undefined-type

Got hold of Västtrafik (Gothenburgs public transportation system) and asked them for an open API. Vasttrafik has before had some open connections for services but it they have now shut it and their webmaster pointed me at this direction.
http://www.vasttrafik.se/sv/Att-resa/Reseplaneraren/Reseplaneraren-pa-din-sida/Post.aspx

So it seems like to use their services I need to include an iFrame with their services. A sad day for me, with an open API there was loads of posibilities for e.g. connecting a map with destinations drawn for your route, select where you want to go on the map and why not port that to the iPhone.

So I’m giving Västtrafik the thumbs down. Bad public service API;s…. bad…

Life api, västtrafik

I’ve quit my job as a Senior Flash Developer at HiQ Interactive in Sweden/Gothenburg. So now I’m sitting home with my new bought iMac computer =)

Must say that I love my new mac. But I’m having some problems with it as well. For a developer the keys are all messed up, shortcut keys don’t really work (as I want it to work ). But hey, I figure I gotta learn soon. I hope.

Life work

I figured that I would start keeping track on my personal bank accounts. Where does my money go anyway, why is it always empty ???

So after a little surfing on the web I found http://www.buxfer.com

Wonderful site with its simple way of tracking, keeping metadata tags for grouping. Just so simple and I love it. Then the problem came. I want to import my accounts and not do it manually and buxfer doesn’t support my bank (but it supports a very long list of other banks).

Download and try the air application: buxferbankaccountconverter

So what happened I wrote my own little parser.

#1 Copy & Paste Bank Account data

#2 Paste into the converter and run it. Has for now Handelsbanken & Nordea. Export to the csv file.

#3 Import into Buxfer

———-
UPDATED: 2008-07-05
Added support for banks
- Handelsbanken
- Nordea
- Swedbank
Extras
- Added support for direct upload data into buxfer account.
———-
UPDATED: 2008-07-13
Added support for banks
- SEB
———-
UPDATED: 2008-07-22
Bugfix
- Sort order by date and lock columns

- Remove Saldo in descriptions, messes up saldo for buxfer.
———-
UPDATED: 2008-07-30
Added support

- Application auto-update.
———-
UPDATE: 2009-02-21 (Version 1.5)
Fixed Handelsbanken Copy/Paste linebreaks
———-
Note: seems like problems for recognizing income/expense when uploading data.
———-
UPDATE:2009-03-31 (Version 1.6)
Fixed MAC OS 10.5 Paste problem.
A confirmed bug in Mac os x 10.5 made it almost impossible to copy/paste the account data to the application. The fix is to hijack the text event:

textField1.addEventListener(TextEvent.TEXT_INPUT, input);
function input(event:TextEvent){
event.preventDefault();
 
var textField:TextField = event.target as TextField;
var currentText:String = textField.text;
var insertionPrefix:String = currentText.substr(0, textField.selectionBeginIndex);
var insertionSuffix:String = currentText.substr(textField.selectionEndIndex, currentText.length);
textField.text = insertionPrefix + event.text + insertionSuffix;
var caretIndex:int = insertionPrefix.length + event.text.length;
textField.setSelection(caretIndex, caretIndex);
}

more information about the bug can be found at adobe bugs.

Download and try the air application: buxferbankaccountconverter

AIR, Life AIR, bank, buxfer, convert

When Flash 9 update came all XMLSockets stopped working. This is for the sandbox security update for XMLSocket and ONLY XMLSocket. Took me a while to understand the problem and how to solve it.

Before:
XMLSocket goes and checks the sandbox security (crossdomain.xml) as all other security related flash things.

Now:
XMLSocket wants to check port 843 (default) for a security crossdomain file. This is NOT same file as the crossdomain that is on the web server port 80.

Solution:
After long searching and reading it’s really 2 things you need to do.
1.) The server must feed client with a special XMLSocket crossdomain file. Download the zip from http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/socket_policy_files.html and read the article, could also be good to read http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/fplayer9_security.html so you know what is going on.
I don’t know so much about servers so on my ubuntu machine i just typed in the terminal.
./flashpolicyd.pl –file=../policyfile.xml –port=843

2.) Flash Client; make sure to run loadPolicyFile(“xmlsocket://mysite.com:843″) or change port number to what you have in #1. When it’s loaded it should all work.
It’s simple as that,,,

Why most people always write lite, I know this but not, This is how you doing it…. Flash Blogs, shape up. =)

Flash, Life 9.0.115, Flash, security, socket, xmlsocket

Released an update to my “Flash Developer Kit” today.
My devkit basically contains eclipse with the wonderful FDT Professional, some Java installs, Perl, Flex compiler files.

Because I have 8 developers to handle I’ve made some rules on what software to use, code rules, architecture and so on. After a lot of hard work it finally pays of. We can now easily get into a projects SVN (using tortoise) and instantly know where to start looking for code when something needs to be done.

I have as well setup a big SVN library with our whole framework, so when starting a new project an ANT script is building up the architecture with files and everything we need to get started fast.

As a general working architecture for the code we are following Adobes Cairngorm (some good docs). Was created for Flex applications, but with some refactorying I got it to work very nice with AS3 projects and is now porting the major functionality to AS2. This makes us be able to work with the same architecture in all projects and does not have to care if it’s Flash 6 or 9 projects.

Life developer, Flash, kit, tool

I spoke at an education in Gothenburg that is focused on “Web Developing” from art to coding. Was there to inspire about Flash, Flex, Air and give them a better knowledge about how to think about the “Flash Solution”.
Attached my powerpoint but figure it doesn’t say anything without me talking on, and on, and on, and on, and on =)

Download presentation: gbg_2008_02

Life speaker

Was at the company Speak in Gothenburg and spoke of Flash lite for mobile devices. Some idéas and stuff that we has done for the Wii console, PSP and with a guitar hero controller connected to a computer.

For more of those cases look into the blog.

Life speaker

The Gothenburg office went to conferance, small little place called lingatan.
Nothing actually of interest, the basic conferance stuff, food and a lots and lots of drinks.

Life conferance, lingatan

Just had some time over and installed b2evolution.
So now it’s just to keep this baby updated.

Will as well look over the art, having some trouble getting the skins working.

Interested? Look at their site: http://b2evolution.net/

Life b2evolution, blog

By reading specifications I found out that Adobe Version Cue 3 uses webdav to handle files. My first thought here is why aint they using svn or cvs. And how should I then work with Adobe Bridge as a developer.

What I would like to do is to handle every project and all files with Version Cue. I can setup and use documents, psd files and life is just good. What I’m getting irretated on is when I develop, how am I suppose to handle this?

Should I use Flash IDE for the *.fla files and *.as. Well, If they built a decent actionscript editor I might. But the reality is that there is so many good editors out there. Myself and my dev team uses Eclipse with FDT, a wonderfull plugin. Then we have for example Flash Developer, and I would guess that every serious programmer uses another actionscript editor than the Flash IDE.

Tried to contact and talk with Adobe about how to connect to Version Cue and handle flash project without using Bridge. There is the webdav interface in Windows but it still doesnt really do it. Best senario is if I could access my Version Cue project like I do with SVN or CVS. I could check in and merge my classes and lock *.fla files to skip conflicts with other developers on the same project.

After trying every plugin I could find to Eclipse I still only could access with the WebDAV, could se the files but not touch it. So well, whats the solution? Keep the project in Version Cue with art, files, specs. and keep the Flash part in a SVN repository somewhere else. Keeping everything locked up at one place just makes the restless sleep at night.

Life backup, cvs, svn, version cue, versions, webdav