This side of things

I have been offline (from home) for sometime now and the whole experience with the Reliance WiMax connection has been terrible. I have had this connection for about 15 days now and have been able to use it for only about 3 days. This really sucks, especially, if you have big plans like me – the "after I get broadband at home" list.

Till about last week, I was able to get an IP, if I waited for around for about 3 hrs. Now, its more like NEVER! Tech support sucks too. They take you through the usual routine – Start > Run > type "Cmd" > ipconfig /all, ipconfig /release (some people add this..dunno for what effect!), ipconfig /renew. Oh yeah! there is also the power off the PPOE device and the restart the machine thing! Another common term I used to hear – "teething problems". If you did have teething problems, you would give out so many connections. Surely, the public will most certainly jump into the whole thing when they hear about it.

I should have got the usual broadband connected with wires, but, I had heard good reviews about the WiMax connection and decided to jump into the bandwagon. The connection is really good..if.. you get the IP address...that is! Mine is a 300KBPS Unlimited option and I get about 50KBPS download rate on an average. Somehow, all that seems like a dream now. I am having to fallback on my Mobile GPRS connection to check my emails and browse a bit. I will wait till the weekend. If(status=="problem not solved){ actionUnsubscribe=true}

 

Evolv

The development continues. It has been slow and I hit upon some new stuff to include. This was something I was working on a long time ago. A utility called IAD (Interactive Advertisement). That has now become obsolete, considering the amount of change the media has been through. But, along the same lines, I am building an add-on, which would enable users to control template based ads on their sites. These adverts will be configurable to an extent and make life a lot easier for people who have signed up as affiliates or anything of that sort. Yeah, advertising seems to have become a fad with me. I work in a advert company... DUHHH!

Also, I am considering changing the engine of my content management console a bit. I kinda hit a road block with it. I guess it has more to do with reusing bits of code from the old Spark versions. So, the old AS2 migrated code needs to be redone from scratch using AS 3.0. L

I will have a complete list of features up soon. I still have to complete the calculations J

 

Ciao!

Deconstructing “Spark”

First up – Thank you, Heidi (Adobe) for the envelope of stickers! :)

With about 20% development of "Evolv" complete, I thought I'd build the "Application Family Tree" for "Spark" (or "Evolv" as it is now called!). It isn't a very big tree – just 3 major and one minor version. The whole idea of Deconstruction was fun!

What started off with a simple utility of type out my Blog entry for a really old version of my site, evolved to become a full-fledged application. Man! It is mind-blowing!

Spark V1.0 was built with very simple logic and just had a single function. Originally developed using Flash MX (ver 6.0) and good ol' VB 6.0, the code was pretty basic. It was the day of the Dial-up and being on the internet was expensive. So I needed something that could get my journal up and about. The answer was to have an offline application that could help me save my files with the necessities of the time. It was also the era where we needed that "&myVar=" in the text file to make it load into Flash. I developed a cheeky trick, wherein, VB would step in and make sure that it adds the variable at the beginning of the blabber and save the file. Simple thing worked out to be handy. Inspired by the success of the trick, I decided to make the rest of the site a bit more dynamic and applied the trick to all pages. So, depending on the section you are updating, you need to select the variable that needs to be added. Funny!

When MX 2004 was released, I took that leap. I decided to port existing functionality into MX 2004. Even though, initially, I wasn't too happy about using the V2 components, I decided to use them. But, things didn't end there. The major step was to make it an online application. We finally had cable internet at home and that changed everything! It was also a big jump, since, I had to upgrade almost everything – VB 6.0 to ASP.NET.. yeah! That was a leap! The whole technology upgrade made me add more things too. The original Journal Editor could now use Style Sheets and send out emailers. This has to be Version 2.0!

Spark V3.0 was a big step forward, once again. More features were added. Spark was rebuilt using AS 2.0 – Classes, objects et all. One of my clients asked me to add in some way to view Query results from his MS Access database. That became a good feature to have. I extended the feature to query SQL Server and MySQL databases also.

Spark 3.01 stuck to the same lines as 3.0. I make a few tweaks, did a lot of code cleanups and added one feature – File Upload. I broke my head literally at this feature and got a work around, since, Flash MX 2004 didn't have the feature. JavaScript came in handy here. The feature was buggy, but did its thing! As long as people who used it were happy having it, it didn't matter. Even though it was a minor version, it was the most memorable!

Spark didn't get to see Flash 8.0. I was kinda busy and didn't have the time to put in for an upgrade. I just spruced up the File Upload and used the FileReference class and functionality. No version change.. just a small tweak!

Now, almost 6 months later, the new version is under development. The change of product name was necessary – to something that truly reflects what the product does. "Evolv" (yeah no "e" at the end) is packed with features. It is being programmed as a whole plug n'play engine. You could just plugin the features you need and leave out the rest. The AS 3.0 and ASP.NET combination works really well and gives it the power and flexibility.

The whole deconstruction episode was really interesting and reflective. There are a couple of things I wouldn't have done and some I would. More on Evolv..soon!