Archive for December, 2007
Socom Map Packs Working on My PS3
A little update on my favorite pass-time. I was FINALLY able to get the Socom Combined Assault Map Packs working with my PlayStation 3. You’d think that the big hard drive would someday prove useful to somebody, but in the meantime, I was able to get these stupid map packs working ONLY on my iPod. Purchased, downloaded, installed and at long last, they’re working.
There are hoards of other people with PS3’s that bought the map packs and later found out they couldn’t play them. Hopefully, this will prove useful to you. For Sony to build the PS3 and not enable backward compatibility….argh!!! What are you people taking lessons from Microsoft now?
What would you like to see in Attest 2.0?
I’ve had some very cool feedback on Attest 1.0, and got some great ideas from other developers on how to improve on Attest 2.0 for the Adobe Flex 3 Developer Certification Exam when that comes along eventually. I’m compiling a list of features that I personally would like to see, but if you’ve used Attest and have some feedback, fill me in! I want to hear any ideas that would make Attest kick some butt!
Some ideas that I had, as well as ideas from other developers using Attest are:
- Learning Mode:
- Should allow user to choose amount of questions for custom tests. This way the user may only have 10 mins to spare, but could still create a custom test (5-10 questions for example)
- Ability to check the answer during viewing of the questions for learning mode only. Instant feedback would be nice.
- Test Mode:
- Same ability to choose custom number of questions and time for each test, as well as the premade tests.
- Possibly view the results per question as stated above, rather than go to a different results page.
Center Registration Point - Another Recipe for the Flex CookBook
Here’s a little recipe for scaling an image from a center registration point. Flash always allowed you to bounce the registration point wherever you wanted, but Flex expects it on the top left. If you want to resize an image from the center evenly, with a horizontal slider for example, you’ll like this one.
First the MXML. This layout is simple, it basically just has the small script with a function to accept a SilderEvent when the user changes the value of the horizontal slider. This function then uses the static functions (calcX() and calcY()) in the ImageResizer class to calculate the new math and tell your image how to resize properly from the center.
The Dave Flatley Medical Plan - cost $0 per month
It’s my intention to post more about my gripes, after all, that is partly the reason I started this blog in parallel with my company blog where I have to write more professionally. It’s quite possible I might offend a few folks and lose some popularity myself, maybe I’ll gain popularity for calling it as I see it, I don’t know? But if I end up tossing my company in the toidy bowl for my personal views than so be it, I didn’t start my company purely for profit after all.
I can hear Jacob Marley yelling at ole’ Ebenezer
Ebenezer: But it was only that you were an honest man of business!
Jacob Marley: BUSINESS? Mankind was my business! Their common welfare was my business!
And who wants to go out like Jacob? Not me! So let me state for the record that there will be more griping here and in general, if I find a business that likes to dish out slaps in the face for Christmas, I’m going to feel free to share my experience with you all. Maybe you’ve had similar experiences and would care to share? Maybe you work for these companies and would like my address so you can send your security task force over to inject me with arsenic via a 007-style umbrella? I have to give fair warning, I’m quite adept at the drunken monkey style of Kung Fu. wakaaaaa!!!!
Programmatic Button Skins in Flex 3
The Flex CookBook recipe call prompted me to pull together some more generic, but useful code samples, so I figured I’d post them here and keep my fingers crossed that a recipe or two slip into the book unnoticed 
I’ll explain a little recipe I use for programmatic skinning on buttons in particular on some projects. If you need fast, extendable, easy on the bandwidth buttons then this one is highly useful. To start off, I picked buttons because they’re the most generic examples of how to use programmatic skin, and probably the most likely target for clean, simple skins. In the future, I’ll post more skins for other components.
Complete source files:
Programmatic Button Skins - source files
PS3 not kind to PS2 games
My favorite game in the world….Socom Combined Assault. I’ve been hooked on the Socom series for years now. And although I said I wouldn’t fall into the PS3 trap until the prices went way down, I ended up getting one a while back.
So Zipper just released 2 map packs (with some of my old favorites from older Socom’s) and I bought and tried to download them. AFTER purchasing them I keep getting an error that says I can’t install them, there’s no hard drive. Heh, there’s a pretty big hard drive there, can’t ya find it?? Ya pos!!
Here I am reading and reading on what kind of a hack I have to implement to install these damn things on my PS3. What? Is Sony taking backwards compatibility lessons from Microsoft? ARGHhhh!!! It also says all sales are final and no refunds? Oh no you dit-int!!! I’ll find a way to install these maps or I’m going to be slightly miffed on the phone with tech Sony tech support.