Flash Catalyst - Adobe Edge explains

Informative video about Flash Catalyst at Adobe Edge.

Using the Flex Builder 3 Profiler by Jun Heider

While working on the Leverage games, we are heavily using the Profiler built into Flex Builder 3. I couldn't stress how important this feature has become to my present life. Check out this great session on using Flex 3 Builder by Jun Heider. He explains how to check memory and performance on local, remote and Flash swfs.

Leverage HQ: Game 2 Lanuched!

Hey ya'll, game 2 at leveragehq.com is now completed. I really enjoyed making this game. Hope you have just as much fun playing it.

WE'VE GOT FLYERS!

I'm very excited, today I received the promotional flyers in the mail.

Latest Project: TNT's Leverage

Hey everyone,

I'm working on a really nice project with two great Flash developers ( Michelle and Jabari ). Check out leveragehq.com for game one of eleven. We'll be releasing another game this week - I'll keep you posted.

Gone Independent

Hey Everyone,

I've finally flew the coupe and am now freelancing. Please, feel free to contact me for work.

Cheers,

Anthony

MACOSX Tip: Detach Widget from Dashboard

Open Terminal and type the following:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES

Press Return, then log out and back in.

Go to your dashboard, press fn+F12 ( or what it is you use to go back and forth between your desktop and dashboard mode ), while pressing and holding on the widget.

Flash CS3 Shortcut: Adjust TextField Letter Spacing

I discovered a neat short cut in Flash CS3 this morning. To change the letter spacing in a TextField press COMMAND + RIGHT/LEFT arrow on your keyboard. For the letter spacing to occur faster in a shorter amount of steps, press SHIFT + COMMAND + RIGHT/LEFT.

Django Errors: SMTP AUTH and SMTPAuthenticationError

FYI, if you have issues with Django's send_mail with a gmail account, in your settings.py use the following template.

# EMAIL SETTINGS
EMAIL_HOST = "smtp.gmail.com"
EMAIL_PORT = "587"
EMAIL_HOST_USER = "your_account_user@gmail.com"
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = "password"
# Controls whether a secure connection is used.
EMAIL_USE_TLS = True


If you are getting SMTPAuthenticationError with a non gmail account:

# EMAIL SETTINGS
EMAIL_HOST = "mail.whatever-domain.com"
EMAIL_PORT = "25"
EMAIL_HOST_USER = "username"
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = "password"
# Controls whether a secure connection is used.
EMAIL_USE_TLS = True

Image Optimization - What you need to know about JPEGs, GIFs, and PNGs

Good article at YUI blog on image optimization.

CSS Advanced Selectors in Flex 4

Adobe has enhanced CSS functionality in their new Flex 4 sdk ( Currently Beta ). Not only do you get type selectors and class selectors, but you also get id selectors. That is great, this is much similar to how CSS is. Flex 4 also now has descendent selectors. Descendent selectors allow you to match children to a particular ancestor. Lastly, psuedo selectors are also available. Psuedo selectors are great for dynamic content.

Check out CSS Advanced Selectors - Functional and Design Specification

Media Temple's supports Django - Follow Up

I posted a while back about Media Temple announcing Django support for their Grid-Containers. I was excited at that time because I wanted to get into Django development. My wife and are working on a personal site together. The site is allowing me to mess about with Django.

Anyway, this morning I upgraded my service at Media Temple to support the Django framework. It was amazing how simple it was to get this setup. I went to my account center, upgraded and created my first Django application on my new production environment. After I started my application, I setup my Django settings to connect with my database. I then moved to the command line to ssh into my new Container environment, and deployed!

All I know, is my partner at work, Ian had issues a few months ago setting up and deploying a project we are working on. I guess XO Communications doesn't make it as easy. Then again, Media Temple has always been innovative when it comes to ease of use.

If your looking for a hosting company providing Django, I recommend Media Temple. This is not an endorsement. I've been using their services since 2001.

Cheers

How Many Miles Per Gallon Does Your Body Get?

46.5 miles per gallon

Created by The Car Connection

Fun quiz created by The Car Connection. I like the sites css design. The quiz is fun as well. It also seems as though I'm doing well for myself.

Freeman Transport - Track Bike

Montana based bike company Freeman, has beautiful hand made bikes. Check-in your bike at the airport, how awesome is that?

I Got Hitched!

I'm back from beautiful Vermont where my wife and I got hitched. I would love to post pictures of our wedding, but I have to hold off until our site knotequaltied.com is launched.

its-laS-tik by What's Ur Bag - Worse shopping bag on the planet

I pay a daily visit to whole foods on 25th street & 7th ave. We at Hungry Elephant take pride in helping the environment as much as we can. I've been using BAGGU bags for a few months now ( It's provided at the HE office ). A couple of weeks ago I bought my own unique grocery bag. I ended up purchasing the Chamelion at What's Ur Bag - USA. Long story short, it's a piece of crap. I don't like the elasticity it has. It creates this awkward arm movement while I'm walking. It totally disorients my walk. The advertisement on their site shows the bags full of items. Unfortunately they are resting on a table. When I load my bag up with groceries, the entire bag droops to the floor, sometimes dragging on the ground. I tried placing it over my shoulders, that just leaded to more discomfort. Overall I give this item a 0, for uselessness. Try doing a point system on that user story.

One Banana Peanut Butter on 12 Grain, please

I am a sucker for peanut butter. I tend to eat all types of interesting peanut butter sandwiches, banana & peanut butter, peanut butter & apple butter etc. Okay, maybe not that interesting but, finally, I can make my own peanut butter. I have got to put this on my Christmas list.

Eboy Interview at The Flash Blog

I've been digging the eboy team's work for a few years now. Last year I was excited to see them doing some cool t-shirts for Adobe. I almost won one of their shirts a while back, but unfortunately came out the loser. Check out this really cool interview by Mike Chambers and Lee Brimelow. I swear, these dudes are so inspiring.

Curious Pictures for Freelancer's Union

Cute short commercial by Curious Pictures for Freelancer's Union. Digging the Darwin like design.

Site of the Day: Announced

I was speaking with a very close friend of mine. He mentioned I should do a site of the day. Although I post external sites here infrequently - I think it's a great idea and will be continuing a daily blog of my favorite link for that day. I look forward to sharing my online inspirations.

theselby: Beautiful Homes Around The World

I am one who loves visiting people's homes. This site features artsy apartments from Manhattan to London. It's a great inspiration for anyone who's into arts such as interior design and a liking for nick knacks. I personally like how cluttered they set up their places. I get to look at all the random items which could spark some kind of idea. Yeah, that sounded a little sad. Take it for what it's worth, I'm at a desk all day long.

EventListener function creation shortcut

My co-worker Ian is a big Python developer. He loves all types of one liner code shortcuts. I have to say it is great working with him. I get to steal all types of neat tricks. Here is a shortcut when creating an event listener. You know it's the little things in life.

my_btn.addEventListener( MouseEvent.CLICK, function( event:MouseEvent ):void
{
trace( event.type );
} );

Free Download: The Fader Magazine Issue 57

Don't say I didn't tell you anything.

Dope Hand Made Fonts

I really dig these fonts. A little pricey for my blood, but I can see why. Estonia based design company HMF, specialize in unique nontraditional font design.

Flash CS4 Documentation is Live!

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Flash/10.0_Welcome/

Vector and Array Performance Test by Mike Chambers

Mike Chambers does a performance test to see which is faster, Vector objects or Arrays. In his test, Vectors came out 60% faster. I'm it'll vary depending what you are doing.

JavaScript is coming strong...

I've recently been getting into frameworks other than Flex. My interest has primarely focused on Django, Drupal, YUI and jQuery. I am extremely impressed. All I have to say is...Flash needs to watch out, JavaScript is looking strong. Here are some reference materials:

http://blogs.zoho.com/uncategorized/firefox-31-google-chrome-javascript-wins-flashsilverlight-lose/

http://www.insideria.com/2008/10/will-jquery-dominate-the-ajax.html

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/09/28/jquery-and-microsoft.aspx

Media Temple now offers Django GridContainers

I'm excited to announce Media Temple's Django GridContainers. I can't wait to start testing it out. It's nice to have a pre-packaged Django Framework installed.

Hug A Developer

Google Chrome: Recreating an elite browser

Download the latest Beta of Goggle Chrome. I can't wait for them to release a version for mac.

My New Bicycle, The Cannondale CAAD 9

I am excited to announce, I am now officially a NYC bike rider. Today I walked over to Sid's Bike Shop on 19 street and got fitted for my newly dope road bicycle. Currently, it has all its stocked components - I don't need to go over board, this is my first time owning a bicycle. Can't wait to do some really long rides. I'll be putting a few things into use, for one: my Garmin Forerunner can now come out of the closet and will be used more often than once a week from running days. I will also be religiously checking out and getting acquainted with NYC Bike Maps.

Ted Pushinsky San Fran Street Photographer

It's been awhile since I've seen a photographers work that blows my mind away. Ted Pushinksky has such a raw eye, I feel like I'm within the pictures he's taken.

Hungry Elephant Site and Blog Launched

We at Hungry Elephant, launched our blog and website. Pay it a visit, there will be some interesting coming from the shop.

Beautiful Photos by nj dodge's

This guy has some stunning photos of New York City. The reflections at night are memorizing.

OOP 101 - Models & Data Transfer Objects

Great article on creating Models and DTO's ( Data Transfer Objects ), also known as Value Objects. nwebb, explains how to separate your interface from your logic, by creating a bindable Model that is constantly updating the view. He also goes through an explaination of why it is good practice to follow this type of methodology. Good read, and it explains object oriented programming on a very basic level.

Consider Models to be your API. It is your global reference for all your logic. Your DTO's are just references to objects. Noticelby useful when your doing some type data transfering with the database. Your view is mainly the UI elements (eg. TextField).

Installing Apache 2, PHP 5 and MySQl 5 on Mac OSX

I've been using MAMP for a few years now. Lately, I've been interested in working with environments on a much lower level than I'm accustomed to. I reached out to my boy, he gave me some great resources for installing Apache, Php and MySQL on my Mac OSX. Here, I will share with you what I've been gathering. Be aware, you must be familiar with the command line.

Install MacPorts:

MacPorts is definitely the way to go. It pretty much made installing painless. I grabbed the description from their site.

"The MacPorts Project is an open-source community initiative to design an easy-to-use system for compiling, installing, and upgrading either command-line, X11 or Aqua based open-source software on the Mac OS X operating system."

Install Xcode from Apple.com:

In order for MacPorts to work, you must install Apple's development software Xcode.

This is the link my friend Jonathan gave me. It is a nice concised tutorial on getting this enivornment setup properly.

Enjoy!

VELORBIS

I've been looking into a bicycle. Especially now I have to walk 9 blocks to work. Not sure I'll be able to get one any time soon due to space limitation in my studio. Velorbis seems to be the bike I would buy. It's beautifully designed and well made. You must check out their collection.

Nice Explaination of AMF ( Action Message Format )

Lee Brimelow at The FlashBlog has a nice explanation of AMF. This is great for those that are wanting to get started on AMF. Personally, I love it. It helps pack binary data and sends it to my server-side with minimal overhead. Think of having the availability to send an array to the server as an array, or a string as string. Great stuff, check out the article and go install amfphp to test.

The Process

Hugry Elephant - New Employment

Hello there, I just wanted to announce my first week at Hungry Elephant. I'm having a fantastic there. It is great to be around like minded individuals. The place is amazing and so are the people. I look forward to posting things I've learned and projects I create here at Hungry Elephant.

Introducing: Sweeties & Gangsters - Portfolio by Anthony Cintron

Finally! Sweeties & Gangsters is now live. I originally came up with this concept last year while I was visiting San Francisco. After a year, I'm happy to release the first iteration of my digital playground. It has been over 4 years since my last personal site. The second phase will include an open source section. For now, take a look at my micro-site and let me know what you think of it.

Wunderman.com Launched

Finally, without further to do - I present to you wunderman.com. All content modules were done using Flex 3.0. Used Cairngorm as the architectural framework, Papervision 3.0 for the module flips, and Degrafa for all ui elements. For the "Like it. Take it", we created an entirely seperate video player optimized in pure AS3. I would like to give Jonathan Stasiak a big shout out for helping me out on this enormous project. It took 2 weeks for component and module development, as well as the overall framework. It then took another 2 weeks to add enhancements, fix bugs and do lots of testing. It was interesting to see how two Flex developers could get this type of project done within a 4 week constraint.

General Deep Linking Strategies

We should expect more deep-linking strategies for Flash/Flex content. Adobe recommends these basic principles.

Adobe Advances Rich Media Search on the Web

Adobe is teaming up with Google and Yahoo to improve flash search results. They are going to deliver an optimized flash player for the search engine's spider. I look forward to this.

Latest work in progress & some news

I haven't been posting much lately due to my full time consulting gig and freelance work. Check out this work in progress piece. I'll probably finish it off this upcoming weekend.

Deleting files on a Flash Media Server

I haven't post much in a while, because I've been busy with a new project. During the evenings I've been dedicating some time to my portfolio site - I know it is long over due. Hopefully, I will be done some time in the near future. One of my featured components is a webcam. It's taking some time getting the kinks ironed out. I am fairly new to Server-Side ActionScripting and the Flash Media Server. Thanks to some folks, especially Lisa Larson-Kelly - I've been getting through the component. Tonight I figured out how to delete a file off a Flash Media Server. Here is the server-side Script:

I call the removeFile function inside my onDisconnect call. I did that so the server checks if a user published their recent webcam recording. If they didn't, the removeFile function deletes the file. Really, simple script; but most effective.



function removeFile(){
if ( !publish )
{
var file = new File("[my directory]/recorded_video.flv");
if ( file.exists )
{
file.remove();
}
}
}


Flash Player 10 Resources

Theres a lot of hype right now over Adobe's Flash Player 10, codename "Astro". After checking out several resources, I have compiled a list of places that have the most recent information on Astro and additions to the API. Their is an unofficial Flash Player 10 Debugger, but I'm not sure if it works or not. I look forward to doing some interesting motion graphics effects with the new filter capabilities and the Drawing API. I wish Adobe had released this a few months ago. I would like to implement the native z into the current Wunderman project.

Adobe Labs:
Featured Demos and Videos
Getting Started
Pixel Bender Toolkit - New image processing language by Adobe
Targeting Flash Player 10 Beta with Flex SDK 3.0x


Others:
1. Senocular - Flash Player 10 Drawing API
2. Peer to peer, Speex and UDP now in Flash Player 10
3...and there's more to Player 10

Color in the Dark

Finally, I finished my latest painting. I call her, "Color in the dark".

Central Park Conservancy, Celebrating Greensward

We recently launched a probono site for Central Park. What I like most about this site is the accuracy of the navigational map. I originally developed it with x positioning as well as y, but the client wanted us to only slide up and down - Personally, I like the former. None the less there were some intricacies that you wouldn't notice at first. Firstly, I had created a loading map queue (Thanks Dan for helping out on this), The time line became some what of a nuisance, because of the option of dragging and clicking. The real joy of this was mainly the math for the map and making sure the main view displayed accurately when you have scrolled over "mini-map" with the navigational view.

The Algorithmist's Compiled WOW and PV3D Demos & Tutorials

Jim Armstrong has a sweet compiled list of WOW Engine and PV3D Demos and Video Tutorials. I recommend the 3D Sinc Plotter for viewing pleasure.

GoASAP plus Papervision 3D equals Go3D

GoASAP is a Animation ActionScript 3.0 library. It is a base framework for Tween and Physics Animations. They now have GoASAP 3D, MosesSupposes, the maker of Fuse is working with the Papervision 3D team on an API for you 3d AS3 developers. Some exciting stuff.

Away on Vacation

Tomorrow morning I'm heading to the Virgin Islands, St. John. I'll be away til next week Wednesday. I won't be updating while I'm away.

FlexManiacs 2008 Conference - May 21 - 23

Hooray! It's official, I will be attending FlexManiacs 2008 Conference. If anyone else is attending, contact me. See you in three weeks!

Adobe's Open Source Project

Exciting stuff for us Flash/Flex Developers, please read more here.

Flashbelt Conference 2008

I'm officially attending Flashbelt Conference 2008. I look forward to some good sessions. Some of my favorite Flash/Flex Developers will be speaking at this years Conferences. If anyone else is going, please hit me up.

Bulleit Bourbon - Flash Landing Page

A month ago we launched Bulleit Bourbon's mini-shop. I did the Flash Animation for the stores landing page. It took me a while to post this because I wasn't really sure if it was worth showing. Anyhow, what the hell check it out for yourself

Unit Testing with FlexUnit

Great article by InsideRIA on Unit Testing and using Adobe's Unit Testing framework FlexUnit.

New Painting in Progress

The girls and I had a art session on the 12th. I believe this is the second largest painting I've worked on. Check out what I have so far.

KitchenSync Open-Source Animation (ActionScript) Library

KitchenSync was designed for developers who want a smart way to handle animation or other time-based functionality with code. Written from the ground up in ActionScript 3.0, KitchenSync relies on smart object-oriented architecture rather than complicated shorthand. It includes a number of features and shortcuts, such as the clone() method, that save effort for developers. KitchenSync makes extensive use of events and informative runtime errors and is quite flexible when it comes to extending the functionality.

AMF3 PHP Server Objects to Flex Client

Sweet article on AMF3 PHP with Flex.

AMF3 PHP Server Object to Flex Client Object Relational Mapping

Getting Started with WebORB for PHP (An Alternative to AMFPHP)

Introduction to SQLite in Adobe AIR

I'm really posting this for archive purposes. Check out Pete Elst's session on SQLite in Adobe Air. I love it when they record their sessions.

FlashCodersNY Meetig & Arduino Board

Seb from London visited our FlashCodersNY meeting a couple of weeks ago. He did a demonstration on the ever so popular Arduino board. It was awesome, and I learned lots that evening. I also had the pleasure of meeting Moses Supposes. Click here to see the video.

Using PureMVC

Yee Peng Chia has written a very useful tutorial on implementing an MVC into your advanced flash project. This tutorial uses PureMVC, which is an already setup framework for anyone wanting a pre-packaged design pattern framework. Her tutorial is dedicated to Flash Designers who are transitioning over to more OOP and AS3 environment. Check it out.

I Love Play-Doh

At the office this morning I was given some clay. I forgot how fun it is to sculpt. This is what I came up with in 15 mins.

Wunderman's new Logo

Last week, Wunderman's new logo was put up in the lobby.

New Painting + Thai-Lovin

I've been experimenting with acrylics again. Last year, around this time I did a few Colour Pencil Illustrations. It's been awhile since I've messed with paints but as you can see I'm getting my groove slightly back.

May 1s 2008 Reboot

This morning I woke up at 6 in a hurry to my desk. I had some ideas on fixing my portfolio section of the newly (in development) Sweeties and Gangsters site. This site has been in the making (mainly conceptually) since my trip to San Fran last summer. I have done much altering around and finally settled on a strong idea. I have now been in production for a month now. I have to say, it will be quite a complicated site as far as the dynamism. I have never built anything at this level of difficulty - from Design aesthetics to data modeling and structural design. I can't wait to release the beta version May 1st, 2008. I was blog reading a few moments ago and noticed the May 1st Reboot site has been re-designed. It's crunch time now, I have only 4 weeks till the launch of Sweeties and Gangsters; it's exciting!

Winner of Adobe Cut & Paste Competition

Explore by 3 Wagon was completely created with Adobe Photoshop and Adobe AfterEffects. Pretty sweet overall execution, not bad for using 2D Imagery. Check out the Finalist page for more videos.

The Fall

The story is set in Los Angeles, circa 1920 and involves a little girl that has been hospitalized to recover from a fall. She strikes up a friendship with a bedridden man who begins weaving her into a fanciful story that helps her escape the confines of the hospital and whisks her away into the world of imagination.

Identity Crisis - Sweet Fashion for Women

I came across identityCRISIS and was hooked on Karly Hand's eye for color. With her fantastic skill in "3-dimension collaging", I can definitely see lots of ladies in NYC rocking her stuff. I may have to purchase something for my lady.

Behind Every Great Inventor, There Is His Adversary

I'm always fascinated by new inventions. What entices me is not usually the invention itself but the inventor. The intriguing part is that quite a few intellects, inventors, philosophers and even scientists deem themselves in a godly like ability. Okay, I don't mind that; The point is that no one man can just come up with an idea and expect it not to be replicated. We are people who can think on many levels, and to view one has the only source of creation, would be insane. I read this article this morning on inventions that have already be thought of and how all the inventors would race to the patents' office; Some inventors couldn't even afford to legalize their inventions in time. So their are many creators out there that are not taken noticed. Truly, we all want to be acknowledged for our talents. Check out the article at the New York Times site.

Google's Docs Offline

I definitely will be trying this out. I think it is important for me to have as much data and tools online and not on my drive. It makes me feel secure to know that if my computer crashes, I can easily get to my data and not worry that it is lost. My fiancee and I share lots of documents, and to have Google's docs locally and online, makes it easier to edit updates at any point in time (online/offline).

Erik Natzke's Processing Art

I'm really digging Processing. I bought my self a how-to book today from Amazon. Check out Erik Natzke's ill designs using Processing.




Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions. It is used by students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production. It is created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context and to serve as a software sketchbook and professional production tool. Processing is developed by artists and designers as an alternative to proprietary software tools in the same domain.