Software, Fitness, and Gaming – Jesse Warden

Blog

  • Tool vs. Product

    Dude, I just figured it out as to why I have problems getting excited about end results vs. how to get there. Like, you know how a lot of developers and designers are loyal to their craft vs. loyal to their company? Some don’t care where they work, just as long as they are plying their trade. I have the same type of thing with Flash. I don’t really care what’s created in it; RIA’s, games, animations… they are all neat, but I care more about creating things in Flash vs. what was actually created. I don’t get excited over RIA’s, but I do get excited over a new component set made to create RIA’s. I’m not excited about Flex, but I am excited I can create components for Flex.

    Anyway, thinking about it on the way to work this morning. I was always frustrated because I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t excited about a lot of the products and technologies such as RIA’s, XPath, and portable vector rendering engines… and then I realized, I don’t give a flip about them unless they were made using Flash. So, I’m all about the tool vs. the product. Granted, I’m all about creating quality content, just ask my customers. I can, however, see why I’m still a developer vs. a business owner.

  • 133t (Leet) Keyboard

    d00d, I’d so buy 1, tis so ph@t!

    Leet Keyboard

  • Rock, Paper, Saddam dot Kizz-ohm

    Via Steven Sacks.

    *** Not Work Safe ***

    Saddam plays rock paper scissors with the courtroom judge with some crazy rules.

    Rock Paper Saddam

  • Initialization Order in Flash MX 2004

    Did I mention homework sux? Taking a break between 10 billion essays + discussion board assignments to spiel some Flash stizz-nuff.

    Someone commented on a really old blog entry asking a question about init order of components. Here’s the four one one.

    In Flash MX, you had this compile time operator called #initclip. You would wrap your class code, typically on frame one inside of the movie clip that was your component. You’d place a number next to the #initclip to specify in which order the class should initialize in so you made sure your super classes instantiated before your sub-classes, and components that were used by other components were instantiated first, and then the ones using them followed.

    I personally was ever able to break this, and I think it was because I would always place my component inside the component that used it… I’m not sure if that forces it correct, overrides the order #, or what… anyway, here was Flash MX:

    #initclip 5
function MyClass()
{
        initTheManWithThePlan();
}
#endinitclip

    In Flash MX 2004, the IDE handles this for you. It can detect the classes your utilizing/inheriting from, and with the IDE’s help of assets, it’ll auto-write the #initclip orders; you can see these if you decompile the SWF. You build your classes, then place the component inside the component that uses it. If it’s just a class with no GUI (damn programmer…) then as long as you have an import, or a fully qualified class path in the class that uses it, your good.

    I’m sure I skrait foobarred some semantics, but the easiest way to get smart people to talk is to be dead wrong and they’ll happily correct you, so there I go.