Archive for December, 2005

So what happens to MMUGs now? Her’s Londo’s answer…

Published on December 30, 2005 in London MMUG. 2 Comments

I saw that senocular.com was asking What will happen to MMUGs now? Will they become Adobe User Groups (AUGs?) I can't speak for other MMUGs but I can announce what we're going to be doing in 2006 with the London Macromedia User Group: We're going to be renaming it to the London MultiMedia User Group. Being lazy at heart and not wanting to give up too many XBox cycles on rebranding, we thought this would be the easiest route :) Also, it fits perfectly with our wanting to embrace a wider range of topics.

Darn, 15 minutes to get to my gate... I better post this and get going lest I miss my flight to Cyprus. Going to be spending New Year's with my family in the North.

Happy New Year everyone! Here's to an exciting 2006! :)

Flash In The Can 2006

Published on December 29, 2005 in Flash. 0 Comments

Aral Balkan speaking at Flash In The Can in 2006

I've been invited to present on the Open Source Flash Revolution at Flash in the Can. The conference will be taking place between April 21st - 23rd in Toronto, Canada.

Chris Allen and John Grden will also be there to present the Red 5 server along a wonderful line-up of speakers.

For more information, see the Flash In The Can website.

Speaking at FlashForward 2006

Published on December 29, 2005 in Flash. 0 Comments

Aral Balkan speaking at Flash Forward 2006 in Seattle

I'm going to be holding a workshop on Object-Oriented ActionScript 2 and a seminar on the Open Source Flash Revolution at FlashForward 2006 in Seattle. The dates for the conference are February 27th (Workshop day) - March 2nd. I'll be in Seattle from the 25th so if anyone wants to meet up, buzz me and we'll see if we can arrange something! :)

For more information, see the Flash Forward web site.

A Monkey Ball Moment

Published on December 29, 2005 in General. 2 Comments

How's this for close? A to-the-millisecond tie in Super Monkey Ball between yours truly and my good friend, Paul Booth. Been wanting to post this pic for a while :)

No Flare for me :(

Published on December 16, 2005 in General. 0 Comments

I wanted to really try out MadCap Software's upcoming RoboHelp replacement called Flare but, unfortunately, their Beta is apparently full. I actually called up their San Fran offices but, although sympathetic, their representative informed me that I had a rat's chance in hell of getting in on the beta. Darn, I really wanted to use it for my upcoming courses. Oh well... I guess it's pure XML for me. They're apparently going to be releasing a sneak-peek in January. Alas, I plan to have a lot of content created before then.

Does anyone know of any other single-source publishing tools?

Foundations of Object-Oriented ActionScript 2 Course - January 2006

Published on December 14, 2005 in Flash. 1 Comment

I've just decided on dates for my first Foundations of Object-Oriented ActionScript 2 Course in 2006.

The first 2-day course will take place on the 23rd and 24th of January, 2006. I'm in the middle of updating the courses as we speak and students will be working with shiny new copies of Studio 8 :)

The courses take place at our training room at the Brighton Media Center in Brighton, UK (half hour from Gatwick airport and 1hr from London Victoria/London Bridge stations by train.)

There's a £50 early bird discount if you sign up before December 31, 2006 for the January course (and another £50 discount if you sign up with one or more friends.)

London MMUG December Drinks

Published on December 8, 2005 in London MMUG. 0 Comments

The London MMUG is getting together on the 15th (that's next Thursday) at the Elbow Room (89-91 Chapel Market) -- very close to the N1 Centre -- Islington (N1). There will be food. There will be drink. There will be pool and there will be music. And we have a copy of Keith Peter's new book, Foundation ActionScript Animation. It's a really great book and I was honored that Keith asked me to write the foreword for it.

See you next week!

Warning: OSFlash may cause babies…

Published on December 7, 2005 in General. 1 Comment

How heartwarmingly cool: Just read Ralf Bokelberg's OSFlash success story on the new success stories page. (Ralf's a real old-timer in the Flash world and one of those people I hold deep admiration and respect for.)

He tells how the time MTASC saved him was invested in his little baby who just turned two. I agree, Ralf -- that *is* a success story and a great example of how the amazing tools that the open source community contribute to the Flash Platform have very real, very human effects on all of us.

Nicolas, I hope you're feeling all warm and fuzzy. Wipe that tear from your eye, man -- compiler authors don't get emotional! :)

Setting up server-side filter rules with CPanel/IMAP

Published on December 5, 2005 in General. 4 Comments

Why didn't I do this earlier? If you have CPanel, you can set up server-side filters which are *great* if you're using IMAP as it means you don't have to train every email client on every one of your computers to place Flashcoders in your Flashcoders folder. Filtering *should* be done on the server :)

So, go into CPanel -> Email Management -> Email filtering.

Add Filter.

Add your criteria and in the Destination, enter the absolute path to the folder that you want the email placed in. This is slightly tricky to figure out if you don't have shell access. On my server it was /home/[CPanel username]/mail/[domain.name]/[mail username]/[folder name].

That's it! No more setting client-side mail filters! :)

Flash Player + Adobe Acrobat = disaster

Published on December 5, 2005 in General. 15 Comments

I just read on Colin's blog that apparently Adobe has plans to integrate the Flash Player and the Adobe Acrobat Reader (also known affectionately as the bloated beast from hell.) I'm sorry, I didn't know there were plans to draw up Flash's death certificate!

WTF would you want to merge these two players?

I'm really racking my brain to come up with some feature that Acrobat could add to the toolset of the Flash developer and, for the life of me, I can't! Could someone from Macromedia please give the Adobe folk a clue?

Flash got to where it is today in no small part due to the tiny size of the player. You add Adobe Acrobat in there and you'll have a disaster of Adobe Dimensions Atmosphere proportions.

Please reconsider.

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