My new blog is located at ghostRadio.net. The new feed address is http://www.ghostradio.net/feed/

So… what is the new site, and why did I bother? For a long time, I’ve been wanting to redesign my site, and separate the development-related stuff I write from the more personal stuff I post. I’ve also wanted to create a portfolio site of sorts, to show off my past and current work. I’ve created a few different designs for this new site over the last year or so, but have never settled on a design that I was in love with. As much as I wanted to do a site that was strictly portfolio style, I really like the format that a blog allows. So, rather than build a new site from scratch, with a separate blog portion, I’m merging them into one site.

I’ve been posting here on joshbuhler.com for a few years now, and that content will remain here, but I’m also transferring some of my favorite posts from here to the new site. Some things there will be familiar if you’ve been reading my blog for a while, but if you haven’t, consider this a good way to browse the archives of my old site, but with an “only the good stuff” filter applied. It’s been a lot fun to browse my archives, look at old stuff, and take a new look at older posts. In some cases, I’ve even gone back and taken a new approach to things. Currently, there are only two posts live there, and I still have a few tasks to finish up before the site is complete, but you’ll want to stick around, as there’s a steady stream of stuff ready to roll out over the next few weeks.

While I can’t guarantee that things there will be 100% development-related, a majority of it will be. I’ll still be posting here on joshbuhler.com, but that stuff will be more non-developer stuff. If you want to follow my development-related stuff, then you’ll want to subscribe to the posts there. Also, I keep saying “development-related” because while 90% of the work I do is Flash-based, I’ve been working with XNA game development, and iPhone stuff as well. So things won’t be all Flash, Flex, and Actionscript. Just a majority of it will be.

See you at the new site!

Luckily, I just checked out the schedule, and I get to present on the first day, right after the keynote, so I can get my session out of the way, and enjoy the rest of the conference, stress free.

You can check out the schedule for the conference and see who else will be there, and what there presenting here: http://360conferences.com/360flex/downloads/schedule.pdf

If you’re thinking about going, you’ll want to register ASAP, as the tickets are cheaper on a first come, first serve basis. So register at http://360flex.eventbrite.com now to get the best possible price.

Now, in case you’re curious, here’s the session description I submitted:

Working with Events in Flex and ActionScript 3.0 is something that we all do on a regular basis - but do we really know how to take advantage of everything that the Event flow in AS3 has to offer? What are the different phases of an event’s life? What exactly is an Event’s priority? This session will cover the life of an Event - how to create one, listen to it though various stages of it’s life, and if needs be, kill it without mercy. We’ll also cover creating your own custom events, and how to clean up after yourself when you’re done using an Event.

See you in May!

I’m sure I’m not the first person to want this, but I thought of this recently: How awesome would it be if the Flash Player provided the option to send a bug report or crash log back to the developer if they wanted to receive them?

What I’d like to see is something that a developer could include in their code, possibly through a metadata tag so that it’s compiled into the SWF, that would provide the user with the option to submit a bug report to the developer.

Maybe something like this:

[CrashLog(dest="bugs@developersAddress.com")]

If the SWF crashed, or hit one of those “A script is causing the Flash Player…” errors, a crash dialog could be displayed to the user, and give them the option to submit a report. This report could then be submitted by the Flash Player to the developer, who would receive at minimum a crash log of what was going on in the Flash Player at that time. If they wanted to, the user could also detail what they were doing/trying to do, or submit system info, like what browser they’re using, and other web-related info. Even if the only info returned was a snapshot of the same info you get in the Flex Builder debugger when an error is thrown, that would be more info than we often get from users.

Would anyone else be interested in getting something like this? Is it even possible that we could see it in the Flash Player some day? If anyone on the Flash Player team is reading this, feel free to add this one in next time you get bored.

Answer: No. Static methods and properties of classes are not inherited by subclasses. You can however access the static members of a parent class from within it's subclasses.

This question came up today as I was helping a coworker debug something, and Flex Builder was throwing an error saying that it couldn't find a property on the class we were working in.

We were stumped for a bit, because we were trying to access a static property defined in the parent class, and were trying to access it via the subclass. We were stumped, using the logic that the properties and methods of the parent class, including the static ones are inherited. At least, as long as they're public or protected, they should be, right?

Here's a quick example that proved us wrong though. Suppose we have a class ParentClass which defines a few methods and properties, some static, some not.

If we then extend this class, at first glance you might think that static items are inherited:

If you create a new instance of SubClass, when the constructor runs, you'll see CLASS_NAME: Parent Class in the output panel. Inheritance, right? The subclass is using a variable defined by the parent. But that's where it ends. This works, because subclasses can access static members of their parent classes, from within the class.

If we now try to use the subclass in our application, you'll see where the inheritance of static items ends.

You're free to access the static items in ParentClass, as long as you access them via ParentClass. As they aren't inherited by SubClass, they cannot be accessed through SubClass. You could however, write your own static methods on SubClass, which then access ParentClass for the values, and returns them, if you really needed to get the static items via SubClass.

For more info, check out the entry on static variables in the ActionScript 3.0 Language Specification.

After a quick survey both in the office and via Twitter, I've found that the answers received were a bit 50/50 both ways, so if you didn't know the answer, you're not alone.

The resulting sound quality is terrible.

It comes from Microsoft.

All good reasons to brush it off as one big joke, right?

I'm referring to Songsmith, a new application by Microsoft Research. So what's the point of it? From the Songsmith site:

Songsmith generates musical accompaniment to match a singer’s voice. Just choose a musical style, sing into your PC’s microphone, and Songsmith will create backing music for you. Then share your songs with your friends and family, post your songs online, or create your own music videos.

Now, forgetting all of the things mentioned above, the purpose of the application is actually a pretty good idea, and something that someone like me could actually use. I'm not a great songwriter, and I've never actually finished any of the song ideas that I have. One big problem I have is that I'll come up with a melody or guitar lick that I like, but then fail miserably at coming up with an accompaniment for it. The fact that Songsmith exists means that I'm not the only one with that problem.

My opinion is that much of the hate directed towards Songsmith is due to the commercial, and the fact that Microsoft is behind it. Because we all love to hate on Microsoft, right? (I'm guilty of participating in that crowd - I love my Xbox, but could care less about the rest of Microsoft's offerings.)

However, imagine the reaction to this had it been produced by Apple. Obviously, the video introducing it would be much better. The video would most likely feature someone like John Mayer (or whomever happens to be Steve's favorite act at the moment) firing off some series of licks on his guitar, and then with a few clicks generates a backing track that fits with his guitar track. Like Songsmith, the output wouldn't be perfect, but it'd be a good jumping off point to help you flesh out some of your musical ideas. I think we could all agree that Apple would produce something that would definitely be slicker, and help sell this idea much better than Microsoft did.

Regardless of who produces the application though, why is this idea the biggest joke of the internet so far? I would love to see Songsmith, or something like it continue to evolve. Is the output of Songsmith perfect? No. Would it be if anyone else made it? No. But would it serve as a good place to work on some song ideas? Of course.

However, rather than a standalone application, I'd like to see it as a plugin for existing recording/sampling software, or as a feature in GarageBand. Build it into something like a Cyber Amp or a POD, and use it to save those little bits of inspiration you get when you're playing your guitar. This would even be great as part of a game like RockBand or Guitar Hero - just plug in the mic, sing your lyrics, add some drum tracks, and share it with your friends.

As much as I cringed watching that video, and hearing those people sing, I still thought it was a pretty good idea, and wish the Songsmith team the best of luck.

Yes, there used to be a few more comments here, but I've decided that the discussion between the poster of those comments and my responses weren't worth leaving online. Call it censorship, cowardice, arrogance, or whatever you want, it doesn't matter. It's my blog.

My brother-in-law Chris, was our pilot for that night and was kind enough to take my wife and I with him and my sister. We took off from Airport #2 out in West Jordan, flew down over Utah County for a bit, and made it back up to SLC just in time for midnight to fly over downtown.

Chris got a new HD camera for Christmas, and so we were able to shoot some video while we were up there. If you've ever wondered what it looks like to fly directly over a fireworks show, now you can see it. The fireworks were being launched from near the Gallivan Center.

Watching the show there was great, but it was also pretty amazing to be able to see all the various fireworks displays across the valley all at once. This is easily one of the most memorable New Years that I've had so far, and would do it again in a heartbeat.

Fireworks by Air - 5D MKII from Chris Palmer on Vimeo.

From: thanksbro@gmail.com

You know, it's sort of annoying when people get arrogant and try to put in some terrible protection.

com.joshbuhler.games.utils.TheftBlock.checkURL("www.joshbuhler.com", this);

I'm sure anyone who wanted to host your game could just as easily decompile it as I did. I only did it to put it on a flash drive, as well. Having your name on the main screen isn't enough?

Huh? A few things:

Arrogant?

Honestly? You're going to steal content from my site and then complain about it? Since when is protecting something that you invested time in arrogant? I built it, I can do with it as I see fit. Seems to me that the real arrogance here is in the party trying to steal some content, and complaining to the author that they were inconvenienced in the process. (Of course, maybe it's not arrogance, just idiocy.)

I know it's easy to beat.

Congrats - you're an ub3r 1337 haX0r who can decompile a swf.

I have no illusions that the small utility class (TheftBlock) I wrote is in any way, shape, or form bulletproof. I realize that it's really just a minor annoyance to someone trying to host my content on their site. I don't care. In reality, that's what it's supposed to be - an annoyance. Basically, the class checks the URL it's running from, and if it's not on my domain, it draws a large red box over the entire Flash movie, telling you to quit trying to steal my stuff. Shouldn't that have been a hint that I don't want to have this thing hosted anywhere else but on my site? Believe it or not, it's actually been fairly effective in keeping the game hosted on my site, and a few others I've provided it to.

I'm Selfish

Yup. Even though I post several bits of code and other content freely on mine and other sites, there are a few things I want to keep for myself. If you really want Duck Hunt on your site, you could crank out your own version of this game in a weekend like I did. Or know what? Ask me nicely and I might send you a build you can host if you like.

I also realize that there is a bit of the pot calling the kettle black here, as technically the "content" here isn't even mine - it's Nintendo's, as they created Duck Hunt in the first place. Part of the reason I even built it was because when I got the idea, I had seen several other Flash-based versions that for one reason or another I didn't like, and decided to build a version that was as true to the original as possible. It was also a good project to start playing with ActionScript 2.0 at the time. However, as the IP belongs to Nintendo in the end, if they end up contacting me and asking me to remove it from my site, I will.

In the end, I know that whatever you put online, is pretty much freely available to anyone who wants to take it. It's pretty much a given that it's going to happen eventually. But still, who in their right mind steals something, and then complains about how annoying it was to do? Seriously.

Another feature I didn't really think I'd have too much fun with was the Avatars. I built mine last night, and think I did a fair job getting something that looks like me. Of course, if I could get a black Fender or Flex hat for the little guy, he'd look even more like me. Though, the most fun I've had with this guy is playing with my (almost) 2-year old daughter Brooklynn. You can use the controller to move the avatar's head around, make them talk, etc. Once this guy appeared on the screen, Brooklynn was captivated, and we spent a fair amount of time with me controlling him like a virtual puppet, and her giggling. Good times.

So, did you guys get avatar'd, and do they look anything like you? You can share your avatars easily online by using the following URL:

http://avatar.xboxlive.com/avatar/GAMERTAG/avatar-body.png

Just replace GAMERTAG with your own, and you're in business.

ElectionDashboard 1.1.1

Versions 1.1.0 and up have auto-updating built into them, in case I find another bug. Anything prior to that, and you'll need to first uninstall the app before installing the latest.