Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Video Tutorial - Flash Builder 4 Graphics

This video shows how to use the MXML syntax and the graphics package in Flash Builder 4 to create a rectangle using the new Spark graphic packages. This is part of the new fx package for declarative graphics. You can use Rect or Ellipse to make most shapes. A circle is a specialized type of ellipse with a constant radius, a line is a Rect with a very small value for one of the thicknesses, and a square is a Rect with 4 equal sides. As with all of these tutorials, if you want the source, email me: dnickull at adobe dot com.

Tuesday, November 03, 2009

Best Duane's World Episode ever

Thanks to the great acting of Marc Thiele, Serge Jespers and Tom Krcha, this turned out to be a great episode. The code and tunes bits involve Marc's German Metal band Spoiler (well worth checking out) as well as Flex 4 Data Paging using PHP on the back end.

Monday, November 02, 2009

Fastest Broadband Service in the UK?

Ahh – life as an evangelist. Conferences, fun, parties, music, snowboarding, code camps, cutting edge software *bla-bla-bla* not enough words for the fun I have in my life. Lately, I’ve been working in the UK quite a bit and want to get all the comforts of home. I’ll be there again Nov 7-11, right after my stint at SAP in Walldorf. As an Adobe Evangelist, working remotely is hard. I often forget to bring files with me or download software from a high bandwidth site. Last Thursday while waiting at the airport, it really sunk in. You can’t just depend on most Internet companies to provide a good quality of service. Fifteen minutes to upload a simple blog post really sucks. When you forget the latest build of LiveCycle ES and try it over a normal wireless while VPN’d, forget it! At over 2GB, it just doesn’t work.

When I travel for Adobe, I expect some minimal comforts. Good hotel, good food, good car (if applicable) and more. Good Internet is the least I expect so I set out on a quest to find the best broadband in the UK. Finding a good high bandwidth hotspot is hard though. Nevertheless, my googling fetched an availability checker. All you do is hit in your postal/zip code and get an immediate response with the best deals and offers for broadband service for individual ISPs. The availability checker coughed up a list of multiple, fast broadband connections, prices, terms etc. I checked out a broadband comparison between ISPs, read a couple of reviews. Finally found one that suits my needs (namely does not compromise on the speed).

If you live in the UK or are passing through for a couple of days, you may want to try the broadband availability checker.