Posts filed under 'Events'
Today I went to Colin Moock’s ActionScript 3.0 tour here in Sydney. The venue was the SMC Conference and function centre at 66 Goulburn St. It’s just around the corner from the office.
Colin was a great presenter and quite amusing. Even after letting us know that he couldn’t go to sleep after 3am in the morning, he still stayed a bit more after the event to answer more questions.
He gave away some free books and I was lucky enough to get one by debugging some of the code. Some people got free books for answering some Star Trek and infocom related questions, and others for travelling a long distance to the event. There was a girl who came all the way from New Zealand just for the event. I reckon around 200 people attended the event.
Colin has sworn never to use powerpoint, so he built his own presentation software. Here is a link to the same system he uses during the presentation: http://moock.org/lectures/presentationviewer/
Select AS3.0 from the ground up and then click on open presentation. Then use j,k,l to navigate through the items.
Here is a full html page with all the lecture notes: http://moock.org/lectures/groundUpAS3/
And a 2mb pdf with the code used: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/actionscript/articles/as3_tour/colin_moock_f6.pdf
The colour on the projector screen was more yellowish instead of olive, but it still felt much better than a cheesy powerpoint.
The presentation was a bit too basic for someone who already had read his AS20 Cookbook but I new that beforehand. When registering you receive a confirmation email and here is a quote:
“Remember, this course is for beginner-to-intermediate level programmers and runs for a grueling 9 hours, so get a good night sleep and be ready for a heavy onslaught of ActionScript 3.0 info!”
Though I do a lot of advance work with AS2.0, I decided to go because I had never done anything with AS3 yet. I got to see some details on AS3 like: how the display list works and also a bit on how the ASVM2 does garbage collection.
The application that Colin builds, while explaining key concepts of OOP with AS3 is a Virtual Pet game. Like the Tamagochi game. He uses the MVC design pattern and explains the concept very well.
At the end of the presentation he asks if it’s worth going down that path of OOP for just a simple game like the Virtual Zoo. The answer: It depends.
This app could have been built on the Flash IDE timeline in less than an hour. But when you think about extending it, or implementing any changes, that’s when the timeline will probably fail. In a real life example when a client starts asking you to do updates you would have wanted to opt for the OOP design instead of the procedural way.
Overall: It was a great event and I thank Adobe, O’Reilly and Colin for making this happen. I’m looking forward for more to come.
May 5th, 2008
Foo Fighters played on Friday and Saturday at the Acer Arena, here in Sydney. The show was bloody awesome! It’s one of the best shows I’ve been to in a long time, if not the best. I recorded some videos with my mobile, but the audio is crappy, so I checked if anyone else had posted a video and here’s a recording with pretty good quality (thanks to satur9nine) of My Hero. Check more videos of these two shows here: Youtube. Foo Fighters Acer Arena.
The Fooies rock big time!
Saturday 03 May 2008 - highlights:
They started the show with Let it die.
They played for almost 3 hours.
Pat Smear was invited
A special guest guitarist performed the Ballad of the Beaconsfield miners with Dave Grohl.
Everlong started acoustic and solo by Dave, and the rest of the band joined at the end.
The crowd was full-on! I almost lost my voice cheering
They did all their classic songs, even Big Me.
Dave Grohl was really funny. It looks like he likes playing in Sydney.
My favourites (videos on youtube) :
May 4th, 2008
Last night was the inaugural meeting of the Sydney Adobe User Group. Note that it is now a joint group between the Flash User Group and the Coldfusion User Group.
Geoff Bowers did a presentation about “Setting Fire To Your Community”
The presentation was really good and I left the user group meeting with a nice feeling to try and help the opensource communities I daily use.
He gave really good (and a bit funny and disturbing) analogies comparing opensource communities with japanese mummies. Geoff also got into explaining some details about different opensource licensing schemes, and made us aware of the great difference between gpl and lgpl.
Even though most of us might just click next, next, next when downloading most of the software we use… If you are going to use that code in your commercial projects, you should really know what you are getting into and learn about the implications you will have when you distribute your project.
We also learnt that the extjs framework is changing its licensing from lgpl to gpl. This means that if you include that library in your code, you will have to opensource your project.
It was a great meeting and I’m looking forward to the next one. Chris informed us that the meetings will be held on every last Monday of the month, so the next meeting will be on May 26.
April 29th, 2008
Chris just sent this event information to the flash developers mailing lists:
Thursday, 24th January. 6pm
Flex 3 and AIR are getting close to launch and in preparation, Danny Dura from the Platform Evangelism Team will be specifically in Sydney to show off the great new features for this exciting launch.
Check the listings below to hook up with the local user group in the city closest to you and join us for an evening of Flex and AIR.
Don’t miss out on the opportunity to see and hear about this highly anticipated release of Flex 3 and AIR during this special pre-release tour. Plus, in addition to giving away some one of a kind Flex/AIR branded schwag, each event will also be raffling off a copy of Flex Builder 3 Professional (pending availability) and a full commercial copy of CS3 Web Premium!
Details and RSVP on http://sydneyflashdev2008prelaunchtour.eventbrite.com
You can also joing the Google Group: FlashAussie
January 16th, 2008
If you haven’t already heard, the date is set for 5th May, the same week as WebDU.
Update: WebDU dates are: 12-13 June 2008. (Thanks Geoff)
Register here: http://www.adobeas3tour.com/
Advanced programmers please note:
This course does not cover expert-level topics. You are unlikely to encounter new concepts in this course, but are welcome to attend for a refresher on ActionScript programming fundamentals.
For a complete list of topics covered, see the Course Outline below and the course lecture notes, available at: http://moock.org/lectures/groundUpAS3/
January 11th, 2008
