Houston Clubs web design and life

Getting back into Flash with AS3

Jul 2, 2008 by Paul White

Its been a while since I have played around with flash.  I am finally getting around to building a new portfolio website for whitesites.com.  The current one gets the job done, but my potential clients aren't really given any taste of my flash skills.  Even though my current skill set could help build a very nice website, there are few things I specifically wanted to utilize in my new website.  The main one being the use of 3D.   Flash as a stand alone package does not support 3D.  If you want 3D you are left to program your own 3D engine using actionscript.  If you aren't a fan of Trig it could cause you some stress.  Thankfully there is an open source class called Sandy 3D, designed to run on Flash AS2 and AS3.  This gives developers a very easy way to integrating 3D into their Flash Apps.  Since AS3 is the latest and greatest to come out of Adobe, I will put my focus on catching up to learn it.  AS3 is a true Object Oriented Programming Language.  I am used to working with alot of C# in my asp.net Apps, so learning AS3 should be that bad.  But considering how intense it could be, I might actually buy a book on the subject.

How to spot a Fake Developer

Jun 26, 2008 by Paul White

If you are in the market for a website, you will most likely approach several developers looking for quotes.  This is fine, but most clients don't know enough to see a fraud, or see a value.  They rush to the lowest bidder and then wonder why things don't turn out the way they wanted.  Here are several things to look for when building a new website.

The Foreclosure Bubble and where its going.

Jun 24, 2008 by Paul White

The Media has put aflot of attention into foreclosures, but the number of foreclosures doesn't compare to the number that will happend in the future.  All it takes is to look back 30 years in history to see what happend the last time.

HTTP black lists stop comment spammers

Jun 4, 2008 by Paul White

I got sick of seeing failed viewstate in my event logs. so I wrote some code that checks visitors against a HTTP blacklist.  I found that one of my blacklists was full of false positives.  Not that the given IP wasn't abusive at one point in time but I found it was full of proxies of which are frequently used by legitimate users.  After comparing some user logs I found that I was blocking a few of my member.  The HTTP blacklist from Project Honey Pot works, but had the problem with proxies as I stated above.  However one that I have had much better luck with is the one by stopforumspam.com.
If you are looking to stop comment spammers from seeing your site, I highly recommend them.  Read on for a code snippet that shows how I implimented this block

A guys review of Sex and the City

Jun 2, 2008 by Paul White


Over the weekend, My wife and I went to see Sex and the City on the big screen.  I was dreading the experience.  I guess had set my expectation pretty low. assuming that I would be the only man in a theater full of women and gays.  But I was surprized.  Even though the crowd was mostly women, there were also quite a few couples too.  The movie in all was pretty good.  Not what I would consider a guys night out type of flick. But definately a good date movie.  Read on for my full review

How to make your CSS look the same in IE and firefox

May 27, 2008 by Paul White

I was fighting some design issues on my client's new site.  But I found some CSS code that did the trick.  I guess the trick is to reset all your tags inside your CSS before starting to implement your own custom attributes.  If you have been struggling with getting your CSS to look the same on both your firefox and IE 7 pages. This code snippet will do the trick.

Ethanol is not Green Energy

May 21, 2008 by Paul White

Recently there has been this notion of thinking that ethanol ( made from corn or other plants ) is part of what we call green energy.  It is not.  Green energy is when you are able to collect energy from something that is already there, but just not harnessed.  The only forms of green energy are water, wind, and light.  Everything else has to be manufactured and create some sort of waste.

Oil Companies are not to blame

May 14, 2008 by Paul White

Many people would like to believe that oil prices are going to go back down soon.  But if there is one constant in a capitalist world its that markets will always work.  Here are a few theories about the price of Oil

How to become a Billionaire

May 11, 2008 by Paul White

Recently there has been alot of attention on Warren Buffet.  He is practically a god in the investment world.  He wasn't a trust fund baby like most of the other Billiionaires.  He grew his money over time with smart investing.  After I worked some numbers I figured out that becoming a Billionaire is really not that hard, just a matter of discipline and a eye for stock trades that will make you money.  Check out the figures for yourself.

Steve Ballmer TKOs Jerry Yang

May 4, 2008 by Paul White

Steve Ballmer just kicked Jerry Yang's ASS.  This goes to show how one company can destroy its competition by just making an offer.