Neglected Code Blog

So I tend to use prefixed comments on my own code to remind myself when I’m putting something off, or I’ve identified a problem but don’t have time to fix it. Stuff like //FIXME and //TODO are all over my code with instructions and sometimes even psuedo-code.The big problem for me is that I always forget where I left these comments. Today I finally took a second to skulk around for a cool eclipse plugin, and with help from a brilliant colleague and friend of mine, Michael Avila

http://www.richinternet.de/blog/index.cfm?entry=911D4B57-0F0D-5A73-AF6F4D4D04099757

So far I’m LOVING this little plugin. A++!:)

I’ll be speaking about crazy uses of AIR at the Singularity global web conference! I just got my bio and presentation details up. I think Aral will be posting my pic sometime soon. The conference is unique in that its all over the net, which is really an awesome idea. I’m looking forward to hearing all the other speakers.

I’m sitting here feeling relatively stupid, and a little ripped off. I invested 4+ hours to do something that I should have been able to figure out in about 5 minutes or less. I have been trying to figure out how to upload an image to Tumblr using their very simple API. After many attempts at sending the binary data from a ByteArray I finally figured it out…duh.Of course there are a few ways to obvtain the FileReference object, and also many events to listen to. I’ll go into detail about all this later maybe, but for now I’m just going to paste the obvious method for posting images to Tumblr. Here’s the code: 

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var vars:URLVariables = new URLVariables();
vars.email = "your@emailaddress.com";
vars.password = "password";
vars.type = "photo";
vars.caption = "This is the photo caption!"; // optional ( and can use html )
 
var request:URLRequest = new URLRequest( "http://www.tumblr.com/api/write" );
request.method = URLRequestMethod.POST;
request.data = vars;
 
file.upload( request, "data" );

Yeah, I know, that was way too obvious, and a lame post, but I am trying to squeeze as much out of my wasted 4 hours as I can, so thanks for reading. 

Its last minute, but I’ll be sharing the meeting with friend, cohort, and UDFUG manager John Lindquist. I’ll try and take up 45 minutes talking about AIR windows ( NativeWindow stuff really ) and some fun toys I’ve made. There will also be a fun little announcement at the meeting ( more on that later ).

I think one of the toughest parts of presenting is knowing what your audience already knows. I’m always afraid I’m covering material everyone is already well aware of. If anyone reading has any suggestions for going about this I’d love to hear. I’ve been writing the AIR Bible for a few months now and am finding the task of delivering content that is useful to both advanced and beginner developers at the same time to be highly challenging. I personally prefer to read something that is a little over my head, I can always re-read it and do the required research and experimentation to try and catch up, but I really don’t like textbooks that offer little to nothing that isn’t obvious. I once picked up a C# textbook and was rather disappointed that it spent a whole chapter on Arrays. I don’t blame the authors really, its really tough to know who your audience is, and there doesn’t seem to be a very obvious way of separating programming basics from the nature of a specific language or platform.

I’ll continue on with my struggle to deliver good material for all, but again would love to hear feedback on the subject, thanks in advance!

Beta 3 is now available on labs. It doesn’t look like anything major changed, unlike the transition from beta 1 to beta 2 you should be able to migrate pretty easily. I haven’t seen a nice overview of the changes outside of the release notes so far and the link on devnet introducing 3 is linking to Mike Chamber’s beta 2 announcement. I’ll update as soon as that gets fixed, but so far it looks good and I’ll be installing today to take it out for a spin. Here’s where you can get the stuff you need to start working in beta 3:

The runtime - What you need to run AIR apps.

The SDK - What you need if you don’t want to use either Flash CS3, Flex 3 Beta 3, or Dreamweaver

FlexBuilder 3 - What I use to develop. I occasionally use FlashDevelop, but rely on FlexBuilder for mostly all my actionscripting.

I’d like to announce something that I’ve been working on during the past month that I’ve been too busy with to announce. You might guess by the title of this post that I’m co-authoring the Adobe AIR Bible for Wiley Publishing. I’m excited to be working with Ben Gorton and Ryan Taylor, both colleagues that I met and have the pleasure of working with at Schematic. The Bible has been a lot of work so far, but so far it has been worth it. I really can’t express how excited I am to hold it in my hands and see it in bookstores, but I have several months of hard work ahead of me that I’ll be trying to survive.

I really am enjoying working with Ben and Ryan, and all the research and learning that goes into writing. Most of all I’m really enjoying the aspect of giving back to the Flash/Flex community and contributing to the learning experience of fellow developers. The book is shaping up pretty well and I hope for and look forward to it being as helpful as so many textbooks have been for myself.

We should be on the book shelves sometime in the spring of ‘08, so keep an eye out!

I’ll be speaking at the LA Web Developer Meetup in Glendale on October the 23rd. Here’s the info: http://web.meetup.com/34/calendar/6440869/

I’m going to give an ultra quick rundown on getting started with developing applications in the Adobe AIR Platform. Its supposed to be only 10 minutes with a 5 minutes Q and A, so it will definitely be rapid. I’m hoping to get to “Hello World” at the very least though.

I’ll actually be jetting back to the FITC after party right after this, but there should be time to get there before the Schematic crew is totally hammered. I’m looking forward to this insane day!