The Year in Review

Thursday, December 29 2011 - , , - 0 comments

It's been a very busy year around here and my blogging has fallen off a cliff. Ironically, this is post 701. Somehow seven hundred became the magic number. So what's been going on: The 3D Room Planner on Lazboy and Thomasville and others as well. The iPad version of our 2D room planner available on iTunes . Then there are the side projects: I published 3 full length novels this year. My Amputee Wife The Desert War Oasis the New Dawn Two others are complete and in editing phases with expected publication in 2012. The Daughter of Ceras - www.tjweaverbooks.com The Slave of Oasis - www.tjweaverbooks...

Happy 236th Birthday Marines

Thursday, November 10 2011 - - 0 comments

I’m reading My War by Andy Rooney. I bet I haven’t watched 60 minutes in 15 years, but reading this book I can hear his voice and that same no nonsense character. He was as brash and stubborn as a young kid as he portrayed himself on 60 minutes. Andy had no shortage of opinions on Patton, Hemingway, Ernie Pyle, and a great many other “famous” people that he met and or served with during the War. The book is a pleasure to read as it is laced with his wit and wisdom. This book will remind you why we have a Veteran’s Day and what there is to be proud of, whether you are a Marine, a Soldier, a Flyboy...

Embed Fonts using FlashBuilder 4.5 Actionscript Only Project for a Mobile App

Saturday, June 18 2011 - - 1 comments

Last week I lost a good 6+ hours trying to get embedded fonts to work on an iOS / Android Flashbuilder project. I know Adobe is aware of this, but I’m going to say it again. Embedded fonts is just plain screwy. There is no reason it should take an entire day to get a font to rotate and actually appear on the screen. I can rotate fonts all day long in every major browser with just a few lines of CSS, but making the same happen in Flashbuilder is like standing on one leg while walking a tight rope. If you want to rotate a font it MUST be embedded. To embed a font in an Actionscript only project you...

FlashBuilder 4.5 and iOS vs. Android

Tuesday, June 07 2011 - - 0 comments

One of the new features in Flashbuilder 4.5 is that it can publish to Android, iOS and Blackberry. We are still waiting on the iOS update to build Flex iOS projects, however you can build a strictly AS3 project and publish to iOS. That all sounds great, until you actually try and do it. The steps necessary for me to publish to my Iconia tablet were 2 – Configure the IDE and Install the USB driver. From that point on I can publish to my tablet and I can debug on it. To publish to the iOS based tablet is a whole lot of steps most of which are not consumer friendly and frankly have so far have resulted...

Going Mobile

Tuesday, June 07 2011 - - 0 comments

So I bought an Acer Iconia Tab A500-10S16u 10.1-Inch Tablet Computer (Aluminum Metallic) tablet and have used it extensively for a few week now. For the most part I must say I like it better than the iPad with one big notable exception: Netflix and Hulu. Neither one of these work on my tablet which is a serious issue for the adoption of Android based mobile computing. Let’s face it, the tablet is the best form factor for consuming both of these video sources and not being able to just sucks....

Tuscan Marine Shot and Killed By Swat

Friday, May 27 2011 - - 0 comments

This is the second article I’ve read about this and I have to say that the bias in both is appalling. I would expect that some reasonable fact checking and detail verification would take place before writing and posting inflammatory garbage like this: http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/05/27/arizona.marine.death/index.html?hpt=T1   You might think I would be on the side of the Marine, after all, he was apparently innocent… The fact of whether this man was innocent or not isn’t actually all that relevant. The focus on both articles has been: Marine, Vet, SWAT, Excessive force (71 shots fired). Let...

Would You Do It Again

Sunday, April 17 2011 - - 0 comments

I was driving home on Friday and as I stopped at a light the car behind me turned to the shoulder and came to a stop next to me. I looked over and the young guy driving nodded, his passenger window coming down. So I pushed the button on mine and he goes: “Were you a Marine?” Gee what gave it away? The veteran plates or the big Marine Corps sticker on my back window? “Yeah,” I answered. “Would you do it again?” The light went green, but there were still a few cars ahead of me not moving. “In a second.” He smiled nodding. “Should I join? I’m twenty four.” I stated to answer then stopped. Too many...

Amazon Marketing Fail

Monday, March 21 2011 - - 0 comments

Amazon does so many things right. I swear I send a large portion of my income there way, yet after every single purchase Amazon insists on showing more items that I might want that I would never ever consider purchasing. This is a company that has so much analytical data, yet they can’t do simple marketing… I don’t get it. Here’s a perfect example: I purchased a shower curtain and liner a few days ago. Now, when I log into my Amazon account what do I see: If I just purchased a shower curtain what are the odds I want another? Yes, you could argue that I might have more than one shower, but what...

Ruby on Rails vs. Mono.NET

Friday, March 11 2011 - - 0 comments

I’m looking to start a project that will be hosted at Rackspace on the cloud. It will also likely have at least a partial component that uses E2C at Amazon. The cost of a Windows platform is just silly at these places so I’m going with Linux. The question is Mono.NET vs. Ruby and Rails. Now I tried a simple MVC2 project on Mono.net both on Windows using VS2010 and their plugin. The site compiled, but refused to run. I then tried using Mono IDE and it failed to even compile a simple MVC app. I don’t have the patience to fight the IDE before I’ve even got the site running so I’ve switched to VMWare...

MS Orchard and www.tjweaverbooks.com

Friday, March 04 2011 - - 0 comments

I recently launched a new site: www.tjweaverbooks.com using Microsoft Orchard CMS. So far I’m pleased with what Orchard can do. I haven’t spent a lot of time configuring the site yet, however those thing I have done all have worked well. The one thing I wish it did, is allowed links in some of the widgets. It’s annoying that you have to do that manually. My new site is focused on my fiction rather than technology.