A Challenger Appears

Because what is life without a little variety? But mostly because so much of what I love about programming is puzzle solving. Here is the newest puzzle:

A close friend needs to keep track of:

• The clients who enter his business
• The employees with which each of these clients interact - one or more
• The way in which each of these clients interact with these employees - one or more
• And at client check-out, be able to summon up all of these things, along with the charges associated with any of these interactions, with a tip function, to come up with the client's total charge.

The current way of doing this is, I kid you not, pencil and paper. Needless to say, it works exactly as well as you might think it works. Solution - maybe? Air app with php scripts to talk with an on-site database. Having never worked with databases before, or php ostensibly, here is my general understanding of the undertaking.

• Each employee will have a login. There will be an additional login for the front desk.
• When the client arrives, they will be 'checked in' by the front desk, and their name added to a list of 'current clients,' ie clients currently in the establishment.
• Upon each interaction and/or service provided by each employee, they will be able to add the information to the client's record the service provided, and that it was provided by them.
• This is particularly important in that it will be the employee's responsibility, as at the moment this is where the breakdown in communication occurs. A client may come in for service A, but in the end receives an additional service B from the same or different employee, of which the front desk has no record. Thus, the client is not charged for service B, although the employee expects to be paid for rendering service B. The front desk needs an exhaustive list of services provided at checkout.
• At said check out, the front desk needs to summon up a total, and give the client the option of tipping individual employees. The client will then be removed from the 'current clients' listing, as they are leaving and can no longer receive services. A record of this transaction will then be stored, ideally to be --
• Exported at the end of the day, into some sort of permanent record of transactions, leaving the database blank of clients for the start of the next business day.

Why an Air app? Because how classy would it turn out to be for each employee, currently using Acer netbooks, to be able to administer their accounts on iPads? Xoom tablets? (which, buy the way, I am in love with.) Even more importantly is the windows/mac cross-platform debate, should the equipment ever need to be upgraded. But bottom line: Flash will always just work. Every time. There is nothing else I have that kind of confidence in.

So folks, this is the new undertaking. I'll try and keep my progress updated =)

HYPE Framework v. 1.1.9 Installation Guide

Last night is a fantastic and code-ridden pow-wow session between myself and my development partner, he pushed me with no hesitation headlong in to the summer lake of the HYPE Framework. Which is, apparently, the most amazing thing ever. Who knew?

One of the best things, I was told, about HYPE was that they published out their class library with the aid of a .mxp. The wiki is pretty dry if you ask me - you would think that an obscure file extension would have a little more punch to it. If you can tell me in the comments below what precisely an .mxp is, that would be fantastic, but as far as I was able to glean conversationally, that shit installs itself. Which is nice.

The problem here is that as of 2/18/2011, HYPE no longer offers the .mxp in their download package. I'm not sure why. The trick is, in their install tutorial, they basically go "If you're a developer, you know what to do. Everyone else, install using the .mxp. Done!" So here is, what I think will be useful for you graphics-based folks, the missing how-to to getting HYPE playing nice on your machine.

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1) Download the .zip file linked in the upper left hand corner of the HYPE mainpage. (currently "download / 3.3 mb zip") Unzip, and place the resulting file somewhere easy for you to find.

2) Open flash, and go to Flash > Preferences. Once there, click on "ActionScript" in the list of categories on your left.

3) At the bottom of that box you should see an option for "Language," including buttons for both ActionScript 2.0 Settings and ActionScript 3.0 Settings. Click on the button for ActionScript 3.0

4) After the panel for AS3 settings opens up, you will click on the plus (+) icon to add a new path, followed by the file icon.

Then, navigate to the folder where you saved the unzipped HYPE folder and open it. Inside the HYPE folder you will see a folder titled "src". Select that folder, and click "Choose". This will kick you back to the settings window - click OK. You will then be at the Preferences window - click OK a second time.

Congratulations! Flash is now able to access the HYPE code library, enabling you to do all sorts of massively cool things. Oh, and as a bonus - this documentation will work for any external class library you would like to be using - as you can see in my example, I have PaperVision and Tweener currently.

Happy summer solstice!

I Love Papervision.

Papervision is a set of ActionScript classes dealing with 3D rendering. Not having any prior experience in 3D or any other tools - Maya, etc - that is really as much detail as I can describe it with.

But basically, it will take your 2D ActionScript stage with an x and a y axis and add an additional z axis:

(image credit devshed.com)

This has fantastic implications for all kinds of super cool and neat display capabilities, in addition to allowing for the development of an interactive 3D space. I've been working through it thanks to the fantastic publication Papervision3D Essentials and I have to say it's super cool. Expect more from this front soon.

First Post

I am a 21 year old lady programmer, somewhere in Middle America. I owe my self-taught skill in Actionscript 3.0 to several fantastic books - Colin Moock's Essential ActionScript 3.0 and Adobe Flash Classroom in a Book, to name a few. After the essential foundations laid from these influential texts, I've devoured everything I could get my hands on, from css and HTML to Java and PHP.

When I came to programming, I was a sophomore studying for my BM of Music Composition. Now, nine months later and in to the summer before my first semester as a Computer Science student, I am positively thrilled with everything I am doing in my life, more so than I think I ever could have expected. If you have yet in your life to find something you are truly passionate about - search! Seek out! Discover! Because until then, you have no idea where I'm coming from.

I hope to use this blog as a notebook of sorts, detailing current projects, current struggles, and their solutions. I hope to find a community of equally passionate and driven individuals, desperately climbing higher and higher towards that pinnacle, Knowledge.

I hope.

I dream.

I seek.

I love programming.