March 27, 2008
[OFF TOPIC] My Daughter is no Joke!
Whoops! Thanks to some peps from Flashmagazine I found out my previous link to my daughter's pictures where going to a joke of the day web site.
Here is her real link:
http://www.flickr.com/giadabianchi
-erik
Posted by erikbianchi at 09:51 PM | Comments (0)
March 18, 2008
[OFF TOPIC] Where have I been?
Man I miss blogging and getting into various debates in the Flash community. So where the heck have I been?
For the past two years I’ve been working on my own gig as a partner in a new startup. It’s been exciting to be apart of to say the least!
To start with just an idea and move into a real product, building a team, a company, doing some tech / trade shows, promoting the product, establishing brand partnerships, getting funding and now having an active user based (can’t disclose numbers but they are surprisingly higher then I expected since we launched: www.mego.com).
BTW: like my last post stated we are looking for REMOTE Senior Flash Developers!
erik (at) mego [dot] com minus the () and []
On a personal note I also became a dad:
http://www.flickr.com/giadabianchi
So on top of the biz and being a dad, I just become super unmotivated to post because of all the spam I was receiving both email and on this web site. It literally took my web host server down and despite running blacklist and various other filters I couldn’t stop the problem even after 2 weeks of effort.
However, I’m in the process of moving my blog so I can enabled comments once again and hopefully finish a couple of the OSFlash projects ive been working on in my spare time (which hasn’t been much the past 6 months).
-erik
Posted by erikbianchi at 11:54 PM | Comments (0)
[JOBS] Work for me from home!
I’m looking for another Senior Flash Developer to join my team! We are a small (but growing) privately held / funded company with a lot of potential / interest and a rapidly growing user base.
The work we do is very diverse and can be anything from RSS readers to 3d displays. Most projects are quick mini apps so don’t expect to work on any 1 project for too long.
Because we are all remote exceptional communication is paramount!
Unfortunately we are ONLY seeking Senior Flash Developers at this time. We are not interested in Flex Developers who have no Flash experience or php developers who use ming at this time.
Qualifications:
• Senior Flash Developer
• Can work with timelines
• Can communicate effectively with other designers, flash developers and server devs.
• Can take designs / concepts and turn them into logical structures.
• AS2 mandatory
• AS3 nice
• Familiar with frameworks MVC , MVP, ARP, Cairngorm, etc
• Can write requirements
• Detail oriented
• Application / game development experience +
• Strong OOP skills
• Excellent can-do attitude
• Able to deal with changing requirements
• Experience with design patterns
• Agency experience+ but not mandatory
• Creative thinker / problem solver
• Enjoys puzzles
• Star wars geek + but not reqired
Please send resumes to: [erik] at (mego) dot com minus [] or () of course
-erik
Posted by erikbianchi at 01:45 AM | Comments (0)
May 23, 2007
[Flash Quirks] Combo Box Dropdown can’t be removed and breaks getNextHighestDepth
Maybe this is a well known issue, but for me, I try avoid the V2 components from Flash 8 because they seem to cause more problems then they are worth (not to mention the file size bloat). So I usually end up writing component frameworks for my clients or sale them some of my home baked sets. That’s not to knock the hardworking developers who worked on the V2 components, to quote President Theodore Roosevelt:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
But I digress . . .
So I’m working on a project where we used the V2 combo box and hit a funky issue where an opened combo box’s drop down would remain on stage if the combo box was opened and then the component was removed via removeMovieClip.
We also hit what we thought was another unrelated issue where we lost the ability to remove movieclips that had been laid out in the Flash IDE. For those who don’t know, Movieclips placed on the timeline are given negative depth values that can not be removed without first swaping depth to a positive depth value.
After some digging and mucking around it turns out the combo box attaches a dropdown list component to _root at the highest possible depth (thus breaking our stageMC.swapDepths.getNextHighestDepth()).removeMovieClip() method and because it isn’t apart of the component (encapsulation is good) it gets abandoned all by its lonesome.
The solution:
myComboBox._lookroot = true;
The End
PS: for those wondering of my lack of updates we can thank the spamers who have killed my comments, email and even hacked into my cgi bin.
Posted by erikbianchi at 07:40 AM | Comments (0)
May 04, 2006
[OT] E3 or Bust, first born for tickets
E3, the gaming event of all gaming events, is coming up and this year looks to be the best show ever. I’ve manage to make it every year with last year being one of the worst shows and the very first E3 being the best (both the N64 and PS1 debuted at that event and it was the first time the gaming community got a glimpse of the glory of Mario 64).
With both the PS3 and Nintendo’s Wii in playable form this year (surprisingly I am more excited about Nintendo’s system) the anticipation is killing me. However, I’m starting to panic!!!!! My peeps that I normally get tickets from don’t have any extra this year so I'm not sure if I can go.
Anyhow, if anyone has a spare ticket or two let me know, I’d be willing to barter Flash services, first born, etc.
Posted by erikbianchi at 07:31 PM | Comments (0)
March 03, 2006
[Flash Quirks] Min and Max Z Depth
Because I always get asked what the min and max values are for MovieClip depth (negative and positive) and then I always forget the answer or where to find it, I'm making a note of it here on my blog:
Min and Max swapDepth / Z depth positions:
-16384 to 1048575
-erik
Posted by erikbianchi at 01:08 AM | Comments (0)
February 23, 2006
[Tools] $500 dollar commercial bug tracker for $5 bucks!
As a social marketing experiment / charity event Axosoft is selling their $500 dollar bug tracking software for $5 dollars with 100% of the proceeds being donated to the red cross, but HURRY! Offer ends this Friday!!
More info:
http://www.axosoft.com/Products/ontime.aspx?cn=otm_stepromo
Posted by erikbianchi at 07:04 PM | Comments (0)