Why mention the Matrix? Because eventually there comes a point in the life of every developer where they must make a choice: red pill, or blue pill.

You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. – Morpheus

In the film, Neo takes the red pill, and is freed from the clutches of the Matrix. He learns how to enter and exit the Matrix at will, and essentially gains superpowers. Neo is able to move fast enough to dodge bullets, fly, and have incredible strength, all because he has learned how to fully take advantage of the environment that he’s in.

In development though, what are our equivalents of the red pill vs. blue pill? It’s the difference between simply getting something done, and getting it done more efficiently. As developers, we need to learn how to fully manipulate and control our environments and development tools, so that we can be as efficient and as powerful as we can when writing our applications.

So how do we do this? The first step is to look at the tools and applications that you are currently using. How well do you know these apps? Is there something you could learn that would make using them easier, or would make you faster? Why do you even use one application over another? An IDE is designed to make you more productive as a programmer. Unfortunately, too many developers seem to treat their IDE as a glorified text-editor, using a bare-minimum of it’s available features. Worse yet, other developers actively avoid using them, citing reasons such as “Application X is too expensive”, “I can code faster without one”, or “Real coders write binary”.

As an example, I’ve heard the expensive argument too many times with Flex Builder. Sure, you can download the Flex SDK for free and start building Flex and ActionScript 3.0 applications without spending a dime, but if you’re seriously considering doing all of your Flex work using the free SDK, because it’ll save you money, you’re living a lie, and wasting both your and your client’s money. When I first started learning Flex, I was using the free SDK – writing my code using a text editor, and compiling everything using the command-line compiler that comes with the SDK. It was enough to get me started with learning Flex, but there was no way that I was ever going to attempt a serious project using that workflow. It was just too time consuming. Once I finally purchased a copy of Flex Builder, and could take advantage of its code-hinting, searching, class browser, and other features, I was kicking myself, wishing I’d purchased it months earlier.

Most IDEs are targeted towards a specific type of development, be it web, Flash, iPhone, or whatever. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, and I’m not going to declare that what I use is better than what you use. What I want to encourage is that regardless of the IDE that you use, really learn to use it. Learn IDE kung fu.

Each IDE (or other application you use) has various features that are designed to help you work more efficiently. Many have several shortcut keys for text editing, or dropping in snippets of text. As a few examples, in Eclipse, one of my favorite shortcuts is Opt-Up/Down Arrow. This will move a selected block of text up or down one line at a time, which is incredibly handy, and much faster that a Cut, then Paste of the same text in most situations. In Xcode, using CMD-Opt-Up Arrow will toggle between the header and implementation files of the class you’re working in, which again, is very convenient to know. As you may know, the more time you can keep your hands on the keyboard, the more time can be spent writing code.

However, as useful as these shortcuts can be, there are often hundreds of them available in an established app. When you first begin using an IDE or other application, it can be a bit daunting to think about learning all of the various shortcuts or tools available. So where to begin? One thing that works really well for me is either printing out a cheat-sheet of shortcut keys, and taping it up next to my monitor. I’ll then try to be sure and use those new shortcuts as much as I can to get them into my brain. If you’re using an app that has more than 12 users, the odds are pretty good that someone has posted a cheat-sheet of all of the shortcuts an app has online. Usually, a simple Google search can help you find what you need. If you can’t find one, then make one yourself! It doesn’t need to be pretty – it could even be a Post-It note with a few keystrokes scribbled in crayon. The key is to figure out some method that will help remind you that they exist, and what they are. If you find yourself using a feature on a regular basis, it’ll definitely be worth your time to discover if there is a shortcut key associated with that feature. If not by default, many apps will allow you to add custom shortcut keys.

In addition to keyboard shortcuts, many apps have additional features that are designed to help you out, but not many users know about them. I’ll often spend a few minutes each day to browse the menus of an app I use often to see if there’s some feature I’ve been neglecting or haven’t even know about. By browsing the menus or help docs of an app, I’ve found some pretty useful stuff that has really improved my workflows in various applications, or made my life easier. You can often find out little tips & tricks for your apps by searching online for tutorials for that particular app.

Also, learn to customize your apps if you can. If an app is scriptable – learn how to do that. As an example, Flash and Fireworks can be scripted via JavaScript, or have custom panels added, which can be written using ActionScript. Many Mac applications can be scripted through AppleScript. If you find yourself doing the same basic task over and over, see if that’s something that can be automated through an app’s scripting engine. You may spend an hour writing a script, but if you’ll use that script on 15 different projects over the next year, you may save yourself a considerable amount of time.

Applications and IDEs are designed to make you more productive, and when you learn how to fully take advantage of what they have to offer, they can make you feel like the only thing stopping you from writing the code you want to is your typing speed. You don’t need to learn every little detail about the tools you’re using, but it can’t hurt either. You work hard to make sure that your code is as efficient as possible, so why not make sure that you are as well?

Learn kung fu.

This is just a quick little tip I was going to post to Twitter, but I needed a little more than 140 characters to explain it. If you’re like me, ever since Leopard fixed iCal so that it’s dock icon would always display the correct date, even when it wasn’t open, you’ve had iCal as a permanent resident of your dock.

However, this morning I noticed that since updating to Snow Leopard, iCal was only showing the correct date when it was open. As soon as I closed it, it would revert back to displaying Sept. 1 as the date. With all of the little tweaks and enhancements in Snow Leopard, I was pretty bugged that this old issue had crept back in. This issue doesn’t seem to appear on every Mac that’s been updated to Snow Leopard, but based on what I’ve found in my searching for a solution, it’s been hitting more than a few Macs out there.

Luckily, the fix for this was pretty easy: remove iCal from your dock, then drag it back in. As soon as I did that, even when closed, iCal’s dock icon began displaying the correct date again.

Kelly Clarkson: Open Mic is finally live in the iTunes App Store! Rain and Sony Music have been working on this app for a while now, and have really wanted to keep it quiet until it launched. This is our first iPhone application, and we’re incredibly excited to finally get it out into the wild.

The app challenges your singing abilities by asking you to sing along with Kelly Clarkson on songs from her latest album, All I Ever Wanted, and sing them right. This game monitors both the pitch and timing of your singing. If you sing well enough, you might even win the chance to sing with Kelly’s band during the soundcheck at an upcoming show, and go to a special meet & greet with Kelly!

This app has been a blast to work on, and everyone at Rain has done a fantastic job on it, coding, testing, or just cheering each other on. Special thanks go out to Aaron, for sitting at the desk next to me, and snickering every time I would sing into my phone to do some debugging. (Or singing along, depending on the mood he was in.)

So, if you haven’t already got it by now, buy it, sing with it, and love it. Because your life will suck without this app.

(Oh and for the record, we were approved to the app store on our first submission – I guess that means we know what we’re doing after all.

Before the emacs lovers get on my case, for the record, I hate vi, vim, pico, and pretty much every other command line based text editor as well.

Like many developers, several times a day I fire up Terminal on my Mac to take care of a few things, mostly working with Subversion or Git. I don’t mind using Terminal for tasks like these, but for editing text, I absolutely hate it when I need to use emacs or pico. I can never remember the commands to do various things, and not being able to use a mouse for selecting text drives me nuts.

Every time I end up getting kicked into emacs by Terminal, I wish that I was using SubEthaEdit, which is my text editor of choice. I’ve known that those code monkeys had built a command line tool for working with SubEthaEdit (SEE) for a while now, but I never really understood what the point was until today.

I came across this old (2006) blog post by the SEE guys on how to use SEE for writing your commit messages in Subversion, instead of the default editor used by your system. However, using it in Subversion is great, but I wanted to use it for any tool, including Git. Using the instructions from the blog post above as inspiration, after installing the see utility from the preferences pane of SubEthaEdit, I added the following line to my .bash_profile file so that any tool that needs to display a text editor can access it:

export EDITOR='see -w -r'

Now, anytime a command line tool needs to have me edit a file, a SubEthaEdit window will pop open, and once I’m done editing the file, the command line tool will resume, and finish whatever it needed to do with the newly edited file. With Git, this works great, since all I need to type is git commit -a, and when SEE launches, the new window will be already filled with the details of the files changed in the commit, and all I need to add is the commit message.

Of course, once see is installed, you can also use it to open and edit existing files as well, just like you would with emacs or vi. I’m loving this so far, and no longer dread having to exit large amounts of text from the command line. I just wish I’d figured this out years ago when it was first available.

In the trailer, pretty much all you see is a green line that reacts to audio, and occasionally pieces together an image. I thought the effect was pretty slick, and wanted to try and recreate it a little bit. About 15 minutes later, I had something passable, that was kinda fun to watch:

http://www.ghostradio.net/flash/mw2/

As you can see, I didn’t go full-blown and recreate everything, just the green line that reacts to the sound, and I added a bit of glow and fading effects. It’s actually a really simple effect that looks pretty decent, without a bunch of code.

The line reacting to the sound is part of the sample code from the documentation for SoundMixer.computeSpectrum, so you can find a more detailed explanation of what’s happening with the audio there.

For the blurring and glowing effects, all I’m doing is grabbing a snapshot of the green line, and redrawing it with a bit of blur and a glow. By repeatedly blurring it, eventually the snapshot of that line starts to dissolve away.

I’ve posted the source for this as a Flex Builder 3 project you can download here: http://www.ghostradio.net/flash/mw2/mw2trailer.zip

Again, nothing super special, but still kinda fun to play with.

Audio: Call of Duty 4 Gun Sounds by Serpento, video on YouTube.

Today I’d like to present a new theory I’m currently working on. I’ve yet to come up with a name for this, but in summary, here it is:

Any customer service employee deemed too inept to function at the task of actually helping customers is immediately transferred to answering service calls related to the Xbox 360.

Allow me to explain the origins of this theory. In November of 2006 I purchased an Xbox 360 core system. I got a crazy-good deal on it from Amazon, $100 new, as part of Amazon’s Thanksgiving sales. Despite being one of the first revisions of the Xbox 360, I hadn’t had any issues with it, including the manifestation of the dreaded “Red Ring of Death (RRoD)”. Given the high rate of failure among other Xboxes of the same generation, I consider it a minor miracle that mine was still ticking.

Little did I know that the ticking was that of a time bomb.

Denial, Anger, Bargaining, etc.

The night of August 9 I sat down to play a game of NHL 09, and made it about 5 minutes into the game when the screen froze. Since the console was unresponsive, I restarted the Xbox, and was immediately greeted with the RRoD. I didn’t want to believe this was actually happening to me. I turned the Xbox off and on a few times, each time receiving the same results. I then began following the various troubleshooting steps at support.xbox.com, and had no luck. It was then that I realized I may have to actually ship my Xbox back to Microsoft for service.

Frustrated, but slightly relieved that this happened only a few months before the warranty expired, I broke down and decided to open up a service request, and ship my Xbox back for repair. I began to fill out the online service request form, but didn’t submit it, as I couldn’t see an option to receive a shipping box for my Xbox. I could either choose to have Microsoft mail me a return shipping label, or print one myself, after they emailed it to me. However, I wanted more than just a shipping label, I wanted a box.

Why would I be willing to wait for a box? Because I wanted to make sure that my Xbox was being shipped in Microsoft-approved packaging, and that it would arrive in one piece. Sure, I could purchase my own box, but having worked for a mail-order company in the past, I know how picky companies can be about returned items, and wanted to make sure there were no excuses when it was received by the service department. After checking the hours of the service department online, and seeing that they were open for another 45 minutes, I gave them a call, and after a few moments, I was finally able to reach a human being. This person was more than willing to listen to me explain the issues with my Xbox, but then told me that “the system was updating”, and he could do nothing for me, and I would have to call back the next day.

Undeterred, (and having worked in a call center before, and knowing the habits of some employees with minutes left on their shifts) I immediately called back. The second representative I spoke to again listened to my plight, walked me through the steps to verify the problem, and then told me I would need to file a claim online. “Can’t I do that with you?”, I asked, and as told that the only way to file a warranty claim was via the website. I’m going to assume that the system was not in fact “down”, as she was able to verify the serial number of my console, and collect other information from me. I informed her that the reason I was calling was to get a shipping box, and that since I didn’t see the option online, I was going to file my claim by phone. Again, I was told that online filing is the only way to do it, and that shipping boxes have never been an option. I was then disconnected.

I decided to call back one last time, hoping to speak with a reasonable person. Unfortunately, the third rep I spoke to was just as disappointing as the first. He gladly offered to process my claim, and setup a return. However, when I asked about the box, he denied me. However, rather than telling me that boxes have never been an option like the previous rep, he simply told me that as of June 1, 2009, boxes were no longer being shipped out. This confused me. Especially since I was staring at a screen on August 9, 2009, that looked like this:

Apparently, when Microsoft changes their policies, they don’t update sites that their customers might actually see them. They only tell their inept customer service staff. After a bit of discussion with the rep, I gave up, and decided to file the claim online, and ship back my Xbox in my own packaging. Sure, it only cost me six dollars for the packing, and my Xbox is already on the way to Mesquite, TX for repairs, but it’s the fact that each rep I spoke to that night was so unwilling to either help me, or answer my questions. Whether they were unwilling, or couldn’t I don’t know. Either way, I wasn’t asking difficult questions of them. None of the reps could tell me if I would receive my console with repairs made, or if it would be a replacement console. That’s fairly understandable however, as they may not know the extent of the repairs that would need to be made. When I asked about a replacement, if that console would be a new one, or a refurbished one, again, they had no idea.

The history of the RRoD and faulty Xbox 360 consoles is embarrassing enough to Microsoft. Why do they insist on continuing that embarrassment with experiences like mine?

As a side note, I guess now that I don’t have an Xbox for a few weeks, my Wii might finally start to see some regular action again.

Couldn’t resist the Wii joke. Sorry.

I’ll be speaking about an app that Rain has been working on for the last few months, and how we managed to build it. The session, Kelly Clarkson Open Mic: Behind the App, will be a part of the “The Business of iPhone development” session track. Here’s the full session description:

Kelly Clarkson Open Mic : Behind the App

Get the inside story on Kelly Clarkson Open Mic and how it was developed by a team of web devs turned into first-time iDevelopers, who started small by building an application for one of Sony Music’s most popular artists. Join us for a postmortem on the game, where we’ll discuss the successes, difficulties, and other lessons learned during the creation of the application, so that hopefully you can learn from our experiences.

Once the application launches later this summer I’ll be able to swap out the [REDACTED] tags for the real name of the application – and yes, it will launch before 360|iDev happens.

Update: The app is now live!

If you’re even thinking about going, you’ll want to register ASAP, as the tickets are cheaper on a first come, first serve basis. So register at http://360idev.eventbrite.com/ now to get the best possible price.

AT&T has failed big time with this launch, in a few obvious ways, but there’s one spot where I’m going to redirect that FAIL right back at the source of the accusations. So, where did AT&T drop the ball?

MMS Support FAIL

MMS is the ability to send a picture, video, or audio along with your text messages – a Multimedia Messaging Service. When iPhone OS 3.0 launches next week, along with the new iPhone, iPhone owners will finally have the ability to send MMS messages. Unless, of course, you’re using your iPhone on AT&T. Which a majority of iPhone users are doing. Other iPhone users around the world will have this feature enabled out of the box, but here in the US, AT&T has shown us that an advanced feature such as that is just too much for them to handle right now.

Of course, MMS on the iPhone is a two part FAIL, the first part directed towards AT&T, the other at Apple. Can Apple explain why iPhone users have had to wait two years for a feature that the free Nokia clunker that AT&T gave me two years ago has had that feature, and it works just fine? Of course, if the iPhone had that feature on day one, then they couldn’t treat it like some fantastic new feature that they came up with.

Tethering FAIL

The second FAIL on AT&T’s part is the tethering option, or being able to share your iPhone’s internet connection with your computer. Again, being what amounts to the flagship carrier of the iPhone, this feature needs to be working now. Not sometime later this summer. I honestly don’t think anyone will be surprised if Apple doesn’t renew AT&T’s exclusivity, based on their apparent lack of preparation for this feature, or the MMS.

Pricing FAIL

<rant>

The biggest cries of FAIl that I’m hearing about AT&T’s handling of the iPhone 3G S is the pricing structure. Current owners are up in arms over the fact that to upgrade to the 3G S, it could cost them almost $700, and that’s completely unreasonable for iPhone owners. (Here’s where I’m probably going to piss off the most folks now…) The pricing is not a FAIL by AT&T. More like the mobile industry in general, or the folks who don’t read the fine print when agreeing to contract terms.

I do not own an iPhone. I have a Nokia 6555 that I got for free when I switched to AT&T a couple of years ago. Last night I checked out upgrade pricing for my account, and I fall into the same category as iPhone 3G owners – the dreaded list of “non-qualifying” customers. I would have to pay the same $700 to upgrade to the new iPhone as well. Why am I not complaining though? Because I realize that unfortunately, I’m still under the contract I signed to get that free phone in the first place, technically I’m still paying for that “free” phone. I could complain, but it’s something I agreed to when I signed the contract. Until my contract is up, I’m not eligible for special pricing on any phones.

Suppose I wanted to upgrade my current phone to something else – even one of the “free” phones AT&T currently offers. For new customers, or “qualifying existing customers” (defined by the AT&T rep I spoke to on the phone last night as customers not currently under another contract), here’s the upgrade pricing for three of the “free” phones listed on AT&T’s site:

• Sony Ericsson W350 – $150
• Samsung a637 – $169.99
• Pantech C630 – $229.99

Yup. Free to new customers, but up to $230 for “valued customers” like me, plus an $18 upgrade fee. (As a side note, AT&T really needs to change that “valued customer” wording.)

“But… but… I didn’t need to pay a crazy upgrade cost to switch from my original iPhone to the iPhone 3G!” Of course not – you paid full price for your original iPhone. The 3G was then cheaper for you because AT&T subsidized the price of that handset. Unfortunately for you though, when you bought your 3G at the subsidized price, that price was based on you keeping that handset for the full two years of your contract. That’s the exact reason why they’re now asking you to pay more for the 3G S upgrade – AT&T is essentially rolling the cost of the remainder of your existing 3G contract into the new phone’s price. They’re doing the exact same thing to me – because I’m still under contract, in their eyes I have to finish paying for my “free” phone. (Even though with less than a month left on my contract, I don’t understand why my upgrade pricing is the same as someone with a year left on theirs. Why isn’t that upgrade rate pro-rated?)

After speaking with AT&T last night, they informed me that once my contract expires next month, I’ll be eligible to get the 3G S at the prices mentioned in the keynote yesterday. Once my contract expires, I’ll become a “qualifying customer”. I would assume that any original iPhone owners who didn’t upgrade to the 3G will as well. (Of course, you’d need to confirm this with AT&T yourself for your own account.)

I realize that many folks like to have the greatest and latest piece of hardware – I can appreciate that. However, I don’t understand why many iPhone owners are so up in arms about this. These are terms that you agreed to. I’ve heard many talk about petitions, and that iPhone owners should be able to upgrade without the penalty. Why? Why should iPhone owners get preferential treatment? Why not the Nokia fanboy out there that wants to upgrade his Nokia every year? When you sign those contracts to get the cheaper phones, you’re all under the same rules, regardless of who makes your handset.

Well, what about agreeing to a new contract with the 3G S? As I see it, you’d still be in the same boat – you still owe AT&T for the subsidy on your 3G, so either you roll that cost into the hardware price, or make the contract a three or four year, instead of the two. Either way, you’re still going to pay a higher price.

Will I be getting the 3G S? I plan on it. Of course, I’ll be waiting until next month to do so, because it would be just plain stupid to pay extra to upgrade now, when I can wait a month to do so, and save a few hundred bucks. I also realize that I’ll be agreeing to a 2 year contract to get the phone at that price, so next year when a new iPhone comes out, I won’t be able to get the new pricing, and would have to pay a crazy price to upgrade.

I’m not trying to defend AT&T here – I personally think the mobile industry is screwed up, and hate the notion of any contracts to get a phone. I just think it’s important that folks try to actually consider the other side of the story here. AT&T has done a lot of things incredibly wrong, or just plain stupid, but this pricing isn’t one of them. Sometimes life just sucks, and you can’t get what you want – sorry.

</rant>

I’m just renewing my notes from the last few days, and making plans for the rest of this week. I’ve been so busy lately trying to prepare my presentation and meet some deadlines that I’ve been neglecting the blog, so I figured I’d at least take advantage of this time to get caught up on at least one thing. Rather than bore you with a minute-by-minute recap of the last three days, I’ll just call out a few things that really stood out to me.

The Venue

First off, John and Tom outdid themselves with the venue selection. The Crowne Plaza Hotel at Union Station is one classy place. Sure, there’s an Amtrak station next door, and you could occasionally hear a train rumble through in the middle of the night, but it wasn’t anything that the hotel-supplied earplugs couldn’t take care of. It was one of the nicer hotels I’ve stayed at, and having the conference in the hotel meeting areas was very nice.

The grand hall where keynotes and meals were held was beautiful, and the food was top-notch. (Especially the chicken tortilla things – those were tasty.) Best conference-supplied meals ever. As for the meeting rooms, it was fantastic having tables for every seat, and power strips under each table. I only ended up with a dead battery once, and that was because I forgot to plugin. Also, zero issues using the wifi. How often do you see that happen when hundreds of geeks converge on one location?

addEventListener() – Now what?

After the keynote, the first session I attended as pretty much the best session ever, titled “addEventListener() – Now what?”. However, I only get to say that because I was the presenter. This was my first time presenting at an event like this, and I loved it. While it was also slightly terrifying, and I was pretty nervous presenting (I’m sure it showed), it was still a lot of fun. I’ve presented several times to our local user groups, at work, and even taught a few Flash classes locally, there was a big difference between the groups of 15-30 people I’m used to, and a room with almost 80. Still fun though, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. I’ve heard mostly good things so far, so I think it went fairly well.

I thought the sessions would be recorded this time like they were last year, but they weren’t. I’m almost done writing up an article based on my presentation, so once that’s done, I’ll post it here, with all of the sample code from the session. In the meantime, you can download the slides and sample code.

Phidgets – Leonard Souza

This one was awesome. Phidgets are a collection of hardware components that you can interface with your computer via USB and control via ActionScript. Stuff like servo motors, light sensors, relays, etc. I want some of these. They interact with AS3 via a downloadable socket server provided by the Phidgets folks. The demos in the presentation included controlling a webcam mounted on a servo, a light sensor that controlled the alpha values of some UIComponents in a Flex app, and a few strings of Christmas lights that served as an audio visualizer, pulsing to the beat of a music video. I now know what I need to buy in order to properly decorate my house this winter.

This session showed how easy it was get things setup and working, with really not that much code. It also inspired a few of us with a lot of ideas for future projects, from more interactive displays, to some ways to better hot rod the foosball table in the office back home.

Structured Log Testing – Renaun Erickson

This was an interesting session from a testing standpoint. Sure, unit testing is great and all, but sometimes you need to test things that unit testing won’t always catch. Or, there are instances where your testers won’t have access to those unit tests, but they’ll be complaining that your app keeps crashing. Structured Log Testing is designed to help in situations like this. You place logging statements throughout your application, and as your app runs, these logs are collected by a standalone application that can save the series of log statements. This can then be used to generate a script which can be used to help replay the series of actions that led to any failures in your application. Cool stuff, and worth checking out.

Advanced Data Visualization – Tom Gonzalez

This session was the premiere of the Axiis Data Visualization Framework. Rather than being another set of charting components, Axiis is a framework that helps you to easily build something to visualize your data using MXML, similar to creating graphics using Degrafa. Anyone who has had to extend the Flex Charting components would be very interested in Axiis, as it seemed much easier. Also, it’s been released under an MIT license, so it’s much cheaper to use than the Adobe set. Open source FTW.

Cool “Sugar Honey Ice Tea” – Doug McCune

(Keeping it family-friendly here.)

Doug delivered as promised. Sessions like Doug’s are some of my favorite things at these events. Sure, in other sessions you get to see great new tools, learn new techniques, or insider tech info from Adobe folks, but sometimes it’s just fun to sit back, and get inspired by what someone else has done. And, knowing Doug, you know it’s going to be entertaining, and at times, just downright disturbing.

One of the projects shown off was something called STEGAsaurus, based on a technique called Steganography. This was an AIR app which can embed text or even other files into an image file. The image still looks normal, however at first look you wouldn’t suspect that there was a secret message lurking in the pixels. He also demonstrated some face-tracking code, that really worked pretty well. It was used to implement his “Safe SEXTing” app, which can be used so that if you decide to take nudie pics of yourself to send to your friends, at least your face would be blurred out automatically. Even cooler, the face tracking was used to implement Johnny Lee’s famous Head Tracking tech, using only a webcam, rather than a WiiMote and infrared-equipped glasses. Very cool.

Of course though, the one thing that will forever be etched into my retinas for better or worse is the sight of Doug with female breasts. Cool demo, frightening end result. Using the FLARToolkit, and a marker drawn onto his chest, Doug was able to give himself a brand new body – at least on the computer screen. Still a pretty cool demo though, and a fitting end to what was my favorite session of the show. You can’t help but leave wondering what crazy ideas you might be able to pull off, if you just sit down and start coding.

Summary

360|Flex is definitely worth the expense, both in the financial cost and the time away from the office. The guys behind the show aren’t in it for the cash, but the community, and it shows. They’ve worked hard to make it enjoyable and affordable, and it’s a great product I’d recommend to any Flex developers out there. I always enjoy going out to these conferences, as it’s great to learn, be inspired, or just catch up with friends and meet new ones. You also get to put a face behind the blogs you normally read, and spend time generally just hanging out with a bunch of immensely talented folks.

Why should you go? What does $550 of your hard-earned cash (or your boss’) buy you at 360|Flex Indy?

Well… Not only will I be attending, but I’ll also be speaking on using Events, and how to do more with them beyond the basic addEventListener() call that we all know and love. That’s reason enough to get out there! But, just in case that isn’t reason enough to entice you to go, how about these extra bonuses?

• Almost 60 sessions of Flex, AIR and ActionScript goodness
• 4 days of conference sessions
• 4 days of lunch (great for networking)
• 3 evening receptions at Rock Bottom (again, great for networking)
• 2 (maybe more) different launches of products (Axiis and others)
• 1 Bug Quash event on Sunday (come make Flex better)
• 1 Flex 101 hands-on also on Sunday (to get you prepped for the week)
• 1 Charity Code Jam over the course of the show (to earn some Karma points)
• 1 USB drive jam packed with copies of the sessions and code samples, plus some extra surprises
• A chance to attend the only 360|Flex of 2009

You can check out the schedule for the conference and see who else will be there, and what there presenting here: http://360conferences.com/360flex/downloads/schedule.pdf

If you’ve been thinking about going, register ASAP, as the tickets are almost gone. Register at http://360flex.eventbrite.com now to make sure you get in.

See you next week!