Well, it’s certainly been a while between posts, which is why I’ve just installed the Tweetboard Alpha to this blog. Yay! Now, if you look to the left of the page, you’ll see a lime coloured tab. Click it.
The way I see it, as I’m constantly twittering and completely failing to post to this blog, at least my site will be a cool one stop shop for all of my posts; wherever they may come from.
Well, Flash on the Beach ‘09 is already set to go with tickets going on sale as from Monday. For those that have never been, I highly urge you to attend. FOTB is quite undoubtably the best Flash conference this side of the pond (and hopefully, next year, on both sides of the pond). What’s more, when the tickets are made available, the first fifty people to grab those tickets will get them at the amazing price of £129!!! Let me say that again in clear bold text for those nice chaps that can’t be bothered to read all this…
The first 50 people to buy their FOTB tickets will get them for only £129 !!!
That’s an amazing discount. So if your excuse for not going is that you can’t afford it, you no longer have an excuse.
Last year, FOTB had an amazing line up, fantastic after-session parties and free beer. This year promises to be even better, so if you’re a Flash dev, or just love Flash, then you MUST get yourself there!
So, I now have six lucky bugtesters busying away (hopefully) on the new hxGaia port. This version of Gaia provides two new benefits; the first being that you can code against it using the wonderful haXe language, and the second being that you don’t need to use the Flash IDE… So, no more FLA’s and hello 100% coded Gaia apps, thank you very much!
Once I get the thumbs up from the bug testers, I’ll be putting this baby up on haXeLib, as well as on SVN. So, stay tuned!
Well, I think I can deem the haXe talk at the London Flash Platform User Group a success. I’ve had some positive comments, and some of the developers that were present have decided to give haXe a try. That’s all I could have hoped for 
If you missed it, you can see videos of the event, here.
Right, I’m just about to leave for London. This evening, I’m giving two talks at the LFPUG about haXe. The first talk is entitled “haXe : What and Whatever For?”, and the second talk is “haXe : Doing More For Less”. Both talks will be about an hour long, and will leave some time for Q&A. I hope not to be too nervous, but I’m sure it’ll go down well. They’re all a good bunch of lads, really (they have to be, they’re interested in haXe ;-)), so I’m not too worried.
Anyway, if you’re going, I look forward to meeting you, and graciously accepting a pint or two 
Later!
I’ve been asked to create some test / demo apps for the new 8bit XGS game console, thanks to my experience writing games for web and embedded systems, and so of course, I accepted. It should be arriving any day, now, and I can’t wait to get going. The console was developed by none other than the games development guru Andre LaMothe, and is meant to provide a fun platform to teach AVR programming in C. An easier to use 16bit PIC based console with the same (albeit more powerful) peripherals is also available for about $20 more. I’ll write more when I know I’m allowed.
Steven Sacks just pointed me to the FluorineFX Aperture framework, which unobtrusively hooks into AIR apps deployed on Windows machines, providing the AIR apps with the ability to call native Windows API commands, and other cool stuff. This is similar to what the Shu Player provides, only it’s not gonna cost you 250 quid to use. Check it out
Within the last week, I have accepted a gracious offer from Flash and Flex Developer Magazine to become their new regular columnist. This will entail writing a couple of articles about haXe for each edition, as well as other Flash and Flex related information.
For the next edition of FFD, I have written two articles entitled “Tracking Time with Screenweaver HX” and “Multiuser Applications in haXe”. If you haven’t yet subscribed to this publication, I suggest you do so, soon
For those of you into electronics for commerce, as I am, you might be interested in a new product aimed at making real world objects interact with the internet.
Tikitag is a website providing a remote service for secure MiFare tag and card validation. Essentially, you’d purchase the Tikitag RFID reader and tags - or tags on their own, if you already own the reader - then use the Tikitag website to customize access for your own application. This can be anything from a simple URL redirect, whereby owners of a tag can scan it via a reader and be presented with a webpage, to full applications user authentication. The service also works with NFC phones, which can replace the RFID reader.
At the moment, functionality on the website is limited, so I’ve taken the initiative to create a cross-platform dynamic library so as to enable developers to incorporate offline usage of the reader and tags. You can find out more about this on the developers group website.
Grant Davies pointed this out to me; the Flash & Flex Developer magazine. Until now, most magazines sitting in WHSmiths have tended to be a little boring and full of stuff I already know. I’ve had to settle for my favourite ImagineFX magazine, which always inspires me, and maybe the odd copy of a Linux mag for the free distro. However, Flash & Flex Developer looks pretty promising, and it features loads of haXe goodies in the first issue… Can’t get much better than that
Btw, I did have some issues subscribing via their PayPal option for the UK, as it seems they’ve set it up wrong. I’ve told them about it via email, but have had no response. If anyone else feels bummed by this, drop an email yourself, as the more notices they get, the more they may get off of their arses and do something about it 
