Davey's Webtech Blog

JSON is the acronym “JavaScript Object Notation”. Having perused through a few sites, I have come across this topic many times and have no idea what this was. So here are some links to get started:

Matthew Batchelder gives the case to use JSON above XML. Obviously, JSON is more readable compared to XML. (Going through a large XML file is kind of a headache.) Using JSON avoids parsing XML since it is already recognized as a data structure. Thus avoiding the XML process would give the benefit of speed.

The JSON site includes some Actionscript libraries (in AS1, AS2, and AS3) to implement it in your code.

DJ

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From time to time, I cannot sit in front of a monitor, but like to get to a coffee shop, sip a cup of vanilla-nut flavoured coffee and read the latest in Flash trends and developments through magazine articles. Here is a list that I have come across so far. While I live in Montreal, the UK-based magazines usually arrive on newsstands about a few months after they are published. Hence, subscribing to it is a much better deal, and it arrives within the month of delivery.  (A warning: UK based magazines are twice the price in North America so the price range might be heavy for some. As I come to think of it, the cost of living in Europe is higher proportionally in many areas (e.g. London) to North America. With that and the cost of overseas delivery, I believe the cost to be justified.)

Web designer (UK) This is currently my favourite mag. Maybe it is the most colourful in comparison to the other magazines that I take a look at. It covers Adobe related software in the Web Premium suite, along with some Silverlight, and other web-related technologies. (e.g. WordPress, etc.)

.Net (UK) Not to be confused with Microsoft’s development software (Gosh, I don’t know what to really call it, they got so many flavours of .Net like ASP.Net, C#, VB.Net, etc…) It’s sister magazine Computer Arts is one the avant-garde art design magazines in the market.

Layers (US) This magazine covers everything related to the Adobe Design community. They also have an excellent video tutorial resource site. I picked one magazine covering Lee Brimelow’s tutorial of the image displacement map filter in Flash to imitate water ripples in a canal somewhere in Europe. Pretty neat.

Flex and Flash Developer (EU) A European-based mag published quarterly throughout the year. These articles are geared towards more of the developer than the designer. The complexity also ranges from beginner to advanced programmers.

Flex Authority (Electronic-based) covers Flash development using the Flex Framework. You can find a review of the magazine at Tariq Ahmed’s blog.

Cheers,

DJ

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Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn’t seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo

I should try to interview my kids and ask what they think about Star Wars. Come to think of it, my wife might say the same thing.

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I purchased an Acer Aspire 6930 laptop a few months ago. It is a really nice laptop, albeit quite heavy, but very suitable for my multimedia needs.

So when “Dark Knight” came out on blu-ray, I was all giddy and ready to go and view those cool scenes taken with an IMAX camera. (If you have seen the movie at IMAX the scenes usually pertain to the outdoor city scenes of Hong Kong and Chicago. Just breathtaking! to the point that I felt a bit disoriented.)

Anyway, it turns out that I had deleted my blu-ray player on my laptop, because I wasn’t too happy with all the extras that came with it. (My fault.) Anyway, I looked around and Nero 9 seemed to be a solution. Since I needed some DVD burning software and it said that it had blu-ray capability, I waited for boxing day and got a good deal. Well, it turns out, the Nero player doesn’t play blu-ray. Wierd. It can burn and play home HD movies onto blu-ray discs. (And no, my drive only reads blu-ray, not write.) So here we go again. So far the only players I found out were:

1) Cyberlink’s PowerDVD ultra

2) Corel WinDVD plus Blu-ray

3) Arcsoft’s Totalmedia Theatre

After reading many reviews, it seems that PowerDVD and WinDVD are comparable and does take advantage of the latest graphics card acceleartion from both ATI and NVidia.

TotalMedia caught my attention as it also provides a plugin for Microsoft’s mediacenter player.

As for Nero 9, the best that I find is to wait upon a software update. It seems that the software industry is waiting out for a standard DRM convention.

As for a Blu-ray player, I haven’t decided on a purchase yet. Looks like I will be waiting a little while longer before I get to finally see “Dark Knight”. Besides, I am busy with other projects.

Have a happy new year…

DJ

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