The other day my wife IM'ed me, "Your blog is broken or something." turns out, when you don't post in like 2 months, it has nothing to show.

It's been a busy few months; Tom and I wrapped up 360|Flex Europe, and immediately dove into 360|Flex San Jose 2008. After Milan, my wife and I spent an extra week in Italy, hitting Venice, Florence and Rome.

I got home, started a project with Esria, attended Software 2008, and now am finally enjoying being home.

My project is one challenge after another, but I'm learning a great deal, so it's almost worth it :)

Software 2008 was an experiment to see how I worked with a potential client (free trip to Vegas, can't complain) so that might bear fruit.

I was also in San Jose for a day last week, get this. Denver -> Vegas, vegas -> San Jose in the AM,  San Jose ->Vegas in the afternoon, Vegas -> Denver in the evening. That's some seriously frakked up travel. On top of that, i worked all night the night before on my project, so I didn't go to bed at all. w00t!

Aside of a trip to Japan, followed by another trip to San Jose (friend's wedding) my traveling is mostly done for a bit, I love to travel, but these past few months have been killer!

Tom and I have some interesting things on the horizon too, interesting enough for me to want to accelerate time a smidge to see what happens. I'm not jynxing anything by saying what's up, but I'll say this, we'll be at MAX in a bigger way than "attendee" or even "speaker" Should be really cool.

The other thing, well I don't even know how to make a hint about so you'll just have to wait, the same as me to find out. To quote that not very good Jim Carry movie, "How will it end?"

Without even knowing it, prior to our meeting, she bought a widescreen, HD capable TV.

Tom and I bought a PS3 for 360|Flex Atlanta, since he's already equipped for gaming, and Blue Ray, I got this one. Not counting when it's doing a tour  of duty as the official Rock Band/Guitar Hero station for 360|Flex, it's now our Blue Ray player. I doubt I'll ever own or play a PS3 game, since my gaming days ended when the Original NES died... Good times, good times.

I was pleasantly surprised (I was fully thinking that we'd be buying a new TV sooner than planned to handle HD content) when I upgraded the PS3's OS to support the BD/BlueTooth remote control, and it comes up with "HDMI Device Detected. Use it?"

"Oh hellz yeah!"

I watched a few minutes of Spider-Man 3 (came with the system), and then Transformers, and WOWZA! While I don't think the world changed, or that I'll never watch non 1080 content again, I will say that DAMN it does look great!

I still wouldn't buy one with my own money. It's just too specialized.

Tom and I ordered them for using at the conferences. We typically use our personal machines, which is great, but mine is a MBP, and his is some kind of 12 ton windoze thing, neither are light by any means.

So this way we can carry a little less weight for checking people in, looking things up, doing keynotes, etc.

The other upside, for me is travel. My wife and I are staying in Italy a week beyond 360|Flex Europe and blogging and surfing the web will be much nicer without a 3 or 4 lb MBP. I'll be in Japan in May, again, a lighter machine will rock.

Plus, my MBP is my dev machine, it's much more important and when I travel I sometimes worry about it, losing it or being damaged, would really impact my work.

So my thoughts...

it's nice. it's too small to work on all day, but as a second machine, it's pretty nice. I won't say how light it is, because I knew it was light, and those reviewers who repeat the obvious are kinda lame. Battery run time, easy to argue, weight, kinda hard, I figured Steve wasn't fudging.

Combined with .mac I think it really comes into it's own as a second machine. I moved all my conference stuff to .mac and created aliases in my regular docs folders. I have my iDisk available offline so the files are always there. So far it's pretty smooth. I like it.

I definitely doesn't feel powerful enough to do development, and the Hard drive (we opted for SSD) is WAY too small for that. My MBP has my code, CF and Flex, my iTunes library, my iPhoto library (not really that big), and gb's and gb's of other data, no way 64gb, or even 80, could handle it.

The battery seems ok, I've yet to run it down. The power adapter is pretty whack. It's yet another brick to carry (should I take both machines) and it seems like the plug could easily have been a flat spot in the body to accommodate a standard mag safe plug, but this way consumers have to buy additional plugs, more $.

The fancy multi-touch trackpad.... haven't used it. Firefox doesn't recognize it (obviously) and I can't fit my photos on it, and using it in the Finder, just makes my icons all the wrong size. So I'm not too bummed my MBP doesn't have that feature.

It does boot fast, i'll give it that.

My final verdict (for now at least) it's a good second laptop for travel (we should all be so lucky to have that kind of coin) and presentations, it's no way a primary developer laptop. It may very well work ok for someone who doesn't compile code, or run photoshop often. We're leasing these two, so we can have some write offs for 360Conferences, plus if they suck, we'll buy them for the 1$ fee (cuz we're paying so bloody much) and use them as conference terminals for whatever.

So I zipped up some old 360|Flex folders; Atlanta, Seattle, and San Jose 1, and stuff to make some room. So far so good, I could just keep the archive file in the business folder and get in it, if I need it.

Enter the MacBook AIR (More on that next), so I figure I'll unarchive and copy those up to .mac that way I could have alias's on each machine to have nice access to the data.

Enter the error!

the archive was a monster, 1.24gb, so after a minute or so of processing, OSX tells me that it can't unarchive, error -1 not enough permissions.

Ah hell.

I rebuilt permissions, renamed the file, tried the command line unzip and zip tools, no dice...

The final solution, changing the extension to .rar That seemed to please the unarchiver, go figure.

I know I'm happy.

Packing can be so stressful. I always worry I'll run out of underwear!

I'm getting read to head to SFO for Adobe's Industry Leader and Creative Media Summit. I'm not entirely sure what it means, but sounds fun nonetheless.

It should be exciting, maybe rubbing elbows whomever Adobe thinks is an industry leader :)

My main hope is that it will afford Tom and I a chance to get 360Conferences' name out there a bit more, we're more than 360|Flex (big news on that coming soon, I hope), so we want people to know who we are.

If you're gonna be in attendance, drop a comment or an email and let me know, we can get drinks or something!

I'm really enjoying working on this thing, I really hope other conference organizers can take it and 1. make it better, and 2. make use of it for their events. If for no other reason, than to stop using so much paper.

I've been working on it a lot this week, while I figure out what I want to do next. I've incorporated Rich's UpdateManager so that deploying new versions of the session Survey will be WAY easier!

I've also updated the DB to support multiple events, so now in the configuration file you can specify the ID of the event (among other things) so reusing the app is much easier, with much less coding.

Speaking of config files, I've beefed it up a bit. It started out just holding the location of the backend server, and such. Now you can give your app a title, point to a specific DSN name in your backend, and tell the app where to look for updates.

You can also tell when you're online or off now. There's a little icon that changes from green to red depending on network connection. Network status really confused a lot of people who submitted several not realizing they were offline, and the app not providing proper feedback about saving online. It does that now too.

I'm pretty happy with it and am working with Sim to get it hosted, trac'ed, etc so folks can start submitting bugs, enhancements, etc I'm really hopeful that this app can help Greenify conferences, and improve the feedback we can provide to speakers. Using this tool, Tom and I gave our 360|Flex Atlanta speakers feedback in just about a week of the conference ending, w00t!

Stay tuned for the official announcement.

Having never done any SQLite stuff prior to the session survey, building it was a definite learning experience.

The hardest part of building with SQLite I think, is working with existing data. Writing data for later retrieval, cake. retrieving "offline" data, that was a bit more labor.

To start, populating the SQLite DB, isn't fun. I bought an off the shelve tool, SQLite Manager, that I like a whole lot. It supports SQLlite 2 and 3.

I'm not sure, but I'm guessing it's the nature of SQLite files, that once you've created the table and started working with it, making changes to structure, ain't possible.

I suppose since it's a flat file of some sort, making structure changes once populated, wouldn't be possible, but still a pisser. LOL.

Make sure when you create your "offline" tables, you know what you want.

For the survey app, we needed users to be able to still pick a track, and still pick a session from that track.

Tom and I ended up making our Cairngorm commands dual prupose. Getting on and off line data. Detecting whether the user is connected as a simple matter of implementing a URLMonitor to ping our site.

The command, looks for our global "am I online" var, and if we're not online, executes the SQLite functionality.

In order to make the commands as loosely coupled (for lack of a better term) to being on or off-line, we made the SQL result handler, call the command's normal result. From there the result() looks to see what type of result it's getting, since delegate sends a different type of result Object, than the SQL connection does. From there, it's a matter of formatting the data and storing it.

Our execute() looks like

if (model.networkConnection)
            {
                var delegate:SurveyDelegate = new SurveyDelegate(this);
           
                delegate.getTracks();
            } else {
                var connection:SQLConnection = new SQLConnection();
                var dbFileString : String = "360Survey.sqlite";
               
                var dbFile = File.applicationDirectory.resolvePath(dbFileString);
               
                connection.open(dbFile);
                var sqlQuery:String = "SELECT trackID, trackTitle, trackShortName FROM tbl_tracks";
                dbStatement.sqlConnection = connection;
                dbStatement.text = sqlQuery;
   
                dbStatement.addEventListener(SQLEvent.RESULT, onRetrieveDataResult);
                dbStatement.addEventListener(SQLErrorEvent.ERROR, onDBError);
   
                dbStatement.execute();
               
               
            }

Then the result() does the "what did I just get" logic.

public function result(data:Object):void
{
    trace('[GetTracksCommand] - Result');
    var resultData:ArrayCollection = new ArrayCollection();
    var tmpAC:ArrayCollection = new ArrayCollection();
        
    if (data.hasOwnProperty("result")) {
        resultData = data.result;
        } else {
            resultData = new ArrayCollection(data.data);
        }

I was a bit worried that it would be harder to build a connection aware application, especially since Tom and I didn't really start writing code, until about 2 weeks out from Atlanta. There's still a few things to re-factor in the code, and get cleaned up, but I think when we put this app out into the Open Source domain, other conferences will be able to easily modify it to their needs, they'll need a CF backend, unless they want to replace the CFCs with .NET, PHP or Java whatever, but hey, it'll be a starting place.

I'm looking for some ideas on what everyone would like to see in the Session Survey. Give me your ideas...

So I'm spending some of my down hours while I work on my next gig working on the session Survey App.

Our launch during the conference went ok, a few bugs, nothing too bad. Now it's time to clean up and enhance. I'm thinking we'll try to get it to a nice 1.0 place, and then put it up on RIAforge. I wanted to put a few more security measures, and user experience enhancements.

I also wanted to get anyone's input on what they'd like before it goes, Open Source.

I'm working on validating Attendee ID, so we can minimize crap data. Then I'll work on setting your ID into a shared Obj for persistence, maybe just us SQL Lite? I dunno.

I'm also going to improve the user feedback, when the app is working in "offline mode" maybe a cool status light or something? Also will make sure the save complete dialog shows up in both modes, not just 'online'

Besides those three things, what would ya'll want in a survey app for conferences?

If you're an attendee, let me know what you think of the app, no holds barred. I know it's rough, shoot! Tom and I worked on it off and on just the last week or two leading up to the Conference. You know the saying about the mechanic having the crappiest car.

I'm excited to get it buttoned up enough to put up on RIAforge, it'll be my first OS project... yippy! I'm really hoping others will jump in to help improve conferences of any type.  Part of the release will include the DB design, you'll need to create your own SQL lite DB for offline mode, with your own data, sorry, can't give out our attendee info.

The API contest is up and running, you ain't even got to be there to win, though, we'd sure like to meet you if you do win!

The contest site is pretty straight forward; build a cool app, upload or link to it, explain it, tell us what API you used.

It's that simple! Next week, we'll roll out the voting portion of the app, let everyone vote on the app(s) they like. We'll announce the winners at 360|Flex Atlanta.

There's all sorts of cool prizes, and categories, take a look here. Plus all those cool sponsors are running their own contests, so you can enter your app in more than one, none of that "one entry per household crap." LOL.

We've got no limitations on our contests, but the sponsors do, so make sure if you plan to enter their contests too, check the rules.

I had to run to the Apple store yesterday to pick up iLife '08, and while I was trying to be noticed by an apple store helper (this was one of those stores without a register counter at all, you get rung up where ever are), I saw the Apple International Power Adapter set. While I've already got a really handy little multi-prong doo-dad, I figured, well I need to charge more than one thing at a time usually. Plus in thinking of 360|Flex Europe, I'd have my MacBook Pro with me, and having a not small adapter to worry about would suck. So.....

I picked this up. It's pretty clever and makes the Apple power brick even more useful. I usually carry the long cord, and the plug only nubbin with me, so now, based on the country I'll be visiting, I just need to carry one more plug only nubbin.

The box comes with a total of 6 adapters, 2 more US plug only nubbins, then the standard assortment of Europe, Asia, Australia, and the UK.

I'm sure there are plenty of cheaper alternatives, but I'm a nut for OEM, gear that looks like the rest of my stuff.

This also works well since I have a trip to Japan coming up, so now I'll be charging my blackberry and my laptop at the same time.

I know, and while I'm not gonna say, I will say that being at 360|Flex Atlanta will be a really good place to find out.

Sure there are rumors; Apple will release a new PDA, Yahoo will be bought by Wal-Mart (no not really, but wouldn't surprise me), etc. but I have it on pretty good authority, that Adobe will have some super big news for us all, and it'll be right around 360|Flex Atlanta REDACTED.

As if the kick ass speakers and really great sponsors weren't enough. As if the 1gb USB flash drive we're using instead of lame ass CD's wasn't enough. Now missing 360|Flex Atlanta could mean you'll miss out on being part of some really big news. How much would that suck?!

See ya there!