How To Build Countdown Timer in ActionScript 2 – taterboy
April 14th, 2010 | Filed under: General Info

The Settings:
The first thing in our code is deciding if our timer is going to blink every second or not. Blinking gives the impressing of time passing and is easier to notice then just one or two numbers incrementing. Just set “blinking” to true or false

/** timer settings  ****************************************************************/
var blinking:Boolean = true;	// allow timers to blink every second
var osecs:Number = 0; 			//used to enable flashing

The Dates:
The countdown timer takes a future date and figures out how many days, hours, mins, and seconds from now until that date arrives. The next thing we need to do is enter in our future date for the timer to count to. To make things easy, the date is broken into year, month, day, hour, min, sec, and millisecond.

/** date settings  ****************************************************************/
// set the target date
var timeToYear:Number = 2012; 	// full year 2010
var timeToMonth:Number = 12; 	// month 1 - 12
var timeToDate:Number = 21; 	// date 1 - 31 depending on month
var timeToHour:Number = 0; 		// hour 0 - 23
var timeToMin:Number = 0; 		// min 0 - 59
var timeToSec:Number = 0; 		// sec 0 - 59
var timeToMilSec:Number = 0; 	// milliseconds 0 - 999

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Technorati Tags: ActionScript 2, AS2, countdown, Date, Flash, timer, Tutorial

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Adobe Developer spotlight: Todd Williams – taterboy
February 7th, 2010 | Filed under: Bio, General Info

Wow! Spotlighted by Adobe, this is really awesome! I couldn’t want to let the month go by without acknowledging how cool it is to have my pretty mug share the Adobe Devnet homepage with those of Kevin Lynch and Ben Forta. It is a great honor to have Adobe notice the work we are doing over here in Tampa. Thank You!

The Thank You Speech:
I would first like to thank…. (music starts playing) .. and It is an honor…. (Large suited men are closing in) … the world would be a much better place if … (being dragged off stage still clinging to the microphone, dragging the podium behind us) .. and in closing I would like to say….

BTW:
My mom now has a print out of the Adobe Devnet homepage on her fridge, as well as bumper sticker on the back of her car saying “My son is Student of the month at Adobe.com/devnet”.

The Links:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/spotlight/spotlight_twilliams.html

P.S. New Tour de Flex samples, as well as a few development tips are currently in the works. Client work and crazy hours has aside, I Hope to be posting them soon.

Technorati Tags: Adobe, AIR, developer, devnet, Flash, Flex, todd williams

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Illustrating In Illustrator 101 part 3 of 5 – taterboy
December 24th, 2009 | Filed under: Design, General Info, Illustrator, Tutorials

Defining Shapes

Lines:
Some may think that illustration is all about the lines, comics and other art styles may give this impression. I use line-work in most of my illustration styles, though not always black lines. If you do not use lines in your work, you use color or some other means of creating contrast between forms and objects. It is this contrast between colors or light and dark values that produce the lines we think we see everyday in the world around us. We will discuss the use of line-work and contrast to properly define shapes using light and shadow.

Comic artists may use line-work, but on closer inspection we find that those lines do a lot more then just define the shapes of the drawing. The line weight varies as it contours each element. This line variation builds the foundation of the form which gives the illusion of dimension. As you can see with the simple line drawing below. The drawing on the right has more depth while the left circle looks more like a cave drawing.

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Technorati Tags: Adobe Illustrator, basics, contrast, highlights, Illustration, reflective light, rim lighting, shadows, Tutorial

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Try WorkWatcher Free for 1 Month – taterboy
July 21st, 2009 | Filed under: Flex, General Info

WorkWatcher is the application we use at HD Interactive to manage our business and virtual workforce. WorkWatcher will be completing beta very soon and we are offering a free 1 month subscription for a limited time. Anyone interested in giving WorkWatcher a try, to see if we can save your company and employees much time and money, send an email to info@workwatcher.com today.

A Hosted Solution with an AIR Application Client:
We are web developers by day, but wanted to give WorkWatcher the feel of a desktop application. Something you keep open and use throughout the day, but still have the portability of a web application. Just download WorkWatcher to any computer and you can pick up where you left off.
Read More »

Technorati Tags: Adobe AIR, business management, linux, mac, management software, payroll, project management, windows, WorkWatcher

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Box of Sox built using Ansca Corona – taterboy
June 25th, 2009 | Filed under: General Info, iPhone

The gig is up. All those who thought I was really smart for building Box of Sox with xCode now know the truth. Box of Sox and tapDots were built with Corona, not the beer, but an iPhone SDK from Ansca Mobile.

Corona uses a scripting language that is very similar to actionScript, javascript, and php to access the iPhone’s APIs and build applications. As a Flash developer working with Corona was so familiar, I had my first prototype built in less than a day. The best part is my brain did not meltdown like it does trying figure out xCode/Objective C programming.

Ansca is officially announcing Corona and it’s early adopter program this week at the HOW Conference in Austin Texas and will give a live demo on Friday in a session called “iPhone Development for Designers”. They will be joined by our own Sean Carey and Joseph Desetto to talk about the production process used to build Box of Sox.

To find out more about Corona, sign up for the early adopter program and download the SDK, check out their website here.

You can follow some of the up to date happening at the HOW Conference here and here

Ansca is making big news with the Corona SDK from Forbes and Information Week.

Information Week also quoted Trae Regan, another HDI guy, on trying out Ansca. He is a PHP/Database programmer and had his first iPhone prototype, pulling and parsing xml from the web, in a couple hours. Like many of us, Trae has spent numerous hours on xCode/Objective C tutorials with a nice collection of tutorial samples to show for it. Contrast that with a few hours spent with Corona, he was able to build a unique working prototype for a new application from scratch.

Update: Mobile Orchard podcast with Ansca

If you are looking for more details about Corona, check out this podcast at mobileorchard.com. Carlos and Walter from Ansca really get into the inner workings and their vision for Corona.
http://podcast.mobileorchard.com/episode-19-corona-easy-to-implement-high-performance-native-iphone-apps-written-in-lua/

Technorati Tags: Actionscript, Ansca, box of sox, Corona, HOW Conference, iPhone

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Some Sketches and Illustrations Summer 2009 – taterboy
June 1st, 2009 | Filed under: General Info

Some of you may be aware, I know I bring it up all the time, that I began my career as an illustrator. With all of the programming and UI stuff, it could be months between having opportunities to pick up a pencil. So my sketchbooks are filled with notes, website grids and UI diagrams instead of drawings. I am trying to find time to do more sketching, like in high school, I may not pick the best places to start sketching, but the point is to find time to practice.

There have not been very many graphics on the blog, so I hope to balance things with a few sketches and illustrations from the last year or two. They are just sketches, but it is cool to see some of the different styles and subjects.
Read More »

Technorati Tags: box of sox, drawing, harry potter, icons, Illustration, Illustrator, iPhone, nicolas cage, simon cowell, sketches, spiderman, super hero, task list, vector art

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Blog Outages Should Be Fixed – taterboy
May 27th, 2009 | Filed under: General Info

We have had some blog outages over the last few days. I apologize, we should be back up and running strong and hopefully a little faster even.

Thanks for you patients and understanding.

UPDATE

I guess I spoke too soon, had another outage this morning. The good thing is it was unrealted to the other outages and it seems to be working now. Hopefully.

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Happy April Fools Day – taterboy
March 31st, 2009 | Filed under: Flash, General Info

If you came to the site any other way then www.taterboy.com. Click the link below to see our sad attempt at humor.

April Fools Day Link

Have a fun day and be careful.

Update:

To see the prank, click Read More.
Read More »

Technorati Tags: April Fools, AS3, Flash, Funny, Loader

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Adobe MAX 2008 day one – taterboy
November 17th, 2008 | Filed under: General Info

The first day of MAX has ended at 10:30 pm Monday night. East coast time is taking it’s toll, but I know I am not the only one. I just finished moderating a video tips group that was full of drooping eyes.

Today was a success with 4 new t-shirts and a few new tips learned. All of the sessions are going to be available for free at Adobe TV. I have heard the Flash Catylist (thermo) sessions were really good, the Flash Player Internals session had some nice insight on optimizing code, my favorite one of the day. The Flex Tips session showed off some features of Flex Builder that I never new existed and now will not be able to live without.

MAX 2008 Sessions added to Adobe TV - 12/11/08

MAX 2008 on Adobe TV.

Technorati Tags: Adobe Max, AIR, Flash, Flex

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MAX continued – taterboy
November 17th, 2008 | Filed under: General Info

Max keynote is available online now. keynote

I cannot do it justice from my iPhone, so check it out.

Updates:

Apparantly the keynote video does not live at the address I placed above, that is what was on the big screen at the end of the keynote. sorry about that.
Here are a couple links of real live blogging (bet they had a laptop).
Liveblogging MAX 2008 Day 1 General Session Keynote

Adobe MAX 2008: Monday - Keynote

Tour de Flex on a 20′ screen, shot by Greg Wilson. Tour de Flex on a 20 ft Screen

Technorati Tags: 2008, Adobe, AIR, Flash, Flex, keynote, max, Tour de Flex

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