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Steve Jobs (1955 - 2011)

Wed Oct 5 19:42:05 2011

This morning I woke up to the horrible news that former Apple CEO Steve Jobs has died. At first I couldn't believe my eyes and ears. Twitter and news sites across the web have been inundated with people sharing thoughts, memories, and condolences. I would like to show my thanks to the man who inadvertently changed the way I work and the way I live my life with this simple post.

Thank you Steve.

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says (http://news.stanford.edu/)
How to live before you die. (www.ted.com)

The Death of Flash? - "Spartans! Prepare for glory!"

Thu Sep 22 09:38:09 2011

Now, I don't normally shed my opinions in the way I'm about to, but the heralds of Twitter are shouting about the deathly demise of Flash, and have been for a while now actually. However, with an amazing chain of releases for ActionScripers out there lately, such as Starling, Alchemy, Stage 3D, Flash player 11 and Air 3, etc, one might hear the spine-chillingly celebrated cry, "Spartans! Prepare for glory!" coming from the Adobe camp - who seem to show their full support for HTML 5 & CSS3, might I add.

Well, we'll see. However, as much as the 'hell dining' sounds appealing, I have to admit that I'm not worried in the slightest. After all, strictly speaking HTML 5 is nothing without JavaScript, right? And all the script based languages are pretty easy once you learn one, yeah? The move to full-time JS coding for absolutely everything would be a piece of proverbial cake, no? (Sweeping statements, I know!)

As much as I adore flash and ActionScript 3, I'd most likely be quite excited at the prospect of a unified web under HTML 5. I'd probably shout from the rooftops that my life has been made easier. No more juggling languages to get different jobs done - just JS all the way!

But isn't how HTML was different depending on which browser you used the reason Flash came to be so popular in the first place? Not much has changed, you do realize?

In the end, even if flash does die off from the web, I don't think it will matter because nowadays (for me) Flash/Air is changing direction. It's becoming more diverse and looks to be evolving into much more than just a simpleton web based media. It's actually rather exciting. Like watching your child grow or something.

Someone on twitter also posted something like, it's not the tools we use that define us, but creativity and great ideas (paraphrasing here I'm afraid). But yeah, I agree and you just know that talent will come through no matter what the circumstances. So I say bring it on - long live Flash and HTML 5.

TumbleBee video now on youTube

Sun Sep 11 22:49:14 2011

TumbleBee video is now on youTube. Enjoy.

ActionScript 3 in Sublime Text 2 - simply refreshing!

Thu Sep 8 02:02:03 2011

I had a really pleasant surprise today when I just happened to stumble upon a great little text editor called Sublime Text. Sublime Text 2 is currently at build version 2111 and is still in its beta stage... but boy is it good. It supports many of the major features that I feel have been sadly lacking from TextMate - i.e. split view coding, rich text input such as Japanese (a big one for me), a minimap, full screen and distraction free views - as well as macros and snippet support of course - and anything else I can think of that I need and use on a daily basis.

To get set up to compile for AS3, first off go download it at the Sublime Text website. Then once it's safely installed and inside your Applications folder (if on a mac), fire it up. At first glance, it actually looks a lot like TextMate, but for me has a bit more appeal.

You will need to add what's called a Build System in order to run the build command mxmlc . To do this, go to Tools > Build System > New Build System... . A new file should open called ' untitled-sublime-build '.

Copy the following json into that file, of course substituting the 'location_of_flex_sdk' for the real location of the sdk...

{
    "cmd": [" location_of_flex_sdk /bin/mxmlc", "$file"],
    "selector": "source.actionscript"
}

Quit and restart Sublime. Now, write a little hello world in AS3 (whatever you like) and save it anywhere you like.

Now all that's left is to press command + b and you should see the build take place.

To work in split screen, go to View > Layout and choosing a layout you'd like.

Pretty nice, me thinks. Can't wait to see how this baby is going to turn out. Looks very promising.

TumbleBee Update and New App called Tones

Wed Aug 24 21:12:12 2011