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!!

Programmers Don't Like to Code

You write code. Does that mean you like writing code?! Well, After reading this article, you might think twice. The article talks about how a coder might actually be interested in problem solving rather than writing code. Coding helps a programmer solve problems but all coders don’t like writing code, really.

Quoted from the article:
"From an outsider’s vantage, I can see why they’d think we like coding. We solve problems by coding, and we’re all happy and enthused while typing away or talking code. But they’re confusing the action and the intention. It’s not pulling the trigger that makes me happy, it’s hitting the target. The action approaches incidental"

That makes sense to some extent... Not all coders like to write everything from scratch. Either they would use built in libraries or write modules which they could use later. This may seem like the coder doesn’t like to code and may be wanting to spend more time on problem solving.

When I first read that article, I thought I was too more inclined towards the problem solving hill. But thinking about it, I DO like coding! I think this totally depends from person to person [*cough* coder to coder]. A person might like coding, a person might like solving problems or in most cases s/he might like both.

One line in the article says: “If programmers liked to code, we’d all be writing in machine language to this day”.

Well, that may also be true to some extent but I believe that human beings are ‘programmed’ to evolve and we have always looked for doing things the easier way. If the above statement held true, we all might as well be making fire using stones to this day :-)

Actionscript & 3D are now good friends

[Over the years] I've always been amazed seeing the coolest 3D stuffs done in Flash. But I have to say, this one tops it all. The first time I saw this demo, my jaw almost dropped! Check it out, more demos here. [Important: If you can't see any 3D action, make sure you have the lastest version of Flash Player]

[Over the years] Flash has come a long way from being a cheesy GIF animatior to a kickass tool for developing cool web sites, games, desktop applications, videos... and now some amazing 3D stuffs.

Thanks to the [opensouce] project Papervision3D [and FP9], 3D is fast becoming a [sleek] reality in the Flash world withough chewing up your CPU. I haven't tried out anything yet with papervision, but want to try out at least some basic stuff. Thinking about it, I've really never done any 3D stuff with Actionscript or other 3D software.. umm... I guess they say, it's never too late to start :-]

Early days of blogging

Almost for a year or two I've been regularly reading Flash blogs. Yes, just reading. Always wanted to blog myself but for some strange reason, never really started. It was high time I did justice to the unconscious blogger inside me and started blogging. Just sometime back grabbed a template at blogger.com and wrote my first blog entry. And here we are!

2007, I want to make it a point that i blog regularly, not just because I've always wanted to, but because i want to contribute to the flash community and meet new people. Well it's not really necessary to blog to meet great people like Abdul and Arul, you just have to be a part of Orkut. I've met some awesome Flash people [Hi, Debabrata :-)] in Orkut and i think its a great place to find old pals and keep in touch with them [err.. did i forget to mention that you could waste hours of your day posting scraps and going through friends' friends' lists in Orkut. Abdul's been a victim himself!].

Right now there is nothing much on this Blog but I'll be posting regularly about Flash/ Flex in general, RIAs, Web 2.0 and Geeky topics. Will be adding more links and gadgets too.

Hello to Active Blogging!

picnik: very cool RIA

While browsing through Manish's blog, I came across this neat looking RIA called picnik. It's an online photo-editor with a twist! It's pretty impresive how you can quickly edit a picture [from your system, or providers like flickr] and save it back. Due to my proxy setting i was not able to upload & edit images from my system. But you can allow picnik to access your flickr account and walla... all your flickr images are loaded neatly inside it. Then you can do pretty cool stuffs with all your images - the interface is very neat, easy to use. A very good example of how Flex is shaping up the future of kickass RIA applications.

Looking at this, I got reminded of another flickr browser entirely in Flex done by Alessandro.