Maruti Swift - Boooked

I just got a 50K hole in my pocket today... it happened all of a sudden, I was planning for a car since sometime... didn't realise it would happen all of a sudden.

Along with my colleagues (Amit and Santosh), I happen to get down the office for a cup of tea, where we decided to zip across to a maruti showroom for a quick glance of their new swift car.
The introductory offer was going on and the prices were going to hike the next day. So all had to happen in a day itself. We just got a test drive done and everything seemed to fit in perfectly.
and I just decided to end up with a 50K hole in the pocket.

The car is just great for its price. The features are amazing.
I bought the second best model
Maruti Swift VXi with ABS technology.
So this will be the first car that I have bought with my money and this will be the biggest investment... - Rs. 4.6 Lacks (my heart is still pounding)



I was really confused about the color... I asked the agent to pick up a color he favors from Red and Black... so Black it was.

well it's gonna take more than 45 days for delivery... would give me some time to decide about the financing and for an auspicious date for the car delivery.

Back From Bangalore Macromedia MAX 2005

BANGALORE
Date: March 17th & 18th 2005(8.30 am to 6.00 pm)
Venue: Hotel Le Meridien, 28, Sankey Road, P.B. No. 174,
Bangalore - 560 052

This is the first time I have ever travelled for a seminar in my life, And it has definitely been worthwhile I spent. Although my company didn't sponser me for this trip I was determined to be there. Couldn't dare to miss the sneak speak preview of the Flash 8 - codename '8 Ball'.

I met a lot of flash enthusiasts, had a ball of a time speaking to them. My camera went beserk clicking pictures all the time. I ended up finishing nearly 4 films on a 4 day trip to Bangalore.

Day One Agenda

• ActionScript for Designers (Greg Rewis)
• Deconstructing Flash Video (Greg Rewis)
• Sneak Peek(Greg Rewis) - my jaw got dislocated
• Building Flash Applications with Dynamic Data (Chak Ming Fai)
• Cold Fusion MX 7 (Chak Ming Fai) - slept during this one
• Migrating to RIA from traditional web and client server applications (James Talbot) - zzzz
• Creating Your First Flex Application (James Talbot) - this got me up... eyes wide open
• Using ActionScript2 in Flex and Flash Applications (James Talbot) - neat

Day Two Agenda

• Using CSS for Page Layout (Greg Rewis) - busy writing notes very interesting
• Building Dynamic Applications with Dreamweaver (Greg Rewis) - never knew that dreamweaver made complicated things so easy.
• Using Templates with Dreamweaver and Contribute (Greg Rewis)
• Deploying Contribute 3 and Web Publishing System (Chak Ming Fai)
• Breeze Session(Chak Ming Fai)
• Macromedia Mobile Solutions (Chak Ming Fai)
• Mobile Developer Program (Bill Perry) -
• Creating Dynamic Applications with Macromedia Flash Lite 1.1 (Bill Perry) - This was a great help for giving a fresh lead to mobile development.
• Flash Opportunities in the Asian mobile market (Arron Fang)
• Content Developer Testimonial (Cyril Ferry)

About the Presenters...

• Greg Rewis - he was just great, very funny and kept everyone on the move.
• Chak Ming Fai - something was wrong with him, he looked and sounded lost. I have attended his sessions earlier and I really looked upon for this one. Somehow this time it was lost.
• Bill Perry - He knew what he was speaking and I really liked the way he explained things.

Spoof -

• I heard that Greg would always remembers his mom during a seminar and he sure did.
• While Bill Perry was displaying a beta version of the Flash Lite CDK and the application crashed and froze still. You should have seen Bill's puzzled blank face.

Flash Communication Server Books

I went through couple of chapters in Flash communication server MX by Kevin Towes. The book starts off in a very basic level. Anyone starting with flash communcation server could understand the book a pretty simple manner. But the content isn't that attractive. The topic seems to be extended worthlessly to fill up the pages for the book. The examples were decent, but I would need to check the code as I see many of them are not written appropriately. In any case since this is the only Flash Comm book I can lay my hands, I cannot do much about it. well the worst down side is also that it is for Flash Communication Server MX 1.0, while MX 1.5 version is the latest in the market.

I wish if the Programming Flash MX 1.5 book by Brian Lesser is published soon in India. The book looks really good and the Flash Comm. mailing list has been very positive with it's review.

Privacy Box Size

I have been working on Flash Communication Server lately, and there was this flash camera feed that were to be broadcasted.

The layout was something like the left side of the html window was suppose to have a web cam window which is made in flash and the right side had html text which would change on runtime.

A single flash is been divided into a presenter/viewer mode. The person who logs in as an admin would have rights to present flash web feed and the others would have the ability to view it only.

The flash movie size was set to 160x120. Since its a web cam only. The web cam worked perfectly on a bigger stage size and on any size in a flash IDE. But it never worked on IE window with a 160x120 flash stage size.
It didn't work because whenver the SWF tries to access the camera. Flash Player displays a Privacy dialog box that lets the user choose whether to allow or deny access to the camera. The privacy dialog box needs a stage size around 215x138 to display, if the stage size is below that the settings and the privacy dialogue box would never appear.



So Make sure your Stage size is at least 215 x 138 pixels; this is the minimum size Flash requires to display the dialog box.

Macromedia Flash Players For Testing.

Older Versions of Flash Player - December 13, 2002
for specific flash 5 & flash 6 players check the below link
Older Minor Versions of Flash Player - October 13, 2003

These are available specifically for Macromedia Flash developers who are examining their sites from the perspective of users with older Flash Players. For normal use, please download the most current version of the Flash Player, available from the Flash Player Download Center.

Before installing a different Flash Player, I would recommend uninstalling the current installed Flash Player and restarting the system. For more information on removing and installing the Flash Player, see How to uninstall the Flash plug-in and ActiveX Control

Macromedia MAX 2004

Below you will find a links to movie of the Sneak Peeks session at Macromedia MAX 2004. A couple of notes before the link...

1) Flex - New charting components (WOW!)
Flex is a new development tool by macromedia. You can see the rich internet application capabilities in the video. The coding is done in MXML (Macromedia XML), this can be done in notepad or use macromedias flex builder to code. Flex Server is required to convert these codes into flash. So ideally you don’t need macromedia flash IDE at all. As flex is a complete development tool. Btw. The client just needs to have flash player to view any flex output.

2) Flash 8 - Blending modes, Filters (drop shadow, etc), Improved Performance in the player, Authoring tool preview, Improved Library, etc...
Flash 8 is not yet released, but some new features have been pointed out. Just Imagine Flash with Photoshop filters.

3) Central - Flex in Central, Flash without shell/chrome!!!
Macromedia Central extends the reach of Flash rich Internet applications and content beyond the browser and into the desktop.
This is used to make offline flash applications; I’ve not yet tried it out.
The video is not complete as the person was out of space.

QuickTime Video Download
Online Link
http://www2.hku.nl/~patrick/SneakPeeks_320x240.mov
http://www.joshdura.com/sneakpeek/SneakPeeks_320x240.mov

If videos are blocked use this link to see the video in flash.
http://www.dengjie.com/temp/8ball/video_content.html

related articles –
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/max2004/articles/gen_session1.html
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/max2004/articles/gen_session2.html
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/max2004/articles/max_themes.html

I better stop before I go on and on with the links J

my blog is in its second year

and this is the second post on blogger. I really suck on this.
But since I am going thru a Lynda.Com training tutorial for blogging. I should be having more info in couple of days and will be more comfertable in posting more things than this only.

lets Hope that I can get some more time for this