Fixing Snake Eyes
After sitting in a box for 5 years (that’s 5 years too long), I finally unpacked my G.I. Joe collection to display all 75+ of them in my custom-built glass cabinet. Upon opening the box and sorting them out, I discovered about 12 of them were broken. Having a fixed bunch of them before, I thankfully had the tools, parts and knowledge to do the repair work.
My collection of 3 3/4″ Joes spans from 1982 – 1988 and includes most of my favorite characters, including Flamethrower, my all time favorite. As many of them are around 25 years old (hard to believe it), they tend to suffer from a similar problem. The black rubber band that holds the waist and torso together (called and O-ring), being made of some organic material, can rot and break. So when I opened the box of figures, here’s something of what I saw:
This wasn’t the first time I saw this. Several years earlier, I had to repair many of the figures and ordered replacement O-rings from a site called smalljoes.com. So, here are the steps I took to fix my injured G.I. Joes including one my favorites, Snake Eyes:
The first step is to unscrew the back, which allows you to disassemble the figure, and take out the rotted O-ring. You put the new O-ring on the hook at the top of the legs and put the waist over it, pulling the O-ring through.
Next stretch the O-ring in the back and snap the chest piece on it. Next, carefully add in the head/neck, followed by each arm.
Holding the figure together, you now tighten the screw and your done.
It takes less than a minute and should preserve your figure for several years, especially if it’s retired from active duty and sitting on your shelve.
Another great collector piece to get is the foot stand. I prefer the clear ones, but they make all colors as well. These are great for displaying the figures in on the shelf. Enjoy your collection!
Also, I should note that I recently bumped into an old friend of mine who works for Hasbro in the G.I. Joe marketing group (dream job!). I checked out the site and it’s use of Flash and sound emulates a DVD! Pretty nice effort leading up to the movie this summer. Looking forward to it!
Bug Vacuum
With 4 bugs, (3 of them live) in the bug vacuum, I thought I’d share a view inside the chamber.
You can get your very ownBug Vacuum from Amazon
The Flash Flex name game
Flex Builder has a new name. That name, you should know by now, is going to be Flash Builder.
I very badly (well, as badly as any individual possibly could who 1. was not an Adobe employee, nor 2. had anything to gain financially from a name change) wanted this back when Flex went from 1.5 to 2. You see back then Flex was a different product. It was clear that Flex was no longer the server-side, stand-a-lone, uber-code-y solution Macromedia originally positioned it to be.
At version 2, it became clear that Flex was simply a ‘top soil’ layer of rich code on top of Flash Platform that allowed more rapid, if slightly less ‘Flex’-ible designed approach to building a Flash SWF.
So now, 2 versions later, the official tool for building Flex-enriched Flash apps is now going to be called Flash Builder. I have read a lot of posts expressing concerns about how this affects the way people understand the ‘differences’ between Flash and Flex platforms.
In my opinion, the fact that people even think there are (or were) differences between Flash and Flex, or even considered them two separate ‘platforms’, is what this new product naming should solve. You see, Flash and Flex are not two different platforms. To compare the two would be like comparing a grilled cheese sandwich and a frying pan — where the sandwich is the Flash application and the frying pan is the ‘tool’ used to make it.
Flex was never an application type. Any application built using Flex Builder or leveraging the Flex framework was ultimately and always a Flash application. For years, we referred to Yahoo! Maps as a Flex application. What we all meant was it was a Flash application built with Flex.
As Sir Keith points out in his clever mock dialogue, many accomplished developers coding Flash applications have been using Flex Builder for a while — mostly due to the weak IDE environment of Flash Professional. While I would love to see a stronger coding environment with Flash Professional, I think Adobe sees this differently. Flash Professional may not get any weaker for code, but it certainly will get stronger as a creative expression tool. By making Flash Pro ever more designer friendly, Adobe can now position Flash Builder as the ultimate IDE for coding Flash applications.
The Flex framework will still be celebrated and continue to grow — especially with Flex SDK 4 on the way. We should still see even more Flex specific topics at MAX, break out conferences like 360Flex continue to flourish and see a growing knowledge base of effective framework features like data binding, advanced components and architecture. So the state of Flex is good and I believe it will have a stronger base of developers now that the tooling is well understand.
And for those concerned that Flash Builder won’t continue to attract hard core coders… Last time I checked, Flex Builder >>> now Flash Builder is still based in Eclipse. Unless that changes, the world of Java and other coders now officially have a ‘familiar’ place to build Flash applications from.
33 things I learned from Danger Zone, the making of Top Gun
1.) Top Gun, the movie, was based on an article called “Top Guns” discovered by Producer Jerry Bruckheimer.
2.) Jeffrey Katzenberg originally approved the writing of the movie for the studio.
3.) The writers signed on mainly so they could have a chance to fly in a jet fighter plane.
4.) The writers visited the actual Top Gun school and discovered Naval pilots have ‘their own language’.
5.) RIO = Radar Intercept Officer
6.) The writers approached the film as a sports movie, so a trophy was added for the pilots to win. There is no actual trophy in the real school.
7.) The locker room and volleyball scenes were added in so Tom Cruise, paid $1mil for the movie, would show ’some skin’.
8.) The script was originally titled “Top Guns” after the article.
9.) The accident when Goose dies was supposed to be a collision – but the Navy didn’t want that.
10.) The jetwash incident actual happened to the technical adviser’s friend. In the event of a flat spin, the RIO actually needs to wait before ejecting himself for the canopy to clear the low pressure zone. This is why Goose dies.
11.) Paramount originally didn’t like the movie. Executives wanted the movie to be more about learning how to fly the plane.
12.) Don Simpson actually begged Eisner and Katzenberg not to change the script.
13.) The movie was shelved until new management was brought into Paramount.
14.) Bruckheimer got a greenlight with a budget projecting of $14mil.
15.) Tony Scott was offered Top Gun because he had done a Saab commercial featuring a jet.
16.) The music inspired Tony Scott to go for a more “Rock n Roll in the sky” feel.
17.) The writer, Jack Epps, actually suggest Tom Cruise be cast — and wrote the script with him in mind.
18.) Tom Cruise, with a pony tail, took at test ride in a Blue Angels plane to get convinced to take the role.
19.) Val Kilmer and Tom Cruise had the same agent, and that’s how he heard of the movie.
20.) Tony Scott had to chase Val Kilmer down after the audition to get him to take the role of Ice Man.
21.) Val Kilmer and Tom Cruise did not talk to each other much off camera. Kilmer says it was to prime them both for the subtext tension and conflict between their characters.
22.) Ice Man’s coughed “bull shit”, when Maverick is explaining his maneuver, was not in the script.
23.) Michael Ironsides was unsure about his ability to pull off playing an officer, until a real Navy pilot mistook for one while on location.
24.) “Mom and Pop in Oklahoma” was an expression used for the everyday person who wouldn’t care if things weren’t detailed 100% to actual Navy specifications.
25.) The carrier scenes were shot on a real aircraft carrier, The U.S.S. Enterprise, while in service. 6,000 crewman were on board during the shooting.
26.) The real crew had been out to sea for 180 days.
27.) Director Tony Scott wrote a personal check of $25,000 so he could get the carrier’s course to change for 5 minutes to get the right lighting angle from the sun for one shot.
28.) ACM = Air Combat Maneuvering
29.) Most of the shots of the Navy planes in the sky were taken from a camera on board a Leer jet.
30.) The control tower fly by was real, and while many Navy pilots always wanted to do it, they had to draw straws to see who would get to do it.
31.) Anthony Edwards was the only actor not to get sick during the flight scenes.
32. Tony Scott’s commercial experience paid off when flipping the camera 360 degrees to capture some of the flying sequences.
33.) The film is dedicated to Art Sholl, an acclaimed stunt flier, who actually died shooting one of the flat spin sequences. Neither his plane nor his body were ever recovered.
For more Top Gun trivia, visit IMDB.
To purchase the Top Gun [Blu-ray]
featuring this awesome documentary, visit Amazon.
Wish I was going to 360Flex next week
At one point I was going. At one point I was speaking. Unfortunately, for me, I’m unable to do either this year. For the first time since the original 360Flex, I won’t be attending the event next week in Indy. And it just sucks for me.
This event is the best, in my opinion, for all levels of Flex developers. You simply don’t have direct and personal access to so many talented presenters and session as you do with 360Flex. It’s the lowest cost event, by far, and the organizers, Tom and John, work very hard to keep it humble and simple.
They’ve done a great job profiling the speakers and sessions this year. Here’s a link to the schedule, and you’ll see some amazing names and topics being featured.
My boy Wes Leonardo, from Ribbit, will be presenting some cool AIR stuff. Also, if I were going, I would not miss Joe Johnston’s FLEXperience session, all about UX in Flex!
I’ll miss hanging with everyone, but I’m sure it’ll be an awesome event.
And if you’re not going, and CAN go, you owe it to me to go to http://360flex.eventbrite.com/ NOW and register.
Have a great time and good luck with what I’m sure will be another incredible event for the community!
Follow Me
Follow Me
Upcoming Engagements
-
