Complete Cloud Computing

How long will it be… before you no longer buy an actual computer or a handheld device… but instead, you buy a simple account to a computer service… which then does EVERYTHING for you.

For example, All processing, All storage, All video rendering, All EVERYTHING is stored and processed in some far off computer datacenter.  The datacenter simply sends video and audio signals back and forth to your handheld or desktop terminal.

You would never have to upgrade your computer hardware… as you wouldnt own any.  Well, you’d still have to own a printer, I guess, if you want to print something physical.

Modifying Flex 4 States with Action-script?

Ill give a cookie to anyone who can answer this.

<s:SolidColorStroke id=”bgStroke” color=”blue” color.over=”green” />

Doing this:

bgStroke.color = “red”;

Changes all states colors to red.

Anyone know how to modify specific state properties with action-script?  I cant find this anywhere.

EzPDF and Special Characters (Copyright, Trademark and Registered Trademark)

We’ve been kind of struggling here at work with PDF creation.  I switched us to a PDF framework called EzPDF that seems to work fine, except for one simple thing.  Special characters do not show up correctly.

After hours of searching the very little amount of content on the topic, I found a small comment that helped me out:

“Add the following line to functions ezProcessText() in class.ezpdf.php and addText() in class.pdf.php”

In the first row of the function, just add:

$text = mb_convert_encoding($text, “ISO-8859-1″, “UTF-8″);

That solved the issues with the registered and copyright characters.   However, the Trademark symbol was still messed up… Apparently you have to “swap” out one of the 255 characters available with the Trademark…. SOooo..  I decided to swap the upside down question mark ( ¡ ) out for trademarks… For any text blocks that may have a trade mark symbol.. .i need to run some replace code:

$postVar = str_ireplace(‘&trade;’, ‘¡’ , $postVar);

$postVar = str_ireplace(‘™’, ‘¡’ , $postVar);

Also, the first time you select your font in EzPDF… it needs to look something like this:

$insertTradeMark = array(161=>’trademark’);

$pdf->selectFont(‘ezPDF/fonts/Helvetica.afm,  array(‘encoding’=>’WinAnsiEncoding’, ‘differences’=>$insertTradeMark));

161 is the character number for the upside down question mark.  You can see the other numbers and things you can replace them with inside the Helvetica.afm font files that came with EzPDF.

How fast are we truly moving?

If your standing still on the equator… supposedly you’re moving around the center of the earth at around 1000 mph.

The earth, is circling our sun at an estimated 66,000 mph.

The sun (our solar system) is circling the center of our galaxy at .. as far as i know.. 483,000 mph.

And our galaxy is traversing the universe at an estimated 1.3 million miles per hour.

And whos to say the universe itself is not moving?

This number would obviously vary based on what phase of an orbit we are in (much like a merry-go-round on the back of a pickup truck, only there are several nested merry-go-rounds.)

My question is….  if we are technically always traveling at enormous speeds through the universe.. and time slows down the faster you are moving (apparently it stops at the speed of light)….  how fast would time move if we completely stopped?

Scientists also believe that the galaxies are speeding up… so… do they account for this in any “aging” that they place on things.  If the earth was moving much slower long ago… its time would be faster, and would it not age faster?

Discuss.

Tipping

Whats with this percentage tipping thats become the norm?  It makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever.  I think I’m done with it.

If a restaurant charges me $10 dollars for a cheeseburger.. and a different restaurant charges me $5 for the same cheeseburger… why is one of the waiters getting twice the tip?… they did the same amount of work.    Don’t give me that “they rely on tips” crap either… this is not about that.

I think from now on, I will simple tip $2.00 for a plate of food, and $.50 for each drink.. so I get a plate of food and 2 drinks, they get $3.00… no matter what the place is charging me.

Flex Chart and Datagrid sorting with a shared dataprovider.

Flex:  Charts and Datagrids that share the same databinding.

I have been struggling for hours trying to determine why my datagrid data is sorting the opposite of my chart.  

If I sort by Total on the datagrid with 1 at the top, that row is on the bottom of the chart.   If I sort by name on the data grid with A starting on the top,  A is on the bottom of my chart.  It sucks.

This is a desperate plee for help from any readers.

Datagrid:

<mx:DataGrid id=”datagrid”  dataProvider=”{challenges}”>

Chart:

<mx:BarChart  dataProvider=”{challenges}”  type=”stacked”>

<mx:verticalAxis>

     <mx:CategoryAxis dataProvider=”{challenges}” categoryField=”name”/>

</mx:verticalAxis>

<mx:series>

     <mx:BarSeries id=”bar_one” xField=”one” displayName=”Primary” />

</mx:series>

 </mx:BarChart>

Image is attached.

A new future

I don’t care who you are, who you worship, or what you do… watch this:

http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/

and support this:

http://www.thevenusproject.com/

Venus project is definately a dream… but theres nothing wrong with reaching for it.

Flex Line Charting and Datapoints

All I wanted in life yesterday was to put some datapoints (circles or dots) on my flex lineChart.  Why?  Well, if your chart line goes straight, you have no idea where your datapoint is.

 

You would think that it would be a fairly easy task, but I found it really hard to find information on datapoints and flex charts.  So here goes.

 

<mx:LineSeries yField=”staff” itemRenderer=”mx.charts.renderers.CircleItemRenderer”/>

There.  All you need to do is assign an itemRenderer which is tyied to a mx.charts.renderer.  Theres several different shapes in the renderers package.   You can change the color and stroke of the datapoint as well:

 <mx:LineSeries 
itemRenderer=”mx.charts.renderers.CircleItemRenderer”
fill=”{new SolidColor(0xFF9900,0);}”
stroke=”{new Stroke(0xFF9900,0,0)}”/>

Heres the result:

Here you can see a linechart without the datapoints, and the one after inserting the lineSeries itemRenderer.

It’s amazing how hard that was to find online.  Even the adobe documentation simply stated you could do it, but didn’t tell you how.

Chrome and Flex Navigation Bug

If you’re having issues with Google Chrome and navigation in flex, you may need to disable Deep-Linking in your project to get Chrome working correctly.  You can do this in your project setting -> Flex Compiler and under the HTML Wrapper section.  If your not using deep-linking, its not that big of a deal.  However, if you do need deep-linking for your application.  Check out swfaddress, a deeplinking helper addin, which I heard does work with Chrome.

IE Dropdown Menu Hovering Issues and CSS

If you’ve ever coded a dropdown menu for a website, you’ve probably found IE to big a big CSS nightmare compared to Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome.

The Problem

After getting the code in place I noticed that it was acting really funky when it popped up over other text… which would be almost all the time.  You can see the problem here:

http://www.tinyqueen.com/udm4/udm4/template.html

 

You can roll over the “About” button, and the sub menu will popup as expected, but if you slide the mouse to the right (above the text behind the menu) IE freaks out and trys to focus on the text behind the menu, and thus, the popup disappears.

The Code - HTML

<ul id=”parentMenu”>
<li>
<a href=”#” onMouseOver=”callShowMenuScript” >About Us</a>
<div id=”hiddenMenu”>
<a href=”#” class=”item”>Who We Are</a>
<a href=”#” class=”item”>Etc… etc…</a>
</div>
</li>
</ul>

The Code - CSS

#dropdownNav li{
list-style: none;
float: left;
}

#dropdownNav li a{
display: block;
}

#dropdownNav div {
position: absolute;
visibility: hidden;
}

#dropdownNav div a, #dropdownNav .disabled{
display:block;
position: relative;
}

The Solution

After about 3 hours of online digging I found nothing.  If i changed Display:Block to Display:Inline.. the bug disappeared but the menu, of course, was all messed up.  

Then I removed Position:relative from the last CSS item listed here and everything worked fine.  I apparently didn’t even need the poition tag beacuse my menu still worked fine.   

Conclusion

If you plan on using mouseOvers on Divs or floated items with IE, be sure you dont need relative positioning on the div you plan on using the mouse overs on.