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Violence in Rio
Rio gangs shoot down police chopper, 2 cops dead
So, on the one hand I’m pissed that Chicago got a bad rap right before the IOC voting because the city was dangerous, but on the other hand I’m glad that Chicago didn’t get the Olympics because media events that usually make only local headlines would be blown up on an international level. Then I go back to being mad because I know if I were an athlete, I wouldn’t be too excited about going to Rio. The helicopter in the above article was shot down approximately 5 miles from where at least some of the Olympics will take place.
Quote from the article:
Violence also broke out Saturday in another slum, where television footage showed at least three buses set afire and motorists fleeing for cover from bursts of gunfire by presumed drug traffickers. Police gave no immediate details of those events, though gangs sometimes set buses aflame to protest police operations.
Despite increased policing efforts, Rio remains one of the world’s most dangerous cities. The violence generally is contained within slum areas, though it sometimes spills into posh beach neighborhoods and periodically shuts down the highway that links the international airport to tourist destinations.
Colin Moock’s ActionScript 3 Tour – Chicago
On a metaphysical level it was nice to have another day off from work. On a realphysical level, it was nice to get back into the routine. And not having to walk all the way from the entrace of Navy Pier to the back. It was a 10 minute walk and I was trucking it.
I took a picture of Colin with my cameraphone, and I was all excited cause I found out the USB cord for my real camera connects to my phone, too. But when I connected it, Windows couldn’t find the software, and so, no picture.
Anyway…
Colin was a great presenter, and I applaud him for presenting for essentially 8 hours (he kept saying 9, but that included the lunch break). I guess when the name is “ActionScript from the Ground Up” I shouldn’t have been expecting any real advanced coverage of the topic. I got a great review of OOP, though, and I’m sure for all the Flash “design” type people there, it was way too fast. It was essentially a 9 week course crammed into 9 hours with no time for homework. So, yeah, I’m sure there were some minds blown. But I also am sure there were people who were bored out of their minds. I was close, but I hung on and managed to pick up things here and there even in the OOP stuff. That said, I’m pretty sure I can skip his book (sorry Colin!) since the reviews on Amazon say that it goes a lot into the OOP stuff. But that frees up some cash, so I can get the RIAs with Flex and Java book I’ve been wanting forever, or else Adobe’s Flex 3 training book. And for Adobe, I think that was the point anyway; just to get people more exposure to ActionScript and make them more interested in using it; so they can stay on top of Silverlight.
I am also glad I got to see how similar ActionScript is to Java. I’d say that AS is probably more like Java than JavaScript. Of course, names for languages really don’t tell you anything about them.
I overloaded myself with the Flex/ActionScript by reading my Flex 2 with ActionScript 3 book on the train and bus to the event. Now, I will try to busy myself with a game I’d like to develop using Flex/ActionScript, and try to also fit in an extra credit project at work using Ruby on Rails. My FA side project will be a good one since I can probably move quickly to advanced Flex/ActionScript concepts since the languages are so similar to what I already know. The RoR project will have a bit more of a learning curve since I’m still getting to know Ruby.
Just an FYI (while I was finding the picture below), I came across this TIOBE software site that ranks programming languages. As of Dec 2007, Ruby is at #9 while ActionScript is #25 (glad to see it’s at least that high; MXML doesn’t count as a programming language). Java is #1 with a 20% share, so I guess it’s good that I’ve got that one down pretty well.
Nels Wadycki 