Thursday
Oct 30,2008
Let me tell you the story of this guy who just created a new blog design and wanted to have a nice caricature of himself to put in the About part. After searching on the web for an affordable solution, he finally found this company called Fast Icon (now Caricature Icons) which is doing really nice drawings. So on June 20th he ordered the caricature and sent all required pictures. Let’s add one more detail before going further, there is this nice quote on their website :
How long does this all take?
Each Caricature icon is completed in around 3 days, depending on complexity. However, because of the number of orders we get, most caricatures are delivered within a week or two of receipt of your picture/s by the artist, sometimes sooner.
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Posted in Blog, Personal 
1 Comment »
Wednesday
Oct 15,2008
I’m a ColdFusion developer for almost 10 years now and I’m starting to wonder why ColdFusion is not making the buzz on the web anymore (even with version 9 on the way). Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems that since the release of Flex2 and all those RIA technologies which are currently invading the web space, ColdFusion is hiding somewhere doing only furtive apparitions on some blogs - I even heard that ColdFusion is a phase out product on which you cannot rely anymore !
I had some hope when I heard about the success of Scotch On The Rocks conference (sorry for not being able to attend it), but in the end nothing really changed - except maybe in UK and US ?
I think also that Adobe could do a better promotion of ColdFusion: this year at Flash on the Beach, there were those pins that you can grab for free at Adobe booth. But look at the picture, none of ColdFusion (btw if any exists, I’m interested 
) ! The product was only mentionned twice during Adobe presentations. I think that it should have disserved few more words to describe how great the couple Flex/CF is to develop RIAs.
In Belgium, it seems that our CFUG is trying to get back from it’s grave (which I applaud), but the way it’s done doesn’t seems to be so efficient :
I hope that I didn’t offend anyone here (Kristen, Ben, Raymond…) and please don’t misinterpret what I’m trying to tell : I still love ColdFusion (which is my main development platform), I greatly encourage Community events, but I think that Adobe could/need to do a lot better.
Posted in ColdFusion, Personal 13 Comments »
Wednesday
Oct 8,2008
No, the point here is not about being a rockstar freelancer (although it could be easier to imagine sometimes) but about the opportunity to become a developer freelancer.
There are first those fantastic videos from Jesse Warden “Being Independent and Making Money Using Flex”. Then came Flash On the Beach and those “inspired session” where the main message was, in short terms: “Quit your job, go independent, do what you really want to do, make money and have fun!”. And finally there are my friends in the Flash/Flex community who are independent and happily living from it.
Since several days|weeks|months, I’m a bit torn between answering to those sirens and not moving at all. And I have always this question in my mind:
“Is there a right moment in a life and/or a right place to become a freelancer?”
Let me explain a bit: I mostly agree on all those encouragements for being a freelancer, but I think that it’s missing an important factor which is your familial situation (and maybe age).
Don’t you think that you’re seeing things differently when you are single rather than married, when you have kids or not, when you are 20 or 40 ? Don’t you think that it’s easier to be a freelancer when you reached a certain level of expertise than when you’re a noob? It’s not a question of being afraid, it’s more a question of responsibility.
Maybe an example will help you to understand my point of view: Imagine a 35 guy who is an IT consultant for 10 years, married with kids and a home loan ongoing (any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental). Do you really think that switching to freelancing at that particular moment of his life is right? Of course it will probably bring more money in the household [“Money, get away. Get a good job with good pay and youre okay. Money, its a gas. Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash. New car, caviar, four star daydream, Think Ill buy me a football team.” – Pink Floyd] but is it worth the sacrifice of your week-ends and family life? It doesn’t mean that this guy is not passionate about his job (Oh no!). I think being 20 (and gifted) or being 40 with no more kids at home is a better moment in a life for being a freelancer.
I first wanted to do a deeper analysis, but finally I decided to make the discussion more opened. So what’s your opinion? Please feel free to share your thoughts here.
Posted in General, Jobs, Personal 15 Comments »
Friday
Oct 3,2008
It was my first time at Flash On the Beach (and in Brighton), and I haven’t been disappointed ! I think that it’s the best conference that I’ve ever attended so far : Brighton is a colorful city with a tremendous nightlife, the Dome is a wonderful venue and there was really top inspiring speakers.
I will not do a review of all sessions that I attended, but let’s have an overview of each days and see what I personally retain :
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Posted in Conferences, Flex 2 Comments »
Friday
Sep 26,2008
The Google AJAX Language API lets you translate and detect the language of blocks of text. For non-Javascript environments, it exposes also a simple RESTful interface to use in combination with JSON to decode the result. Let’s try a simple Flex example of language detection :
Demo (right click for the source code)
It’s pretty easy to achieve. Here is how to call the service
var srv:HTTPService = new HTTPService();
srv.url = 'http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/language/detect';
srv.request.v = '1.0'; /*version - might change in the future*/
srv.request.q = /*the text to send*/;
srv.addEventListener(ResultEvent.RESULT, /*a resultHandler function*/);
srv.addEventListener(FaultEvent.FAULT, /*a faultHandler function*/);
srv.send();
The JSON Response is the following :
{
"responseData" : {
"language" : the-detected-language,
"isReliable" : the-reliability-of-the-detect,
"confidence" : the-confidence-level-of-the-detect
},
"responseDetails" : null | string-on-error,
"responseStatus" : 200 | error-code
}Okay, nice but Why am I so enthusiast about that API ?
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Posted in API, Flex 11 Comments »
