mariofalomir.com

So, I downloaded today Flash Builder 4 Beta, and so far I’m enjoying it like a child with a new toy (a shame that the toy goes away in 30 days). Just for the record, I don’t give a dime about the rebranding “issue”, as long as it keeps me achieving my development goals and tasks, and the Adobe guys keeps on adding cool sh!t to it I’m OK with that

I haven’t played that LOT with it that’s for sure, but so far I wanted to give a try to one of the new features it has to offer, which is to drag/drop to the design stage a Flash Component and have the ability to edit it from there (of course it opens the Flash IDE), just for the sake of knowing what it takes to do that, and it resulted very simple …after you’re done editing it, by a click of a button, it gets compiled and exported back to Flex.damn it…Flash Builder Probably I’m impressed by the trivial but I think that’s really awesome.

To make a test I did some non-sense stuff, but is still cool. Just drag the Flash Component to stage; double-click on it, a popup window appears, you can change it’s name if you wish, and then click on the “Create” button to launch Flash IDE and create it.

In Flash IDE I just threw a Button and Dynamic TextField to stage, give them some extraordinary instance names, and added an embedded font to the library, so I could add listeners and use the embedded font within Flash Builder. It’s so easy and straightforward. Click on the image to view the sample.

And the rocket-science code of my first Flash Builder 4 beta app HERE!!

Another thing that I liked is the little tips that are displayed once you hover to a property of a particular object. Cool Now I get to learn as well while developing.

One other thing I liked is the “Flex Theme” options you are given within the properties of a project, you just select your theme and click OK and are good too go. I specially liked the wireframe one for my mock-ups. Nice!

I know that so far I’ve been playing with the silly stuff, however as I dig more into it I will be loggin my joy here, besides I will leave the more technical shit to the gurus

Cheers!

Today I read on some blog posts about the recent acquisition of Sun by Oracle Corporation and talking with some folks at work (which are Java developers) they are a little concern about this matter, they fear that Java becomes more Entreprise, I’m not a Java developer so I don’t know what to expect from this fusion (Java-wise), however I’m worried about the future of MySQL. Are they going to just fade it out, and throw it to the limbo ?

I haven’t heard anything or read anything regarding the place or status that MySQL will have after this move by Oracle but knowing that in the past big Corporations buy “small” competitors just to sink them, I started to worry.

What do you think?

Lately I’ve been digging a little bit into the world of data visualization and have found some amazing examples and applications on how you can represent different kinds of information using some very fancy and advanced techniques in order to display your data in a more interactive and less boring way.

I have to say that I rather look at a cute graphic displaying a bunch of bubbles with some little tag in it,that you can drag around, they can bump into each other, play a little bit with, waste some time while in it , than just going through some boring lines of text and numbers. One of the samples I ran into was a really cool constellation visualization application that really caught my attention, as well as a bunch of others mentioned here. I have to say ( and unfortunately accept) that they were way over my head hehe; what I  actually needed to do was something rather simpler and something alike the constellation approach was more appealing to me ( and my technical skills heh ), so I thought I should try some physic engine outhere  to handle the nodes and springs the way I wanted to do it.

After going through the existing ( or at least the ones I found ) physic engines for AS3, I found APE to be the most easy to start with and implement (and intuitive), and yet still a very cool and powerful engine; actually I just took a glance at an example and see what was needed to start playing with it; with APE it is just a piece of cake to make a billiards game for crying out loud! man, I remember all the hurdles I ran into when I did one, with a lot of glitches I have to say, a few years ago (with Flash 5), and I don’t recall an existing physics engine back then.

Anyway, FWIW (less), here I just want to present a little example on how to simple use some particles with spring constraints connecting each other, for all the ones that wants to see how easy is to use this fantastic engine, or wants to know how to start. I use a similar approach for my visualization application. That said, this is very BASIC, but other more complex examples will come, as well as an example of implementing APE with games and that sort of sh!t. I’m also preparing one example using WOW (which is based in APE) and PV3D. I know a few weeks ago I said I was going to give it a try and build my own collision detection for 3D objects, but the hell with, this french guy is already doing some amazing stuff.

Just press down over one of the balls and move the mouse. SWF Main Class Ball Class (nothing fancy, you can come up with something much better)

Cheers

Today I’ve joined the XXX club… talking about porn ? absolutely not … so if you were looking for porn not here (..although it could spice up a little bit my blog )… anyway, today I’m celebrating my thirtieth year (30 in case you didn’t get it) on this planet, so HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!! WOOT!!!!

30 years ?? wow, I’m still a boy, very young!! heh , I mean, I remember when I was like 18 or 20 and thought that a 30 year old guy was an old fart, was an ancient human being! however looking things in a different perspective now, 30 years isn’t that bad at all!.; so the 20’s are in the past now, entered a new decade, it will feel kinda weird though when people ask me about my age, to say that “I’m 30 years old” , I kinda liked saying that I was 20-something hehe.

Anyway, I will celebrate it and enjoy it as much as possible! as if i was turning 20 again! with my beautiful wife, adorable child and tons of beer!!

Cheers!

Mario

Hi everybody, I just ran across this example by Clockmaker and gave a try drawing some random sh!t inside a Cube. I know is pretty useless but lately I’ve been working with this kind of stuff so I wanted to give it a shot in order to implement it in some project Im working on, and it’s pretty easy. I know there is aneasier/smarter approach to do this, but hey, I’m not a guru like you :P.

Anyway, here is the demo with its ugly source (mxml and as ).

By the way, the collision detection engine as expected is pretty much stuck on its way hehe so nevermind the last post.

Cheers.

-MF