Steven Diomampo

If this is any indication for the rest of the year, things are looking really good…

I flew in early Saturday to get a head start on things and upon arrival I was in fear I had jumped the gun by a day. Thankfully Amy and Steve were here as well, so we grabbed some lunch at Gordon Beirsch (I highly recommend their burgers). This gave us an opportunity to pick back up where RIAdventure left off, back in December. Following lunch we parted ways and I decided to have a look at what the area had to offer.

Like any other downtown city, there are a lot of buildings, but it’s a bit different to look out and see the Adobe logo. Adobe is literally a few blocks away from the Marriott that we are staying at, you can see it out the window of the room. This is the kinda stuff that can be pretty inspiring for simple Dallasite like myself. The Tech Museum is also right across the street and judging from all of the costume wearing folk, I’m guessing they are still pushing the Star Trek exhibit. Aside from the nerdy stuff, there are plenty of bars, restaurants and shops I peaked into before heading back to the hotel for a nap to dream about the next few days.

I’ll be sure to update this will all the cool stuff I experienced once I head back to Dallas and get a minute to gather my thoughts. Just want to say thanks to John and Tom for the free ticket, and I’m looking forward to everything!!!

Updated Pics:

[slideshow id=4]

Let me preface this by saying, this approach is certainly not the final say. Any tutorials, demos or information shared on my site should be taken for what they are worth. I love feedback, so feel free to leave a comment below.

[Update: As Amy mentioned in the comments, this is not specific to the Robotlegs framework.]

I have recently been tinkering with the new Robotlegs framework and wanted to share a quick gotcha. It’s really not a gotcha, and really more something I forgot to do. Click here to see the post that helped jog my memory on this one. Hope this will come in handy for someone.

View Demo | View Source

If you can’t read the white print on the demo it says:

I intend on repurposing this title “At This Moment I Am…” as a series of mile markers about myself. I’ll be breaking it down into two different sections: Working On, and Moving Towards. Both categories are pretty self explanatory, Working On will list what I am doing now in order to get to what I am Moving Towards.

Working On

• An Android application
• A modular Flex application
• Optimizing as3 code
• Meeting new people

Moving Towards

Mobility

The future is mobile, and at least two of the items I am Working On will get me there. In the world of Mobile Phones, for me it’s all about Android, and if you haven’t heard of Android, something is wrong. Check out this market share prediction. At any rate, the signs are there, and Google as well as the community is really pushing the Android Platform.

How about developing for Android? As a Flex Developer, I’d like to think the learning curve for Android development is slightly reduced. When you start your first project in eclipse, you’ll notice that the xml layout files(located in res/layout/) give two tab options, Layout and someFile.xml. You’ll find these in the bottom left corner in the image below.

Think of the Layout tab as the Design tab in Flex Builder. In this case it is giving you the visual representation of the xml file (registration.xml) versus MXML in Flex, which would be like seeing the Source tab.

On the surface I was able to pick up on some of the similarities, but I was fortunate enough to have some good discussions with Faisal Abid about everything under the hood. He has a strong Flex background and has been working on some heavy Android apps. At some point I will put together a good post on bridging the gaps of Flex and Android.

Another item I’m working on that falls under Mobility for me is, meeting new people. For me to be more mobile in 2010 it will require breaking out of the shell and meeting more people in more places. It’s amazing how much seven days on a cruise ship with complete strangers can really change your perspective on things. See my Stop Encapsulating Yourself!!! post for more on this. At any rate, traveling is a top priority for me this coming year, so meeting people around the world is a big deal. I’ve compiled a list of where I will be traveling in 2010:

• San Jose, CA (early March) – It’s conference time! This time I get to meet back up with the gang and a couple hundred other members for 360|Flex.
• Breckenridge, CO (mid-late March) – Snowboarding and friends!!!
• _____, LA –  Wedding, Congrats @ogreen32!
• Las Vegas, NV (summer time) – WSOP! I’m looking to get into one of the smaller events like the $1k, we’ll see.
• _____, VT (October) – Yet another wedding, Congrats Gonzo!
• Japan (65% chance) – Meet new people, be in a different country.
• NY and Canada (80% chance) – Visit friends

Be sure to stop by http://www.nowandthere.com/ for some great travel/lifestyle resources (thanks Sam).

To start, I’ll explain the inspiration behind this post. I recently had the pleasure of being onboard the RIAdventure conference cruise. Being that it was my first Flash/Flex conference, I could tell after day one that I had been missing a really, really big piece of my life as a developer. I feel ashamed to say it, but my time prior to this was spent hacking away from the sidelines. Here is a small Q/A I came up with…

• Do I browse every forum and blog searching for an answer, but don’t find one, then when I finally solve it, do I submit the solution?

  • Express your gratitude with a simple response. It’ll go further you think.

• Is there a limited history of my work available to the public?

  • So you write top secret code, but still find time to update your twitter status with useless information. The top dogs in our industry gain a following, because they have something to follow. If you have nothing, recycle, and try throwing a link to a good article every once in awhile.

• Have I ever been to a conference?

  • For super introverts, find your local user group, and get involved. For curious introverts to total extroverts, book the next conference possible!

Meet Some Of My New Developer Besties (in no particular order)

• Lee Fernandes

• John Wilker

• Tom Ortega

• Sam Rivello

• Doug McCune

• Joshua Cyr

• Greg Burch

• Paul Taylor

• Ryan Stewart

• Faisal Abid

• Ash K.

• Nate Beck

• Amy Blankenship

• Minnesota Scott

• Steve Howard

If you’re not jealous, Stop Encapsulating Yourself!!!

So I am just starting to wrap my head around the Mate concept. I did my first little HelloWorld app, just to get my feet wet. In just an hour of tinkering, the separation of the framework from the application itself is very apparent. Having spent most of my time in the PureMVC world, I have grown accustom to writing my code around a frameworks api, but I do appreciate this clear separation.

I’ll update this post with a link to my simple app, but for now I’m gonna dive back into some code. Right now I am trying to figure out how to trigger multiple handlers to a single event, something like multiple mediators interested in the same notification (Observer Pattern) in PureMVC. For example, I have a simple button that triggers a custom Event, my EventMap  currently handles that event using a CallBack tag, so I am only able to trigger a method on the Event target…guess I’ll keep digging : )

It’s been over a year since I last posted about my obsession with learning new technologies and now I’m back!

Shortly after that post I was offered a position as a Flash Developer for RMG Connect/JWT. Having been more of a “jack of all trades” developer at multiple companies, I accepted the opportunity to become a master of something. I can truly say that this decision will likely become the backbone of my career as a developer. So, this post is about my personal and professional progression (alliteration aside). I’ll try to stay away from the infomercial talk as much as possible, but if I throw it in there it’s strictly for motivational purposes.

As I was saying, before being hired I was a “one-off” project gladiator. A little HTML here, a touch of PHP there, a sprinkle of Javascript, a dash of Actionscript, and so on… I would spend most of my time trying to consume knowledge from so many sources that i ended up just running in circles, re-learning only basic information on various languages. For some people this can be exciting, and for awhile it was, but eventually it got frustrating because I never seemed to get a sense of true accomplishment from my work. I’ve always been one to keep moving forward, onto bigger and better things, so to be stuck in this circle wasn’t fun for me.

Nearing the end of that phase I was poking around at some as3, trying to get a good feel for all things Object Oriented. I bought a bunch of books on OOP and was beginning to take on my own interpretation of it. [ENTER Brian Lewis] So I get a phone interview with the Senior Multimedia Developer at RMG Connect [Brian Lewis] and by dumb luck he wants me to join the team as a Flash Developer. Granted I’ve been around Flash since my high school years (save your jokes please,  Half Asian == Looks 15 == Human Calculator), I was still only dabbling with things and managed to make this knucklehead [Brian Lewis] think I was The Golden Child. As it turned out, this Oaf [Brian Lewis], would become my Mentor and a “somewhat decent” friend. In all seriousness (here comes the Bromance), I’ve been lucky to work side by side with him [Brian Lewis], and can attribute most of my development knowledge to him. So if you are lucky enough to find a Mentor, be sure to take them Bow Hunting a lot (inside joke).

Anyway,  within one years time I’ve had the opportunity to work on Large-Scale websites/applications and use a multitude of tools, frameworks, etc. To drop some names, here’s a small list:

– FlashDevelop
– FlexBuilder (soon to be FlashBuilder)
– LowRA
– PureMVC (I love me some Pure!!!)
– Flash Remoting
– Services consuming JSON and XML data

For those just starting their careers, I urge you to keep moving forward, stick to it and success will follow. There is plenty to learn, but it can be done. My experience has grown tremendously and it’s only fair that I continue this process by sharing my knowledge with anyone willing to listen. So, I am planning to make a conscious effort by updating this blog with my experiences, tutorials, and advice as I continue down the road ahead.

My wife might say that this post is long overdue…

At any rate, if you haven’t realized it by now, I am going to rant a bit about how obsessed I have become over the last year with learning various technologies. Someone out there might say, “I’m more obsessed than that…”, and it may be true, but don’t spoil this post, because I rarely have anything to write on here as it is (because I’m learning ALL THE TIME!!!…[snicker]).

So I’ve got a ton of books (Visual Web Programming in VB.NET, JavaScript in 24 Hours, XML, Prototype and script.aculo.us, Visual Basic 2005, PHP/MySQL, Flash Programming, yada yada yada…the list really does go on), I just completed another semester of 2 courses (one on VB.NET and the other was advanced Web Programming), and my IPOD is stacked with audio on similar subjects. Additionally there is an overwhelming amount of knowledge (some not worth a dime) on the Web that I enjoy referencing.

Hopefully it’s clear that I have surrendered myself to the “Power of Learning”. In doing so I have recently found that I need even more ways of gaining/storing all of this knowledge to feed my addiction…

Recently at work I was helping a colleague learn a bit of Flash and some ActionScript 3.0. I’m not an ActionScript “guru”, that said, I also won’t claim to be a “guru” of any other sort. Back to the point…I was teaching him all these things, but in the process teaching and reinforcing my own knowledge of the subjects. It was amazing and gave me sort of a “Rainman” type moment.

After that, I explained to my colleague that in helping him grasp these concepts, I also helped myself…
He agreed and said that it was one of the best ways he knew how to learn(he had previously studied for tests in this way).

The point is, I AM MISSING OUT on a key ingredient to successful learning…

SCHOOL works to some degree as I have recently built a small network of friends who I contact through email, but let’s be real, we’ve all got full time jobs to juggle as well.

BOOKS and lesson tutorials can only carry you so far. Especially with programming/tech books…

The WEB…Admittedly it is probably the number 1 source of information for Tech Professionals while on the job…”No, I don’t have stats to prove it, let’s just call it a wild guess”.

By leveraging all three of these tools a person is truly able to gain essential knowledge. That’s where I currently stand…but there’s always room for improvement!!!

To break out and get great at something you need to actively engage in shared thought of the subject on a regular basis. At least that’s what I think would work best for me right now…Unfortunately at my current position I am the only one looking at things in a developer-oriented direction. This alone makes it hard for me to constantly give and take the type of information I need to accelerate my learning in this fashion. That might be my greatest (maybe my only?) concern at my current workplace. I haven’t been there too long, but do not want to become stagnant within my field. Which brings me back to the first line of this entire post…

“My wife might say that this post is long overdue…”

She knows better than anyone, that most of my time outside of work is spent keeping up with the technology curve. With all that off my chest, it’s time to go…

Hello all, and welcome to my new blog! For starters my name is Steven Diomampo. Currently I am a Web Developer/Flash Programmer at a post-production company in the Dallas Area. I would like for this blog to appeal to the everyone, but obviously it won’t, so check out the other blogs I’ve listed if this one doesn’t tickle your fancy.

At any rate, I will try my best (no guarantees) to provide a variety of content that I am involved in or interested in. As for a few categories off the top of my head, maybe … Programming, Poker, Traveling, Family, Money and Goals. That’s not the “be all, end all” list, but it’s a start that’s hopefully moving in an interesting direction.

That about sums it up for my first official post.

-Steven Diomampo