The spirit sustains the stone  

I seem to find getting a ‘java.lang.OutOfMemoryError’ a fairly common occurance when using ANT to build my flash projects ;( There’s not much docmentations out there and none of the solutions I found on the web fixed the issue for me ;( the code example below did…


<!– IMPORTANT added folk=’true’ to help avoid java.lang.OutOfMemoryError –>
<mxmlc file=”${module.class}”
output=”${module.target}”
keep-generated-actionscript=”${module.generateActionscript}”
debug=”${module.debug}”
actionscript-file-encoding=”UTF-8″
optimize=”true”
fork=”true”
compiler.show-binding-warnings=”false” incremental=”false” strict=”true” headless-server=”${flex.compile.headlessServer}”>
<!– IMPORTANT we need to give process more memory to avoid java.lang.OutOfMemoryError –>
<jvmarg line=”-Xms512m -Xmx700m -XX:MaxPermSize=700m -XX:PermSize=512m” />


Seeing as I never seem to find the time to write decent blog posts at the moment anyone who’s interested can follow me on twitter http://twitter.com/paddy_keane

Nuget of wisdom learned today - according to Lee Brimelow using Bit Masking to find odd/even numbers is 600% faster than modulus operator! it’s a pretty common task to need this when working with lists so every other row can have a different style.

Bit Masking

for (var i:uint=0; i<100; i++)
{
   if(i & 1)
   {
      row.color = 0xFF0000; // i is odd
   }
   else
   {
      row.color = 0x000000; // i is even
   }
}

Modulus Operator:

for (var i:uint=0; i<100; i++)
{
   if(i % 2 == 0)
   {
      row.color = 0xFF0000; // i is even
   }
   else
   {
      row.color = 0x000000; // i is odd
   }
}

Thanks Lee ;)

Senario:

A Flex app is part of an html page that has a scrollBar. The Mouse is over a List component and the mouseWheel is used,  browsers (PC firefox) will sometimes scroll both the html page and the List. As far as I know there isn’t any easy way to disable Flex ListBase Classes interacting with mouseWheel? I’ve seen a few posts on forums asking how to overcome this problem.

A Solution:

For anyone that wants a fix here you go (click Button under List to change options):

http://www.darklump.co.uk/examples/flex/3/flash_and_browser_double_scroll/

(right click for source)

hope it helps, anyone got a better way?…

Last year I helped built a flex site for a Nokia headset design competition. It was a great success with 10 times more entrance that forecast (hence the gallery navigation needing a bit of a overhaul). The winning designs where created last month and they look amazing. It’s wonderful to see designs come to life. There were some really impressive submissions. more images & details here:

http://www.creativereview.co.uk/crblog/nokia-headset-comp-winners/

The making of…

http://www.thrillerheadphones.blogspot.com/

Last November I had the pleasure of attending a great 2 day course on Away3D. Rob Bateman, who is a great teacher, helped explain tons about 3D development in flash. I’d highly recommend doing a course if you get the chance! Anyway, after the course I mocked up the below as a test. The codes been sitting around gathering dust so without further ado:

Demo:
http://www.darklump.co.uk/experiments/away3d/spiral-navigation/

Source: (you’ll prob need to compile it in flex builder)
http://www.darklump.co.uk/experiments/away3d/spiral-navigation/Spiral3D.zip

I’ve been following this case since the beginning, The London Mayor, ‘Blonde Borris’ has a pretty good summation of where it’s at. I wonder how much news coverage this gets in USA?

http://www.boris-johnson.com/2009/01/27/quest-to-extradite-harmless-hacker-gary-mckinnon/

http://freegary.org.uk/

http://search.bbc.co.uk/search?uri=%2F&scope=all&go=toolbar&q=Gary+McKinnon

if anyones interested, I’ve just signed up to attend some evening session on; webservices, cloud computing, agile methods…. there are other free events too.

http://skillsmatter.com/event/ajax-ria/yahoo-developer-network-php-oauth-web-services

http://skillsmatter.com/event/cloud-grid/cloud-computing-101-an-intro-to-cloud-computing-281

http://skillsmatter.com/event/agile-scrum/agile-methods

Jeeps, how hard is it to keep up with all the projects Adobe have on the go. When I first heard about Cocomo and then saw on Labs ‘Build real-time social Apps’ I just saw the word ’social’ and thought it was some sort of API for facebook, made an mental note, put in on the ‘backburner’ and never gave it a look. OOops!

It wasn’t till Nigel Pegg from Adobe (I still remember his AS1 Tree Component with fondness back in the day) left a comment on my last post that I’ve eked out some time to look into it.  All I can say is WOW.

Cocomo has the abilies to be used an alternative approach to developing/deploying multi-user applications/games  as opposed FMS. This has the potential to address a lot stumbling blocks I’ve had with multi-user development. You don’t have to write server-side code and handle all the stuff to do with connection fall-backs, load balanced servers etc. so hopefully a lot of the pain is removed ;)  delagating all that chod work away is a god send for me ;)

After 2 Days I’ve got a pretty good understanding of how it works and have most of the demos hooked up and working. I can now happily start thinking about developing mulituser projects with a lot more confedence (hoping Adobe sort out a business model that isn’t cost prohibitive ;) ). Nigel and the team have done a really outstanding job with the API, it’s very thoughtfully implemented.

The links below have the best debates, some of which look quite delicate for the FMS Dev community. As Adobe roll out more and more services; Cocomo, Stratus, Connection Pro, Live Cycle… It’s going to be important that they explain and define the services a bit better as there looks like quite a bit of crossover, making me wonder if there could be one service that rules them all? It’s going to be interesting to see how this goes; If the service can give enough control to devs, if it remains robust with 20,000 connections, how secure it is (I wonder what info can be garnered like ’Account Shared Secret’ using Charles proxy?) … As I move from the demos to my first app I hope it stands up to scrutiny. 

If, like me, you haven’t given Cocomo your attention I recommend you take a look.

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/cocomo/

http://www.flashcomguru.com/index.cfm/2008/11/17/cocomo-public-beta

http://blogs.adobe.com/collabmethods/2008/11/of_referees_and_wrenches_cocom.html

As Adobe announced plans to Open Flash Platform Messaging Protocol I’m interested to understand what that means for FMS? With the latest 3.5 release of FSM I’ve been disappointed we still need to use AS1 for server-side code when creating multi-player games and the fact there’s no AS3 components ;( I get the impression time and money has gone into streaming video as opposed the interactive server? I’ve had a Red5 sticker on my laptop now for about 6 years and it’s still only at 0.8 release preventing us using it on client projects. Colin Moocks Unity server has always interested me but as far as I know it’s only AS2. With RTMP being open-sourced can we expect some quick developments in the area of AS3 server-side code and Interactive Servers???  multiplayer seems to have taken a bit of a back seat of late so this could be good news? The Plot thickens…