Jul

25

I’ve been using Git and Capistrano to manage and deploy sites as of recent. One of the main reason’s for using a repo is to allow new developers to grab all the source needed for a project. That of course can mean Flash source files (FLAs). Git can’t do binary changes, but can still keep track of FLA versions. This is kind of nice. But Flash files can be rather large in file size. Which makes the repo bigger and hence cap deployments can take a long time. Tarring the whole repo up is inefficient. Capistrano offers three ways of dealing with this. One, don’t put your binary sources (FLA, PSD, etc…) in the repo and use the remote_cache deploy option to make deployments only use diffs and be really really speedy. Awesome. Option two, put the binaries in the repo and deploy using a local cache option that excludes certain directories. So something like:

set :deploy_via, :copy

set :copy_cache, "/tmp/caches/#{application}"

set :copy_exclude, ["flash_work", "art_work"]

This works, but still bogs down deployments. I’m not sure if cap is really excluding the directories before it creates the tarball, I need to dig threw the source and see. The third option, is to deploy the entire repo, binaries and all, and then add a after_update hook and remove the directories. Again, you are still tarring everything, which is slow, and then SFTPing everything, which is slow.

In the end, remote_cache would be absolutely awesome if it could exclude directories, which is a whole ‘nother Git issue. Perhaps Jamis has something planned for remote_cache and excludes. I’d be happy to test it out.

Jul

23

Perhaps something already exists that I am unaware of, but I could really use something in Flash similar to the open file window in Textmate. Organizing symbols in Flash is an art form already. So follow along: In Textmate I have a project open. Rather than drilling down into /com/mikekrisher/vo/Something.as, I simply hit command + t and a simple window opens where I can start typing a file name and it does the Google suggestions thing and shows a list of matching files. Choosing one opens it obviously.

I want the same thing in Flash. Hit a keystroke. Start typing the symbol name. Get a list of matching symbols. Choose one to open it up so I can edit it. Much faster than drilling down in the library and double clicking it.

Picky, picky, I know.

Jul

23

About three weeks ago, I decided to give Skype a try again and see how the quality had been improved and to see if I could ditch my Vonage line finally. Unfortunately, the quality is still unacceptable when calling mobile devices or landlines. There is a terrible echo on the landline user’s end. Everything was fine on my end, but other’s said it was borderline impossible to hear and have a conversation. I was really wanting it to work. Too bad. I tried the various mic hacks and settings, but nothing made a difference. I’m on a MacBook Pro with 4gb of RAM, using WiFi, hooked up to a 15MB down/5MB up Verizon fiber line. It wasn’t latency on the network. I checked Packet Loss. It was simply digital encoding or something happening before the analog delivery to the PTSN devices.

Skype, if you are listening, I really wanted this to work. If you need a guinea pig to help diagnose or work on the problem, let me know.

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