Recently upgraded my Macbook Pro to Windows 7 and was going through the Windows Live products and decided to try out the Windows Live Writer to generate a blog posting. So far it looks like a fairly convenient way to make updates.

   

Test Table Header 1	Test Table Header 2
Cell content	Cell content

I was somewhat disappointed to discover that a windows media center background addin cannot receive PlayState or PlayRate events from the host process. This makes sense at one level in that the AddIn is hosted out-of-process from the host media center application (at least starting in Windows XP MC Edition Update Rollup 2). I guess it would have been nice though if Microsoft had thought to supply a mechanism within the Media Center SDK that would enable compensate for this. So for now, I'm forced to poll the properties at regular intervals and write my own little routine to raise events internal to my application. Maybe Windows 7 Media Center will have some improvements here... I'll be watching :)

Click here to check out Meliah's pages on this site.

I've been tinkerin with the new flex 2.0 Beta and what started as an effort to test ActionScript 3.0 math performance turned into something considerably more. Having always had a facsination with 3D math, I decided to write a simple 3D engine in flex 2 thinking it might be useful someday. While the usefulness remains to be seen, I had a lot of fun building this thing. Here are some of the highlighted features:

• XML model definition
• Ploygon surface styles (fill color, line color, alphas)
• Symmetry math to mirror a model (see the face demo)
• Vertex tweening so you can control a vertex’s movement
• Animation Sequences to combine multiple vertex tweening groups (see the talking and/or kiss animations in the face demo)

!!!DEMOS!!! Note: These flex demos require Flash Player 9 or higher. 

 

 More...

To help my daughter memorize her multiplication tables, I put together this little app using the Flex 2.0 Public Alpha. Read the story behing Meteor Math and play the game. You may be surprised how rusty your multiplication skills have become. Note: Requires Flash Player 8.5 or higher.



An alien race has discovered Earth! In long standing alien tradition, to determine if earthlings are worthy of existence, a challenge is issued. Failing this challenge will result in the complete annihilation of earth and all it's inhabitants.
Earth is to be subjected to an onslaught of mathematical meteors! You alone have been chosen to pilot the Earth?s ship in defense of the alien attack. Your mathematical skills will be our only hope!

Good Luck!

I've been trialing the flex 2 alpha with player 8.5 and have been most interested in the strict typing and the implications it has in compiler optimization and application performance. So I put together a little demo app to experiment with some math calculations. You can see some apps here and here . Please note that you will need flash player 8.5 to see the demo. Here is a screen snapshot:

This little guy was also showcased on the macromedia labs web site here.

I look forward to throwing some more examples up on my blog in the near future and maybe even getting a another spotlight on the labs site :)

Regular expressions are very handy when you need to validate user input. JavaScript provides the RegExp object but ActionScript doesn't have a built-in equivelant. So I went on the hunt to see what was out there and stumbled across this site: http://www.jurjans.lv/flash/RegExp.html which offers a home grown class that claims to be almost 100% compatible with JavaScript 1.2 standard.

For a project I am developing in Macromedia Flex, I needed a website url validator. There are several standard validators (i.e. email, zip code, phone number, etc.) but no URL validator. So I decided to put Pavlis' RegExp class through it's paces.

I discovered that it works "as advertized"! I was able to quickly and easily create the URL validator using a regular expression. Here is the code snippet:

Note: The regular expression I chose to use here is just an example of a URL validation expression. I tend to use http://www.regexlib.com/ as a resource when looking for regular expressions. Also, note the double backslashes where you might expect a single. The ActionScript compiler tries to interpret the character following backslash before the argument is passed to the RegExp constructor. The double slash escapes the backslash.

As the content grows, my goal is that this site will become useful to a variety of software developers. In 10+ years of professional development experience, I have been exposed to a wide range of systems and platforms.

As I may not have frequent opportunity to update the site outside the context of my full time job and contracts, I will most likely kick this off by occasionally posting tidbits from my current projects in a manner that could be useful to someone "looking in" from the outside. In this way, even if no-one visits the site, at least I have a "demo" site to showcase some of my handy-work!

Feel free to take whatever you can and adapt it to fit your situation. It is not necessary to offer credit to me. But also keep in mind that anything you use from this site becomes yours as soon as you use it.

I look forward to interacting with fellow software engineers as it helps me to grow as well! I also get excited about helping jumpstart others who are facing tough situations. So, without further verbiage, let's get coding!

BTW - I expect a certain amount of "teasing" about my domain name and so I'll take it all in jest
I guess I was feeling particularly bold the day I registered it. If nothing else, I should get a few chuckles. As they say, laughter is the best medicine!

-Chad