Diary: January 2005

Annoying Obscure Flash Bugs Episode 2: The Phantom Caret

(Yes, yes, I know the phantom menace was episode 1, but this is my second annoying obscure Flash bug of the week, and 'Attack of the Ghosting Caret Clones' didnt have quite the same ring to it)

Well, I've just wasted THREE HOURS trying to work around a stupid stupid bug in Macromedia Flash MX Version 6. The problem was that when I used the Selection.setFocus() method, a static non-functioning caret (a ghost caret, if you like) would appear in every TextField that I had, because they were stored in a MovieClip for ease of use. Not a ...

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Productivity Levels Low

Last week was mostly spent working, most days from approximately 9 or 10am to 3 or 4am. Monday I fixed the samba problem with my server and then worked, Tuesday I worked, Wednesday I worked on something different, Thursday I worked, and Friday I worked and then helped celebrate Peter's birthday by visiting the pub and then going to the cinema to watch Team America: World Police. Damn I love that film. Then on Saturday I did some work, Leela came over and helped me eat some chocolate cake, and on Sunday I bought a stapler and some white ...

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Official: ActionScript Is A Joke

When does 1 - 1 not equal 0? When you're writing ActionScript.

Well, not quite. But in the world according to Macromedia, one value of 0.0078125 is different to another value of 0.0078125. What's that I hear, but they're both the same number, easy to represent in binary (1/2/2/2/2/2/2/2), so their value should be 0.0078125? Well, yes, I would agree, but after a while looking at my algorithms to figure out what I was doing wrong, I have actually discovered that Flash does not agree with us. And ...

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ActionScript No Longer Sucks So Much

Oh how I hate ActionScript. I was fed up with it not having hashes, so I wrote my own hash algorithm. It's called like this:

#include "hash.as"

myHash = new Hash();

myHash.set("this key", "some value");

myHash.set("that key", randomObject);

thisText = myHash.get("that key");

Yes, I am lame. I even automatically generated documentation using my automatic documentation generator, and I have added a new section called flash, where my various exciting outings with flash will go. Please let it end here.

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Food, Work and Yay

Well, since my last entry I have gone home for several meetings with people, and redesigned the tonbschl site again. Hurrah! Last week I also went for two all-you-can-eat meals in one day - accidentally, of course. Pizza hut for lunch, followed by F:east for tea. F:east have all you can eat puddings! Result. And then on Saturday I went to Ask with Leela which was great, they do fantastic pizzas.

In between eating and working, I have finished my new site, Yay.org.uk - let me know what you think! But only if what you think is good ...

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