Manlio Rules

Gogeous and not too cold. Great runs all day

i spent most of the afternoon working with this stuff so i figured i would document my resources for learning how to create custom skins for different components in Flex. because i’m sure in a few weeks i’ll want to do this again and i’ll forget. this is assuming you want to do the skin authoring in Flash CS4.

step 1:

read this article

step 2:

once you’ve done that, you’ll know how to create individual skins for flex components (ta da!). the trick to doing multiple skins of the same type of component is basically here:


Button
{
skin: Embed(skinClass="Button_skin");
}


.otherButton
{
skin: Embed(skinClass="Button_skin2");
}


so my default buttons would be skinned with the “Button_skin” file, and i could choose a “otherButton” style that would have it be skinned differently.

each skinClass is a separately published .swc file. the best way to separate naming conventions will be in the particular .fla’s, you’ll have to rename the master export class, but since it’s all inheiriting from mx.flash.UIMovieClip the name doesn’t really matter. then create a separate style (make sure you use the “.” notation for a new class, i screwed that up at first)

and that’s about it.

The celtics won the championship this week. I thought this was great for obvious reasons. it really made me reflect (and this isnt’ new ground in the cultural psyche) of how wonderful it is to be a boston sports fan, especially for these last 8 years. We’ve seen multiple super bowls, the first world series victory since before WWI, and now the resurrection of a franchise previously left for dead. Sometimes you just luck into good fortune, and I surely have done that. At any point in my life i could have “decided” to start rooting for Philadelphia, New York, or SF based teams, and given up the Boston franchises. understandable since i haven’t lived in boston since i was 17. Still, how do you “give up” your favorite sports teams? i will never know. i think it has something to do with enjoying the drinking part more than the sports part. just a guess. Next up, the Quakers!

Work has been going fine lately, though it is hard. no matter how much i think i know, i’m routinely cut down to size on a daily basis with some offhand comment like: “i don’t understand why you’re doing it that way, it’s ineffecient.” at which point i have to sweep up little pieces of my ego, put them back together into something resembling confidence, and soldier through the day’s lesson. It is hard to remember that every time i dont’ know something, it means i learn. mostly it just feels like i’m a dunce.

tonight is my first real gig since i stopped playing at those shows at the frying pan in ny. you know the ones i mean. i usually ran sound for them and got frustrated as well. i suppose some of them were fun. in any event, i’m nervous.

next week there will be time for sleep. nah, i’m just kidding. who needs to actually rest?

So, a few weeks back, Jay and I are at trivia (w/Ali and Mike, winnin ur champagne by bein smartsest), and he mentions that he is interested in going mountain biking sometime soon. Now, i’m not a great biker, most of my bike experience in the last 5 years came in Brooklyn when i would use my ultra heavy dual suspension hybrid bike to zoom around the boroughs, usually with Scott about 15 blocks ahead of me.

But anyways, we decided to go up to San Rafael, rent some mountain bikes, and see what all the fuss was about. We left around 10AM, headed north, rented the bikes, and put them on Jay’s car. then we followed the GPS to San Pedro Ave, which resulted in us u-turning out of a residential neighborhood. but we made it. we suited up, and headed for the hill… and damn, that was really hard. i am the kind of biker who hates to admit defeat and get off the bike, but this was just too much for me. 45 degree incline, rocks everywhere, big dips in the trail, i was having none of it. i could hardly stay balanced, let alone have any sort of strategy about avoiding the rocks. so i hit one after the other, waiting for the inevitable large rock that would pitch me over my handelbars and over the edge of the very narrow path.

luckily that did not happen, and we managed to make it all the way around and then down a harrowing slope (downhill = scarier than uphill) and back to the car. oh, and rental bike? your new fangled disc brakes failed to impress me with all their squeaking and the ineffectual stopping.

despite feeling that i was risking serious injury at every moment (which is suppose i also do when i snowboard, but i’m much more comfortable on a snowboard than a bicycle, and i don’t make a habit of going over rocks), i had a lot of fun. my next step is going to be seeing if i can refit my hybrid suspension frame with some nice mountain tires and get the gears working a little bit better. and then victory will be mine. victory!

As some of you know, i love baseball.

As fewer of you know, i enjoy playing softball quite a bit.

And as even less of you know (luckily), i’m borderline terrible at it. here’s why:

A. Someone (possibly Noam Chomsky) can’t keep his mouth shut. A lot (all) of this paragraph is heresy, but i remember being forced to quit baseball twice in my youth. The first and most crippling time to my future development was when i was about to graduate from the “farm” league to the “minors”, where the kids started pitching and things got a little more competitive (i was maybe 10). My mother heard a story that there was a fight between a coach and one of the parents in the minors, and decided she didn’t want me exposed to that level of competition, because chances were i’d be getting yelled at by other parents for sucking. so i wasn’t allowed to play the next year or ever again in the town leagues. Years later, i was told that the person who started the fight was Noam Chomsky, but it’s very, VERY ,possible that this is untrue, and i have no evidence aside from someone else’s story. But my development was cut off way too early because of the incident. this is the primary reason i am not a major leaguer as we speak.

B. I’m a left handed infielder. My high school coach, before he relegated me to the practice squad, told me that my best positional fit would be as an infielder, because i wasn’t so great at tracking fly balls and was much better fielding grounders. but i’m left handed, which means i have to play first base, and i’m not really enough of a power hitter to justify that, even at the high school level. sidenote: after i got demoted, my dad forced me to quit the team altogether. this led to me skipping one trimester of sports at my high school and having to double up sports credit the next year. to my knowledge this was the only time this had ever happened at my school. so in some ways, i’m a pioneer.

C. I’m not athletically gifted. at all really. i used to think that i just hadn’t found the right sport. now i know that the right sport is probably Wii tennis. and Jay kicked my ass at that a few weeks ago.

so that’s my story. tune in next time when i explain why my high school’s lack of a football team has certainly robbed the patriots of their best cornerback since Ty Law left.

via Deadspin

hi sports fans. so, here’s what’s been going on in my life since the start of the month.

1. Snowboarding. i went up to our cabin for the first time last weekend. the house is great, the snowboarding is great, i will be going back up there this weekend to get a few days in, though the conditions aren’t awesome, they’re much better than what i’m used to back east. my goal remains to get 25 days up this season. right now i’m at 2, but it still seems like it’s achievable. i hope. i might be making that up.

2. CES. i spent sunday-wednesday of this week at the Consumer Electronics Show, doing demo’s for the products that i built last year, and generally wandering around, gawking at huge tv’s. my main takeaway from CES is that everyone seems to be hawking HD camcorders, to let more of us make video blogs. maybe i’ll start doing a video blog on manlio rules, though i think i would lose almost 100% of the eloquence y’all have come to expect from me. but at least i could always have def leppard playing in the background.

3. Football. the pats are in the playoffs! go playoffs! i’m nervous about the SD game this sunday, but if anyone can stop LDT, it’s the Pats. I hope.

4. Trivia. Trivia nights have been pretty much my only social outlet since the start of the year. we keep winning, so that’s good. last week we somehow rolled with like 12 people. Lyandra and Amy were there as well, so my SF friends got to meet some of my NY friends, and vice versa.

and that’s pretty much it. seems awfully boring. i’ve got some shots of trivia 2 weeks ago that you can peruse, if you so desire. i’ll make sure to take ski cabin shots this weekend so everyone can drool at the awesomeness of wintering in Tahoe. wintering!

so, boot camp has been progressing slowly but surely. I missed all of last week because of work and general exhaustion, and we re-assesed this week. somehow i managed to do 8 less situps than last time. at this rate, in 4 months i will get down to 0 situps. but i improved in every other area, so that’s good. My side goal is to be able to run the 5k at brie’s wedding in 6 weeks. i think i’m well on my way towards that.

AND, today when we split the groups, i got assigned to the “A” team, which means the hardest workouts with the most in shape people, and ideally the best results… it kicked my ass for the day, we’ll see if i can keep up there.

went out for Amy’s birthday last night, decided that i will be watching many football games this year at Mad Dog in the Fog. should be fun.

so, i’m starting to think that perhaps what i should do this year is become a mainstay at giants stadium. I don’t really like the giants very much, but i’ve got a lot of time to kill, and the stadium is absolutely beautiful. like, real super nice.

Friday night i met my new softball team. I think i may be the best player on the team. anyone who has seen me play softball knows why this is a scary concept. anyone who hasn’t seen me play softball but has watched my conduct my affairs should also have some inking.

Saturday I did nothing. Except… well… ok, so i had an appointment to get a consultation about hair transplant surgery. I’ve been doing worse and worse coming to peace with my hair situation in the last few weeks, so i made an appointment. But getting there involved driving through North Beach, which i have never done before, and hopefully will not have to do again, because it’s very difficult. After an hour of driving, when i had missed my appointment by 20 minutes, i gave up, decided that my incompetence at geographic navigation was some sort of sign, and went home. later, on the internet, i found out that the general cost of hair transplant surgery is between $4000 and $9000, which is crazy talk. If i’m going to use $4000 strictly to make myself more attractive, i’m going to get some sort of crazy ass pectoral implants (ideally ones that shoot fireworks) and a ton of drugs, plus maybe a real bitchin guitar. I should start a hair club that preaches those philosophies. better pecs, better drugs, and a bitchin guitar. fuck your hair.

and sunday i went to see the pirates play the giants. i didn’t take any photos, so here are some shots of barry bonds when he played for the pirates and the giants.

note: bonds didn’t actually play in the game.

so, last week i spent wednesday through monday in vail, with luke, briehan, alex, dan, amy, and sharon. it was a ton of fun, the snow was good, the house was beautiful, and all of us had a great time, or at least i did. i assume everyone else did as well. thanks go to luke’s parents, who put up with us all week, and luke for inviting all of us out there. photos are below: