Anyone who has tried to send an AMF serialized Date object as part of a DTO (VO to some) from amfphp has probably run into the wall of Can’t Do That. Luckily (if you have no problem using PHP 5.2) there is now a patch for amfphp.
http://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=5786096
Sometimes finding the right piece of code can bring much happiness 
Seeing strange things happening while using cake and amfphp? Firefox not work at all while safari seems to work fine? Getting lots of NetConnection.Call.BadVersion errors? Try turning of cakephp debugging. This resolved many issues in one of my recent flex projects.
A very easy solution to a hard to find problem.
Still having issues? NetConnection.Call.BadVersion can be a pain. This may help:
http://amfphp.org/docs2/debugging.html
GearGrams is a flex project I created after a visiting friend said he wanted an easy way to keep track of his gear weight for a long backpacking trip. Wanting to test out Panda, a framework I’ve been working on for a while, I put together GearGrams. Rather than explain the features here its easier to just check it out. The app explains itself and there is a nice help video to get you started when you first login.
Finally an easy actionscript CI set up!
Here are the steps I went through to get CruiseControl.rb up and funning for a flex project.
The basic concept is to create an air app along side your flex project that will run all the unit tests. CruiseControl.rb will then checkout all the code, build and run the air app then report what happened.
All of the files for this tutorial can be downl Read the rest of this entry »
Working with Shane and Peter inc. and WaveWatch.com I’m thrilled to show off our first iPhone app: “Surf”
Surf is an iPhone app for surfers. Its the first of its kind to include live surf cams.
However, my favorite part is the 6 day forecast graph. This forecast has tide, swell hight, swell direction, wind speed, wind direction, tide, sunrise, sunset, moonphase and weather conditions all in one easy to read scrollable graph.
For more information and download instruction visit http://iphone.wavewatch.com/download
Shane and Peter deserver a big thank you for their hard work. They have also put together a list of all the others who can’t be thanked enough for their help. S&P introduce Surf
RubyAMF converts a bytearray from AMF to an array of fixnums. Those fixnums represent characters which represent the bytes.
This is how to write the data to file:
1 2 3 4 5 | byteArray = rubyamf_params[2]; #assuming a ByteArray was passed as arg 2 fout = File.open( path, 'wb' ); data = byteArray.pack('c'*byteArray.length); fout.puts(data); fout.close |
Took me a while to figure this out and I didn’t see any instruction elsewhere on the web. I’m currently using this to save images to disk from flex.
I’m a big fan of simple, short tutorials that do what you need quickly. Here is a simple iPhone hello world tutorial with 3 steps and 3 lines of code. Download the source code
1 2 3 4 5 6 | - (void)viewDidLoad {
[super viewDidLoad];
UILabel *helloLabel = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(100, 30, 100, 30)];
[self.view addSubview:helloLabel];
helloLabel.text = @"Hello World";
} |
UPDATE: This tutorial no longer works with the latest iPhone sdk. I recommend this tutorial instead:
http://www.aaronspjut.com/mind/index.php/2009/02/06/iphone-hello-world-in-3-lines/
Read the rest of this entry »
I have had the great pleasure to work with Shane & Peter over the last year and they recently created and launched SproutWire. SproutWire is a site focused on providing information to small businesses to help them thrive. Anyone heading into or already a part of the entrepreneurial world is sure to find the site helpful.
I’ve gone through a few hosting companies and each time I’ve made a change for the better. I just switched from ULTRAsurge to DreamHost. ULTRAsurge is a cheap solution and for the time I’ve been with them they have served me well. But ULTRAsurge isn’t much different from the many other hosting companies out there that us cPanel and are probably just resellers. DreamHost however is an employee owned company, and they put more effort into their product than any other hosting company I’ve used. For a web developer they offer a great service because they have all the usual hosting company features (mysql, php, ….) but they also have svn, ruby and best of all, the ability for customers to vote on what we want added next. I’ve only been with them for a couple weeks so haven’t had a chance to see how they handle technicall issues, but so far I’m impressed.
UPDATE: I’ve created a newer tutorial using CruiseControl.rb. IMO Its a better setup.
Here are the steps I went through to get CruiseControl working with Flash Actionscript 3 (AS3) and Flex 2.
Most of this information can be found around the internet (eyefodder tutorials). The main additions I’ve contributed are putting all the information in one place and using Apollo to run testcases and output the pass/fail data.
These steps are for OS X but should be close to the same for any other os that the Flex 2 sdk will run on. The main changes would be the svn server and client install and paths in the ant build file.
Overview
1. Install the Flex 2 SDK and the Apollo SDK
2. Create a simple Actionscript 3 app.
3. Install FlexUnit and create a test case.
4. Instal svn server
5. install svn client
6. Create an Apollo app that outputs unit test result xml for CruiseControl
7. Create build files for building the HelloWorld app and Apollo test app.
8. Add the project to svn
9. Install and setup CruiseControl
Install the Flex 2 SDK and the Apollo SDK
1. Download the Flex 2 SDK from here: http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/sdk/
2. Put the sdk here on your ma Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve moved my personal posts to a new blog here www.aaronspjut.com/aaron. I’m going to keep this blog more specific to software engineering while the other will contain everything else. If you are unable to find a post that was once here it is probably there.
I usually travel with two laptops, a mac and a windows machine. My mac is my main machine and the PC is usually provided by work and often changes. More then once I’ve wanted to access a wireless network on the PC but the key on my mac was not accessible. This happened recently and instead of having someone dig up long lost key i searched around and found this applescript solution.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 | tell application "Keychain Scripting" tell keychain "System.keychain" set TheKey to "" & (password of first key whose name is "xxx") end tell end tell set the clipboard to TheKey display dialog "Copied " & length of TheKey & " chars to clipboard." with icon note buttons {"OK"} default button "OK" |
Replace xxx with your network name.
That script will copy whatever network’s key you specify to the clip board. A big help if you don’t have a key like “1234567890″.
I’m currently developing applications for Pocket PC and Smartphone which means I spend a lot of time on a Windows box away from OS X. Recently I needed to create a bunch of event class files that were all very similar. Rather than create each one by hand I wanted to automate their creation with a script. On my mac I would use Rhino and create the script in javascript. While jscript is easy to use on Windows, I wanted to use Rhino so my scripts would work on both OS X and Windows.
Here is how I got Rhino to work on both platforms:
First, the OS X install instructions. I found instructions on Mike Chambers blog and modified them a little.
1. Download Rhino from here:http://www.mozilla.org/rhino/download.html
2. In the root directory there is a file called js.jar put it in ~/Library/Java/Extensions. If the directory doesn’t exist then create it.
3. Add this line to the .bash_profile in your home directory: alias js=’java org.mozilla.javascript.tools.shell.Main’
Rhino should now be installed. To test it:
1. Create a file called helloWorld.js that contains the line: print(”hello world”);
2. Open a terminal window, navigate to the directory where you saved helloWorld.js and type “js helloWorld.js”
Thats it. You should see “hello world” displayed in the terminal.
Now for Windows. I wanted the same functionality; type js on the command line to access Rhino.
1. Download Rhino from here:http://www.mozilla.org/rhino/download.html
2. In the root directory there is a file called js.jar put it in C:\Rhino. If the directory doesn’t exist then create it.
3. Create a file called js.bat, save it in C:\Rhino and put this script in it:
@echo off if "%OS%"=="Windows_NT" @setlocal if "%OS%"=="WINNT" @setlocal set JS_FILE=%1 shift set LINE_ARGS=%1 if ""%1""=="""" goto doneStart shift :setupArgs if ""%1""=="""" goto doneStart set LINE_ARGS=%LINE_ARGS% %1 shift goto setupArgs :doneStart java -jar "C:\rhino\js.jar" %JS_FILE% %LINE_ARGS% if "%OS%"=="Windows_NT" @endlocal if "%OS%"=="WINNT" @endlocal
4. Add C:\rhino to your class path. (Setting classpath instructions)
Your set. You can now use javascript on both platforms for all your pragmatic scripting needs.
Here are some quick steps to compiling a simple actionscript 3 swf using Eclipse. This should work using any OS although you would probably need to change the ant build file to use mxmlc.exe if on Windows.
1. Download the Flex SDK from here
2. Move the downloaded files to /Developer/flex_sdk
3. Create a simple project in Eclipse
4. Add new file to the project and name it “build.xml”
5. Add this code to the build.xml file:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 | < ?xml version="1.0" ?> <project name="dar" default="build" basedir="."> <target name="build"> <exec dir="." failonerror="true" executable="/Developer/flex_sdk/bin/mxmlc"> <arg line="HelloWorld.as" /> </exec> </target> </project> |
6. Add a new file to the project and name it HelloWorld.as
7. Add this code to HelloWorld.as
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 | package { import flash.display.MovieClip; import flash.text.TextField; public class HelloWorld extends MovieClip { public function HelloWorld() { var helloDisplay:TextField = new TextField(); helloDisplay.text = "Hello World"; addChild(helloDisplay); } } } |
8. Right click on build.xml and run it has ant build 1. Right click on file -> Run As -> 1 Ant Build
9. Right click on the project folder and select refresh. A file named HelloWorld.swf should be added.
10. Open the swf and watch the hello world goodness be shown.
I hate to use the I’ve been busy excuse but…
Quite a lot has happened in the last four months and posting here just stopped happening.
A quick update on my professional Flash life:
First I stopped working at Adobe. It was one hell of a ride and I couldn’t have asked for a better group of people to work with but the time came to move on. Immediately after Adobe I started working as Flash developer for a company called Composer. Recently I was promoted to a Senior developer. I spend all day, every day developing with Flash. And all of this in 3 months! Things have been moving fast but I’m loving every second of it.
The first post after a long break is always the hardest. I’ll be back soon 
A hard drive crash in my powerbook has kept this area quiet for the last couple weeks. Luckily I had everything important backed up and my warranty doesn’t expire until next month.
The good folks down at Dave’s Computer Service in Santa Cruz installed a nice new drive and everything is working perfectly again.
It’s here again. The Art Institute of California — San Francisco portfolio show is tonight!!
With works from Jeff Minard and Cynthia Haddock being on display it will be the best show yet. I also heard rumors that the one and only Bryan Crabtree is taking a break from his world travels and flying in special just for the show.
Be sure to check it out:
June 16th, 4:00pm
Location:
Ramada Plaza Hotel International
Address:
1231 Market St
San Francisco, CA 94103
I’m upgrading to wordpress 1.5. A few customizations have caused some problems so I apologize for anything that doesn’t currently work or look right.
Over the next couple days, domain name servers will be updating aaronspjut.com to point to a new server. I’ve been meaning to ditch my old hosting company, mmhosting, for a while now. Over the years mmhosting has been hacked so that all index pages displayed a nice 0wn3d message, pointed my domain name to a escort’s site, and had a customer service site that has never worked. So finally I have switched to UltraSurge. So far I’ve been happy with them. Much more space than I had before for much less cost and responsive tech support.
