February 01st 2010 - Entry Posted to: General, Illustration

My girl told me about this;

I had no idea. Cool to get reprinted twice now!

0

December 11th 2009 - Entry Posted to: AMFPHP, ActionScript 3, General, Zend AMF

I’m currently re-writing my Flash press PHP service.

I’ve moved it to using the Wordpress api as opposed to working on the database directly.

Most methods are complete, with some no longer needed. For instance, all posts / pages can be returned with a simple ‘getContent” method, but would you rather have seperate, ‘getPost’,’ getPosts’, ‘getPage’, ‘getPages’ etc methods?

What additional features would you like to see in this service? Remember, that the service has access to most of the Wordpress API. There is no point recreating each an everything method, but there might be some methods that are more useful than others. I’ve also added in two methods for calling Wordpress methods beyond what the service supports, one for the Wordpress API and one that handles SQL requests, channeled through the Wordpress API.

Anyway, let me know your thoughts, if you have any.

At the moment, I’ve only supporting ZendAMF but will test out AMFPHP if I get the chance.

Update:
I’ve got it mostly completed. Just have to work on documentation and some examples. I’ve got reading and writing to the Wordpress database for posts / pages and attachments. And reading support for most other Wordpress features.

To get Write support for attachments (image resizing) you will have to require admin.php, but as you have to require a Wordpress file to get access to the Wordpress API anyway, I’m sure thats not a problem for anyone. Let me know if it is.

Update 2:
I’ve finally managed to get AMFPHP up and running again and have the various methods working through the services browser. I added in a new method to get the attachments from a post, which was a requested feature. I’ve also re factored some of the code.

The current available methods are:
callWpMethod – call any available Wordpress method
getUserByLoginName
getUserMetadata
getUserById
getComments
getPostMeta
findTerms (taxonomy method)
getTagCloud
getTerms
getCategories
getCategoriesByPostId
getTagsByPostId
getBlogInfo
getBookmarks
getAttachments
deletePost
getPostOrPageByTitle
getPosts
getPost
countPosts
insertAttachmentAsByteArray
insertAttachment
insertPost

I may rename some, or drop some methods. Note that “posts” is used to mean posts and pages.

20

March 22nd 2009 - Entry Posted to: General

After 30 odd hours of flying, transit lounges and endless spinach pasta stodge, I’m in London.

Now to find a job, if anyone knows of any Flash work going over here, drop me a line.

I have a job, house, etc thanks to all the people who posted links. Now I just need the weather to warm up.

25

January 09th 2009 - Entry Posted to: General

I recently discovered a user at http://flashden.net was using one of my files as a paid template, an older version of my FullBrowser Content file.

While I give most of my files away, I do stipulate that they are not used as the base for making money off of, by turning them into templates etc that are on sold multiple times. Generally this is a good faith agreement, between myself and whoever uses my files. I have received alot of help from various blogs and forums with learning ActionScript, and this blog is a means to return some of that help.

What was and is most frustrating about this experience, has been my dealings with Flash Den, and the user who ‘borrowed’ my file. It was pretty clear cut to me, that this user had stolen my source. I mean, I decompiled his preview and had a look at it to see.

Seems that FlashDen were just taking their time, and have since removed this offenders and another’s from the site. So, well done to them.

Check out this for similarities:

His file contains these constants;

public static const BG_LOADING:String = "newslideloading";
public static const UNLOAD_BG:String = "unloadbg";
public static const BG_LOADED:String = "newslideloaded";

My file contains these constants:

public static  const BG_LOADED:String  = "newslideloaded";
public static  const BG_LOADING:String  = "newslideloading";
public static  const UNLOAD_BG:String  = "unloadbg";

His has these vars (just some of them)

private var YminStageSize:int;
private var useMinStageSize:Boolean;
private var XminStageSize:int;
private var imageScaleProp:Number;

Mine has these vars (again, just some of them)

private var useMinStageSize:Boolean;//use a minimum stage size?
private var XminStageSize:int;
private var YminStageSize:int;
private var imageScaleProp:Number;

You get the idea. Not only were the constants, vars the same, but the method names were the same, along with the functionality of each method. The only change was the shift from tweenLite to tweener for some animation, and the removal of all the garbage collection methods and event handling. The guy was so crap, that he left the constants in there, not understanding that they were for custom event dispatches, but deleted the custom event handling. The user was adamant that he didn’t use my file, when clearly he had. After a few emails, he decided to delete ‘my’ file once he realised he had been caught out.

I decided to report him to FlashDen, and provided the FlashDen staff with my source files, and a link to his. Their response was that no copyright infringement occurred, and that the user probably just deleted his file to “make some modifications”. I couldn’t believe it, I mean, clearly his file is totally based off of mine. This user is still happily uploading new files.

So, in the end, its worked out OK. FlashDen took their time, which I guess is OK. As they investigate any issues, rather than issuing instant take down notices if someone thinks something is copyright.

On another forum, some other user posted class files from the Martha Mclean website I wrote, trying to get help with the mess the decompiler made of it all. I recognised the code instantly and questioned where it came from. What an idiot. If the dude actually just tried to learn how to do it, then he would be set, its not even that hard..

23

April 20th 2008 - Entry Posted to: General, Illustration

My blog header image “Yawn” originally started life as a submission to the http://www.threadless.com t-shirt design contest.

Well, they actually seemed to like it, so its been printed. You can have a look at it here: http://www.threadless.com/product/1203/Yawn

3

January 27th 2008 - Entry Posted to: General

A bit of light holiday reading for me while up at Rarawa Beach on the North Islands East Coast. Can’t beat a dose of Essential ActionScript 3!

2