No breakfast this morning. I woke up too late, had to iron and shower, no time for grub...
After making the walk over to eBay, I was able to see Jeffry Houser do his session on making custom components. This was kind of a geek experience for me, because I have listened to his podcast for almost a year now, it's my 2nd favorite podcast behind This American Life. After a few failed attempts for Jeffry to throw chocolate kisses into the crowd, the session started and I learned alot. It reminded me of the same style he does his 15 minutes with flex screencasts.
Next was Promoting your Flex and AIR apps. I can't even begin to explain the wealth of information that this seminar was to me. I learned so much in that hour, it was amazing. So many things that will help me become a better flex/air developer. This seminar was supposed to be given by Mike Potter, but he was not able to make it. Puneet Goel was an awesome fill-in and he even emailed me the slides right after class which I have to think him greatly for.
Lunch was good, Tortilla's, as Jacob stated "it's hard to mess up mexican".
Then we got an announcement that deGrafa would be doing an impromptu session during lunch. This caught my interest, and I went in without any expectations. I came out immediately wanting to download and play with deGrafa. It is THAT amazing. Check out their samples they are awesome!
Next was Neil Webb and Cairngorm for Beginners. Neil really had some awesome analogies for explaining how the MVC structure worked inside of Cairngorm. The more I think about it, the more I feel that I would better not using any frameworks while I'm still trying to master Flex.
After that we went over to Advanced AIR & SQLite Optimization. This really taught me alot of generic SQL tactics that I could use in my current MySQL usage to improve performance.
Lastly was Data Visualization. This was too much code, too late in the day. We left halfway through from fuzzy brain syndrome.
We started talking today about starting our own Flex User Group in the Maryland area. I really think it's a great idea, and want to explore it further.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
360Flex Day 1
So it's Monday morning, I'm eating breakfast by myself, yay.
We walk over to 360Flex (which is at ebay's HQ, awesome) and Adobe is 5 minutes into their keynote. This was the hilight of the morning for me. They previewed some awesome new stuff in Flash Player 10, Flex 4 and most importantly......Thermo.
On the topic of Thermo, when the F is this thing going to come out. People are telling me to wait til MAX, cause it will probably be there, at least in beta form, or maybe it will be released with all of CS4 later this year. All I can say is it bridges the gap between designer and developer like never before.
Let me break it down......Your designer makes a mock up of their Layout in Photoshop or Fireworks. In Thermo you hit "Create new layout from PSD file". It then turns your PSD mockup into full MXML!!!! The designer could then tweak things in Thermo if they like, scroll bars, buttons, etc. Or you as the developer can take over. There is some overlap, between designer & developer, but it is good overlap.
The ability to just go into the code and replace dummy text, is beautiful, just beautiful.
After that we sat through the worst presentation of the day. I don't mean to be harsh, they lady was an awesome programmer, but I believe she was a little nervous as her room had twice as many people as anyone else. If it's your first time speaking and there are 300 geeks staring at you, wow, that would make me nervous too. I can't say I didn't learn anything, it was about Item Renderers and Item Editors, but, she needs to work on her public speaking skills a little more. She seemed happy to be done, and I feel really bad for her, but public speaking is definitely not for everyone, I couldn't do it.
Next was Lunch, gross ass pasta (with peas!!!) and brick like breadsticks. Looking forward to Adobe's dinner on Tuesday.
After lunch I was able to see the coolest thing ever. OpenFlux / Plexiglass. It takes a list and turns it into cool 3D effects, like a Carousel, Cover Flow, Time Machine, Roller Coaster, etc. It even has cameras that allow you to move around your flex layout, so cool.
Next was Swiz framework. It's probably really cool, but it was hurting my head, I think it's way over my expertise at this time.
Finally was creating an MMO from scratch in 59 minutes. This was NOT what I thought it was going to be. The guy flew through everything, and I suppose it was more for ppl interested in game development. I went to watch what was going on, but quickly got lost. I'm a WoW geek, so the beginning interested me, then I was lost.
So far, I have only taken away OpenFlux/PlexiGlass and the wonders of things to come at Adobe. I hope Tueday will be better.
We walk over to 360Flex (which is at ebay's HQ, awesome) and Adobe is 5 minutes into their keynote. This was the hilight of the morning for me. They previewed some awesome new stuff in Flash Player 10, Flex 4 and most importantly......Thermo.
On the topic of Thermo, when the F is this thing going to come out. People are telling me to wait til MAX, cause it will probably be there, at least in beta form, or maybe it will be released with all of CS4 later this year. All I can say is it bridges the gap between designer and developer like never before.
Let me break it down......Your designer makes a mock up of their Layout in Photoshop or Fireworks. In Thermo you hit "Create new layout from PSD file". It then turns your PSD mockup into full MXML!!!! The designer could then tweak things in Thermo if they like, scroll bars, buttons, etc. Or you as the developer can take over. There is some overlap, between designer & developer, but it is good overlap.
The ability to just go into the code and replace dummy text, is beautiful, just beautiful.
After that we sat through the worst presentation of the day. I don't mean to be harsh, they lady was an awesome programmer, but I believe she was a little nervous as her room had twice as many people as anyone else. If it's your first time speaking and there are 300 geeks staring at you, wow, that would make me nervous too. I can't say I didn't learn anything, it was about Item Renderers and Item Editors, but, she needs to work on her public speaking skills a little more. She seemed happy to be done, and I feel really bad for her, but public speaking is definitely not for everyone, I couldn't do it.
Next was Lunch, gross ass pasta (with peas!!!) and brick like breadsticks. Looking forward to Adobe's dinner on Tuesday.
After lunch I was able to see the coolest thing ever. OpenFlux / Plexiglass. It takes a list and turns it into cool 3D effects, like a Carousel, Cover Flow, Time Machine, Roller Coaster, etc. It even has cameras that allow you to move around your flex layout, so cool.
Next was Swiz framework. It's probably really cool, but it was hurting my head, I think it's way over my expertise at this time.
Finally was creating an MMO from scratch in 59 minutes. This was NOT what I thought it was going to be. The guy flew through everything, and I suppose it was more for ppl interested in game development. I went to watch what was going on, but quickly got lost. I'm a WoW geek, so the beginning interested me, then I was lost.
So far, I have only taken away OpenFlux/PlexiGlass and the wonders of things to come at Adobe. I hope Tueday will be better.
Monday, August 18, 2008
360 Flex Sunday Training
Well I woke up at 6:45 am to my iPhone ringing, "wtf, i still have 15 minutes on my alarm!". It was our Datacenter asking why they didn't see our 03 Exchange Server online.
Such dummies, we, f-that, no more we, i'm done doing IT. Our outsourced IT guy and our new internal IT guy were working on migrating from Exchange 03 to Exchange 07. The datacenter should know, since they did build the 07 server for us.
So once that was straightened out, I just said screw it and started to get ready. I wanted to wear my fancy new Dew shirt, but the damn iron in the hotel kept leaking water on it!
So i sucked it up and wore a wrinkled polo, hooray!
We went downstairs and got some breakfast (stuffed french toast FTW!) Then headed to the conference.
David Gassner from Lynda.com was the trainer and things started off well. I had heard his voice many times before as I have tried to learn Flex through lynda.com many times.
By 4:00 we were on page 62 of 106 with only an hour left. It started to become redundant and there was no way we were going to finish, so we split early, and I finished up the exercises later.
Then we hung out at the bar, and then migrated back over to the Conf. Center for the Welcome Party. Had a couple guiness and then went to bed.
So far I haven't learned anything new in Flex, though the Flex 101 training by Mr. Gassner brought alot back.
Such dummies, we, f-that, no more we, i'm done doing IT. Our outsourced IT guy and our new internal IT guy were working on migrating from Exchange 03 to Exchange 07. The datacenter should know, since they did build the 07 server for us.
So once that was straightened out, I just said screw it and started to get ready. I wanted to wear my fancy new Dew shirt, but the damn iron in the hotel kept leaking water on it!
So i sucked it up and wore a wrinkled polo, hooray!
We went downstairs and got some breakfast (stuffed french toast FTW!) Then headed to the conference.
David Gassner from Lynda.com was the trainer and things started off well. I had heard his voice many times before as I have tried to learn Flex through lynda.com many times.
By 4:00 we were on page 62 of 106 with only an hour left. It started to become redundant and there was no way we were going to finish, so we split early, and I finished up the exercises later.
Then we hung out at the bar, and then migrated back over to the Conf. Center for the Welcome Party. Had a couple guiness and then went to bed.
So far I haven't learned anything new in Flex, though the Flex 101 training by Mr. Gassner brought alot back.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
