Getting Married

Although I intend to maintain this as a Flash-related blog, I feel it's important to mention that Libs and I are tying the knot on Saturday, June 13th!

We're really excited. We've been together for over 8 years, so it's about time.

Declan's all gung ho and keeps saying "Maybe have a wedding?"

Breast Cancer Awareness

A couple of months ago, I was part of a brainstorm involving breast cancer awareness. The idea that popped into my head after the brainstorm made me execute without discussing it with anyone.

However, once I was finished, I sent it off to the man in charge and was told "It's a little dark for what we're looking for."

I don't want it to go to waste, so here's my push for breast cancer awareness.



This links to the donation page at the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation.

Not Canadian? No problem.

American Cancer Society

Cancer Research UK

Network of Strength

Information on Breast Cancer.

Those are just a few links. Do a Google search on breast cancer and you'll be inundated.

I'm not an activist, I just really liked the image and didn't want to see it discarded.

FlashontheBeach

I am so excited about speaking at Flash on the Beach (or FoTB, depending on your interest in acronyms) Brighton.

Get your tickets here.

Suffice it to say, this is a must attend conference.

Besides that, it appears there's a contest for a giveaway pass to the conference.



To quote
Put an FOTB09 badge on your site, link it to us, then fire us an email at badges@flashonthebeach.com to let us know the URL and we'll enter you in a draw for a full 3 day pass!

Now that's a good deal.

Keyboard Events

There was a comment by Muaad for help on how to capture Keyboard Events in AS 3.0. I figured instead of filling up a comment box I'd just go ahead and do a little post on it.

Keyboard Events and capturing them has been around for a long time. I'm going to assume Flash 4 days since I'd built a little animated typer in Flash 4 and can't recall doing it Flash 3.

Like everything else in AS 3.0, you need to import the appropriate class(es);

For capturing Keyboard Events, you'll need;

import flash.events.KeyboardEvent;
Add an eventListener to the stage for whatever you want to capture KEY_DOWN, KEY_UP, etc etc.
stage.addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN,checkKey);

List of Key Codes on Adobe

Source files


There you go, Muaad.

RIP Flash on the Beach Miami '09

It's a sad day to discover that due to the current economic climate, John Davey has canceled the upcoming Flash on the Beach Miami event.

Everyone I know that was speaking, myself included, are thoroughly bummed out. John and his people have consistently put on a great event. Miami would have been John's first foray into North America and we all were excited at the prospect.

Nothing but love, John.

Flash on the Beach Miami '09

Very cool. John Davey is offering a once in a lifetime opportunity for $99 tickets to FoTB Miami ending Wednesday, January 14!

Lee Brimelow explains the whole thing here!

If you don't need to know anything beyond; "99 BUCKS!!!?!?!?! ENDS WEDNESDAY?!?!!?". The discount code is RSKNUTS1.

Here's where you get the tickets.

Aspect Ratio

I've been working on a little something and wanted to maintain a 16:9 aspect ratio no matter what size the browser window was.

Essentially, the calculation is this;
multiplier = 16/9 = 1.7777778

In my test, I used the multiplier on the stageHeight and stageWidth to find out

private function maintainAspectRatio(event:Event):void
{
   width16x9 = stage.stageHeight*multiplier16x9
   height16x9 = stage.stageWidth/multiplier16x9
   if(width16x9 < stage.stageWidth){
      height16x9 = width16x9/multiplier16x9;
   }else{
      width16x9 = height16x9*multiplier16x9;
   }
}

So using an EventListener on the stage I can monitor the current stage size.

stage.addEventListener(Event.RESIZE, maintainAspectRatio);

And there you go.

Here's the test.