Be Flexy with FLEXyLog

FleshChoice discount with Costco membership card

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 20:12:36

Hey, Did you know that you can get a discount from FreshChoice restaurant with a Costco membership card? I go often but just found it.

The exact date you receive a stimulus check

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 16:49:56

When will I get a stimulus check? It will depend largely on the last two digits of your Social Security number. Direct deposit payments If the last two digits of your Social Security number are: Your stimulus payment should be sent to your bank account by: 00 - 20 May 2 21 - 75 May 9 76 - 99 May 16 Paper check If the last two digits of your Social Security number are: Your check should be in the mail by: 00 - 09 May 16 10 - 18 May 23 19 - 25 May 30 26 - 38 June 6 39 - 51 June 13 52 - 63 June 20 64 - 75 June 27 76 - 87 July 4 88 - 99 July 11 Read the detailed story here

How to make searchable FLEX applications

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 20:41:11

This is not about how to make swf searchable. Rather, it provides a way to make search engines pick up the contents of the FLEX/Flash applications. My FLEXyLog FLEX application is displayed on top of the HTML contents. In other words, the z-index of div for the FLEX app is bigger than that of div for HTML contents. The search engines follow links on a page and makes indices for the contents. Therefore, I display several articles in a div with lower z-index with their permanant links. With this trick, I have gotten many visits through the search engines. Check the source of this page and you will see what I am talking about. This trick also helps Google Adsense display relevant ads.

Boy gets butter knife stuck in head - Tales of survival

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 18:42:39

The 11-year-old Vancouver boy needed doctors to remove a butter knife from his head on Sunday. He says he and friend Nate Leach were sitting on a park bench when another boy became angry with them and hurled the knife. ... “It’s kind of a freaky thing to see a knife handle sticking out of your son’s head,” Brian Hemmert said. ... “The first thing I wanted to do was just pull it out of his head and give him a big hug,” he said. “But I was afraid to even touch him. I knew better. I’ve seen a couple of these [medical] shows, so ... leave it alone and let the pros deal with it.” [more]

Starbucks decided to go back to the past!

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 15:57:56

Back to the time when they treated people as loyal customers! No more green Startbucks logo which makes me feel like Starbucks is Cheap. Green to old brown. Indeed it looks old. Starbucks has developed a new blend, Pike Place Roast, that it will have in hand all the time. And Starbucks recently launched www.mystarbucksidea.com, a digital suggestion box to get people's new ideas. The reason why they introduced the smoothe coffee was because many people complaint that the Starbucks coffee is too strong or burnt. Still wonder whether Schultz will be able to change its ruined image and create a new trend.

Calendar component used for FLEXyLog

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 20:21:04

Here is the Calendar component used for this blog. I want to share this component because you may not be able to make the DateChooser work like this. The attached one may be an old version, but it works just fine. I may have used a TileList for the day cells, but I used VBox and HBox since I was very comfortable with using them. Anyway, you need to implement the updateCellData function to get your data.

AIR iPhone

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 13:21:29

With the Ribbit Developer API, you can create an AIR phone application with ease. Imagine, a fully-functional iPhone on your desktop that enables users to make calls, take calls and capture voice messages on their computer. http://developer.ribbit.com/

IRX Transaction

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 13:07:09

While checking my bank statements, I found an unexpected transaction with 'IRX transaction' as a description. I called the bank and found that the transaction means there was something wrong with my deposit with a check, and the bank took out the credit. The bank transaction description should be easy enough so that the customers understand with the description itself rather than have to call them to find out what's happening. I asked what happened, but the service representative didn't give me good explanation. Now, I have to go to a branch to find out why. I think this gotta be easier than this!! The online banking is good, but it's still not good enough to handle 'must-be-easy' things like it. BTW, what does 'IRX' stand for??? I found that Bank of America's system uses codes with three characters. And IRX stands for Item processing - return item and the last X is just a meaningless character to make a three-characters code. The 'IRX Transaction' was changed to 'RETURN ITEM CHARGEBACK' later. Look up the previous deposit you made for the same amount and find out if the check was cleared. Most likely the check had a problem. Is the info helpful?

Color Profile Tools

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 13:14:00

ICC Profile Inspector ICC Profile Inspector is a free utility which will open an ICC profile and allow you to see the entries in the header and the individual profile tags. Curves can be viewed graphically and LUT values can be dumped to a text file. SampleICC SampleICC is a publicly-available code library which will create, parse, manipulate and apply ICC profiles. It includes a utility to test the conformance of a profile with the ICC specification. Profile Dump Profile Dump is an example utility built using SampleICC, which reads and tests ICC profiles for conformance with the current specification. http://www.color.org/profileview2.xalter

Placards for the pregnant?

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 09:20:52

DISABLED PARKING IS PROPOSED FOR 3RD TRIMESTER, 2 MONTHS AFTER BIRTH http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_8675987 Under terms of a bill being proposed by Southern California Assemblyman Chuck De Vore, women in their third trimester of pregnancy, could park their cars in spots reserved for the disabled. Assembly Bill 1940 would declare all women in their final three months of pregnancy, and through their first two months after giving birth, as having a "temporary disability.'' They could then pay $6 to the Department of Motor Vehicles to access any disabled spot in California marked with a blue and white wheelchair symbol for that 5-month period. Do you think this is a good idea? Should pregnant women be allowed to use parking spaces reserved for the disabled? Cast your vote here: http://forums.mercurynews.com/forums/node/14286

Sorting Date strings for charting

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 07:41:45

While working on a FLEX project at work, I encountered a problem with unsorted Date string data set. Before drawing a chart, I had to sort the Date strings in a chronological order. A normal string comparison wouldn't work because the format of date was mm/dd/yr. I found two solutions: 1. Using DateTimeAxis with parseFunction. 2. Convert Date string to time in microseconds and apply Array.sortOn The first solution, using DateTimeAxis, worked very well for one LineSeries or ColumnSeries, but I got very unexpected results with multiple series and stacked column series. I tried several options to make the chart look correctly, but no luck. I didn't want to spend too much time playing with those options and started looking for another solution. DateTimeAxis sample: http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/2/langref/mx/charts/DateTimeAxis.html The second solution was to convert the date string to a time in microseconds by using Date function, and apply sortOn to the array. // acData is an ArrayCollection containing Objects // obj.date = '01/11/08'; for( var i:Number = 0; i < acData.length; i++ ) { var obj:Object = acData.getItemAt(i); var arr:Array = (obj.date as String).split( '/' ); var year:int = parseInt( '20' + arr[2] ); var month:int = parseInt( arr[0] ) - 1; var date:int = parseInt( arr[1] ); var d:Date = new Date( year, month, date ); obj.time = d.getTime(); } // sort by time var dataArr:Array = acData.toArray(); dataArr.sortOn( 'time', Array.NUMERIC ); acData = new ArrayCollection( dataArr );

iPhone users are having more fun

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 11:29:47

The data from M:Metrics for the month of January shows that iPhone users tend to access more entertaining things than those who own smart phones. iPhone users watch video, listen to musics, and visit social networking sites or blogs more than smartphone users do.

Adobe is working on a new version of Flash player for Apple iPhone

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 11:15:47

Adobe has started development of a Flash player working on Apple Inc.'s iPhone, company chief executive Shantanu Narayen said Tuesday. Do you rememer that Apple's Steve Jobs mentioned that the version of Flash player that runs on Macs and PCs is "too slow to be useful" on the iPhone during the March 4th Apple shareholders meeting. He added that "while the mobile version known as Flash Lite is " not capable of being used with the Web. There's this missing product in the middle. It just doesn't exist." There were several rumors that Apple and Adobe are now going their own ways and the long term partnership may break apart. With this annoucements, all the rumors and thoughts will be cleared. This is a big win for Apple and IPhone users, I believe, because enormous amount of web sites are using Flash. YouTube is using Flash format, for example. On Monday, Adobe announced that Microsoft had licensed Flash Lite for the Windows Mobile operating system. This was big surprise to me. Microsoft introduced Silverlight and is trying hard to promote it, but they are going to use Flash Lite for Mobile OS. Hmm... Silverlight is going to have a tough time taking on Adobe’s dominant Flash player even with Internet Explorer 8 which uses Silverlight for some new features like Webslices.

MS released Internet Explorer 8 Beta1

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 15:54:17

Microsoft has made a beta build of Internet Explorer 8 publicly available mainly for developers and desiners. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/ie8/default.mspx Looks like they promote Silverlight with IE 8. They introduced Webslices with which Web sites can expose portions of their page and users can subscribe to and bring that content with them on their links bar wherever they are on the web. Some of the new features are: 1. Standards Compliance IE8 passed the Acid2 test (a test for standards compliance) 2. Facebook Integration Microsoft capitalized on their partnership with the popular social networking site, Facebook, to allow IE8 users the ability to get status updates from Facebook right from their browser toolbar 3. Live Maps Integration 4. Working with AJAX Pages and more...

BPC (Black Point Compensation)

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 13:53:20

Black Point Compensation is a technique used in digital photography printing. Most of Adobe products including Photoshop support BPC feature. They use this technique to address color conversion problems caused by differences between the darkest level of black achievable on one device and the darkest level of black achievable on another. With ICC profiles you can sprcify how to convert the lightest level of white of source device to destination device, but it's not the case for black. To address the issue, Adobe implemented BPC. With BPC feature on, differences between the darkest level of black achievable on one device and the darkest level of black achievable on another can be adjusted, and the dark regions (shadow sections) may keep the details. Since this feature is optional, the user can enable/disalbe it for the color conversion and decide whether the conversion of a particular image looks better with or without BPC. BPC off BPC on [Image source: http://www.color.org/AdobeBPC.pdf] As far as I know, Adobe CMM doesn't have a flag to turn of/off BPC; however, Apple supports it by using the section of flags that were defined and reserved by ICC. Apple's implementation is a hack and was not yet published by ICC.

Yahoo Map Action Scripts 3 APIs Released

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 19:20:46

Yahoo finally released the AC3 version of map APIs. There were APIs for Flash 8 written in AS 2, but not for FLEX 2. There were a few hacks making those old apis working with FLEX 2, which were not quite stable though. http://weblog.cahlan.com/2006/09/yahoo-maps-in-flex-2-as3.html I have long been waiting for FLEX 2 version of APIs, but they skipped it and released for FLEX 3 (AS 3). Since it uses FLEX UIs, there will be lots of good ways to make good applications. For AJAX version, it was limited to draw customized UI on top of the maps. However, any FLEX UI can be drawn on top of the maps, and developers can create more powerful applications. Here are some exaples: http://developer.yahoo.com/flash/maps/examples.html

Not Pie Day, but PI day

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 21:24:17

You all know what the PI value is. It's 3.41592.... So take the first two and it's 3.14. March 14th. It's PI day. 3.14 and the rest SLICE OF PI 3.1415926535 8979323846 2643383279 5028841971

New search engine with very cool interface

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 20:12:03

SearchMe is a new search engine that is currently doing private beta testing with the invited testers. You can request an invitation on their web, searchme.com. The interface looks very cool and useful which was built with Adobe Flash. I just requested an invitation, so I haven't had a chance to test drive. It looks good from their posted video clip. All that matters is how useful information they provide although the user interface is still important factor. They recently got $31 million funds. Can they be a new Google?? Check this article for more details: http://kara.allthingsd.com/20080311/searchme-a-new-visual-search-engine/

Convert Color number value to HEX format string

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 20:00:07

This code will convert a Number to a HEX format string. It can be used to set the text value of a TextInput when a ColorPicker.selectedColor is changed. I spent some time to figure this out. So I hope this will save you some time. :) You have to add '00000' to represent small numbers like 0 (black). var colVal:uint = cp.selectedColor; // where cp is a color picker's ID txtColorVal.text = '#' + ('00000' + colVal.toString(16).toUpperCase()).substr(-6); If you want to convert the HEX string value like #FFFFFF to a number, you could do this. colVal = new Number( '0x' + colValStr.substr( 1 ) );

New blogging tool written in FLEX

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 04:08:23

I was not blogging before although there were many good blogging tools available bacause I didn't know what to post. All that matter are contents I think. Although I kind of wanted to open my own blog, I had no idea about contents. While working on a FLEX project at work, I started this FLEXyLog as a side project to gain more knowledge on FLEX. With this side project I learned a lot of subtle details of FLEX. The FLEXyLog was written in FLEX 2 and PHP & MySQL were used for server side bacause most of cheap shared hosting services support PHP and MySQL. For testing the tool I decided to open an English and Korean blogs. I'd like to share the knowledge on FLEX that I acquired from the development of FLEXyLog. I want to share about AIR as well. There are lots of things that I want to add to FLEXyLog, and I am still working very hard. Frequent updates will be made and you will see the differences everytime you visit. Once I feel that it's stable enough, I would like to share this tool with whoever is interested in.

Create a stacked column series and line series dynamically

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 19:48:30

Continued from the previous article. Here is the sample code showing how to create a stacked column series dynamically.

LineSeries with stacked ColumnSeries

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 19:22:22

With a CartesianChart, you can draw a line series and a stacked column series together. This was not well documented, and I was not able to find any sample code on the Web. So I post one simple example drawing one line series and a stacked column series with a Cartesian Chart. The key is that you use a ColumnSet to which multiple ColumnSeries can be added. The ColumnSet containing the ColumnSerieses should be added to the series. You can add a LineSeries to the series as shown in the sample code below. Once you know the rule, it's very straight forward. However, adding column serieses to a column set dynamically and drawing them as stacked are tricky. I will give you a sample code for this at the next article.

Abstract Profile

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 13:56:02

Abstract profiles are defined from PCS to PCS (Profile Connection Space) and enable colour transformations to be defined that provide some specific colour effects. This profile represents abstract transforms and does not represent any device model. Colour transformations using abstract profiles are performed from PCS to PCS. Abstract profiles cannot be embedded in images.

What is a device link profile?

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 13:43:19

In a normal workflow situation, the color space of the input device is transformed to the color space of the output device via the device-independent L*a*b* color space (known as the profile connection space). This process requires two different profiles — a source profile and a destination profile. Color conversion using source and destination profiles A device link profile is a special kind of ICC profile that converts the color space of the input device directly into the color space of the output device, whereby the output device can be either a physical printer or a file format. Unlike ordinary source or destination profiles, they do not describe a specific color space, but define the conversion from a source color space to a destination color space. The basis for creating a device link profile is, therefore, always an ordinary ICC profile. Device link profiles are most commonly applied to direct CMYK-to-CMYK transformations because converting via a device-independent color space can lead to undesirable effects, such as unsmooth color gradients. In a device link profile the color separations are maintained, thus preserving the black channel of the source profile. Indeed, preserving the black channel of the input color space is one of the main advantages of using a device link profile. For this reason, device link profiles are often used during data preparation, e.g. to convert from ISOcoated to ISOuncoated. Furthermore, device link profiles enable you to by-pass the L*a*b* color space, thus preventing contamination by other colors, e.g. 50% black stays 50% black. However, you should be aware that device link profiles are not as flexible in use as other ICC profiles. Each device link profile can only be used for the specific combination of source and destination profiles for which it was created. Color conversion using a device link profile

World’s oldest animation, 5,200 years old

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 17:48:49

An Italian team of archaeologists unearthed the goblet in the 1970s from a burial site in Iran’s Burnt City, but it was only recently that researchers noticed the images on the bowl tell an animated visual story. Full Story

A Day at the Beach in China

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 10:14:15

A Day at the Beach in China -> I guess it's South Korea!

Why I don't get Adobe FLEX

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 10:10:58

Check Yaniv Golan's blog for the full story. He mentioned these disadvantages or problems with FLEX in his blog, and I totally agree with him. Yes, FLEX does have several challenges to get over. However, I believe that FLEX has bigger advantages than disadvantages. "And what about search engines and other content-aware tools, which cannot easily access the content delivered by Flex applications? And permalinks, which do not work as naturally with Flex as they do with HTML? How do you bookmark a piece of content in a Flex application on Delicious? And - which surprises will you run into when you hit the browser's Back button?" Recently, I developed two HTML web sites and spent a lot of time to optimize pages for different browsers. I think this was a waste of time. Why spend extra time to optimize the same pages for different browsers? Developing FLEXyLog is a real fun. I spend more time to develop features rather than tuning up things. I implemented permanent links so that each article can be directly accessed with the links. With a little bit of implementation efforts, you can make permalinks work with FLEX 3. Although FLEX provides HTML wrappers to support browser history, somehow, it's not working for my blog. I am still working on it to make it work. I know that Adobe is working very hard on seaching capability for swf files. They may soon provide solutions. Overall, I still believe that FLEX will be successful. I haven't tried Microsoft Silverlight, but from several reviews I sense that FLEX is way ahead of Silverlight. I will definately try Silverlight though.

6 AIR apps to check

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 10:04:07

Adobe's AIR platform allows developers to create web applications that run on your desktop without the need of a web browser. Recently, Adobe released the official version 1.0. I have been using Google Analytics, and it's really handy. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/some_adobe_air_apps_worth_a_look.php

I can't believe it's not Twitter - Snitter

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 10:01:57

Snitter is "Snook's Twitter": an Adobe AIR-powered application for twittering. Twitter let's you post small 140 character messages letting people know what you're up to.

Let my people go

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 10:00:01

Dear Colleague, Dear Friends On behalf of the 3000 plus Korean American Pastors, and their million of congregation members, who make up the Korean Church Coalition (KCC) in the United States and abroad, I would like to extend our warmest greetings to you, in the name of our Lord. KCC was formed in 2004 as a non-partisan and non-denominational Christian organization. Our main purpose is to bring an end to the sufferings endured by our brothers and sisters in North Korea, as well as China and other parts of the world, through non-violent means. On September 27, 2004, KCC held its first inaugural conference at the LAX Hilton, which was attended by over 2000 Korean American Pastors. Since February 2005, regional churches of the KCC have been hosting prayer vigils throughout the United States, Canada, and abroad, which was attended by hundreds of thousands of Koreans. Currently, KCC now has representative pastors located in every major city and state in the United States. Since that inaugural event in 2004, one message came through with a consistent and moral clarity, from the prayers of hundreds of thousands of Koreans in the United States and around the world: "Let the North Koreans Go Free." Currently, over 300,000 North Korean Refugees are living in China. Yet, China refuses to recognize them as refugees, and treats them as criminals. They stand by and watch as North Korean girls and women are kidnapped and sold and resold as sex slaves. They stand by and watch as North Koreans work as slaves for shelter and food. And when these North Korean refugees seek help from the authorities, or ask to be sent to a third country that is willing and able to accept them, they repatriate them back to North Korea, where five out of six are murdered in prison. China is responsible for all of these abuses and for the murder by the North Korean government of numerous refugees. The time has long passed for all of us in America to remain silent, and n July, 2007, KCC member pastors held its "Let My People Go" before the Beijing Olympics banner and resolution campaign. In this campaign, we are proclaiming to China that "if you want to host the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, in conformity with the Spirit of which the Olympic games represents, stop turning your backs on the North Korean Refugees residing within your borders." "Grant them Refugee Status and at least the minimal protection afforded to them under international law." "Stop the repatriation back into North Korea, but rather send them to a third country of their choice willing and able to accept them." "You have both a legal and moral obligation to do so." Since the rally, we have received the support and endorsement of America's greatest leaders, both liberal and conservative. Not just Christians, but also Catholics, Jews, and others. What was particularly amazing was that US Congressman Ed Royce (R-CA-39), with primary cosponsor Rep. Diane Watson (D-CA-33), passed House Resolution 234 which "calls on China to honor its obligations under the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol by: halting the forced repatriation of North Korean refugees; terminating the practice of automatically classifying all North Korean border crossers as illegal economic migrants; and granting the UN High Commissioner for Refugees unfettered access to such refugees." Will you also please join us in this endeavor? Please support with your prayers and by displaying our "Let My People Go" banners and bumper stickers, as well as joining our $63 campaign. We will not stop praying, nor rest, until Freedom for all North Koreans Refugees is won, wherever they may be. In His Grace, Rev. Peter I. Sohn President, KCC Go to Let My People Go Web