Mike Potter, Adobe - Thanks Guys!

So, I was checking my mail today and a mysterious package arrived from Amazon. Now, it could have been anything but to my complete shock and awe, it was from Mike Potter at Adobe. Here are some blurry photos from my phone:

WrappedCardBook

I had added the cookbook to my Amazon wish list shortly after Flex 3 was released, as I wanted to dive in and learn everything I could about the newest version of Flex. I really appreciate the gift, and to all of the Adobe team, thank you. You guys have delivered a great product, and you really know how to reach out and touch the community.

BrightKite

If anyone wants a brightkite invite, just let me know. I have 3 left, so the first 3 to comment will get the invites.

Flex Web Cam Effects Demo

Just updated the blog to WordPress 2.3.3 and figured it was time for another post. Today on InsideRIA.com they posted a rather interesting post about Flex graphical filters. Now, I’ve wanted to do this sort of thing for a very long time, but only today had the down time to give it a try. Basically, the application I’ve attached shows your regular web cam feed on the left, as well as a filtered feed on the right. I’ve only scratched the surface with what you can do with filters, combining filters, and the like but the demo serves a very useful purpose.

When my boss saw my little demo running his first comment was, “Wow, that’s fast.” and he was right. Flash was rendering the filtered stream in real-time; side-by-side with the regular output. Granted, blurring and practically inverting the colors isn’t rocket science, but the applications are limitless. Personally, I’d love to see a background subtraction library for Flex with other real-time video processing effects. My guess is that someone over at Adobe already has something to this end for working with YouTube Remixer and similarly powered applications.

Code and source after the break…

Continue reading ‘Flex Web Cam Effects Demo’

Updated: MyBlogLog Plugin v0.5.1

The MyBlogLog WordPress plugin is receiving a very belated face lift and a few bug fixes (thanks to those who reported them). Now, as a disclaimer, this code is relatively untested and was dug out of a very old archive from my days at cloudspace (the company who initially partnered to create MyBlogLog), so use it at your own risk. If you find any bugs, just drop me an email using the contact form and I will try to help in any way I can. This release has been activated on at least 2 WordPress 2.3.3 installs, so yes, it works with 2.3.3!

Check the project page to download the latest plugin file.

Oh, and still no readme.txt. ;)

OnAir Bus Tour - Atlanta

This post is kind of a stub, I’m sitting in the Fox Theatre ready to live-blog. ;)

The event started awhile ago, and I’ve been blogging it as it happens. As always, you can always hit the live video feed instead of reading my transcripts & witty commentary as well.

A special thanks to WeatherFlow Inc. for flying me out to the tour.

Information: http://onair.adobe.com/schedule/cities/atlanta.php

Live Feed: http://onair.adobe.com/live/

Live blogging after the jump…

Continue reading ‘OnAir Bus Tour - Atlanta’

MyBlogLog Plugin Update - In demand?

Well, it’s been over a year since I released my Wordpress MyBlogLog plugin, and I’m still getting emails about it. Honestly, I’m very surprised that this thing still works. If you’re using the plugin now, or want to, let me know! I think it is time for a big code overhaul, and perhaps some new features but there is no sense in developing this plugin if there’s no demand. If you’ve got an idea, post it up and I’ll do my best to get it out there in the wild with the next release. I did notice the guys over at MyBlogLog have been hard at work improving the JavaScript and their own feature set as well which means I should probably update the plugin pretty soon. Also, I am aware of the missing readme file! Please, I know about it, and I’ve posted about it. I promise, next release, you all will get an extensive readme!

Anyways, it amazes me how far MyBlogLog has come since the day I registered and alpha tested it. Really, you have no idea how simple the idea was at the time. Todd, Eric, Steve, John and the rest of the crew over there at Cloudspace and Yahoo, my hats off to you guys.

Chumby - First 50

The chumby is a compact device that displays useful and entertaining information from the web: news, photos, music, celebrity gossip, weather, box scores, blogs — using your wireless internet connection. Always on, it shows — nonstop — what’s online that matters to you.

I just got an email from the guys over at Chumby.com and they’re about to run a 50 person beta run of sorts. I’ve applied to get on the team, and I’m looking forward to it. The work I’ve been doing recently really would look amazing on one of these, as I’ve been working on a flash version of our companies’ wind graph. Basically, it’s a real-time, on site wind graph of our weather stations. So, the Chumby is really the perfect vessel for this thing, albeit a strange one.

Chumby

WWDC 2007

Okay, the WWDC keynote is over and all I have to say is, finally.

Games on the Mac. From two of the largest, most well known development companies ever devised.

Oh, and new MacBook Pros have the 8600M Nvidia chipset…

Via Gizmodo

Hackers these days…

10:45:15 AM yarak_hasan31@hotmail.com: hello
10:45:24 AM abyssknight@hotmail.com: Hello there.
10:45:37 AM yarak_hasan31@hotmail.com: ip adresin ne
10:45:48 AM abyssknight@hotmail.com: hmm?
10:45:59 AM yarak_hasan31@hotmail.com: ip
10:45:59 AM yarak_hasan31@hotmail.com: ıp
10:46:12 AM abyssknight@hotmail.com: What about my IP?
10:46:23 AM yarak_hasan31@hotmail.com: pc ıp
10:46:31 AM yarak_hasan31@hotmail.com: computer ıp
10:46:41 AM abyssknight@hotmail.com: Any particular reason you want my IP?
10:46:48 AM yarak_hasan31@hotmail.com: yes
10:46:53 AM abyssknight@hotmail.com: And that is?
10:46:57 AM yarak_hasan31@hotmail.com: ok
Changed status to Away (10:47:17 AM)
10:47:22 AM abyssknight@hotmail.com: You’re bad at this. ;)
10:47:31 AM yarak_hasan31@hotmail.com: :D

Subversion: Working With HotCopy

Well, I am almost finished moving all my data onto my brand new MacBook Pro 15″ when I realized I needed to move my Subversion repositories. I’m not an expert on Subversion, nor will I ever claim to be but this might just help a few people out. When I made the backups of my repository I went with the trusty ’svnadmin hotcopy old_repos new_repos’ option and had a plug and play backup to restore when the time came. Now, I couldn’t find a single reference on how to restore from a hotcopy, and it certainly wasn’t obvious to me so… Here’s what I did:

  1. Download the OS X SVN Installer from Martin Ott’s Site
  2. Install the package.
  3. Make a .profile file in your home directory and paste the following into it: export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin
  4. Issue a ’svnadmin recover repo_hotcopy’ to start the BDB again.
  5. Ta da, it’s done!

Strangely, that seemed to have fixed everything! Now, that might’ve been the most obvious thing in the entire world to a SVN guru, but it wasn’t to me. I did issue a ‘killall svnserve’ and then a ’svnserve -d -r repo_hotcopy’ before testing it, but it checked out with SVNx and everything looks good.