:cubicleman.com

Ok, I admit it, I used a sensational subject line. So what. Google is really the new evil, well we certainly could call it a entry on the top 5 list of fashionably evil companies of late. Will it be on top? We shall see. But I digress.

I’ve been using the Google Chrome browser for several months now. I find it far better then Safari, using less resources, fast, etc. Upon the first install, the beta version of course, I imagine I saw a link to or saw the text of the EULA or TOS flash by in a series of NEXT depresses. It is too bad, some interesting wording was in there, in a place most consumers have become accustomed to not reading at all, legalese, eh? Did you read it dearest reader? I thought so. So what are the interesting parts?

11. Software updates
11.1 The Software which you use may automatically download and install updates from time to time from Google. These updates are designed to improve, enhance and further develop the Services and may take the form of bug fixes, enhanced functions, new software modules and completely new versions. You agree to receive such updates (and permit Google to deliver these to you) as part of your use of the Services.
20.2 From time to time, Google Chrome may check with remote servers (hosted by Google or by third parties) for available updates to extensions, including but not limited to bug fixes or enhanced functionality. You agree that such updates will be automatically requested, downloaded, and installed without further notice to you.

Hmmm….I MUST agree to updates of Chrome, eh? In fact, there is no way to turn this off! On a MAC there are some possible ways around this But WTF? I can’t easily shut this off as a feature? Sure, forcing updates means ultimately a more secure product, but its my choice damn it! Take that away and you are evil, and I don’t mean in the Knievel way. Heck, even the ubiquitously evil Microsoft allows this, eh?

So, that aside, its a great browser and works a treat when debugging my Flash Platform based applications. Oh wait, except for one small caveat. Google decided to bundle Flash Player 10.1 with Chrome. Hey, that’s awesome! Google is helping to spread the Flash wealth, nice. What’s that Steve? Yeah, whatever.

Why would I complain about this? Google Chrome pushes Flash Player 10.1 Release. This is really pretty cool, as then Chrome updates can push out the new plugin in case of, ahem, security issues for one. As a Flash Platform developer, this pains me no end though! Why? Consider this: I work in Flash daily and constantly use the debug player to do that work. I’ve set Chrome as my default browser ( brownie points G? ) I kick off the debugger with Flash Builder and rock the code, yeehaw! A nice “forced upon me” Chrome update comes along with out any real notification that happens to update Flash Player and bammmm! I waste productive time watching Flash Builder spin endlessly trying to connect to a debug player. ugh!

With this setup Chrome literally points to using the packaged Flash Player installed with Chrome. There is no way to directly change things in Chrome to point to using a external Flash Player plugin version. So, that magical update of Chrome can cost me a hour of time when suddenly the Flash Player in use is now the one Google deems apropos release Flash Player 10.1. yikes! Just to be clear here, the setup now IGNORES your system installed Flash Player plugin.

So, what can a developer do? aha!! or beter maybe: SHAZZAM!!!! Form of a pail of settings…oh, sorry. Open Chrome and navigate to about:plugins There you will find a listing of plugins available to Chrome and links to enable/disable. Just disable the stock Flash Player, usually the first on the list, and enable the installed one likely the second entry. Here is a screen-shot of what I’m talking about.

A year back I bought a Logitech MX Revolution. The mouse absolutely rawks. Big heavy and ergo. The hyper scroll wheel gizmo is really awesome. You can actually set the acceleration threshold on it too. Well, after a year, its still working just swell, but the finish is starting to peel on it on the right side. I contacted Logitech Support about it. Their contact tool allowed me to upload a pic I snapped of the peeling mouse. Within 24 hours I had a reply asking for my contact info. Another 24 hours and I had three contacts from them: 1) from the support person saying another mouse is being shipped, 2) from their support group surveying my feelings on the process, and 3) a shipping confirmation. Shortly after that came the UPS tracking number.

Yesterday I received the new mouse. The packaging mentioned nothing about returning the old one nor did the customer service rep! Talk about customer service. I’ve never had to deal with Logitech before. I think their products are top notch and this experience has really solidified my thoughts on them. Anyone else have such a experience?

peas

DK

Seems the server I’m hosted on bit the dust yesterday. Well, to be more precise, a hard drive bit the dust. After about 12 hours of downtime, things appear to be back to normal with no data loss aside from emails. Back to knocking some AIR out!

Peas

DK

Ok, so I’m no CSS Zen master, far from it actually. The thought of creating good CSS that is cross-browser supported and all just makes me shiver. I had to look at something today concerning links with fancy image backgrounds and rollovers that tweaked this image. After some quick googling, I am a card carrying member of the Google Brain Club, I found this neat article on A List Apart on something they call CSS Sprites. Wow, what a cool deal. Basically you use a single image for all of your links and just reposition this image as a background. What does this gain? Well, for starters only one image needs to be loaded or preloaded. Sure, this one image may be bigger than a single one of the single link backgrounds, but the composite is likely to be smaller and take only one request. It might very well fall into the same number of packets as a single one too depending on image compression and such.

So, how to pull it off? I’ll go over a quick single link example. First, fire up Fireworks (can you tell I’m not a real graphics guy? :} ) and create your two link, or button, states. Here is a sample:

Now, use some simple CSS magic:
#outerCont {top:0px; left:0px; background: url( images/button_states.gif ) 0 0 no-repeat;}
#outerCont a:hover { background: url( images/button_states.gif ) -200px 0 no-repeat;}

Here is a sample page showing it in action:
button_states.html

Back to our regularly scheduled Flex/Air fun!

peas
DK

Wow, what a Friday night in Atlanta. A tornado hit downtown and tore up some stuff. It actually damaged the CNN Center/Omni Hotel a bit. Yes, the same spot 360|Flex Atlanta was in just a few weeks prior. The really freaky thing was, I was on Marta right under all of it as it was and just passed. I actually saw a couple people that had minor scratches and stuff after just running from the mess above. This after having Delta lose my luggage on a direct flight, err….

Check out the pics here:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/03/15/storm.atlanta/index.html#cnnSTCPhoto

DK

gosh, I really need to blog more often, eh? Well its a new year, so maybe…nope, this ain’t gonna be one of those ‘hop on the I am posting my new years resolutions bandwagon’ posts!

Ok, so, I’m a dude in IT. Naturally I dig electronics. That said, I have a really slow acceleration on uptake So, I don’t have a iPod, iPhone, well nor a Mac for that matter. I did finally break down and buy a wireless mouse. After snooping around the net for months I finally went to a store to get physical as it were. The top three mice to look at on my list were all Logitech brands: MX Revolution, VX Revolution, and the Nano. When up front and in person, the Nano is too small for daily use. Sure would be great for a traveling lappy user though. The store was out of MX revolutions, so I snagged the VX. After two days I was convinced it was too small. So I hit a Fry’s and snagged the MX Revolution. Holy Mouse Traps Batman! This thing is expensive! Well, considering its the first mouse I purchased in ~8 years, I was a daily user of a 3-button Logitech forever, $99 doesn’t sounds so bad.

The mouse is totally schweeeet! Glides nice and has a good weight to it. Kind of heavy actually, but to me that’s good. It has ample buttons including a thumb button that looks like a wheel, it has three positions. Oh, and speaking of the wheel, interesting. It has a auto sensing switch that based on the speed at which you are spinning the wheel switches between freewheelin or coastin. Odd way to explain it, eh? Basically it goes from a wheel that has positions as you roll it to none. Why is this cool? In freewheelin mode you can traverse say 50 pages of a Word doc in seconds. You can set the threshold of the switch in the SetPoint tools.

The cons? Price! When you press one of the two switches on the left side used by your thumbs the mouse can literally lift up a bit. The other thing, seems the SetPoint software is conflicting with Dreamweaver, which I use minimally anyhoo.

ok….next up is a keyboard. Any suggestions? No split keyboards for me, I can’t touch type. A couple of reasons why I can’t, but that’s another post.

peas

Awesome!! Universalmind has made the list of fastest growing private companies this year coming in at 290. Though my tenure has been short so far with Universalmind, it has been awesome working with the best and brightest in the industry. I am excited to be part of such a tremendous team and anticipate the times ahead as we grow. You can read about the exciting news here at Inc 500 Fastest Growing Companies in America.

Don’t know who Universalmind is? We are a team of developers whose collective mind tackles your problems and solves them. As a team, we have developed, and continue to enrich, a core knowledge base of best practices for building, troubleshooting, and optimizing complex, high-performance web applications. Check us out here: http://www.universalmind.com. Come talk to us at Adobe MAX Chicago at the Universalmind booth too!

DK

Update: Thanks to Mike at Inc.com for correcting a obvious blunder.

So, I’ve finally joined the world of googness. Thanks Geoff!

http://www.fullasagoog.com

Suppose I need to amp up the frequency here, eh?

DK

After the recent ACFUG meeting and being introduced to the Wii, too many comments have come to mind to not jot down. So here I will try and jot some down. As a reference point, this meeting had a total of 4 Wii, or is that 4 Wiis, at one point.

One Wii is fun, but a Wii Wii is more!

Never come between a man and his Wii.

Nothing like a group of grown men getting together to play with their Wii Wii.

Oh, and this just hit Engadget.com
http://www.nintendowiifanboy.com/2007/05/11/Fwii-for-love-wii-for-life

6/7/2007 - another Engadget wonder, the title says it all
wiiitis on the rise with wii players reports doctor
DK

hello fans and stalkers. So I moved my whole home grown self coded PHP based blog over to Wordpress. Why? Well, Wordpress has many nifty cool features that my home grown code didn’t have. I could have whipped up the code for it, but alas I’d rather not spend my time with it, there are more intersting things to code and learn than a blog, eh? Anyhoo…enjoy!