Virtual Thoughts from eRoom-D

How to make P2P apps without a server? RTFM… no RTMFP.

David Moore — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 14:00:43 +0000

I recently gave a talk to the Chicago Flex User Group, and incidentally the LA user group. That last was quite unexpected, and simulcast as I gave the talk.

I spoke about RTMFP on mobile devices and computers using Adobe AIR and a local network to form a Peer To Peer network without a server.

I have the slides posted up on Slideshare, and the audio is here if you care to take a listen.

How to make P2P apps without a server? RTFM… no RTMFP.

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Developing AIR for Samsung TV on 64 bit systems.

David Moore — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 22:00:10 +0000

In my recent work, I’ve had the opportunity to work on AIR for TV and the new Samsung models of TVs/Blu Ray players.

As part of testing with my fellow developers, we’ve needed to test on a variety of mobile platforms as well as an AIR for TV development box. Now though, the time has come to test on actual Samsung hardware.

This is where things get a little hairy.

In order to get the app onto the box, the app has to be packaged with the Samsung SDK and then put on a web server in order to have the Samsung device download it from the server. Not quite as easy as putting an AIR file on a USB drive and having the dev box install it.

The issue that I had today was installing and running the SDK. The install of the 2.3.2 SDK went smoothly enough, but when I went to launch it, it crashed.

A little Google searching later and I found this article by Chris Lee Kr, and his trouble running it in a VM on his Mac. It gave me what I needed though, which is that the C++ redistributeable package doesn’t have a file for 64 bit that is needed.

The error that I was getting constantly was:

Error: The application has failed to start because the side by side configuration is incorrect please see the application event log or use the command line sxstrace.exe tool for more detail.

The solution though, is simple. Download and install “vcredist_x86.exe” from Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Service Pack 1 Redistributable Package ATL Security Update.

After that, the SDK will run just fine.

Now, I am in the midst of packaging and then installing the app on a Samsung Blu Ray player (BD-D6500). Hopefully things will go smoother.

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Communication – Flex User Group Talk and Flash Builder 4.5

David Moore — Wed, 18 May 2011 12:28:14 +0000

I talk about my upcoming Chicago Flex User Group talk, the Flash Builder 4.5 IDE, and my new, hopefully routine, walk schedule. Related posts: Communication, the podcast – RTMFP and Flash I talk about RTMFP, the Real Time Media Flow Protocol,... Communication, the podcast – intro The first in a series of stream of conciousness … Continue reading » Related posts:

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Twitter Updates for 2011-05-16

David Moore — Mon, 16 May 2011 19:48:00 +0000

Twitter Updates for 2011-05-14: I'm walking almost normally today. Still have pain in my foot, but it's not bad…. http://bit.ly/jMdbYO #
Air for Android, a question of orientation.: So I’m working on AIR for Android lately with both my G2 and my Mot… http://bit.ly/l1abXR #
Communication, the podcast – Writing and editing for the first time.: Today I talk about writing, rewriting, and… http://bit.ly/myc2Tk #
Twitter Updates for 2011-05-15: Chapter three edited and sent off to first readers. Feels good to be writing/edi… http://bit.ly/kfswyx #
RTMFP, where did all my neighbors go?: So while RTMFP is great for peer to peer connections, it does have some c… http://bit.ly/mc77bV #

Twitter Updates for 2011-05-15 Chapter three edited and sent off to first readers. Feels...
Twitter Updates for 2011-05-14 I'm walking almost normally today. Still have pain in my...
Twitter Updates for 2011-05-13 @kjtoo, @minitotoro, Happy birthday! In their honor, I will allow...

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Twitter Updates for 2011-05-15

David Moore — Sun, 15 May 2011 19:48:00 +0000

Chapter three edited and sent off to first readers. Feels good to be writing/editing again. # Related posts: Twitter Updates for 2011-05-13 @kjtoo, @minitotoro, Happy birthday! In their honor, I will allow... Twitter Updates for 2011-05-14 I'm walking almost normally today. Still have pain in my... Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related … Continue reading » Related posts:

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RTMFP, where did all my neighbors go?

David Moore — Sat, 14 May 2011 19:54:21 +0000

So while RTMFP is great for peer to peer connections, it does have some considerations that you need to take into account when using it. The biggest, knowing when peers connect and disconnect to the app.

When a peer connects, the app will receive a NetStatusEvent. The event’s info.code will be a “NetGroup.Neighbor.Connect”. You can use the info.neighbor as a unique identifier for the connected peer.

The nice thing, is if a peer comes in late to the p2p party, as soon as a peer sends a message that is received by yours, then the connect event will be fired. So you’ll always have a list of peers that have connected to your client.

When a peer needs to disconnect, it should call the NetGroup’s close() method. This will send out a packet letting all other peers know that it has disconnected.

The interesting thing is, this is RTMFP, so not all packets will get to all peers. So what happens if your client doesn’t receive the disconnect packet? How do you know that your list of connected peers isn’t stale? Good question. One I don’t yet have an answer to. So if any of you do, please let me know.

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Twitter Updates for 2011-05-14

David Moore — Sat, 14 May 2011 19:48:00 +0000

I'm walking almost normally today. Still have pain in my foot, but it's not bad. #
Fenrir is swallowing Chicago. This may be Ragnarok. http://yfrog.com/gzdkwxhj #
@aral I've run into that as well, on a project last year. Had to write custom code to smooth the scroll based on the browser. in reply to aral #
@codeshaman Which tablet? Must say that I love the Xoom, even without the SD card slot working yet. in reply to codeshaman #
@codeshaman we should compare notes at #balticon in reply to codeshaman #

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Air for Android, a question of orientation.

David Moore — Sat, 14 May 2011 15:42:41 +0000

So I’m working on AIR for Android lately with both my G2 and my Motorola Xoom, using Flex Builder 4.5. Some of you might know that I am getting them to talk together with RTMFP.

I have them talking, but the application that I am working on I need to start and stay in landscape format. So the obvious question is:

How do you do that?

Turns out the answer is easy, and I thought I would share.

In the applicationName-app.xml are settings for your AIR app. You need to change the autoOrients to “false” and the aspectRatio to “landscape” or “portrait”, depending on your needs.

If you haven’t ever taken a look at applicationName-app.xml then you really need to. It has lots of goodies there. This assumes that you are using Flex Builder, if you are coding with other editors or a text editor then you probably had to create it yourself.

That actually all you need to do!

As a side note, if your application tries to listen for the StageOrientationEvent.ORIENTATION_CHANGE event, and you have the autoOrients set to “false” then the event will never fire.

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Communication, the podcast – Writing and editing for the first time.

David Moore — Sat, 14 May 2011 01:00:43 +0000

Today I talk about writing, rewriting, and the novel that I co-wrote over the last year with Katherine Guevara. Related posts: Communication, the podcast – intro The first in a series of stream of conciousness podcasts... Communication, the podcast – RTMFP and Flash I talk about RTMFP, the Real Time Media Flow Protocol,... Communication For … Continue reading » Related posts:

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Twitter Updates for 2011-05-13

David Moore — Fri, 13 May 2011 19:48:00 +0000

@kjtoo, @minitotoro, Happy birthday! In their honor, I will allow one free face shooting tonight. #

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Communication, the podcast – RTMFP and Flash

David Moore — Fri, 13 May 2011 01:46:30 +0000

I talk about RTMFP, the Real Time Media Flow Protocol, and it’s use in Flash and mobile applications. Related posts: Communication, the podcast – intro The first in a series of stream of conciousness podcasts... Communication For a while now I’ve been thinking on communication. How,... Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related … Continue reading » Related posts:

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Communication, the podcast – intro

David Moore — Thu, 12 May 2011 01:42:46 +0000

The first in a series of stream of conciousness podcasts aimed at consolidating my thoughts on development, writing, and communication.

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Communication

David Moore — Wed, 11 May 2011 17:00:45 +0000

For a while now I’ve been thinking on communication. How, despite my father being a professor of communication for all of my life, I don’t seem to be an expert in it. In some cases, I’m not good at it at all. This is definitely my failing, not my father’s, just trying to put things in perspective here.

I am fine when it comes to speaking and talking with groups of friends. I am even ok when it comes to strangers, as long as I know what the heck I am talking about. If I don’t, then I use the old adage of “It is better to keep silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.” I learn a lot by listening to others, and will eventually catch up.

The issue that I have been ruminating on lately though, is that of keeping up communication. I’ve always said I am bad at selling myself, when I was freelancing especially. A good part of that is keeping up communication.

So in an effort to be better at communicating, I will be restoring my previous efforts of posting to the blog. They will most likely be in audio format, since I have more time to record my thoughts than I do to type them.

The content of the podcast postings will be fairly random, but mostly be on the topics of: flash/flex and mobile development, writing, and perhaps some other bits and pieces from my life.

This is an effort to increase my communication skills, so if you like it, great. If you don’t then let me know.

A few other things that I will be doing to increase my communication with family, friends, and colleagues is to email or phone more regularly, to respond to their communications more frequently and in a more timely manner, and… well, I need some help on the rest. That’s why I’m posting, and doing this navel gazing introspection, right?

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Flex 4 Scroller Quirks

David Moore — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 15:51:39 +0000

So in Flex 4, scrolling has moved out of the individual visual containers and now is a container itself that wraps around the containers that need to be scrolled. This is a good thing, but does have some issues that developers, like me, need to wrap their heads around.

Right now, I am just going to talk about the sizing of the children inside the s:Scroller component. It’s something that I have run into a few times, and writing it out here will cement things in my head and hopefully be helpful to you, the reader.

When sizing children inside a scroller, make sure you aren’t using percent based sizing. Why? Because then the child will attempt to size itself to the size of the scroller. It seems obvious, but it’s one of those things that you don’t think about in the middle of coding since it isn’t something that you would think about in Flex 3.

When you use percentage based layout for the children, you end up getting children with their display elements cut off. The scroller thinks that the child is sized correctly based off of it’s percentage, and not it’s actual size. The way around this is to use constraint based layout. If you want a width=”100%” layout, then simply switching to left=0 right=0 will fix your problems. Also, if you don’t need to be fussy with your layout, then let the component size itself, and scroller will handle that properly as well.

In conclusion, avoid percentage based layouts when laying out inside a scroller component.

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Flex Training for ColdFusion Developers

David Moore — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:07:22 +0000

This Thursday November 19th I will be assisting Jeff Tapper while he teaches the Flex Training for ColdFusion Developers class at the Hyatt Regency Chicago on the River Walk, 151 East Wacker Drive, Chicago, IL 60601.

The project I have been working on lately has thrown me headlong into CF, and I find that I like it. It’s been quite easy to pick up, and the changes from CF 8 to CF9 are interesting. Which is part of the class this Thursday. Also part of that class is Flex’s integration with CF9.

To sign up for the free class, head over to the registration site: http://www.ce1.com/adobe/2009/flextrainingforcfdevelopers/

I have no idea if it is full or not, but I know we had over 70 people signed up when I talked with Jeff about it last week. Should be a fun day!

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