Bitwise Magazine

Eye Candy 6

Updated Photoshop effects

Tuesday 5 January 2010

$249. Upgrade (from any version of Eye Candy): $99
Alien Skin
http://www.alienskin.com/

Alien Skin's latest version of its Eye Candy suite enhances some of its best-known Photoshop-compatible filters and adds a new user interface that makes it easier than ever to find and apply presets to create stunning graphic effects in moments. I've reviewed Eye Candy before (see Eye Candy 5 Impact so I won't go over all the basics again here). This updated set of filters retains all the old favourites such as Chrome, Glass, Brushed Metal and Gradient Glow. In fact, there are thirty filters in all. These are divided into two groups: ‘Text Selection' and ‘Textures'. In principle, the Text selection filters (e.g. Glass, Perspective Shadow and Fire) work best when applied to an object on a layer such as large letters or a logo whereas Texture filters are suitable for use on (...)

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g_socket_data.Lookup(s)==0

um, you what...?

Monday 4 January 2010

I’ve been seeing this inscrutable message quite a lot lately. Every time I try to view a Flash movie in a web browser, in fact.

As far as I can figure out, it all began after I installed the latest version of Flash 10. The error message pops up when I view Flash movies in Internet Explorer, Opera or Firefox. When I Googled for information, most of the hits referred to problems with something called the Google Desktop rather than Adobe Flash. I didn't think I had the Google Desktop installed. But when I checked via Control Panel, there it was. I must have installed it ages ago in a moment of recklessness and have never used it ever since. I couldn't see what on earth it had to do with the Flash movie problem but, just on the off-chance, I uninstalled it anyway. And, much to my surprise, that did the trick. Getting rid of the Google Desktop has had the effect of letting me view Flash movies without any (...)

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Flash CS4 and Visual Studio

Amethyst Flash IDE integration

Wednesday 23 December 2009

A small Christmas present for Flash IDE developers who want to program their applications using Visual Studio...

My company, SapphireSteel Software, has just released a preview (beta 'edge') edition of Amethyst - our Flash Platform IDE for Visual Studio - which includes new tools to let you share Flash IDE (CS4 or CS3) applications with Amethyst. That means you can continue designing and animating using the Flash IDE and do the programming (editing, debugging, refactoring, IntelliSense) in Visual Studio. More info here: http://www.sapphiresteel.com/Flash-In-Visual-Studio-Amethyst. Merry Christmas one and all!

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In Wikipedia We Trust

Well, up to a point...

Sunday 20 December 2009

In 2006, The New Yorker published an article about Wikipedia in which it referred to the contributions of “a user known as Essjay, who holds a Ph.D. in theology and a degree in canon law and has written or contributed to sixteen thousand entries.“

The New Yorker claimed that Essjay was “A tenured professor of religion at a private university.” This assertion was subsequently corrected by the addition of an ‘Editor's Note' stating that Essjay had been recommended to the author of the New Yorker article “by a member of Wikipedia's management team because of his respected position within the Wikipedia community.” But, in fact, it had subsequently been discovered that “his real name is Ryan Jordan, that he is twenty-four and holds no advanced degrees, and that he has never taught. He was recently hired by Wikia—a for-profit company affiliated with Wikipedia—as a “community manager”; he continues to hold his Wikipedia positions. He did not answer a message we sent to him; (...)

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Visual Studio, Flex, Flash and sheer exhaustion

New Amethyst Beta

Tuesday 8 December 2009

Shipping new versions of beta software is pretty darn’ exhausting...

As you may know, most of my time recently has been involved in the development of Amethyst, my company's Flash Platform IDE for Visual Studio. This is a huge project. Bigger and more complex even than our other IDE, Ruby In Steel, for programming the Ruby language. Not only does it have a huge range of editing features - including IntelliSense, code refactoring, code colouring and collapsing, plus an integrated 'drill-down debugger' - but it also has (and this is the killer) a fully integrated drag-and-drop design environment. OK, so what? (you may be thinking) - don't all Visual Studio languages have a designer? Well, yes, most do. But then most use one of the designers created by Microsoft. We didn't have that option. The Flash Platform isn't .NET and it isn't Win32. It's a mix (...)

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TV - Last Haven Of The Adventure Game?

The Lost Room

Monday 7 December 2009

When I watched The Lost Room on DVD this weekend I had a sudden but unmistakable sense of déjà-vu.

This American mini-series involves characters exploring a variety of locations in which to find ‘objects' with interesting powers. The people who look for these objects are called ‘collectors' and the principal place in which objects are located is a mysterious ‘room' whose doors connect to a variety of different places at different times. This provides a handy means of transporting a character around the world of the show without having to waste valuable plot-hours sending him on complicated journeys. I hadn't been watching many minutes before I realised where I'd come across this type of world before - in an adventure game. The lead character is the game player. The room and its various exits are just like the multi-connected rooms, mazes, time-machines and (...)

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Climategate - sceptics of the world unite

On both sides of the argument, is this a case of "I Want To Believe"?

Friday 4 December 2009

This morning I read an article in the UK’s ’Independent’ newspaper in which the writer stated:

“A study for the journal Science randomly sampled 928 published peer-reviewed scientific papers that used the words "climate change". It found that 100 per cent – every single one – agreed it is being fuelled by human activity. There is no debate among climate scientists.” So that's it then: There is no debate among climate scientists. A few minutes later I read an article in The Wall Street Journal in which the writer says: “Claims that climate change is accelerating are bizarre. There is general support for the assertion that GATA [globally averaged temperature anomaly] has increased about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the middle of the 19th century. The quality of the data is poor, though, and because the changes are small, it is easy to nudge such (...)

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Outlook Password Problems

The Registry Key To Success

Tuesday 24 November 2009

Outlook wouldn’t let me download my emails today. Or, anyway, not without a lot of fuss and bother.

Every time it tried to get my emails it prompted me to enter my password. I entered my password and clicked a little box to tell Outlook to save it and away it went and got my emails. And then the next time it tried to get my emails it made me go through the whole palaver all over again. As I have several email addresses, this soon got to be pretty damn' annoying. I took a look at my Outlook account details (Tools, Account Settings), double-clicked each listed email address and reset the passwords but to no avail. Each time it tried to get my emails, I was prompted to enter my passwords all over again. I don't know what caused this problem but, having done a fair bit of Googling to try to find the solution, I can tell you that I am not alone in having suffered from it. The good news (...)

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Adobe AIR 2 and Flash Player 10.1 Betas

A Taste Of Things To Come...

Tuesday 17 November 2009

Adobe has just released beta versions of AIR its solution for creating and running desktop Flash applications.

Amongst other things, AIR 2 will provide access to the "native process API". This means that AIR apps should (at last) be able to start other executable applications - hurrah! This was a feature that was curiously lacking from AIR 1.0 as I commented previously. Flash Player 10.1 will have a global error handler. At last! As the developer of a Flash-based application I can tell you that one of the major sources of irritation is having those nasty Flash debug traces pop up when an uncaught exception occurs. Some exceptions may occur from deep inside the Flex or Flash libraries so having the ability to respond in a more civilized manor is something that will cause many Flash developers to heave a deep sigh of relief. More info on Flash 10.1 on the Adobe Developer Connection site. More (...)

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Firefox Now Top Browser - for ’vulnerabilities’

Top o’ the world, ma!

Tuesday 10 November 2009

According to security vendor Cenzic, Firefox has now overtaken Internet Explorer as the favoured browser for malicious attacks...

Apparently Firefox's plugins are a major route by which gremlins gain access to the browser. This is a bit of a blow to all those happy Firefox users who have, for so long, been jeering at the 'insecurity' of Microsoft's browser. Such as the fruits of success, I guess.... Read more on Internet News

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Grues, DataGrids and Adobe Flex

When a UI Component is not a UIComponent

Friday 6 November 2009

Most of my time over the past year or so has been spent developing the drag and drop design environment for ‘Amethyst’, my company’s Flex (or ‘Flash Platform’, if you prefer) IDE for Visual Studio.

Embarking on a project of this scale inevitably leads you down some twisty little programming pathways of whose very existence you had been ignorant at the outset. Every so often you stumble into a dark corner and get eaten by slavering grues. Well, at least, that was how it used to happen in the old adventure game, Zork. In the world of Flex, the grues are called DataGridColumns and they slaver every bit as ferociously as their Zork relations. At least they do if you happen to be developing a drag and drop design environment. As far as I am aware the only people designing drag-and-drop design environments for Flex are hordes of programmers in the basement of Adobe Mansions - and me... DataGridColumns are, unsurprisingly, columns that live inside DataGrids. In our Designer, Flex (...)

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Foundation ActionScript 3.0

Book Review

Friday 9 October 2009

Foundation ActionScript 3.0 for Flash and Flex - $39.99
by Darren Richardson with Paul Milbourne
ISBN-10: 1-4302-1918-1
ISBN-13: 978-1-4302-1918-7
450 Pages
http://friendsofed.com/book.html?isbn=1430219181

A great many books devoted to ActionScript programming have little or nothing to say about programming Adobe's Flex framework for ActionScript. This omission is all very well if all your ActionScript coding will be devoted to animating graphics using the Flash programming libraries within the Flash IDE. But if you plan to develop general-purpose applications to run in a web browser or on the desktop, then you really need to know about Flex. ‘Foundation ActionScript 3.0' not only describes the ActionScript language but also explains how to use it both for traditional Flash development and with the more extensive tools and libraries of the Flex framework. While covering Flash and Flex all in one book may sound like a great idea, there is a potential disadvantage. Even though Flex (...)

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Alien Skin Exposure 2 Review

Digital photography filters

Monday 21 September 2009

Exposure 2 $249
(or included in five-product Photo Bundle for $595)
Alien Skin Software
http://www.alienskin.com

A curious feature of digital photography is that, the more ‘digital' photography becomes, the more photographers seem to want their photographs look the way they used to when they were taken on good old-fashioned film stock and lovingly developed in dark rooms. Alien Skin recently released a bundle of Photoshop-compatible plug-ins aimed at serious photographers. The Photo Bundle includes Blow Up 2, Bokeh, Exposure 2, Image Doctor 2, and Snap Art 2 at a price of $595, which represents an effective discount of $500. We've previously reviewed Blow Up, Bokeh and Snap Art and will look at Image Doctor in the near future. Here I want to concentrate on Exposure 2. You can select from a huge range of presets or use the tabbed pages to alter the settings to taste Exposure 2 promises (...)

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Beginning Ruby: From Novice To Professional (second edition)

Book Review

Sunday 20 September 2009

by Peter Cooper
APress: http://www.apress.com/book/view/1430223634
Computer Manuals (UK): http://www.compman.co.uk
ISBN13: 978-1-4302-2363-4
ISBN10: 1-4302-2363-4
656 pages
$39.99

This new edition of Peter Cooper's informative and approachable introduction to Ruby programming has been updated to cover Ruby 1.9 in addition to Ruby 1.8. I reviewed the first edition of this book and, overall, my opinion of the new edition remains the same: if you already have some programming experience and want an accessible introduction to the world of Ruby, this is the book to get. The structure of the book is relatively little changed since the first edition. It is still divided into three sections: Foundations and Scaffolding, The Core Of Ruby and Ruby Online - and many of the chapters are the same or very similar. One notable change relates to the section on the Rails web framework. In edition one of the book, Rails was treated pretty much as the default framework for (...)

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ActionScript, Bikinis and YouTube

Pussycat, pussycat, where are you?

Wednesday 16 September 2009

I’ve just published a few videos on YouTube. I realise that I’ll be going into competition with such erudite gems as ‘Burping Bikini Girl’ and ’10 Cutest Cat Moments’ but, hey, that’s show business!

I can't claim that my artistic aspirations reach for the heights of the aforementioned videos. My efforts are dedicated to the rather more mundane subject of programming ActionScript with Adobe's Flex Framework. If this is of interest to you - and assuming you have sufficient self-discipline to keep away from the numerous other attractions on YouTube - you can find them here: http://www.youtube.com/user/SapphireSteelDotCom I'll have more to say about my experiences in creating, editing, uploading and promoting YouTube videos later on. Maybe in one of my next tutorials I should try to get a girl in a bikini to burp? Or maybe a burping cat in a bikini would set YouTube-iverse alight? Hmm, now that's an (...)

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CSS in easy steps

Book Review

Monday 7 September 2009

CSS in easy steps, 2nd edition
By Mike McGrath
$14.99 / £10.99
Pages: 192
ISBN: 978-1-84078-364-3
http://www.ineasysteps.com/books/details/?9781840783643

There are CCS gurus. And then there are the rest of us. The gurus create entire web sites using lots of cascading style sheets (CSS) and hardly any HTML. The rest of us can just about manage to style a headline in bold. As for all that ‘cascading' stuff, well, life is too short to learn how to use that... Or then again, maybe not. I have to say that I generally avoid CSS experts like the plague. Many of them have an annoying tendency to display their own style-sheet virtuosity while pouring scorn upon those lesser mortals (such as me!) who can't make head or tail of what they are on about. Happily, Mike McGrath, author of ‘CSS In Easy Steps', is not one of them. His book is clear, helpful and un-preachy. It explains CSS in a way that even I can understand. The first (...)

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Flash & Flex Developer’s Magazine Goes Free

Better value you will not get!

Friday 4 September 2009

If you are interested in developing web or desktop applications using Adobe’s Flash graphics or Flex framework, you should be sure to sign up for a free subscription to Flash & Flex Developer’s Magazine...

Formerly published in both print and PDF versions, the magazine has now become exclusively PDF - and it's free. This really is a good publication for serious Flash Framework developers. The latest issue has over 100 pages and it contains articles ranging from ‘How to Prevent Security Breaches' to ‘Flex Remoting with AMFPHP'. This issue also contains an article which I wrote, explaining some of the technical challenges that went into the creation of Amethyst, my company's Flex IDE for Visual Studio. If you want to know what it's like programming a Visual Studio IDE in a Visual Studio IDE and simultaneously programming a Flex IDE in a Flex IDE running in a Visual Studio IDE (if you see what I mean!), this will give you the lowdown... (...)

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ASP.NET MVC Framework Unleashed

Book Review

Friday 4 September 2009

ASP.NET MVC Framework Unleashed
$44.99 / £36.99
By Stephen Walther
Sams: http://www.informit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0672329980
Computer Bookshops: http://www.compman.co.uk/
Pages: 744
ISBN-10: 0-672-32998-0
ISBN-13: 978-0-672-32998-2

MVC (Model View Controller) Frameworks are all the rage these days. Ruby has quite a few (Rails being the most famous), PHP, Perl and Python have some. And now Microsoft's ASP has one too... For those of you who may have missed out on this trend, I suppose I should try to explain (briefly) what MVC means. In simple terms MVC describes a way of creating applications formed from three more or less independent pieces: the application ‘state' is defined by its data or ‘Model'; its visual ‘front end' is called its ‘View' and the programming code that controls the flow of information between the Model and the View is called the ‘Controller'. Now, I'd be the first to admit that this is a very simplified description of MVC and if you want a more in-depth (...)

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Amethyst Designer for Flex

Our Visual Studio Flex IDE finally goes ‘visual’

Tuesday 1 September 2009

My company, SapphireSteel Software, today launched the latest beta of the Amethyst IDE for Visual Studio. Amethyst provides an integrated environment for coding, designing and debugging Adobe Flex framework applications for the Flash Platform.

The previous betas have concentrated on the code editor and debugger with features such as IntelliSense, refactoring and ‘drill-down' debugging. The latest beta adds in the final piece of the puzzle: a drag-and-drop design environment, The Amethyst Designer. The Amethyst Designer lets you select Flex controls from the Visual Studio toolbox and drop them right onto the Design workspace. here you can move and resize them, make them snap to grid or snap to interactive ‘alignment bars'. You can select multiple controls and use the Amethyst Layout toolbar to make them all the same size, regularise their spacing and do on. And you can use the Visual Studio Properties and Events panel to change properties at design-time and create event-handling methods for the selected event in (...)

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Camtasia for the Mac

Screen recording software

Tuesday 25 August 2009

TechSmith’s famous Windows screen recording/editing suite is now available on the Mac (launched today, 25th August, 2009).

Features of Camtasia for Mac Video editing: Screen recordings can be edited in Camtasia's advanced editing suite. Users can add call outs, slide transitions, and text, as well as trim audio and visual content. Each edit is independent, meaning it can be amended or updated at a later date Camera recording: Camtasia can also record accompanying video and audio from built-in iSight cameras, USB webcams and Firewire HD and HDV video cameras. Videos can be edited to run alongside a screencast, so users can see video content and the presenter simultaneously SmartFocus: Captured video is recorded in high quality digital raw-format. Once a recording has been completed, users can select a variety of dimensions to publish the recording, making it available across multiple devices with (...)

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