<offFlex>Tornado Hits my Hometown</offFlex>

I've been in touch with a lot of you about the recent storm that swept through my home town, but I wanted to take a moment to give a full update now that I finally have a minute to pause.

At about 5pm on Sunday, May 25th a devastating tornado hit my hometown of Parkersburg, IA. I was visiting some friends nearby in La Crosse, WI where I received a call from my parents that no one had heard from my 91 year old grandmother. We also heard news that a woman that lived 4 houses down from her had been a victim of the storm. After an hour or so, some of our good friends that help care for her gave us word that she was pulled from the the wreckage of her house completely unharmed and that she was safely resting in a Red Cross triage facility. She had the good sense and guidance to take shelter in the shower stall of her basement bathroom during the storm. This room ended up being the most undamaged room in the house and was the safest place she could have possibly been.

A lot of friends have been asking me if there's anything they can do to help. If you have the means, I'd suggest donating to one or both of these organizations:

1. The Red Cross.

This organization is awesome. I had always heard about the great stuff they do, in the last few days I was able to see it first hand. They cared for my grandma until we could get to her, tracked down a print out of her medications, contacted a local pharmacist to get her a 3 day supply of medication on the night of the storm, and when we rolled into town the next day they were on the scene handing out water and assisting with the cleanup efforts.


2. Lutheran Disaster Response (LDR)

This may not be a well known organization to you, but if you check out their site you'll quickly find out that when disaster strikes LDR is quickly there. We're told they'll be setting up in town tomorrow to aid in the restoration process. I volunteered to help with Katrina relief work in February this year and the LDR presence is felt strongly by the people displaced by that storm. One person I met there said, "if it wasn't for the volunteers like y'all that keep coming down here, this area would never have been rebuilt."

Both my grandma's and uncle's houses were destroyed by the Tornado. Also, my uncles vehicles and place of work were taken. Driving through town yesterday felt like witnessing the aftermath of a bomb. They are saying that 1/3 of the town has been completely destroyed, including the town's; grocery store, gas station, lumber yard, high school, and several hundred residences.

The response from friends in the town who's houses weren't damaged has been really amazing. They dug in immediately to help us sift through the rubble and recover precious items like photographs and family heirlooms. The governor was in town surveying the damage yesterday and asked the president for federal assistance. Anything you can do to encourage your representatives to support the federal efforts to help the town rebuild would also be appreciated. One phone call might not do much, but (especially in an election year) a few hundred or thousand calls might see some action.

Thanks to everyone who has been supportive to my family and me in the last few days. I'll be heading back to help cleanup as soon as I pick up my sister from the airport.

-adam

New Rocky Mountain Adobe Users Group Site

The Adobe Users Group in the Denver area has a pretty sweet new site www.rmaug.com. The site and user group are maintained by the crew at RealEyes. My favorite feature so far is the blog aggregator for the local Adobe / RIA bloggers. It's cool to see how much is going on in the Denver/Boulder area in terms of new technology. Stop by and give the site a look, and if you're an RIA coder looking for a new home, I'd consider checking out Denver. Also, if you're a local technology blogger submit your feed url to rmaug and get it aggregated. (They may want you to be a user group participant though.. which would seem fair to me.)

Merapi + Physics

Today at Web Maniacs I gave a fairly brief, short notice talk on Merapi. I had a few slides and presented a couple examples. The coolest example by far is something that Doug McCune helped me throw together. This example involves using a physics engine for Flex called Foam and Merapi to invoke the Java/C call SMS/Unimotion to read the Mac Book Pro's accelerometer. Rob Rusher (also a speaker at Web Manics) was nice enough to shoot a video of this example:


and here's a screen shot:


The source code needed in the Flex app is this tag:

  <gyroscope:merapigyroscope id="gyro">

The MerapiGyroscope class has a few properties (smsX, smsY, smsZ) that are bindable and automatically updated by the Java side of Merapi.

This is sneak peak of much more cool stuff to come from the framework and I can guarantee that these libraries will be available for you to play with soon.

Sean The Flex Guy and UM

Another great developer started working with Universal Mind recently. I met Sean Moore via twitter and blogs and have been really impressed with his skills and background. You can check out Sean's post about it on his blog.

Glad your on a UM project Sean.. Hopefully we'll work together directly soon, then it'll really "watch out now" time.

InsideRIA Post - More on Static Code

I have a new post up on InsideRIA called : More on Static Code. This is in response to the high demand that I saw in my blog analytics for a post I did sometime back on this blog called Static Code Blocks!. 

I hope you find it helpful.

-adam

Web Maniacs 2008

When I originally submitted two topics for Web Maniacs a few months ago I figured I might end up presenting one of them. Now I’m doing four. 

In order of appearance:

9a, Wed: Advanced Skinning and Component Development

This session will actually be more about skinning and less about component development. After presenting this topic at 360 Flex | Atlanta I learned that the CS3 design extensions and general Flex skinning techniques are more than enough info to fill a session. I’ll be happy to answer any questions on component development, but the focus of the talk will be all the different ways to create skins. There are various pros and cons associated with each skinning method and we’ll talk a bit about those as well.

2p, Wed: The Merapi Project - A Framework for Bridging Java and AIR

I’ll be presenting some samples applications in this session and answering questions regarding the project. We’ll be entering a private alpha cycle during Web Maniacs, so this is an exciting time for Merapi. If you have an interest in how to push the boundaries of AIR to extend into Java at the desktop, come check out this session.

9a, Thu: Design Patterns and Architecture Frameworks

In this session I’ll be presenting several of the design patterns found in the classic Gamma, Helm, Johnson, and Vlissides text “Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software,” with a Flex twist. Some of these patterns appear the the Flex framework, some appear in Flex application frameworks, and some are just common patterns used in the everyday life of an OO developer. This talk is focused towards the intermediate to expert level object oriented programmer.

11a, Thu: Flex Open Source Panel Discussion

This panel discussion will include founders and contributors from various open source projects in the Flex community. I’ll introduce the panel and each project that’s represented. Then, we’ll pose some general questions about open source technology and the implications on using OS projects in your Flex applications. As we wrap up, we’ll take general questions on OS as well as specific questions for the panel regarding the projects they work on. If you're interested in being on the panel, please contact me at adamflater at gmail dot com.

Whew... I think that’s about it. See you all in D.C. and watch my blog for assets from these talks.

thanks for reading

-adam

Need Opinions on LFFS

As many of you know I've been co-writing a series on the O'Reilly site www.insideria.com with my friend Scott Sheridan called Learning Flex from Scratch.  A big thanks to Rich Tretola for having us on as a part of Inside RIA. 

When we started the series Scott had no experience as a programmer. His academic background is in Psychology and he is a music and yoga teacher. He literally began this project at a point of learning Flex from scratch. My academic background is in Computer Science and Sociology. One of the things that interested me in the very small amount of study I did in the Sociology of Eduction is the idea that students often make the best teachers. So, my role in this project was/is as mentor and technical editor as Scott chronicles his experiences learning the ins and outs of becoming a Flex developer.

The insight that I've gained on how a person learns to be a programmer has been invaluable. I hope this project has resulted in a novel resource for the novice to learn how to really use all of the powerful capabilities offered by the Flex platform.

So, we're starting to talk about planning where to go next. John Wilker and Tom Ortega were gracious enough to accept both Scott and myself as presenters at 360 Flex | San Jose. We will be presenting the LFFS series. After that we're open to what comes next and I'd love to hear some feedback on what would be most valuable to those of you out there learning Flex.

Here are some ideas to think about:

 - A full length book in the LFFS style

 - A series of pocket-guide books

 - Continuing the series as is

 - Creating a featured site for LFFS that includes addt'l writers

 - A focus on LFFS sessions at Adobe community events

 

Don't think of this as a comprehensive list of choices or that any choices are mutually exclusive. We'd love to hear what will be the most valuable resource for you. Feel free to comment on this post or e-mail me at adamflater at gmail dot com.

thanks

-adam

LFFS - 9 - MXML Continued... And A Sample Application For You To Work With!

The latest post in the Learning Flex from Scratch series is up. This post continues exploring the MXML language and leaves you with a uncompleted application to finish. The first "homework assignment" of LFFS, if you will. Check back next week for explanation of the solution Scott came up with.

thanks for reading

-adam