All I could say is thats just damn cool! To check out a new (well there was one example of it about a month ago but this is really nice too) CLICK HERE 

I paid another visit to A&E this week to get some more moten metal out of my eye (Damn Grinding), so I havent been 100% and havent done much work on the computer All is well now though so check back soon. 

Yep I have an alpha of the FlabThrotle running now. Its a socket server which will just replicate localhost traffic to a new port but the requests will be "throtled" or slowed to simulate 56kbps modems etc. I know there are other versions of programs out there that do similar things but no simple ones. Once I have a few more bugs ironed out and a few more features finished (like a balloon poping up with the localhost url for an easy click) I will publiclly release the Beta. See the screen shot below; It shows the little settings dialouge and an image loaded on the throtled port. Its nothing flash but just a cool tool for testing flash movies. I wanted to keep it simple and sweet!

For those of you keeping an eye on this blog for Flabulator , my flash widget app, yes I am still working on it, but I got quite frustrated with the alpha issue in .Net. Seems I can only really do it in c++ or a linked c++ dll. Not Fun!! Everything works except alpha channels and I havent gotten round to making the external interface library. The library is this weeks task! Anyone really hanging for this application?

So peeps things will keep on keeping on here check back soon!

HI all, Ahhh back to work tomorow….the work on computers. Kinda missed it which is sad but really enjoyed getting things sorted with the mustang.

One thing I have been noticing around when checking the net at night is the mixed acceptance of "Sparkle" and the posiiblity of it being a "flash killer". One rule I learned while working in tv doing streamed media. "content is king"! and flash has a stable base of developers with more content than you can shake a wacom pen at. So no it will never be a flash killer. I think both will have its place in the ever increasing circle of things as AJAX found its. I encourage people to try it out and find out what it is really good for.

 Im hanging out to watch The Transporter 2. Loved the first one. Guns martial arts and hard core driving. Number two can only get better as they have a bigger budget. )

Also just updating my flatmate just won Round 1 of the Australia strickly dancing. HAHA We give him stick about his tight pants and his white man version of hip hop.

Good stuff tho Richard and Nicole.

Man what a great country, Just to let you know New Zealand (my home country) is having its general election. But it really shows you what a laxed country it is here when one of the major news channels comes up with a drinking game for election night. If a phrase is mentioned during the coverage you drink. It started out the night with the right wing leading by 56% and two hours later now the left by 1%. During the coverage someone stole a small plane from a local airfield and threatened to fly it into the sky tower, but crashed it into the sea before they made it! Maybe he had been playing the drinking game?

Any way progress on the mustang has gone well and the chassis rail is all in. Have enjoyed working with my hands more but now need to nurse my buste knuckles into a typing state as I prepare to return to work on monday. 

 Came across a cool site when trawling the blogs. Its a dhtml version of msn messenger….or chat app of the like. Damn cool use of AJAX if you ask me. Check IT HERE  Is it just me or are things reall cranking in the UI world. Just as something new comes out something better comes along the next day.

Anyway I will be using my works connection to download the winfx pack to run sparkle….and Ill be doing it from IE apparently . Nuff said.

Yep as mentioned in previous posts I have taken the last couple of days off to work on the mustang in the workshop. Wow what a nice break from the computer. Working with my hands to make/modify/fix something has always been a great experience for me. So I drilled out all the spot welds and removed the chassis. Then aligned the new Chassis rail and spent ages setting up and alinging the chassis machine. But really, what a great surprise it was to find that all the measuring I had done in my little garage, doing pretty major repairs….was all within about two mm’s. The floor was bang on!!

So I have till sunday morning to get it finished then its back to work where I have a new data acess Layer to implement in a pretty complex website. Unfortunatly Flabulator has taken a bit of a back seat at the moment, but I would really like to get a beta out there. Also have the workings of Flabthrotle, a small proxy server which takes your local host trafic and replicates it to a different port but with the bandwidth restriced to say 56k etc. This one will be kept really simple (its just a proxy server) but quite usefull me thinks. A coworker Lloyd wrote the initail code to test if pngs being created were infact interlaces (long story) but seeing it in action gave me the idea. I know there are many other products out there on the market but most are way to feature rich for my liking. I just want something really simple:

It will just be a taskbar icon with a context menu from which you tick your desired throtle amount and can set the port you want localhost traffic replicated to (at the throtled limit). Thats it! doesnt touch localhost at all…..only the traffic on the specified port.
 
With all the other talk about Sparkle out there I cant wait to have a play, but really aggree with the general consensus that it will only really be used for windows specific desktop apps. It will open up all those cool UI’s that busy developers have never commited to write for me cause its too hard. If I can get it sorted it may allow me to position my skills in a really interesting area. With flash and sparkle combined you will have Captain UI!. Flash and Macromedia will always be my fav tho. Good product great comunity with a really supportive software company!