Jenson Press

Thanks for one of the founder (I hope you don’t mind I call you founder) of Singapore Flex User Group, Shunjie, to be kind enough to allow me to make use of photos and videos related to The Actionscript Conference 2008. It’s an event hosted at National Library last Sunday, 19th October 2008 in Singapore! Yes, you did not get me wrong here, we have one of the biggest conference just a few days ago, if you missed that.

A teaser for you all (From Shunjie):
At the Actionscript Conference

Edited on 24th October 2008: Ok, just managed to get this out thanks to Shunjie’s blog at http://www.expertria.com

Since it’s on Seesmic, and I can easily put it here for you

About Passion – TAC

Hmm … too bad I never stay back after the event, else you might see me there too, I’m just, err…too shy to socialize too much =p

The Actionscript Conference 2008 schedule is as followed, I’ve “borrowed” it from TAC website:

8:30am – 9:00am	Registration
9:00am – 9:10am	Hu Shunjie The Actionscript Conference Opening
9:10am – 10:00am	Lee Brimelow What’s in Flash Player 10
10:00am – 10:50am	Michael Plank FDT – Pure Coding Comfort
10:50am – 11:40am	Grant Straker Best Practices in Flex Development
11:40am – 1:00pm	Lunch
1:00pm – 1.50pm	Marco Casario Creating ActionScript Mashup applications with AIR
1:50pm – 2:40pm	Peter Elst RIA Meets Desktop: Introduction to AIR APIs
2:40pm – 3:30pm	Prayank Swaroop What is BlazeDS and how to use it?
3:30pm – 4:10pm	Tea Break
4:10pm – 5:00pm	Stefan Wessels Developing and Launching Your First Flash Lite Application
5:00pm – 5:30pm	Aleksandar Gvozden ActionScript and Social Networking
5:30pm – 6:00pm	Lucky Draw
After 6:00pm	Party Time!

As you can see from the schedule on top, it was started off with a brief introduction from the Manager of Singapore Flex User Group and The Actionscript Conference ‘08 as well as the opening, I was a bit late and hence I was not be able to see the grand opening for myself. I only managed to see the later part, and immediately after that was the presentation by Lee Brimelow, a Platform Evangelist from Adobe. It’s cool that we can know inside out of the new Flash player 10 from him and it’s really very excited. I can feel that everyone just can’t wait any longer to upgrade their flash player to the latest one. Don’t worry it’s not in beta anymore, it’s the official release He shared with us on those key features offered by Flash player 10 within limited time. The features include 3D Effects, Custom Filters and Effects, Advanced Text Layout, Enhanced Drawing API, Dynamic Sound Generation (Enhanced Sound API), and Hardware Acceleration. More information can be viewed and read at Flash Player 10 Top Features.

It’s interesting to see Shunjie holding a piece of white paper written with 5 minutes wording on it to alert the speakers that they only have 5 minutes left for their presentation/speech. Lee Brimelow rushed on the top features in Flash Player 10 as well as available supports in several Adobe CS4 products. So, I must tell you that you must really be there to grasp the essence of FP10 yourself and endure the wow session with Lee Brimelow.

Here is an interview by TAC team with Lee Brimelow:
Lee Brimelow Interview – Actionscript Conference

The next presentation is pretty exciting, as we witnessed the flying coder live performance in front of us. I’m amazed by how fast Michael Plank can code out a complete project within 3 minutes and 50 seconds using FDT. It works well with Actionscript 2 and 3. What is FDT? It’s basically a Actionscript editor which empowers developers to develop RIA in Flash, ActionScript or Adobe AIR a lot faster, easier and definitely more comfortable. FDT is a plug-in which boosts the already mighty open-source platform Eclipse and turns it into a powerful development environment for serious Flash and ActionScript coding. Find out more here: FDT

What really inspired me is the confidence shown by Michael Plank. I really admire him, he’s the god of speed coding, if you must give him a title =p Michael started showing us a traditional way that a normal developer would write his codes, his classes, components and etc, then follow by how FDT can speed up the process and improve your productivity. After that, he challenged us by not using a mouse and with purely use of keyboard shortcut, he repeated the FDT speed coding in just 3 minutes 50 seconds like what I’ve mentioned earlier, 3 mins 50 secs, could you imagine that? Everything! I have to tell you one thing, if there is a recorded video posted up later, you must go and watch it yourself, amazingly impressive!

Here is another interview, done by TAC team with Michael Plank from Power Flasher:
TAC – Interview with Michael Plank

And this, on FDT:
TAC Interview – FDT

Too bad our dear Grant Straker cannot make it for the TAC ‘08 due to personal reason, to present his Best Practices in Flex Development. Thus, we have representative from Esberi Engineering Sense giving presentation to us, Mohammed Khan. And the our long waited lunch break! Cool buffet style where all of us were gathering at level 8 of Singapore National Library. That’s also the time when I had a very fruitful talk with Kenneth and I really learnt a lot from him, I’ve to admit that he would be a good Guru

Alright, another interview with Mohammed Khan for you
TAC Interview – Mohammed Khan

The first session in the afternoon was presented by Marco Casario on Creating ActionScript Mashup applications with AIR. He talks about the power of AIR to build powerful and useful Mashup applications and all the API available for developers and some live examples to really shut your mouth up if you doubt the possibilities. And yes, should I say this is the day for Adobe solutions? Hehe, everything is not only around actionscript, but Adobe! Cool, no wonder they can be one of the biggest sponsor of the event?

Okay, the next one we have on the list was Peter Elst with his presentation on RIA Meets Desktop: Introduction to AIR APIs. This is basically about what AIR API can support. It’s pretty much about how one can use AIR API to build really powerful Desktop application which will pull data from Internet to your desktop without having the needs to launch and blow up your web browser. And you should know that Flex and AIR complement each other in certain ways, and with Flex and AIR in place, you can really build a very powerful RIA and Desktop solution that beyond your imagination. I myself experienced it myself on various samples shown by him and found on the Internet, you really have to see it for yourself to believe it if there’s still doubts lie within you.

A video for you on the interview between TAC and Peter Elst:
TAC Interview – Peter Elst

And then, we have Prayank Swaroop from Adobe too, presenting on What is BlazeDS and how to use it?. PS:Sorry Prayank, I’ve been pestering you on a presentation deck on Flex despite your busy working schedule, I present my sincere apologies to you.

Prayank basically presents us on how Flex and BlazeDS work and how powerful a BlazeDS could be. It actually connect your Flex application to the Java backend server, yes, only Java server. Which you can not only pull data like what normal database server allows you to do, and it can push data from the database server to your Flex application too. It’s not like configuring a trigger to check for updates every now and then or on a preset timing. BlazeDS actually doing data push whenever there is update and it push to all the Flex application automatically and instantly without you having to do anything about it. This is a pretty cool feature provided by BlazeDS to you, and now it’s even made Open Source by Adobe, if you are working with Java server, go grab it and try it now! Even though I’m not using, the features that BlazeDS provides really outshine any other competitors it might meet or already met. Grab BlazeDS HERE.

We have a short tea break to get ourselves refreshed and recharged and come back for the final 2 sessions. One of them totally entertained us by large and everyone just cant stop laughing out really loud! LOL …

Who is it then? He is Stefan Wessels, and he brought us the Developing and Launching Your First Flash Lite Application. Well, he talked to us on the FlashLite for mobile platform application & game development which is really exciting but one can only use up to FlashLite 3 and Actionscript 2 for development. But the potential and fun is there, if you’re really keen on developing on FlashLite for mobile devices. He used the star wars throughout his presentation. You heard light sabre, dark side, why join the dark force, and a lot of hilarious terms which entertain all of us throughout the session. We really enjoy ourselves and he actually inspired me a lot on how one could make use of FlashLite for mobile phones/devices, considering that I myself is one of the mobile app. enthusiasts and I really like mobile platform though I have passion for RIA using Flex as well (Yes, I’m still learning and I consider myself a beginner ).

The last speaker we had for the day was Aleksandar Gvozden on ActionScript and Social Networking. It’s an introduction and sharing on how a developer can build cool apps with Actionscript for Social Networking sites like Facebook, just to name one out of a million

Here are some cool photos of our handsome Alex during his presentation:

I think this is getting very long. But just to share with you that we’re lucky to have various sponsors gave out books for the conference as prizes, throughout the days, a large number of books had been given away to the attendees. A FDT Enterprise License was given out just before the Grand Lucky Draw too! Congratz to the winner! And the lucky draw, yes, first prize walked away with 3 books, while second prize walked home with 2 books, and several lucky beans brought home one book each. I was not that lucky, but I shared the joy with them, congratulations to all!

And not to forget about the hardwork and efforts by FUG and TAC team, well done guys! Hope to attend TAC ‘09 next year again!

Some random shots again for your eyes, sit back and enjoy!

I have to stressed that all photos and videos posted belong to their original owners and they reserved the rights to not to share with anyone else beside authorized site like mine. If you need to link any pictures or videos, please ask for their permission first or to indicate the source of the photos and videos you’ve used. Thank you and enjoy!

Thanks Shunjie and FUG/TAC team for sharing them with me!

I’ve had the honour to attend the TAC with 50% discounted ticket price. But too bad I did not walked home with any book prize from the luckly draw, nor did I won the FDT License.

But I have a nice chat with Seet sitting beside me. He’s from Designer background and recently the company just transferred him to development, thus, he’s now a developer with designer background. I forgot to ask him about the company and stuff he is doing right now. But he’s quite interesting and always keep himself up-to-date with all the IT trends and technologies.

On the other hand, I had a fruitful discussion or rather sharing session with Kenneth, which I learnt quite a lot of things from him, which I have never heard of learnt before. He’s cool and experience which I always regard him as one of the professional developers out there. But he’s humble enough to deny what he’s shared is of much usefulness to me. Well, at least I felt contented, inspired, and motivated, haha …

I will continue to write more on the TAC later while more photos and/or videos have been made available as I didn’t take any during that day. Well, stay tuned!

Well, this question has been harrassing me lately (well, not really harassing in a sense that it distracted me from my work and life). I’m just voicing out here to check with those who might find me annoying or irritating, whether I’m really that annoying/irritating to them?

How do you define annoying, or irritating? Is it when someone makes you feel so distracted, disturbed or frustrated? Or make you find that he/she is taking away your free time, or anything you could define?

What have I done to make you feel that I’ve annoyed you? Honestly I’m not with any intention to do that. I don’t like to irritate people and I always try my best to deal with people harmoniously and never ever try to trouble anyone.

I always live my life peacefully with people around me. In fact, I always try to deal with people in the way they are used to. Or maybe I talk too much? I don’t know, but well, whatever it is, please receive my sincere apologies if you felt offended, annoyed, or irritated.

I have been trying my best to be a better man, all the time, thoughout my life. And I honour and respect everything and everyone, if I have ever done something disappointed you, please forgive me, I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry.

But I do like to express my concerns to people, if you find this annoyed, please let me know, I will stop that on you,a nd stop “disturbing” you.

It might sound sarcastic by making this post, but I sinceely mean everything I’ve written here with 0% of sarcasm or 100% of sincerity. Trust me, I never like to be a faker. But if you think I am, then I would just admit it, if that makes you happy.

I do admit I’m not that good, I have weaknesses and I have bad habits, I do have temper, I do have the similarities that can be found on most of the peopl too, but I’m really am trying to change for better. If you trust me, you have already given me your support.

Ok I think I have to sleep now, have only managed to spare 1% of my time doing some learning on Flex 3. Well, I should try my best to put in more efforts and times, and to make it a habit. Yeah, I mean it too, don’t find me annoyed when I sound alienated to you =p

NIte to all, but do i sound or look annoying or irritating?Tell me, i feel that someone find me annoying or irritating =p