NumbKnuckle

Representing litl: FITC Unconference @ MAX 2010

09/03/2010 in RIA View Comments

I am super stoked to announce that I will be presenting how to get rocking with Git at the FITC Unconference during the Adobe MAX 2010 conference in LA, October 25-27. I will be representing litl and delivering an intro to Git leading into an awesome set by Kathryn Rotondo on team code review. I am rounding up swag to give away during the presentation so be sure not to miss it!

Check out the sessions below for more information:

My session: Be Committed to Version Control, Learn Git
Kathryn Rotonodo: Get a Second Opinion with Code Review
Kevin Suttle: 3D Flash Gaming on TV
Chuck Freedman: 3D Flash Gaming on TV
Ryan Canulla: Deploying One App on Multiple Platforms
The litl Dev Team: litl hands-on Flash Channel Lab

I have joined litl!

08/23/2010 in RIA View Comments

Looking forward to the next chapter…

I am stoked to announce that I have joined the great minds at litl as a Channel Developer. While I love the city of Boston, I will remain working remotely, for now. I can’t express how happy I am to be able to tele-commute and be able to spend more time close to my family.

I have been an enterprise developer at King Pharmaceuticals for the past 3 years and am ready to get back to the other side of the firewall. While King is a great place to work, both for East Tennessee and for the team members, there is little chance to do much public facing development. Also, I am really looking forward to working with a team of peers working on similar projects that I can contribute to and learn a lot from. To me, a new job is not only a chance to bring my own experiences to the table, but to soak up as much of the massive brain power of the other team members as possible.

I started my career in this industry working for a start up that was very innovative, pushing the boundaries of what could be done with the tools available, and had unbelievable talent. The group at litl reminds me somewhat about a start up I worked for so many years ago (pre dot bomb) and for so long ( at least the good parts ).

Since beginning my career in the mid 90’s I have been a 3D artist/animator, Flash and Director developer, web designer/developer, project manager (gasp) and an enterprise developer. After all of that Flash is still my passion and I am super excited to have the opportunity to help create some ground breaking experiences on the litl web book and soon the litl web-connected TV product.

What I look forward to most is being able to rub elbows with some of the Flash community’s most talented: Kevin Suttle [ @kevinsuttle ], Chuck Freedman [ @chuckstar ], Ash Atkins [ @razorberry ] and Kathryn Rotundo [ @krotondo ] just to mention a few.

My FlashBuilder 4 color scheme.

08/16/2010 in RIA View Comments

Something that still isn’t very intuitive to do is changing the color scheme on the editor in Eclipse. FlashBuilder 4 is no different, but hopefully this post will help ease the pain. To me a darker background with soft colors helps me concentrate more than a white background and black text. I once had a professor tell me that staring at a white background is no different than staring at a light bulb…light is projected from behind the screen.

Inspired by Kevin Suttle’s awesome instructions on how to customize the color scheme in FlashBuilder 4, I am listing my own settings below. I have always been a dark gray / blue type of designer and the colors I use in my editor work best for me. As with anything, pick what works best for you and if you want, share them. You can find these preferences in Flash Builder by following the links shown before each set of values below. I thought about posting my actual preference export, but there is a lot of personal system and software information saved in there. Instead of risking the removal of a key line in the preferences I am just listing the values that I changed within each section. This will give you a better idea on what changes anyway… You may notice that even my lighter fonts are still not white, but #DDDDDD.

Window > Preferences > General > Editors > Text Editors >

Line number foreground: 192, 192, 192

Current line highlight: 56, 56, 56

Print margin: 176, 180, 185

Find Scope: 185, 176, 180

Selection foreground color: 0, 0, 0

Selection background color: 0, 0, 0

Background color: 39, 39, 39

Foreground color: 221, 227, 230

Hyperlink: 25, 74, 165

Window > Preferences > Flash Builder > Editors > Syntax Coloring > ActionScript >

ASDoc: #3f5fbf

Bracket/Brace: #11a37c

Comment: #7f7e7e

Default text: #c9c9c9

Keyword: class: #5fa0c1

Keyword: functio #5fa0c1

Keyword: interface: #5fa0c1

Keyword: package: #5fa0c1

Keyword: trace: #76b0c3

Keyword: var: #11a37c

Metadata: #11a37c

Operator: #11a37c

Reserved: #5fa0c1

String: #96cee1

Flash Builder > Editors > Syntax Coloring > MXML >

ASDoc: #3f5fbf

Comment: #999999

Component Tag: #11a37c

Default Text: #dddddd

Processing Instruction: #11a37c

Special Tag: #11a37c

String: #11a37c

Changing the ASDoc Author name in FDT

07/26/2010 in RIA View Comments

One thing that you will notice when creating new .as files in FDT is that the default ASDoc Author will default to your systems user account. In my case, my user account on my system is “bconnatser”. I would rather have my full name shown as the author automatically when creating new Classes. There are two ways, at least, to make this setting change for FDT. One will permanently make the change for you from within the eclipse.ini file. The other way is from with FDT preferences settings.

Permanent change in the eclipse.ini:

Browse to the FDT install – In my case on OSX – “Applications/FDT/FDT4_Beta/FDTEnterprise/”
Then right click / CTRL + Click on FDT 4 and choose “Show Package Contents”
Now browse in the opened package contents to – “Contents/MacOS/” and open to edit eclipse.ini
Add the following, without quotes: “-Duser.name=[YOUR NAME]“

*The same is true if you are using FlashBuilder 4, just browse to your install folder and follow the instructions above.

Inside FDT’s Preferences:

Go to Preferences/FDT/Code Style/Code Templates (Misc)
Check “Override System Username- $(user)”
Enter the name you would like to use as the auther in the text field.
Click Apply
Click OK

Now when creating new Classes your Author name will be set to your desired name, rather than the user account on your system.

Flash Player 10.1: Verifiable speed increase.

06/14/2010 in RIA View Comments

While running some quick tests on Vector declaration using Jackson Dunstan’s quick test harness, I decided to check out the speed difference between Flash Player 10 and Flash Player 10.1. I was still running FP10 and noticed a major difference after comparing my test results with what Jackson had posted. I grabbed the samples with FP10, then updated to FP10.1. Notice the difference below in speed, and the ONLY thing I did different was install 10.1, never even closing Flash Builder. I simply installed 10.1 and ran the app again to get the results. The 10.1 release was always faster, and in some cases at least 2x faster or more.