Psyked*

it’s easy once you know how.

Everything there is to know about Flex 4 (’Gumbo’)

Posted by Mark - 29/08/08 at 10:08:21 am

I haven’t had a chance to write anything about yesterdays’ FlexCamp event, but for now just know that Flex 4 sounds awesome, and you should check it out if you’re the least bit interested in Flex.

Check out Mike Chambers’ post on Flex 4 (’Gumbo’):

http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2008/08/27/everything-there-is-to-know-about-flex-4-gumbo/

Just how easy can you make an AIR application installation?

Posted by James - 23/08/08 at 10:08:54 pm

Well, if you’re using the AIR Install Badge - as Greg Wilson demonstrates - it can be surprisingly easy. The Install Badge handles the launching of your application (if you have it already installed), the installation of your application (if you have the AIR framework installed), and the installation of the AIR framework and the subsiquent installation of your application if you have neither.

The whole Flash / AIR auto-updater can be a pain to sort out when you do it yourself, but the result is very efficent from the end-users’ perspective.  Lucky then that the Install Badge template has this sorted for you.

When the ‘AIR framework requirement’ is a hurdle for getting clients to adopt an AIR solution, the ability to auto-install the AIR framework is a powerful arguement…

See Greg Wilson’s post here: http://gregorywilson.wordpress.com/2008/08/21/air-install-badge-use-it/

Big Ideas (don’t get any)

Posted by James - 08/07/08 at 10:07:09 pm

Continue reading Big Ideas (don’t get any)…

Internet woes fixed - thank you OpenDNS!

Posted by James - 20/06/08 at 10:06:58 pm

Argh.  For a couple of days now I’ve been unable to connect to Psyked from my home internet connection, for some inexplicable reason.  I won’t claim to understand any of it, but it seemed like the whole internet worked except my domain.  I could even ping other websites on the same shared server, and access Psyked through a horribly slow open proxy server, but direct connection was a no-no.

Well, a bit of Googling into traceroutes, pings, hostnames and general techie mumbo-jumbo led me to reconfigure my home networks’ DNS servers away from Virgin broadband and onto OpenDNS. Restart the router and boom! we’re back online.

There’s a lot written about a lot of things (namely problems with Virgin broadband, and some contention over the OpenDNS project).  Here’s a few links I picked up, if you’re interested;

Continue reading Internet woes fixed - thank you OpenDNS!…

What’s up with Flash gaming?

Posted by James - 11/06/08 at 11:06:16 pm

I’ve been pondering Flash games for a while now, and it occurred to me that I don’t quite see so many as I thought I used too. I don’t know - maybe its because I just move in different circles now I’m in the ‘professional’ world, but it seems like there’s more emphasis on the practical things like applications or tools and everyones’ forgotten about the fun things like games.

So, where have all the Flash games gone - and has anything changed in the last 4 or 5 years?

Well, Newgrounds is the old one I remember - and except for a ‘Web 2.0′ facelift, it seems like the same old content is there - Stickman animations (StickDude Killing Arena 4), various impressive console-game-style conversions and a variety of time sucking Minigames (The Zombie Wars). Ok, you have to give credit to the guys who made this stuff, but it doesn’t seem like things have progressed at all on the ‘wow factor’.

Continue reading What’s up with Flash gaming?…

The Terminator: Fiction?

Posted by James - 07/06/08 at 08:06:52 pm

Surfing BBCi’s interactive tv services, I couldn’t help take notice of one ominous sounding news report - “Skynet military launch postponed” - yee gads!
Skynet ?!

It gets better with this quote;

Software on the launch vehicle did not behave normally during a test sequence.

Did not behave normally (!) Suddenly I feel less worried about America’s Cyber warfare division (due to become active on October 1st) and more worried about our own military systems. I’ve always thought that the best way to make people believe reality is fiction was to make a movie about it (nobody believes movies are real, right?) and here we are, tempting fate. Uh oh.

See the full BBCi report here.

Facebook security?!

Posted by James - 30/05/08 at 10:05:51 pm

Ah Facebook. As a rule of thumb you shouldn’t really add any more personal information than’s nessessary to a website - but people tend to just forget that, especially on social networking sites. And noone really reads the legal & privacy notices - because they’re about as flexible as the EULA on your videogames, just explain in very careful words just how much they are allowing themselves to abuse your trust.

Just how safe is your data on Facebook then? When you start out, there’s a lot of inital restriction using the website, having to have ‘friends’ or ‘groups’. The most any stranger can see is a small thumbnail, your name and perhaps a few groups or your country. Think that’s safe enough? Wait until you’ve listened to a bit of scaremongering about the third-party applications…

Continue reading Facebook security?!…