Aaron Spjut

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.

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 (more…)

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:

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 2 SDK from here
2. Move the downloaded files to /Developer/flex_sdk_2
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:

6. Add a new file to the project and name it HelloWorld.as
7. Add this code to HelloWorld.as

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

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.

It's finally here!! A major piece to the all external xcode flash ide has been created. Thats right, mtasc (Motion-Twin ActionScript 2 Compiler), a stand alone actionscript compiler. Ok.. so this post is a couple months late and mtasc has been out for a while. I've been a little out of the flash loop for the past couple months working at a job that doesn't involve all things actionscript.
One of the great things about using mtasc with xcode is that it adds syntax checking. No longer will you need to remember line numbers and move back and forth between flash and xcode.

Here are the steps I took in getting xcode to compile using mtasc: (more…)

Interested to see how I created my portfolio site? Well now you can. The entire thing, .fla's, .as's, .html's, .swf's, all of it is online to be downloaded and picked apart. If you do look at it please drop me an email and let me know. Questions, concerns, critiques, opinions, ideas, hate mail or praise mail, send it all my way.

Click here to download it (6.4 MB)

All of it is licensed under the CC-GNU GPL

Here is a flash contest I heard by way of moveon.org. The theme probably isn't for everyones but the powerbook prize is nice for all and I'm sure some funny animations will come out of it.

Flash Ant was successful in their campaign to get full actionscript support in Naturaldocs.

Here is a quickie on how to get NaturalDocs to work with Xcode.

First fallow this tutorial on making Xcode your Flash IDE.

Then follow these directions to make Xcode run a shell script when building projects.

1)Download Naturaldocs.

2) Put the downloaded NaturalDocs folder in /Developer.
make sure the name of the folder is "NaturalDocs"

3)In one of your current Xcode flash project folders, create a folder called "_00Settings" and another called "_06Documentation".

4)Open op the Xcode project.

5) Add this line to the shell script of the build target: (see this tutorial for help)

6) build the project then look in the "_06Documentation" to see your NaturalDocs spoils.

I wanted to help spread the word that Flash Ant is leading a great petition to get NaturalDocs support for actoinscript. Flash Ant will donate $1 for every email sent asking for actionscript to be included.

A couple weeks ago I got a horrible case of poison oak. My face was so puffy my eyes were almost swollen shut and I didn't recognize myself in the mirror. I went to the doctor and was prescribed medication that wouldn't let me sleep. So for a week I got from zero to four hours sleep each night. To keep from itching a hole in myself I built this, a New portfolio site.

Currently the Xcode setup I have for working on my flash projects forces me to save all unsaved code files before Xcode tells flash to compile everything. I wanted to have the Xcode build functionality which can automatically save files before each build.

Xcode has a nifty build process that allows you to add custom shell scripts to it.

This is how I added the save functionality: (more…)

Most of the projects I work on include many separate swf files that are loaded in at run time. This can be a pain because you have to publish multiple fla's each time you want to test the project. BIT-101 had a helpful answer to this using JSFL. BIT-101's solution works great if your only working on two files but I wanted something that would work on multiple files so I came up with this:

I ran into a problem where all the movies published were also tested all at once inside the same window. Im not sure what was going on there but making each document active before publishing it seemed to fix it.

BIT-101 bound the script to the F7 key. I added it to the JSFL script executed by hitting command-enter in Xcode as shown in the oh so helpful Xcode for flash tutorial.

Next up is to write an Xcode script that saves all unsaved actionscript files before telling flash to publish everything. But that will be for tomorrow… err… make that later today.

Finally A real IDE for Flash on OS X!!!

Pixelconsumption has a great tutorial on how to set up Xcode to work with Flash. Its got the syntax highlighting, "command enter" integration with flash to run your project and all the awesome features of Xcode.

This is an explanation of how vEngine deals with structure collisions. Structures refer to all static objects, like the ground and walls.

Warning!! This document is far from complete.
(more…)

Actionism is one of my flash projects.

My portfolio site uses Loadism and the unreleased 3Dism.

Terence Ranger uses Loadism

Tim Gallaher uses Musicism