I am a big man

Setting up Airport Express with Verizon FIOS

2009-02-14T11:19:00.004-05:00

FIOS is great, blazing internet speed, download AND upload, lots of HD channels, and I am sure that I eventually will get used to their user interface (I am an old Time Warner user). But after all the excitement, I wanted my iTunes back on the wireless network. I tried to just reset my Airport Express, set it up to join the existing wireless network previously created by the good people at Verizon/FIOS but without any success... Then after some research on the internet, the Apple website had posted a solution.
I actually skipped the Airport Assistant step and just directly used the Aiport Utility (Applications/Utilities/Airport Utility) to setup my Airport Express as a client (Join an existing Network). The two key factors for success?
1 - HARD RESET THE AIRPORT EXPRESS (There is a little button that you need to push with the end of a paper clip until the light blinks a couple of times)
2 - CONNECT THE AIRPORT TO THE VERIZON/FIOS router with an ethernet cable (you disconnect it at the end of the setup.)

Et voila...

Widget

2009-02-05T19:23:00.001-05:00

Flex Love

2008-11-19T08:59:00.003-05:00

I swear, I don't work for Adobe, I don't hold any Adobe stock, but when it's good, it's good. The latest one, from the eternal code candid I am:

While writing a long string in Flex Builder 3, hit return in the middle of the string. Flex builder will close the string's quote, add a plus sign and start a quoted new string on the next line. It's not like the French Revolution or the Boston Tea Party, but it warms my heart anyway... this was planned by people who love programmers.

Note: This might be a common feature in many programming environments, I don't know, let me know if you do...

Adobe love: CS4

2008-09-25T09:28:00.003-04:00

Just a selection of what is getting me really excited:
Flash CS4 looks amazing, checkout the new exciting features like the Motion Panel, Bones, with run-time support, preset animations, H.264 video support
Dreamweaver CS4 new features. I never use Dreamweaver, maybe I should.

Man, I gotta buy this asap.

Everybody can make mistakes...

2008-09-24T08:27:00.005-04:00

If you don't know it, let me tell it to you: I love Adobe, they have the best products, they push technology the way I like it, but I could not let this one unnoticed...

Learning Cairngorm for Flex: Kick Ass tutorials!

2008-09-22T16:58:00.003-04:00

Want a very good Flex - Cairngorm intro tutorial with text and videos? Try David Tucker's EXCELLENT tutorials, very conveniently listed on Jamie McDaniel's site. If you study this seriously, you will have a great understanding of the basics of Cairngorm...

Update on Learning Cairngorm

2008-09-21T22:30:00.002-04:00

Wow! I don't regret starting with Cairngorm... in case you are hesitating, yes, there is a learning curve, but after a few hours only, I can now build things so much quicker and it is so much easier. At first glance, it feels that there are more steps that one should need to create the differents parts of your app, but the logical organization is powerful. I have started by creating the barebones of my app, then I started to add functionality inside the main sections... a breeze thanks to the careful Cairngorm organization. Just sharing this in case you are still hesitating. More info from my preview post...

Are your kids ready?

2008-09-19T16:34:00.002-04:00

I hope this little viral widget will go far, it was fun to make...

education.com

Why I chose Cairngorm

2008-09-19T09:13:00.004-04:00

By no means am I a killer AS3/Flex Developer, but I am plugging along, learning as I go, like most of us. After dabbling with Flex for a little while, I decided to get more serious and try to structure my code in a more professional way. They are a few Flex frameworks out there and, for the isolated-self-taught-naive developer like me, choosing a framework is really confusing.

My first question was: Why add a framework on top of an already great framework (Flex)? I came to realize that I did not need to add to what Flex does very well (components, extremely easy GUI creation etc), but what I really needed was a way to create and organize my code that would make my work more efficient, more flexible and easily extended. Of course, I could decide to create my own rules and patterns, but that would be pretty silly, knowing that programmers have been working at this for decades in many languages and that my few months of experience are pretty ridiculous. So, now that I accepted the need for a framework, which one should I choose?

Ok, most of the time, I work alone. But one can dream. Maybe one day I will be working with other developers on a Flex project, so I should learn a framework that is some sort of industry standard. My focus was then centered on Cairngorm (the absolute leader, created and used by Adobe Consulting and also PureMVC, even if not used as much, seems very well respected and very smart.

So how did I choose? After reading many people's opinions and being even more confused, I found a smart little comparison by Jim Robson that did the trick for me. I loved his little Flex app showing the pros and cons of each framework.

So what made me choose Cairngorm?
1- I could not do without Flex Binding
2- Used by more people, might become a more relevant skill for employment (if ever needed)

But I was really attracted to PureMVC, because of the fact that it is a framework for many different programming languages (how cool is that?!), because of the clean MVC separation and the interesting focus on deferred instantiation... oh well, maybe later.

Hello World

2008-06-19T11:45:00.011-04:00

Here I am, in my little speck of dust, marveling at all the beautiful things living on the internet, sometimes sliding down to my desktop to help me when I have no connection. I am gawking at all those sparkling artifacts of human intelligence, and I feel small.

But small is fine.

So, in my small way, I will try to document my efforts building web applications. I have no formal training, and my knowledge is kind of spotty. I will focus on Flex, Flash, and anything else I might think about. Maybe someone will find something of interest, and if so, let me know, it will make my day.