55% Chance of … a Black Hole

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No one’s perfect and everyone makes mistakes … including Google. Here is an actual screenshot (with an exploded view of the item of note) of my iGoogle page today.

As you can see, the weather in Germantown calls for a high of 78 degrees, mostly cloudy, and winds approaching that of a Black Hole.

“Sometimes we all just need to laugh a little”

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Flex Builder Hidden Gem!

HELLO WORLD,

Last night I had the pleasure of attending a presentation given by Daniel Daugherty at the MDCFUG. He spoke on the dangers of Copying and Pasting within your code to achieve re-usability. It was a very informative talk but what really stood out for me was something that has little to do with copying and pasting. He showed us a little known feature in Eclipse (and thus present in Flex Builder) – the Local History Panel.

I was blown away when I discovered that Eclipse (out of the virtual box) contains a feature that saves versions of the files you save. You can access those versions and even perform a Diff on them. This is by no means a replacement for SVN or some other version control system but it certainly does help in those times when you don’t have a version control system configured in your environment … sort of a poor man’s version control.

So for those of you who have never heard of this feature, here are a few screen shots that show you how to access the Local History panel and its features.

Compare two files using the File Diff

From the menu choose Window > Other Views

Compare a file with a version in the Local History panel

Replace a file with a version in the Local History panel

Right-clicking on a file in the Local History panel

Select Team > History

A view of the local History panel.

I give props to Daniel for pointing this out at the MDCFUG user group last night.

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Building You First Adobe Flex Application – Presentation

HELLO WORLD,

Sorry folks about the late post. My company has a urgent and looming deadline that must be met. So most of my time has been spent on that effort.
However, I would like to announce my presentation at the Annapolis Adobe User Group in Severn MD (link for directions here). I will doing a 90 minute tutorial on how to create your very first Flex application. I will keep it simple so that anyone can understand and follow along. Although this is not a hands-on class, you are welcome to bring your own laptop (with Flex 3 installed) and follow along.

So, if you ever wanted to find the time to get a jumpstart on learning Flex, here is your chance. Come on down (or up) to Annapolis (Severn, MD), network, learn something new, and get your questions answered.

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