the one which it is registered in? More specifically, can you do work for clients in the country that you will be residing in? Even more specifically, can this be done either without a UK Visa (the UK is where I intend on travelling) or can it be done on the UK working holiday Visa?
I’m interested in being able to do freelance and temporary development & design work during my stay in the UK, but there’s still fairly large grey areas surrounding what I can and can’t do whilst there. And it’s grey mainly because I run my own business, and most business owners don’t normally move countries and still try and operate the same business. Which is actually a whole other quandary I currently face; what to do with my business?
Has anyone had a similar experience, or can shed any light on the Visa questions above? If so, I’d really appreciate your advice.
I was just looking at my Google Analytics stats for this blog, and noticed that there are wave like patterns in the visits graph. They coincide with Satuday and Sunday in the US (where most of my traffic comes from). It’s weird to see patterns like this so clearly pronounced in the stats - and good to see that my blog gets some time off over the weekend as well ;-)
I can’t put my finger on what it is - but a well used palette of greys just does something for me.
Which is why it was love at first sight when I saw the redoable Wordpress theme - I had to have her!!
Big up to it’s creator Dean Robinson - awesome work mate!
So it’s out with the old fspring theme (you’ve been a solid companion over the years) and in with the new.
This is kinda where my new site design is headed as well… mmmmm, shades of grey.
In an adjunct to my last post on choice (which didn’t exactly set the comment textfield on fire) I’d like to exclaim just how many ways I have to navigate back (and forward) in my browser!
1. standard browser back button
2. right click on page, select back
3. alt + left arrow key
4. right mouse button then left mouse button quickly (only just discovered this one by accident)
5. right click and hold then drag to the left (courtesy of the mouse gestures extension)
6. History > Back
7. click dedicated back button on mouse (VX Revolultion)
Anyone got any others?
The problem with this amount of choice (and I touched on this in my last post) is that it can often cause me to hesitate while I pick one of the 7 ways of going back - when I really just want to go back without thinking about it.
Damn you choice!
There’s something that’s been on my mind. It’s something I’ve spent many hours pondering recently.
Choice.
Specifically, which software to choose.
Which path to take.
Will going down path A get me there in the end or is path B the right choice for me…
Accounting software, IM’s, Calendaring, VNC, and the mother of all software choices - the OS itself.
Sometimes I think it would be good if Microsoft (or some equally powerful higher being) decreed what software was to be used for what purpose, and everyone just got along and used it. One standard, one developer, one channel of support…, simple. A software dictatorship if you like.
But alas, with every passing day, the number of choices only grows. Which seems to be directly proportional to my level of hesitancy to commit to the path I know I need to (at some stage, maybe tomorrow…?) take.
Would love for someone to reaffirm why choice is such a good thing, because I’m starting to loose faith in diversity.
Have at it.
(If you choose :-)
