Vivisecting Media

Is it Flex?

Earlier this morning my friend Aaron hit me up with an IM asking if I had seen SearchMe.com. It is a new visual search engine that is 100% Flash Player based and he was curious if it was Flex. I had just heard about SearchMe last week from my ex-roommate and design guru, Carl Nolting. Carl’s ex-co-worker had recently jumped ship to SearchMe and Carl talked about the site and what it was doing.

So how can you tell if a Flash app uses Flex? If the UI is skinned and the default loader is changed (like Scion.com) then there is no easy way to determine if a Flash app is Flex. That is where a really simple tool called “Is it Flex?” that was built by James Ward. He built a simple web form that you can pass in a SWF location, the app then processes the SWF and then returns back if it uses Flex or not. His app probably loads the SWF into a SWF and then pings it for certain Flex specific APIs.

James’ tool has been around for a while and when Aaron asked me if SearchMe was Flex I instantly thought of testing the site using the form. The only problem was that it took me over 20 minutes to find the fracking thing! When I put in the words ‘is it flex’ (no quotes) it didn’t come up at all in Google. I then went to James’ site and nothing there mentioned it. I searched his blog and only the Flex blog posts came up (which he as 100 of). I then went back to Google and tried different combinations. I started to doubt my memory and thought maybe James didn’t write it. Maybe it was not called “Is it Flex”, maybe it was something else. I searched for how to determine if a SWF is a Flex application. Finally, I put the “is it flex” in quotes and it was the first hit.

Arg… I am usually pretty good with my searches and I would have tried that on my second try. But the first time my search results were soooo off that I doubted my memory and immediately tried other keywords. Its kind of funny that this happened because I had just read a great interview with Udi Manber, VP of search quality at Google. He talks about how frustrating it is when your search fails. We are so used to first success that when it doesn’t happen we tend to get frustrated. Word.

So this is a twofold post. First to point out a great tool that let’s you peek under the covers to see if its all Flash or does it use the Flex Framework. Second, to archive this link so that I don’t forget how to f***ing find it.

– ps: I used Textmate to write this post and I forgot to save it the first time when I previewed it in the Textmate preview window. I was all done and checking my links when I hit the SearchMe link. I then hit back before it loaded and Flash Player then through a “load never completed” exception (yeah debug player), which then hung Flash and crashed Textmate. I lost my first post and had to write this stupid thing again! I got spoiled with Wordpress’ auto-save feature… stupid, stupid, stupid.

The Flex Code-Behind Pattern

The Flex code-behind pattern is a design pattern that has been around since the release of Flex 1.0 yet is not known or used by a lot of developers. The initial concept of the pattern was based on the ASP.NET development pattern where the layout is handled in a main file and a secondary “backing” file handles all the logic. The goal of the pattern is to create a clear separation of logic and layout.

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Testing Markdown Support In Wordpress

I have been looking for multiple offline text editors for my blog. I have tried a few different ones over the years but I haven’t really found one I like. I have actually done most of my posting in the WYSIWYG Wordpress editor and gotten by in most cases. Recently, I have been doing a lot more inline ActionScript and to get the text to format correctly I have to use <pre> HTML markup and the WYSIWYG editor tends to choke on it.

Since then I started writing post in Textmate and I realized that there is probably blogging support already built into it. I was correct and the pre-bundled release has blogging support with markdown already installed. Markdown is a plain text markup language that you can be parsed by the markdown engine that was written in perl. It was ported over to PHP and supposedly is now bundled into Wordpress.

I figured I would try it out and see how it goes using this new syntax and the blogging bundle in Textmate. Hopefully it works right out of the box!

Update: Well… it didn’t work the first time up. The issue was that I didn’t have PHP Markdown installed. Apparently its not fully bundled with it or I may have deleted the plugin. It now works and honestly this is freaking awesome how powerful and simple the syntax is and how the Textmate plugin works.

Moved domains and new layout…

VivMedia has a long convoluted history and I am slowly but surely firming it up.  It originally started out as my first Wordpress blog that was hosted under james.fakescience.com.  It was going to be my personal blog that tied back into the Fake Science podcast (this was before we launched the music store or FS blog).

The first layout was a theme that started out as the Kubrick layout and I then hacked it to hell using my uber-l337 PHP skillz (it was my 2nd PHP project ever, so they were non-existant).  I had never really worked with Wordpress nor had I used much PHP so it was a thrilling piece of shit that amazed even me that it worked. During the design time I came up with the Vivisecting Media name (thanks to Nevada) and I so bought the domain www.vivisectingmedia.com.

I still kept the blog hosted at james.fakescience.com (since I spent all this time getting it working) and set up a mirror for vivmedia to point to the link.  I finally got around to updating the dashboard to link eveything to vivmedia but in essence it was just a stupid mirror and really, really annoyed me (but too lazy to change).

After blogging for a while, we (Fake Science founders) decided to launch Dicta and start using that as our industry mouthpiece.  Sadly, VivMedia became an abandon blog like so many others have and started collecting cobwebs.  

Eventually we closed down FS and I felt it was time to dust off VivMedia and breathe some new life into it.  I was now a consultant and one of my goals was to start blogging about the technologies that I put a lot of time and energy into.

As time tromped on Wordpress kept updating and rolling out new features.  One of the features I was looking into were Widgets, but because I had a frankenstein theme that was designed for Wordpress 1.2 it didn’t really support them.  I was also getting frustrated that my CSS failed on IE (all text centered) and I had no time or patience to try and re-hack the theme.  

Finally, with the launch of Wordpress 2.5 I felt it was about damn time to move off of my crappy theme and put the blog on a proper domain.  So today is the day and I rolled out my new theme and hosted domain.  I assume things are broken (such as Disqus comments not following to the new domain) and the feed is not exactly right.  But its there… and hopefully over the next week or so all the bugs will be shaken off.  I hope you like the new look and the new site, because I really do!

Update: Disqus does it right, again!  Their support got to me right away and fixed the commenting issue for me.  After running my own startup and handling customer support I know how much a pain this can be.  Thanks Jason!!

ActionScript 3.0: Named Loops

One of the benefits of working with other experienced developers is you often get to see tips and tricks they have learned over the years.  ActionScript 3 has a lot of new features and functionality and even after working with it for more then 3 years (I started playing with it when we started development of Flex 2 @ Macromedia) I still haven’t delved into the deepest corners of the language.

I am working on a project that involves the amazing team at gSkinner and Grant was walking the teams through some existing code (I will talk more about the project in the future).  One of the sections of code involved heavily nested loops and he pointed out a neat feature of the language.

When using loops you can name them using a method similar to namespaces (in fact it may leverage the same mechanism).  By naming a loop when you call break you can target the named loop as the break.  This is great when you have deeply nested loops and you want to exit one of the outer loops without having to put in extra logic to determine exit strategies. For example:

// my top loop
outsideLoop:for(var i:uint = 0; i < 10; i++)
{
	trace(i + ": called from outsideLoop.");
 
	//my inside loop
	insideLoop:for(var j:uint = 0; j < 5; j++)
	{
		trace(j + ": called from insideLoop.");
 
		if(j < 2) break outsideLoop; // stop the outside loop
	}
}

As you can see, you name the loop by using [name]:loop structure which then allows you to reference the loop from the break.  Its a nifty little trick that can help with those often complex nested loops.  Enjoy!

Work that flow…

Doug Winnie, the Group Product Manager for Workflow at Adobe, just launched his official blog called “Workflow Experiences“.  I can attest to Doug’s knowledge on workflow from working with him on the Scion.com redesign which we built entirely in Flex 2.  At the time, Doug was the Production team manager and helped us manage the project from both creative and technical aspects.

Doug is very strong writer and speaker and is outspoken on the concepts of development workflows, from the creative to the programatic.  I am looking forward to reading his posts and seeing both what he and Adobe envision as the current view of workflow and how they propose to evolve it over the coming years.

Adobe Kuler 2.0 is live!

Adobe Kuler is a Flash based web application (and now with an available AIR version) that helps designers and developers with color themes.  Designers can design their own color theme using the Kuler create tools, submit their theme to community for review or look at other designers themes.  The new release has added an amazing feature called color extraction.

Color extraction allows you to upload an image and which is processed to create a color theme.  You can then change how the image is processed by selecting different moods, such as Bright or Muted.  Not only can the system pick the color but the UI then allows you to manually select the locations of the color samples used to create the theme.  Once you create your theme you can then save it in your themes and make it public for others to use and rate.

Other new features include the ability to store an unlimited amount of favorites.  As you go through all the themes you can pick out your favorites and store them to your account.  You do need to log in with you Adobe ID to access this feature.  There has been multiple UI tweaks and also a new drop down for random themes, highest rated, newest and most popular (based on the downloads of the ASE version).  When you download a theme it comes in the ASE format (Adobe Swatch Exchange) that can then be imported into Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Flash and Dreamweaver.

Kudos to the Kuler team and their newest launch!!

SXSW 2008: Hot Freaks Party and Dr. Dog photos

As promised in my day three recap, here are the photos for the Hot Freaks day show at the Mohawk.  This set also has pics from day four’s Dr. Dog show.  Sorry for the delay, but trying to manage photos and blog posts after 14 hours of music is a little much.  I will have to think of a better way to streamline this for next year. Enjoy the pics!

SXSW 2008: Day Four Recap (finale)

This is the final day of SXSW music and I am both sad and ready to see it go.  This year’s event flew by so fast it will take some time to process all the new music that I have heard in the last few days.  We started the day off by the annual Saltlick BBQ trip located in Driftwood, Texas.  The Saltlick has family style BBQ where you get all the meat and sides you can eat.  Two massive plates of ribs, brisket and sausage later we head back into Austin.

We drop the car off and head over to Cedar Street Courtyard to catch the final day of the Filter day show series.  We get there just in time to catch a good chunk of DeVotchKa’s set.  DeVotchKa plays of blend of rock and old world music (gypsy-esque) that is incredibly catchy.  They have been around for a long time but public awareness of the band has grown since they were heavily featured in Little Miss Sunshine. They played a killer set and the crowd was thick to see them.  As soon as they wrapped up the venue cleared out so that we could head to the front of the stage.

Grand Archives were up next and brought a rocking set for us to enjoy.  Grand Archives was founded by Mat Brooke after leaving Band of Horses once their first album was released.  Grand Archives has a similar sound to Band of Horses, but you would expect that from one of the founding members.  I would hardly call it a BoH clone but its a good way to give you a starting point on their sound.  The drummer handled a lot of the banter and you could tell they really enjoyed playing together and to the crowd.

Sea Wolf took the stage after Grand Archives and brought a more mellow sound to the stage but they also brought the rock when called for.  Sea Wolf is a large six piece band with keys, cello, lead guitar, bass, drums and singer/rhythm guitar.  They constantly revolved positions adding to the mix different percussion instruments when called for.  Another great live band to add to the must see list.

The final act of the night was Kate Nash with guest Billy Bragg.  I first heard of Kate through Entertainment Weekly.  Yeah, I read EW… wanna fight about it?! Anyway she got a nice writeup in EW and on the drive down Niki was playing her music because he is a big fan.  Kate is a singer/songwriter from the UK and her album reminds me of Lily Allen, although they are pretty different stylistically.  I think its the girl with an accent thing that makes me link the two.

Kate played her guitar and sang to the audience.  Her banter was spot on, her voice was great and her performance is going on my highlight reel for sure.  She was not in town for a showcase, she just wanted to see SXSW.  Since she was here Filter and Q magazine convinced her to play some gigs.

For the last three songs Kate was backed by Billy Bragg on guitar while she played piano.  They did a great duet piece and he backed her on two of her tracks.  If you are familiar with both Kate and Billy then you probably are wondering how they can work together since they have very different sounds.  Well, they work beautifully and it was awesome to be front row center and catch it all.

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SXSW 2008: Day Three Recap (serendipity)

We got up early this morning, not to catch a day show but to snag the complementary breakfast.  Nothing like a steamer tray of eggs, sausages, bacon and biscuits to start the day off right.  After a brief post-breakfast nap we packed up and headed out to the Hot Freaks day show put on by a huge collection of music blogs and media.

We got to the venue to catch the last few minutes of Nicole Atkins.  The sun was starting to beat down and we settled in on the mid-deck at Mohawk overlooking the outdoor stage.  After cracking a cold one we listened to the Hood Internet play a tag team set of Hip-Hop / Indie Rock mashups.  The Hood Internet would provide the between set beats for the rest of the day.

The sun started to really blaze (high of 95 degrees today) and we wandered down from the deck and into the welcome shade of the tent.  The Dodos, from hometown SF, took the stage and rocked with a drums/guitar duo configuration interspersed by a third member on xylophone and gong.

Once their set was finished we decided to brave the sun once more as Cadence Weapon set up. By this point the humidity had dropped to 11% and the sun went from grueling to a very pleasant heat.  Cadence Weapon dropped a tight but remarkably short set due to their Numark CD turntable failing in the heat.

Since the set was maybe 15 minutes long we headed inside to catch the start of Cameron McGill’s set.  A country meets folk sound was filled in by a large 6 piece band packed into a little stage.  They had a great sound with multiple part harmonies and blues lead guitar tones.  We then headed back out to catch the next outdoor set.

In the comfort of the shade tent and a Shiner in hand, White Denim, from Austin, tore up the stage.  High energy in the strides as the Who this three piece laid it down.  The nice thing about this kind of show is that if you don’t recognize the names on the bill you place your faith in the fact that the people putting it on have good and esoteric tastes.

We missed the last few minutes of White Denim’s set to get a good spot inside for the Bowerbirds.  Recent reviews of their showcase claimed they put on a fantastic show and from what I heard online I was looking forward to it.  The first two songs by the Bowerbirds were a little loose and didn’t really hook us, but the third song grabbed us and we were sold on the act.  This is a fantastic band to see when they swing through your area.

After catching the whole set we headed back up to the deck, now covered mostly in shade. With a Tecate and lime to keep us cool, Blitzen Trapper rocked the stage.  The next act was both the closer and headliner of the Hot Freaks show.  They had managed to get British Sea Power to close the joint down.  And close it they did.

British Sea Power took the stage and dominated the crowd with driving riffs and intense energy.  They kept building it up and up until finally the stage manager had to frantically wave them down to stop playing because the time was up. The venue had to close to get ready for the official showcase.  Bravo to the Hot Freaks team for putting on an amazing lineup and allowing us to catch nine acts in such a short period of time.

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