After three years of consulting I’m heading back to a ‘real’ job as a Flash/Flex (mostly the latter) developer at OpenSoft (aka Farheap Solutions). It was a tough call but doing full time Flex work a mere 15 minute commute away was too good to pass up.

The blog, which was about 50/50 Ruby/Flex, will probably now swing wildly to ActionScript/Flex topics as I’m all business in the front from here on out. I now have smarter people than me to take care of the back-end (which at OpenSoft is Java and PHP, with a dash of Ruby thrown in for kicks).

Consulting was fun but a bit scattered, I always had like four projects in various stages of completion (not recommended). Not only was I switching between Ruby and Flex but also between design, business development, tech support, accounting, collections, db admin, server admin and on and on. However I learnt a ton, and really only because I was working for myself could I decide to take a day or two off to learn Rails or Flex. If you’re on the younger side (or have limited attachments, i.e., single, no mortgage) I highly recommend consulting for a couple of years to learn new skills and build a reputation.

So my conversion to the dark side is now complete, five jobs ago I was designing Teletubby books for the BBC and now I’m an evil flex developer.

PS OpenSoft is looking for a couple more ActionScripters, Flex jobs in OC are still pretty rare so send me a resume if you’re interested (alastairdotdawson at farheapdotcom).

My new year’s resolution is to organize my ActionScript snippets, so I made a website to do just that actionsnip.com.

I know yes another snippet site, but none of the others highlight ActionScript properly. And because I don’t only collect snippets but blog posts about ActionScript as well there’s a feature called scraps which lets you save useful posts along side your snippets.

Other features include saving favorite snippets/scraps that others have posted, and a ’steal this code’ link which gives you highlighted code to embed in your blog just like the example below (here’s the original on ActionSnip)

—

Returns true if inputed email is valid.

function emailValid( email:String ):Boolean
{

    var emailRegExp:RegExp = /(A(s*)Z)|(A([^@s]+)@((?:[-a-z0-9]+.)+[a-z]{2,})Z)/i;
    return emailRegExp.test(email);

}

Usage …

// returns true
trace(emailValid("user@domain.com"));
// returns false
trace(emailValid("user@domaincom"));

// returns false
trace(emailValid("user%domain.com"));

—

If you don’t like the Flex Builder styling you can overide it with your own styles. Currently it supports just ActionScript but I’m working on MXML and MXML/ActionScript.

Most of the bugs are squashed but if you see anything let me know (it seems to bug out with a snippet over 500 lines of code so please just snippets for now). Constructive (and even destructive) criticism is welcome.

Snip away!

Happy Birthday to me!

The actual anniversary was last week but I was in the Redneck Riviera on vacation.

My blog turning one is much less exciting than everything that’s happened since I started it. A year ago being an ActionScript developer on Rails was a lonely and frustrating time (so frustrating that my first post was about installing Django). A year ago stable Rails hosting was hard to find, there was no Ruby AMF implementation, and no Flex Builder for OS X. Now you can get solid and affordable Rails hosting with Media Temple (shared) or Slicehost (VPS), two flavors of AMF for Ruby, and Apple users are no longer second class Flex citizens.

The only downside so far has been when I Google something and one of my posts comes up first - great, I’m the “expert” on the problem I can’t fix. That’s a rare occasion though, I usually find the answer from one of the folks listed on the right (thanks!).

PS If by chance you go on vacation and turn your DSL modem off, the reason you can’t get into any of your servers is that your IP address has changed and now conflicts with your iptables firewall settings. Have I plugged Slicehost yet? Their emergency console rocks! :)

There are too many candidates running for presnit in ‘08 so as a weekend project I made Whackapol to ‘thin’ down the field. After a mere two days online it got a mention on CNN last night.

***UPDATE***

Here’s a link to video of the segment (1:50 min in).

And you think someone ought to crack the candidate’s coconuts. Go ahead. Whackapol is the latest and best online way we found yet to smack down your political peeves.

(on camera): Yes! Now that’s satisfying.

And that’s “Raw Politics” — Anderson.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Tom, thanks.

I’ve learnt that political ads pay waaaaay more than web development ads, time for a new blog subject :P

Vixiom designs edgeacoustics.com (be sure to turn up your inferior speakers). A lot of sites claim to be multimedia but this is the real deal with audio, video, interactive elements, and some pretty complex ActionScript to make sure it all holds together. The 3D was done by our friends at SoftMirage.

Is your non-coding time in front of a computer spend bashing away at your keyboard like an overcaffinated spastic monkey playing Battlefield/Counter Strike/Half-Life etc.? Always kiled by those dirty cheating snipers/special ops $%@!ers because you can’t hear ‘em? You need some better sound equipment!

E.D.G.E. Acoustics earphones have industry leading noise isolation, and the highest response accuracy available, they’re a division of Etymotic Research who hold 89 patents in products from consumer earphones to hearing aids.

Or RoRRIASDK, say that ten times fast!

The kit features six examples - and growing - of Flex/Fash with Ruby on Rails goodness including my Flash Remoting with Rails MP3 player tutorial. Big Ups to Mike Potter of Adobe for setting up the SDK and allowing me to contribute to it.

There’s also an Adobe PHP SDK if you’re so inclined.

We have a ton of work right now and are looking for freelance Rails and Flex/Flash developers.

I’d prefer that you have a computer science/software engineering background but it’s not mandatory (I’m a self taught programmer so I know it’s possible).

One project is a very large ecommerce store (large in the number of products) and the other is marked Vixiom ‘Top Secret’ so I won’t go into details but it involves a lot of image manipulation with PDF output.

The front end of the ecommerce store won’t be Flex so if you’re just a Rails developer please still apply we have lots of projects that are straight RoR.

Bonus points if you’re in Southern California, double super extra bonus for Orange County.

Please send an overview of your experience with links/examples to jobs at vixiom dot com. I don’t know of too many other studios using Flex and Rails for live out in the wild production so this is a great opportunity if you’re interested in using them together.