10 reasons to get started with bug and issue management today

1. Build self-documenting projects.
2. Integrate issue tracking with your source control management system (you are using version control right?)
3. Help shape a clear development roadmap.
4. Increase development process transparency.
5. Prioritize important tasks.
6. Distill tasks into bite size portions any team member can tackle; dip in and out of projects.
7. Plan your day around multiple projects.
8. Gather feature requests in one place.
9. Identify your critical path; anticipate project holdups or delays.
10. Closing bugs just feels too good not to…

To get started I suggest you check out redmine if you’re a Ruby person (it’s what I use) or trac if you feel more comfortable with Python.

Timetoast makes PC Magazine’s “Best Free Software of 2009″ list

I’m honoured to have my Flex/Flash app, Timetoast, rub shoulders with such greats as Google Earth and eBay Desktop in PC Magazine’s “Best Free Software of 2009″ list.

Timetoast is an online tool that allows people to easily create timelines they can then share on their blog or website. It’s a fun app which will certainly be getting some neat revisions in the near future! Here’s a link to the Timetoast timelines listing. If you see any other Flash, Flex, AIR or Rails apps listed, feel free to leave a comment, I’d love to know.

For a nice example of a Timetoast timeline out in the wild, check out the RTÉ 2008 Year in Review feature.

Greenprint also made it onto the list. Greenprint is a great desktop application that saves ink and trees at the same time by allowing you to remove blank pages and unnecessary advertising from your print jobs. They recently added a Mac version which is great news for all you eco-conscious Mac users.

Presenting Rails for Flash at LFPUG

As usual, the London Flash Platform User Group event will be held on the last Thursday of the month; that’s this Thursday, October the 30th.

First up this month are the guys at Unit9, they’ll be taking you through their processes and how they keep everyone in the company communicating effectively for maximum result.

I will be following up with a presentation on Ruby on Rails and Flash; taking you through the steps needed to create a REST-ful Rails application that is read and writeable through a Flash Front end. This will give you an introduction to Ruby on Rails and how this powerful web application framework can make it ridiculously easy for you to kick-start your next, or first, database powered Flash application.

The LFPUG will be held at it’s usual location, Cosmobar on Clerkenwell Road (54-56) and the presentations start at 19:00. For more information on the sessions, and indeed on how to get there, see the official LFPUG site.

See you there!

Timetoast featured on 37Signals product blog

Hurrah! My one-man web app, Timetoast, just got featured over on the 37Signals product blog. Their book ‘Getting Real‘ was a great guide while building my web app and I highly suggest you check it out before you start building your own!

Timetoast is a Flash / Flex based app that easily allows people to create and share interactive timelines on the web.

Insoshi: kickstart your social app

Insoshi is an open source social site with everything you would expect; messaging, blogging, connections and much more. If you download the source (writen in Rails), you’ll already have a fully operational social software platform to kick start your idea. To top it off, things can only get better; Insoshi is under active development.

If you’ve used Ruby on Rails before, you should feel very comfortable browsing the source, it is written in a concise and professional manner. For the novice Rails developer, Insoshi provides a great opportunity to understand the architecture of a fully functional Rails site. You’ll learn a lot from browsing the source of a complete application, something I found difficult to find when first embarking on my own Rails adventures.

Head on over to the Insoshi site to get started on your own adventure.

Joining the HD revolution

I just purchased an amazing video camera capable of shooting some pretty impressive HD footage. It’s the Panasonic HVX200 and it’s a pretty gnarly camera. Among other things, it can shoot variable frame rates which means great timelapse and slo-mo capabilities. I’m also really impressed by Panasonic’s P2 solid-state card system, the workflow is great with the P2CMS program.

The Panasonic HVX200.

Now that Adobe Premiere and After Effects CS3 can handle the P2 system, and Flash can display h.264 footage, it seemed like a perfect time to up my cinematography game and get a decent camera to document, among other things, my ski-bum season in Whistler B.C.
I’ll be posting some footage as soon as I get to grips with the camera, but you can already check out some beautiful HVX shots in Lakai’s Fully Flared (John Nack recently posted about this) and even feature films like Cloverfield use the HVX extensively.
Watch this space… 

Ground Kontrol classic gaming

Into classic gaming? Beer? Arcades? I suspected so much so here’s a neat tip if you’re ever in the Portland, Oregon area. Go check out Ground Kontrol; it’s a bar-slash-arcade filled to the brim with classic arcade machines. They also have a pinball section upstairs if you’re into that.

I played my first ever game of Missile Command and loved it to bits. It just goes to show that fancy graphics and cinematographic story-lines don’t make games great. Among the gems found at Ground Kontrol are such classics as Asteroids, Star Wars (1983 Atari Version),  Pac Man, Ms. Pac Man, TMNT, Track & Field, Gauntlet II, Ghouls & Ghosts, Tron, Discs of Tron, Frogger, Battlezone, Mario Bros., 720 skateboarding and of course Missile Command. Here’s a list of all their arcades. By the way, Tuesday is Rock Band night, which could be quite interesting too… 

Ruby on Rails 2.0 is here

The latest version of the web application framework Ruby on Rails has just been released. Check out David’s post to see what some of the changes are.You can download the new release at www.rubyonrails.com 

Mac Flash Player update drops on Labs

A new version of the Adobe Flash Player 9, MovieStar, for Mac just touched down on Adobe Labs today. The new version is 9.0.98.0, so go get it now…

Are your big integers flipping out?

Mine were.

You see, my integer typed variables were, quite literally, flipping out: positive numbers became negative numbers for no apparent reason and I was pretty sure the logic I was coding wasn’t flawed. After a few hours of tearing my hair out I remembered reading something about there being a limit on the size of an integer in ActionScript 3, could this be my problem? I never thought I’d need to know what those limits were until today.

Here’s some useful information on the range of the int, uint and Number datatypes in Actionscript 3.

If you are dealing with very large numbers, and funky stuff starts happening, remember this:

“The range of values represented by the int class is
-2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647″

If you know your number will be an unsigned (non-negative value) you probably want to use the uint datatype (uint) as its maximum is twice that of an int, but only in the positive direction (yep, that makes sense doesn’t it?)

“The range of values represented by the uint class is 0 to 4,294,967,295″

If you can’t make up your mind, just go for the Number datatype as it can take up to 53 bits to represent it, instead of the 32 bits available to the int and uint data types.

“Number is useful in situations where the range of values required exceeds the valid range of the int and uint data types. The Number class can be used to represent integer values well beyond the valid range of the int and uint data types. The Number data type can use up to 53 bits to represent integer values, compared to the 32 bits available to int and uint.”

(all text in quotes comes from the Flash livedocs)

p.s. if anyone has done some tests on the performance of large numbers in ActionScript 3, I’d love to know, so leave me a comment.