WEB-INF/flex/services-config.xml
in the channels definition at the top:

<channels>
    <!--USED IN THE LIVE ENVIRONMENT-->
          <!--channel ref="my-graniteamf-secure"/-->
    <!--USED IN THE LOCAL/DEV ENVIRONMENT-->
          <channel ref="my-graniteamf"/>
</channels>

Then in the channel definition below we have both definitions:

<channel-definition id="my-graniteamf"
        class="mx.messaging.channels.AMFChannel">
        <endpoint
                uri="http://{server.name}:{server.port}/{context.root}/graniteamf/amf"
                class="flex.messaging.endpoints.AMFEndpoint" />
</channel-definition>
<channel-definition id="my-graniteamf-secure"
        class="mx.messaging.channels.SecureAMFChannel">
        <endpoint
                uri="https://{server.name}:443/{context.root}/graniteamf/amf"
                class="flex.messaging.endpoints.SecureAMFEndpoint" />
</channel-definition>

Click Here to Download: services-config.xml

We couldn’t get {server.port} to work correctly, so we’re forcing the port in the address for now.

The only problem with this is you have to remember to switch the AMF channel before deploying.  It’s on our checklist before doing the full deploy, but we’re most likely going to add it to the ant task list to deploy dev, deploy live.  Something like that.

The KEY THING TO REMEMBER is this: although this file is deployed with the war/ear, it is ALSO COMPILED INTO THE APPLICATION SWF when it is built.  Make sure to change it locally and rebuild your swf before posting, or you will see no change in your app. (found this out after a significant amount of time changing the file on the server to no avail…)

(Ref: http://www.mail-archive.com/discussion@affug.com/msg00605.html)

It's just a little smashy, it's still good, it's still good!

This weekend, coming home from my parents for Christmas, I was involved in a little smash-up.  Roads were a little wet, traffic was tight and rather slow moving, and I was travelling down a slight decline just north-east of the Palisades Mall in New York on 287.  Abruptly (as most accidents seem to happen) everyone decided it’d be fun to stop as fast as possible.  I slammed on my brakes and slid my Nissan Altima into a Mazda 626.  Apparently I wasn’t the only one surprised, however, as there were 3 other identical accidents around me.

Mmmmm... Crash-tastic!

Shaken, but still in one piece, the other driver and I pulled to the side, as did the other unfortunate people.  We got out, made sure everyone was ok, and assessed the damage.  Her car may have added a scratch to it’s already impressive collection, but mine was a little worse for wear.  As it was my fault, she said it’s up to me if we want to get the insurance companies involved, but right as that question arose, a very friendly police officer rode up and asked for our paperwork.  He was probably sent to the scene because one of the other accident groups were screaming all irate-like and most likely reported all the accidents in the vicinity to 911.

This was the nicest, most helpful police officer I’ve ever seen in one of these situations.  He made sure we were ok, asked for our paperwork, and in about 5 min, presented us with a printout detailing each others information and sent us on our way.  I expected an impatient, slightly-condescending cop to hand me a ticket for some reason, but not this time.  This made the experience a little less aggravating.

So, hats off to the Tarrytown Police K9 unit!

Anyway, being in situations like this really makes you think…  After driving for almost 10 years or so without an accident (just a slight fender bender about a year after I got my license) it really makes you second-guess those “well, I’ll just send them a text message while I’m going 80mph” or “sure, I can eat this taco while driving..”  I was concentrating on driving because of the traffic and the road conditions and I got into an accident that may actually end with my car being totaled (it’s not really worth fixing a ‘99 Altima if there’s anything other than cosmetic damage).

Also, so far, I’m happy with Geico.  They’ve been very helpful and I’m only responsible for my deductable (as expected).  But I’ll be sure to post if anything of note happens.

C:\Users\<yourusername>\AppData\Roaming\Red Alert 3\Maps

The AppData folder may be hidden, so you’ll have to go unhide it first.

How’s that for a review?

I’ve always enjoyed the Command & Conquer series.  I played the crap out of Red Alert 2 almost as much as I played Blizzard’s Starcraft (and believe me, that’s saying something…)  While Red Alert 3 has been great so far, there are a few things I hope they can clean up in upcoming updates.

My #1 Complaint - The Atrocious Online System

I actually bought this game more for the online play than the actual story mode.  My friends and I enjoy teaming up in an online skirmish, but if we didn’t have cell phones or IM, we’d never link up.  The online system lacks almost every semblance of usability that battle.net had for Diablo and Starcraft.  When a friend on your friend list is online, you can’t get a hold of them unless they’re staring at their message board.  I would think that it would be simple to allow in-game notifications, I know I’d gladly leave a campaign to play online if a friend came on, but nothing short of a cellphone call can get my attention.  That, along with the horrid /whisper <username>line, makes it almost impossible to talk directly to a friend.

#2 - Lack of Multiplayer Maps

Thankfully, this will be fixed soon because Electronic Arts just released the WorldBuilder.  One can only hope that the implementation to find/download/use maps is made easier than their atrocious online system (see item #1).

#3 - Empire of the Rising Sun

I don’t know what other people think, but seeming as I’m lacking the omnipotent AI of a computer, the EotRS are completely unwieldy on the field.  Their method of building by deploying vehicles from the Construction Yard to then be sent somewhere to unfurl, becomes overbearing as you forget about building’s you’ve created.  My other EotRS gripe lands with the Mega Tengu and Striker-VX.  These are vehicles that can transform from ground to air vehicles.  As the game progresses, and you get more and more of these, you’ll have a platoon of them but some will be in land mode, while others are in air mode, there’s no way to make them all ground, or all air, as they’ll continue to switch back and forth.  The only way to combat this is to make sure you keep groups in different ctrl-# groups to easily switch from ground to air, or leave one air, and one ground.

#4 - Attack Formations

Bullfrogs On The Move

I’m pretty sure there’s a way to do this, but I haven’t found it yet.  I usually play soviets, and I would like to have a group of Bullfrogs follow my Kirov Airships, but there’s no way, that I know of, to take group A and make them follow group B.  You can select everyone, but the Bullfrogs go 3x faster than the Kirovs, so you lack the anti-air support you need under your sluggish blimpys.

Sum them up and you still have a rather small, and quite acceptable list of complaints for a game that has only been out a few short weeks, and has already had a few decent updates sent out.  I’ll obviously continue to play, and I would highly recommend anyone pick the game up.

I’m sorry you’ve successfully completed your campaign.

I’m sorry for what the Obama family will now be subjected to…

Enemy #1 of any president is the sensory-overloading, ratings-focused news media system.  Irregardless (if you watch the news, you know why that’s a joke) of whether this pro-Obama stance keeps going not, something is going to take Obama down over the next 4 or 8 years.  Maybe he played t-ball with someone who’s now a transvestite.  Maybe he once shook hands with Castro and someone snapped a photo.  Maybe he brushed up against a 17 year old girl while shaking hands during his campaign.  Someone, somewhere will find something to blow completely out of proportion to either take him down, or bring themself up for their 15 minutes of fame, and end up crucifying his family for it.

It’s a shame because, if he can hold his campaign promises, we might be able to bring this ship back on course.  But I’m still skeptical.  He’s been president-elect now for maybe 12 hours, I’m surprised something hasn’t come up yet.

Watching his campaign… Watching the love he’s garnered from the public… Maybe he owes a little credit to the media.  I’m not saying Bush didn’t make it easy for the media, but stuff like choking on a pretzel has nothing to do with leadership qualities (yes, I know, being a bad public speaker does, but like I said, it’s not like Bush didn’t make it easy).

So, I hope for America, and I hope for Obama’s and his family’s sake, he’s got the spotless record everyone thinks a president should have, because if there is any achilles heal to a politican, it’s the ratings-grubbing media.  Otherwise he’s going to waste a lot of his time focusing on deflecting false claims than actually doing what a president is supposed to do.

Click the images to see the FAIL in all its full-size glory.

Yes. That is what you think it is. Apparently when you rent a place that has a claw-foot bathtub, you can’t have separate hot and cold knobs. So the landlord sent in a “handyman” to “bring it up to code” (quotes entirely necessary). So, obviously, installing a new faucet with copper pipes outside the wall and the fixtures installed through the shower curtain is up to code…

The only word for this is: FAIL

I’ve decided I would like to jump on the Python bandwagon.  I’ve been living the Ubuntu life for a while now, so I figured I should make myself at home…

Whenever I learn a new language, I need a pet project.  I’m not one that can learn just by doing a Hello World, so I came up with this idea.

At work, I deal mainly with kiosks in the field.  They leave the factory and exist in a Toys R’ Us, Walmart, even BMW showrooms (check my company:  http://www.realityi.com).  When they go out, they have a certain version of content on them.  By content, I mean usually .swf, .xml, etc.  These are files that can easily be updated and are in a predictable file structure (seeming as I made it).  We’ve begun to finally use version control, using subversion as our drug of choice.  After much googling, I wasn’t able to find a viable way to create an update package.  It seems that most applications of subversion are connected and can use rsync/svn checkout to get the most update to date content, but machines in my situation are either completely disconnected and updated via USB, or connected to a network but behind a hefty firewall (eg: bmw).

What I needed was a way to find what files have been added or modified between a certain revision and the current content to build an update package (no removals, tell you why in a second).

Enter: SVNUpdateBuilder

I’ve taken on a small, linux-based (for now) project that does just what I need.  It uses the pysvn library, and creates a .tgz file with a directory tree of files that have been added or modified.  I’m learning how to use Python, but also Glade User Interface Builder to create a GTK application.  Check out the website for more information.

You may be asking: “Why is it a compiled python file?”  Well, I’ll tell you.  This is still my learning tool.  I have a few more items on my wishlist that I want to complete before I release it to the masses.  Like I said on the website, this isn’t a difficult project for someone more skilled than I to build, but I would like to be selfish with it until I figure I’ve learned all I care to.  Then I definitely plan to release it on Sourceforge.

You may also be asking “What about files that have been removed?”  In my line of work, with how fickle clients are, it’s better, for now, for us to leave content on the machines and just remove the link to the file in the xml (read: send a modified file).  That way, if a client wants a video relinked on a kiosk, we just have to relink it, not send it out again.  Disk space, for this current project, isn’t a concern as much as bandwidth, so we chose to leave the files out there.  Plans for this project include having output methods for bash scripts or batch files to clean up the target machine, but they haven’t been implemented yet.

So, I will continue to code…  I’ll keep you posted.

WARNING!!!

I’m assuming you’re going to use this for indie/underground music.  This is in NO WAY TO EVER BE USED TO DOWNLOAD LICENSED OR ILLEGAL MATERIALS.  You’ve been warned….

That’s right, it’s so important, that I used the <blink> tag… *shudder…

Setup
For clarity, let’s call my two machines “home” and “remote”.  “Home” is an ubuntu box in my home office.  “Remote” can be any web browser, for example, my laptop at work.

Registration
For this example, go to www.mininova.org and sign up for an account.  Once you are logged in, in the top right, point at your username, and select My Bookmarks.  You will need this RSS URL during installation.

Installation

1. I’m using KTorrent on my home machine.  Install that by opening a terminal and typing:

   sudo apt-get install ktorrent

2. Set it up to auto-launch when the system boots by
   1. Go to System > Preferences > Sessions
   2. Click Add
   3. Name: KTorrent
   4. Command: ktorrent
   5. Comment: <whatever you want>
3. Run ktorrent by either clicking Applications > Internet > KTorrent, type ktorrent at the command line, or reboot your machine.
4. Click on Settings > Configure KTorrent
5. Select Plugins
   1. Click on RSS Feeds and click the Load button in the top right.
   2. [OPTIONAL] You may want to enable/configure Bandwidth Scheduler as well to not piss off people in on your “Home” machine’s connection from slowing it down during heavy use hours, but that is outside the scope of this tutorial.
   3. ClickApply and OK to exit the window.
6. Back in the Application, you should now see a RSS Feeds tab, click that.  On that tab [Figure 1 Below]:
   1. Click New in the bottom left to add a new feed.
   2. Name it whatever you want.
   3. Copy/Paste the RSS Feed URL you got from your Mininova.org site into the URL line.
   4. Change Keep Articles (days) to something smaller, like 7 days
   5. Click Ignore TTL and enter something more reasonable like 10 minutes (it is in the format HH:MM:SS)
   6. Click the Active checkbox in the top left.
   7. Set up the AutoDownload Filter [Figure 2 Below].
      1. In the top left of the RSS tab, click the tab that says Filters*.
      2. Under Accept Filters, click New
      3. Type in a title
      4. Under Regular Expressions, type .*    (period asterisk, no spaces before, after, or in-between) and click Add
      5. In the top right, click the Active Checkbox.

Figure 1	Figure 2

* NOTE: Since you are setting up a personal RSS feed, I am assuming you want to download everything you mark for download. This Filter tool is very powerful.  You are able to watch the rss feed on any torrent site and filter out things that you want to download automatically such as episodes, new albums by bands, etc.  A handy tool to generate the regular expressions needed for the Filters page is called kregexpeditor and can be installed with apt-get.

Testing
Go to www.mininova.org and log in.  Search for anything you’re looking for, click on it, and at the top of the page you should see a button under the Download this Torrent link to Add to Bookmarks.  Clicking it adds this torrent to your RSS feed.  Your home machine will refresh your rss feed (at the period you set the TTL to, 10 minutes in this example) and mark that file for auto downloading.

Final Notes
I just got this working and I was rather excited to see how well it worked right off the bat.  I’ll edit/update this article as I find problems/fixes.

checking for intltool…
found intltool
checking for libtoolize…
found libtoolize
checking for automake…
found automake
checking for autoconf…
found autoconf
Running ‘autoreconf -v –install’…
autoreconf: Entering directory `.’
autoreconf: configure.in: not using Gettext
autoreconf: running: aclocal –output=aclocal.m4t
aclocal: configure.in: 28: macro `AM_GLIB_GNU_GETTEXT’ not found in library
autoreconf: aclocal failed with exit status: 1

Any ideas/suggestions would be fantastic..