Control Option Command

I always knew this day would come. My claim to brief internet fame and niche uniqueness is at an end. It’s just too awesome an idea ¹ for someone else not to have it.

There’s no denying that both her head and body outpretties mine by far, so my only counterpoint here is that A: Mine is bigger ², which everyone knows is better; and B: I feel fairly certain that mine came first.

Ah well. Now we’re a guy and a girl with this tattoo, so unless you’re a baby you better back off. This is our territory.

A while ago I was doing a talk on the Flash platform for NRK, and to give the audience a bit of perspective I took a trip down memory lane and dug up some real goodies. Oh yes.

Since this is too good to not to be repeated, allow me to present; the Macromedia ShockZone site from 1997:

Click to start, or witness the fullbrowser glory.

Edit: As these things usually go I had a bit of a revelation just minutes after posting this post. Completely by accident I typed the keystroke ⇧-⌃-⌥-T, which of course is mapped to the “Select Theme” – command in the Experimental Bundle and which I had completely and utterly purged from my mind. I’m pretty sure you want to use that solution rather than the one I outline in this post, but I’ll keep this around for posterity’s sake anyway. Original post follows.

I’m about to start teaching a 5 week class in ActionScript 3 and if there’s any possible way to avoid it, I won’t spend much time in the IDE code editor, because frankly; It sucks. So in order to make the differences between what the students will see on the screen (You guessed it. TextMate.) and what they’ll be working in themselves, at least initially, I played around with one of the themes in TextMate to make it look more like the Flash IDE editor.

From my beloved Twilight theme:

To this IDE clone based on IDLE:

So since I’ll keep using my main theme for all my professional work I wanted a fast way of switching between the two themes (I’ll do a lot of work to save myself from dealing with a drop down menu). A bit of googling (actually a fair bit of googling) turned up this gem from a spanish speaking TextMate google group. Now, before you even start; Yes I feel slightly dirty about GUI-scripting as well. Making a script that simulates clicks rather than one that just tells the OS to perform whatever task associated with said click just feels wrong. But since not even a journeyman when it comes to the arcane arts of programming TextMate I’m just going to bite the bullet until someone (you?) comes up with a better solution.

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I know these things aren’t really supposed to be difficult, but at least have your Flash guy take out the trace statements before you publish.

I was just surfing as I noticed something funny going on in FlashTracer. Like I said, no biggie, but may serve as a warning for other Flash devs.

Todays topic: Language.

• It’s etcetera. Not excetera.
• Aluminium is pronounced ah-luh-min-ee-um not ah-loo-min-uhm.
• Yes, “ironic” is generally used wrongly, however there really isn’t a good descriptive word to convey the what most people associate with “ironic” so stop being a dick about it. Coincidentally I’ve coined the word “alanic” ¹ to replace it, but until that gets enough momentum; Just accept the new use of “ironic”.
• To paraphrase Terry Pratchett: “Multiple exclamation marks. A sure sign of a twisted mind.” Only I’d put it “…a sure sign of a total douchebag.”
• The fact that you put a winking smiley after your mean and abusive statement does not absolve you of your complete and utter dickery. The same goes for “lol”.
• Just because you’re anal about correct language (like me), don’t be mean. There’s a significant difference between honest mistakes² and laziness / douchebaggery.
• “U” is not a word. “2″ is not a word. “R” is not word. “B” is not a word. Moron is.