Chris Cowherd

We ate over at Claim Jumper tonight and we found that the Redmond Police Department were doing a fund raising event at the restaurant called “Tip a Cop” in which they trade in their ticket books in exchange for aprons and work by assisting the wait staff in an effort to raise money and awareness for the Special Olympics. Claim Jumper was donating all proceeds for the evening to the cause. There was also an envelope on the table in which you could put an additional donation if you were so inclined. It also gave us a great “excuse” to go over the top and get a great meal with dessert of course!

We had a great time! They really went all out to provide a great dining experience and it was very entertaining to be served by Redmond’s officers. In addition to assisting with the dining room, they also had a squad car and police dogs outside. You could have a picture taken of yourself getting arrested or in the car. I couldn’t resist! (pictures below) The money for the pictures also goes to Special Olympics.

I commend them on their efforts.

Shifing Gears

2004 Giant TCR Composite 2

Before moving to Seattle in Jan. 1998, I was really into mountain biking in the desert of Arizona. After moving to the Seattle area, I mountain biked a few times but pretty much gave it up short of riding to work occasionally. I sold my mountain bike around a year later and haven’t really ridden since.

By about 2003 I started getting the itch to start riding again and by 2004 I was shopping for bikes. Here in the Seattle area, particularly where I live in Redmond, road bikes reign supreme. I really had no interest in road riding before. It seems so bla..just sit and spin. Certainly not as exciting as the constant changing terrain of mountain biking, which I still love, but I’m just not crazy about doing it out here in the Pacific Northwest. That’s another story though. For various reasons I decided to get a road bike anyway. Mostly I think I will have more ride opportunities and there is certainly no shortage of organized rides in this area. It started to sound pretty fun.

Resurecting the Wheels

Time Impact Road Pedals

I shopped for quite a while and settled on a 2004 Giant TCR Composite 2 . Several factors influenced my decision. First, I love composites. I worked for a short time in the composites industry in another life so I know what they are capable of. Another reason is that I’m a tech junkie and a composite bikes impress me. I thought about whether I needed this much bike. I could have gotten something much less expensive but I just didn’t want to be able to blame the bike for my poor performance. I seriously considered the next model up mostly because it had composite cranks but I prefer yellow over blue, and I love how these spokes are laced. The blue one had more traditionally spoked wheels even though they are better. Another reason I chose this particular one is that the bike shop had my size (important!) and the one they had at the time was a special edition ONCE frame which had a matte finish. I love matte finish. To top it all off, it was on end-of-the-year clearance all for $1800 out the door. All last year I was shopping it was tagged for $1995 + tax so it was a sweet deal.

Shimano SH-R151 Road Shoe

So far, I’ve only been riding to work and back which is only about 11 miles round trip. The first day…ugh! My butt really hurt and I struggled. I could not believe how out of shape I was. But by the second ride, I was amazed how quickly your body adjusts and it was so much easier.

I’ve always had clipless pedals on my mountain bikes and this bike came with Time Impact pedals. I still had my old moutain bike shoes but the cleats are totally incompatible. I needed get a new pair of shoes that are road specific. I tried on every shoe in the store and walked out with some Shimano SH-R151 shoes. A secure fit was the most important thing I was looking for. These have a carbon sole so that is pretty nice and makes them nice and stiff.

King of the Hill

So the reason that was inspired to write this entry is today I hit a small milestone. Every time I ride I try to hit some kind of milestone whether it be higher top speed, higher average speed etc. So, there is this hill on 40th street that starts on 140th Ave NE and completes at 148th Ave NE. Now being out of shape I could not make it up this hill without stopping! The first day, I walked half of it which is really hard in road shoes! Well, today I made it all the way to the top without stopping. In fact, I made the entire ride to work without stopping while also hitting the highest average speed to date. It doesn’t sound like much but I was pretty irritated with myself that I could not climb this hill. Every ride that hill would challenge me and laugh at me every time I was defeated. Well, hill, put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Looking for Inpiration

Many of you that know me on a day-to-day basis have seen or heard me talking about Macromedia Flash the last several months. I’ve been writing code since I was 12 which is about 25 years now –shuddering at the thought–. I have done just about everything: C, C++, BASIC/VB, .NET stuff, Delphi, script, bla bla bla. What I love using most is combining C++ with Javascript. I’ll talk about why someday but stick with me here. What inspired me to start coding and still inspires me today are video games. Why I never got into the game industry is beyond me. I love working with both sides of my brain; working on projects that exercise the artistic/creative side and the analytical/logical side.

About a year ago I felt like was in a rut. I needed something to inspire me. I needed something… something beautiful. I don’t know how else to describe it. I was in the bookstore every day looking at all the coding books looking for a new language, a new technology I haven’t tried… anything. I wandered a little further than I usually do; just past the linux books, ASP and web development… hmmm… Flash. I thought to myself, “I’ve never looked into Flash. I wonder what its all about. Sure are a lot of online games using this thing.” Scanning the Flash section I notice the Actionscript book. Ahh…programming. I thought for a moment that I probably should not bother because Flash probably used some dumb proprietary language. I reluctantly cracked open the book and to my delight Actionscript was Javascript (ECMAScript). I was hooked already.

The Documentation Dance

So, after buying 6 or 7 books on flash, reading tons of tutorials I think I have a pretty good feel for Flash and know Actionscript fairly well. We have a project we are working on at work that requires some visualization. We decided, “Hey! Lets use Flash as the front end GUI!” Cool. I had heard about Flash Components and thought I would take a crack and making the GUI widgets Flash Components. I started digging and reading some documentation about components but discovered there really isn’t that much out there on how to make your own components. There are tid-bits here and there including Macromedia’s site but nothing I really found conclusive. Everything was more of a “using components” type of thing. Mostly very basic.

If you want it done right…

So that’s when I started my own Flash Component Creation Documentation. The first thing I started doing was going through the base classes (UIObject and UIComponent) and analyzing and documenting every line, every member and function. I registered FlashSecrets.com and plan on putting articles on component creation as well as any other topic on Flash that I had trouble finding. Ideally I’d like the site to center around game development but I think I’m going to also add component creation. Anything I consider advanced Flash coding.

I’ve just about finished commenting UIObject. As soon as I finish commenting UIComponent also, I think I’ll have enough to do a write up on those two alone as the start of a series on creating components.

Stay tuned!