I am posting here the simple example file that I used for my FITC PureMVC presentation.  This is an example of how one might create an application with the PureMVC framework.  It doesn’t do a whole lot, it’s just a simple fortune cookie that when clicked, cracks open to reveal your fortune then lets you view the world’s shortest FLV and a line of text.

However, the fortune is being populated from XML, and all aspects of PureMVC are employed in this example.  If you rip into it, you will soon see how data proxies, mediators, view components, and logic commands are used.  The source is extensively commented, and the example is intentionally simple.

Plus it is one of the few examples I have found that uses Flash rather than Flex, and I think many people are looking for that.

Here is the source.

-tim.

Another FITC has come and gone.  By now this annual event is a regular part of my year.  How long have I been going now?  How many years?

Every year brings new things, and this time was no exception.  At the same time it brings together in one place many familliar faces.  I feel very fortunate to have come across so many good people in the industry that I work in.  It is a special group I think, both creative and technical.  It is a nice feeling to walk into the crowd and see right away a dozen happy faces of people I know.

This time around was particularly good, in that I saw so many graduating students  in those attending.  Some were from last year, some from my recent group of students.  I’m very happy to see them all getting out and putting into practice what they have learned from their proffesors.  This latest group of students really impressed me with their hard work, their dedication, and their teachableness.  I hope that every one of them will find happiness in their careers, and perhaps find a way to return something back when they are able to do so.

I presented this year at FITC – somewhat unexpected I’ll warrant.  Cliff Hall apparently broke his leg if the rumors are true.  While in no way can I fill his shoes, I was able to at least give a good overview of PureMVC, his code framework that I am quite familliar with.  I think the audience did get some good information out of it, but it is obviously hard to condense the whole framework down to one hour.  I do wish Cliff a speedy recovery, and I can only imagine what kind of intense code he will write if confined to his computer.  Look out planet!

Great job to all at FITC, Shawn, Naomi, Rick, Dustin, Dave, and all….well done.  A very good year.

-t.

Today is a very big day readers.

For years I have helped people who wanted to learn object oriented development, and in particular the platform I enjoy a lot – Flash.  It is a fun and sometimes frustrating endeavour.  I recall being extremely anxious myself when first learning, having many ideas but not quite being able to implement them.  It took years of diligent study and practice to come to a point where I felt fluent in the necessary languages.  And later, looking back, I many times thought ‘if I just knew this, I could have saved a lot of time and trouble’.

And so I like to share what I can (keeping in mind that there are likely things I’m doing right now that in the future will make me look back and say ‘if I only knew then…’).  I do workshops and seminars and so forth, have tutored many, and I answer a LOT of emails as schedule allows.

This year, however, was my very first official teaching engagement, that is to say a school specifically brought me on to teach a group of enrolled students Flash development.  My teaching is not ordinary, it is ODD (object design and development…’Oddly Studios’..get it?).  I never wish to simply hand over a bit of code and strand someone.  From day one until now, my goal was to introduce the students to concepts that would expand their minds into architecture – the kind of things you can not get by simply scanning the help files.

Through the semester, we have delved into object relationships, design patterns, and code responsibilities.  We’ve compared inheritance and composition.  We talked about the nine principles of good object oriented development.  And we have talked a LOT about teamwork.

Today is the end result of it.  We have arrived at the final class of the semester, and I go today to receive all the final projects of the students.  It is a diverse group of people with varying interests and levels of interest in code.  My hope out of all of it is that students will come away with a greater knowledge of..code, yes, but more importantly themselves.  The world belongs to someone who understands themselves well.

I expect some will have figured out by now that writing code is not for them.  Some will have caught the fever and will have discovered the drive in them to develop.  Some may have found the planning and architecture interested them most.  Different people with their various filters, will move in their own directions.  My greatest hope is that the time spent in my class will have helped them clarify that direction to themselves.

It’s not just about learning code.  It’s about learning to analyze and use intuition.  And that, friends, makes today a big day.

Well, it is away.  After much work and a great deal of editing, my submission for Blizzard’s worldwide creative writing contest is complete and sent to the fabled game-makers themselves.

Submission Complete

By far the hardest part of the whole process was sticking to the 10000 word limit.  Ten thousand words is not a lot of room to create interesting characters, make the reader get engaged with them, and tell a worthy story.  At one point I was almost seven thousand words over, and I had to do a lot of editing to preserve my story and get it down to the word count.

I wound up taking out a part of the story that I really liked, but with something having to give I decided that the story could remain mostly intact without that part.  I suppose this is the compromise a writer must make.  But for those who are interested, perhaps I will be able to make the missing part available, as it explains in more detail an event only refererenced in the completed submission for Blizzard.

Here is a little teaser;

“The pilot had to give Ice his proper respect. The marine didn’t panic, not one little bit. The pilot saw him calmly take aim, firing with precision, not wasting a single shell. One by one, the frenzied creatures fell, but there were always more to replace the fallen, and Vance could see that slowly but unstoppably they were gaining ground on the marine’s position. In another moment, he and Montoya would be overwhelmed.
It was at that time the pilot felt a strange sensation. Seemingly, he was outside of his body, no longer a participant in its function, but rather just an observer. He saw himself jam the stick forward. In the moment, he couldn’t imagine what his motivations were. Maybe he was just tired of running. Or perhaps he knew that if Ice went down here, he was as good as dead anyway. Maybe he was angry. A picture of Montaya’s pretty face flashed through his mind. All he knew was that his fan jets were supposed to be his last reserve – a last hope burst of speed to outrun an attacker. And yet here he was firing them off, and headed straight into a horde of Zerg.
A part of his mind accepted the fact that he was going to die now. At the same time, another part screamed at him to live. But somehow, in the middle of it all, perhaps born of desperation, a plan began to form in his brain. If only he could reach his team in time, he might be able to give them a chance.”

Wish me luck!!

-timbot