Getting started with Apollo

Apollo has been a buzzword for quite sometime now. Couple of mails were exchanged regarding Apollo in the Flex India user group recently. I was not really interested to even know what it really was untill it was released and folks were talking about it in their blogs.

From adobe.com:
"Apollo is the code name for a cross-operating system runtime being developed by Adobe that allows developers to leverage their existing web development skills (Flash, Flex, HTML, JavaScript, Ajax) to build and deploy rich Internet applications (RIAs) to the desktop."

If you want to know what Apollo is all about, grab a free copy of Apollo for Adobe Flex Developers from O'REILLY. It's a good read to know what features Apollo is bundled with. I got hold of the book couple of days back and I'm finding it pretty interesting. Features like user system directory listing, communication with Javascript etc are prettly cool.

I cannot write much about Apollo right now cause I'm just getting started with it :-). Will be posting about it whenever I try out or find something interesting. I highly recommend you to read the first two chapters of the book, if you want to know what Apollo is all about.

You can download the Apollo runtime/ SDK here and a free copy of Apollo for Adobe Flex Developers is available here.

P.S. I've not been able to post blog entries recently because there was (still is) some problem with my browser, whenever i tried to publish a blog it would post a blank entry :-(

Torn Papers theme - Beta

It's up! Finally published the beta version of the skin for Blogger, which I had been working on for quite sometime. I still need to work on the bottom edges of the post and links. There are couple of things yet to be added, which I will put up in the final version. If anyone's interested, I will be releasing the source for this skin once I'm done with it.

This theme was inspired by pieces of scrambled/torn papers lying in my room :-)

Your comments and suggestions are always welcome.

First shots with Sony Cybershot - H2

First things first: this post shouldn't be here!!
When I started writing blogs, I had thought of blogging only about Flash/ Flex, technology, the web and those kinda stuffs. But lately I've found myself wanting to post about off topics like photography, traveling etc and life in general. May be I will soon start another blog only for those stuffs.

Getting back to the topic, I've wanted to get a good digital camera for quite sometime now. To fulfill this long awaited wish, I went and got myself a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H2 over the weekend. I had planned to get this camera next month, but the craving was too strong, just couldn't wait anymore ;-)

I've used the cam for a day and I'm loving it already. The kickass 12x zoom is just what I had looked for since, it was little difficult to take pictures without scaring away the subject with the other cam i have - Canon digital IXY. Finally, i can take more natural pictures. I've been spending time checking out different features of the camera and getting used to taking pictures in manual mode. I took quite a few pictures testing the aperture, shutter speed, exposure and all those stuffs. Did manage to get few nice ones, but they all seem to be underexposed. Still gotta take more and more pictures and learn. I have uploaded few pictures to Flickr, check it out here:

The whole of this year I will try occupying myself traveling and taking photographs; I've always dreamed of doing that combination! I want to thank the folks at Dikenson Road for giving me a free tripod with the purchase of the camera :-) and also for giving me and Pema privilege to play a combat game almost for 30 mins in the Xbox 360 console which was there for demo play ONLY. Xbox really rocks!!