As the title says, check it out at http://www.purple.us/p3/.

So I was browsing around the Cairngorm site this morning and while I was there I happened to look at the RSS feed and saw something entitled “Quoted in “Professional Cairngorm” “. Turns out one of the authors I quoted in my chapter on criticisms of Cairngorm found the quotation in a Google book search. It also turns out that I may not have fully conveyed the intent of the author’s criticisms. As such, I wanted to post a link to the authors post so that you can look at it directly and allow the author to correct anything I may have mis-represented.

http://blog.iconara.net/2009/12/12/quoted-in-professional-cairngorm/

Update:
Heard back from the author at the cited post. The issue was not that I misquoted the author in the passages that I cited, but rather I did not convey the full scope of the author’s criticisms of Cairngorm. The passages I quoted focused on criticisms of Singletons (which are one of the major criticism levelled at Cairngorm), but the author has also made criticisms of Cairngorm that go beyond its use of Singletons. You can read the author’s thoughts on Cairngorm and other topics on this blog http://blog.iconara.net.

Files from my presentation at Flash Camp Philadelphia posted at http://visualflowdesigns.com/philadelphia-flash-camp-2009-cairngorm-air/

So since you can now find this via a Google search, I am guessing it is OK to release to the general public. Here is the book I wrote on using the Cairngorm Framework with Flex.
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470497262.html

This has probably been up for a bit, but I just found out today. This is an article I wrote on the Adobe AIR File API. http://www.linux-mag.com/cache/7365/1.html

I have spent quite few trips to the book store scouring the shelves for a book on JQuery (yes I know I could order one online, but for me part of the whole experience is picking the book up and leafing through it). As it turns out, the other day I was contacted about reviewing one. At this point, I have only had time to look through it briefly, but from what I can see there is some good stuff in this one.

The title of the book is Learning JQuery 1.3 and here are some of the things that impressed me so far. Firstly, the Forward of the book is written by John Resig the Creator of jQuery and he gives very high praise to the authors. Secondly it includes sections on creating such things as an image carousel and a headline rotator, so we are not talking about a book on just the mechanics of JQuery, you actually get to see practical applications of JQuery.

You can find a sample chapter of the book here and more details on the publisher’s site here.

I have placed links to this book on the Development Resources and Book Recommendations as well.

My article on choosing a Flex framework released today. http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/flex_framework.html

Just finished a Flex app for an online relay chat site. See http://ip-relay.com/relayApp.php. Communicates via an XML socket.

Last week I had the distinct pleasure of installing Trac with SVN support on one of the servers I am managing, and yes it is as bad as you have heard. So I thought I would share the resources that helped me get through it.

I basically followed this guide http://www.techyouruniverse.com/software/installing-trac-with-subversion-on-cent-os-5-with-neon-and-quicksilver
However, be sure to read all of the comments as it was not until I read through those that I discovered there are some additional development packages that I needed install to make it work.

I also used this a a secondary resource:

http://www.daniel-skinner.co.uk/setup-subversion-and-trac-on-centos-5/06/01/2008

Took some fiddling, but finally got it to work.

While trying to answer another post on Flashkit, ran across an interesting dilemma.

The basic idea here was to create a function that would create a curved animation path to a specified x and y coordinate.

The basic idea here is:

1. Find the pivot point between the current x and y and the desired x and y.
2. Calculate the current angle from this pivot point for the current x and y of the clip.
3. Calculate the ending angle based on the desired ending coordinates and the pivot point.
4. Using trig, update the x and y of the clip along an arc at a given radius until it reaches the end angle.

After a while of playing with it, came up with this

In AS frame main movie:

import CurvedAnimation;
var ca:CurvedAnimation = new CurvedAnimation(ball);
ca.arcTo(500,500);

Class File (this is by no means complete and has some code left over from various previous attempts, but it shows what I finally came up with):

class CurvedAnimation {
private var _clip:MovieClip;
private var startAngle:Number;
private var currentAngle:Number;
public var speed:Number = 1;
public var arcWidth:Number;
private var endAngle:Number;
private var pivotX:Number;
private var pivotY:Number;
private var updateInterval:Number;
public function CurvedAnimation(clip:MovieClip) {
trace(“new curved animation”);
this._clip = clip;
}
public function arcTo(endX:Number, endY:Number) {
var midWay = Math.sqrt(Math.pow(this._clip._x-endX, 2)+Math.pow(this._clip._y-endY, 2))/2;
this.arcWidth= 100;
_root.endPin._x = endX;
_root.endPin._y = endY;
_root.endPin.lbl_txt.text = “End point”;

if (endX>this._clip._x) {
this.pivotX = Math.floor(this._clip._x+midWay);
} else {
this.pivotX = Math.floor(this._clip._x-midWay);
}
if (endY>this._clip._Y) {
this.pivotY = Math.floor(this._clip._y+midWay);
} else {
this.pivotY = Math.floor(this._clip._y-midWay);
}
this.currentAngle = this.startAngle = Math.atan2(this._clip._y – this.pivotY ,this._clip._x – this.pivotX)*180/Math.PI
this.endAngle = Math.atan2(endY – this.pivotY ,endX- this.pivotX)*180/Math.PI
this.updateInterval = setInterval(this, “updatePosition”, 100);
debug();
}
private function debug() {
_root.midPin._x = this.pivotX;
_root.midPin._y = this.pivotY;
_root.midPin.lbl_txt.text = “mid point”;
trace(“Current position x: “+this._clip._x+” y: “+this._clip._y);
trace(“Pivot point x: “+this.pivotX+” y: “+this.pivotY);
trace(“Start Angle “+this.startAngle);
trace(“Current Angle “+this.currentAngle);
trace(“End Angle “+this.endAngle);
_root.debug.mouseAngle.text =this.currentAngle

}
private function updatePosition(){

//this._clip._y = -0.002644 * Math.pow(((this._clip._x += 5) – 200), 2) + 200;
if (Math.floor(this.currentAngle) <= Math.floor(this.endAngle)){
this._clip._y = this.pivotY + Math.sin(this.currentAngle * (Math.PI/180))*this.arcWidth;
this._clip._x = this.pivotX + Math.cos(this.currentAngle * (Math.PI/180))*this.arcWidth;
this.currentAngle += this.speed;
this.currentAngle %= 360;
}else{
clearInterval(this.updateInterval)
}
debug();

}

}