Author Archives: DeanLogic

About DeanLogic

Dean has been playing around with programming ever since his family got an IBM PC back in the early 80's. Things have changed since BASICA and Dean has dabbled in HTML, JavaScript, Action Script, Flex, Flash, PHP, C#, C++, J2ME and SQL. On this site Dean likes to share his adventures in coding. And since programming isn't enough of a time killer, Dean has also picked up the hobby of short film creation.

Time for some practice

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While I was at work pondering what other better careers there might be out there, I decided that I probably should make sure my skills are up-to-date.  Since I am limited to what software I have installed on my home PC, I will be brushing up on those skills and learn some new ones in the process.  The best way for me to learn something is to actually have something to do, instead of just reading through a book and trying to absorb it.  I’ve absorbed plenty of useless facts by reading, but that doesn’t beat actually putting to work Continue reading Time for some practice→

Google Docs in Flex frustration

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I enjoy using Google Docs.  I have to admit, it is a very easy way to share information between people and to do on-line collaboration.  I have used documents to brainstorm ideas and create outlines in real time on-line.  Recently I created a form that stores the information submitted into a spreadsheet.  Unfortunately,  the spreadsheet is a little hard to read with the responses are very long and there are multiple long responses.  The provided “summary” view for the spreadsheet doesn’t help, because it just displays all the answers together.  This would be great for a survey, but not for Continue reading Google Docs in Flex frustration→

ArrayCollection column counts

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As part of an example of trying to read data from SharePoint and display it in a Flex/Flash application, I needed to see if I could create pie charts from the data.  After figuring out how to get the list data as an xml output, then cleaning up the data to insert it into a ArrayCollection, the next step was to count the number of times a particular value was used in a particular column.  If I was using SQL, it would be  a straight forward grouping and count.  The work around was to filter out the unique values and Continue reading ArrayCollection column counts→

Filming Heist H2O

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The weekend of June 24 I got together with a The RTP “Let’s Make a Movie” Meetup group of people and we filmed a short movie in 48 hours.  We were part of the 48 Hour Film Project, a filming competition that requires teams to write, film, edit and submit a 7 minute film within a 48 hour time period.  This is the second year that I have competed in the contest and this year’s effort was much better than last year’s. The contest starts with team leaders drawing film genres randomly.  If the group doesn’t like the genre, they Continue reading Filming Heist H2O→

Orientation change with MXML

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I have been banging my head on the wall trying to figure out how to detect the device orientation on the BlackBerry PlayBook.  I initially tried to use the accelerometer function.  Unfortunately, the listener would continue to activate and determining the exact orientation was a little iffy.  So, a slight move of the device would set off the listener and the redrawing of the screen would keep going until the accelerometer stopped.  This was not a good way to test for orientation, it will be a great way to make a game that required moving the PlayBook around a lot.  Continue reading Orientation change with MXML→

mx and qnx happliy playing together

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I’m in the processing of updating the Meetup Search application for the BlackBerry PlayBook.  Last night I was busy trying to rearrange the search form options and realized that the mx:UIComponent was not returning width or height back in order to determine where to place the next component.  The qnx library used for the PlayBook require that an application be either completely in AS3 or use the mx:UIComponent to add the qnx fields; button, textinput, toggle switch, etc…   When developing the Meetup Search, I figured that using the mx tags, it would be easier to control the layout and possibly Continue reading mx and qnx happliy playing together→