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I spent sometime getting acquainted with the new sander today.

Added some more photos too.

Just uploaded version 0.7 of the Remember Mismatched Domains extension for Firefox and Thunderbird. It fixes an issue where certificates with names that contain a space character were not being remembered correctly.

Now those crazy kids can use any character they want when selecting a common name for their SSL certificate and we’ll still be able to skip past the domain name mismatch warning. Ahh, ain’t life grand?

The xpi is in the usual location, here.

Thunderbird users may find the install instructions in this post useful.

There are couple of reasons for the slower than usual updates. With the cooler fall weather and the darkening evenings I’ve stopped putting in evenings on the boat. Also, I’ve been sanding for the last few visits. There are few things less exciting than sanding but blogging about sanding has to be one of them. (You tell me, how does reading about sanding rank?)

A couple of weeks ago I finished glassing the deck. The plans secify using a 6oz cloth to sheath the topside and I am really happy with how it turned out. I found the lighter weight cloth a bit easier to work with - it probably helps that it was lying mostly flat. I expect fairing it should be a relatively painless undertaking, though I’m sure I’ll find some way to complicate the process.

Something I’m not thrilled about is the stiffness of the deck. In a couple of areas it is quite spongy. I had been planning to add strengthening backings to the various deck-mounted hardware I’ll be installing but now I’m thinking about also installing a layer of ply from below between the deck framing. Doing it again I’d be tempted to either deck the boat with thicker ply or use two layers of the specified thickness.

The deck on the VG23 drops slightly beneath the sheer line going forward which means that without some form of scupper the deck will hold a small amount of water. You’d think this wouldn’t be much of a concern right now considering I’m building inside. Not so. Depending on the direction and force of the wind and amount of rainfall there are a number of small leaks in the roof of the barn. We had a fair amount of rain this past week so on the weekend there was a small puddle waiting for me on deck. Though, I’m actually happy it happened - now I’ll know to be wary of it when I wrap the boat for the winter.

Have I mentioned that I’m a big fan of sanding? I’ve begun “cleaning” things up below decks. Starting in the forward berth I’ve been sanding all the rough framing and removing any of the excess epoxy putty that dripped or squeezed out as the members were being installed. It’s awkward, dusty, thirsty work. It also proved too much for my sander. To be honest, when it finally died I actually felt a bit of satisfaction - like I’d vanquished an adversary. (That lasted until the trip to Canadian Tire to pick up a replacment).

Yesterday had that calm after the storm feeling. MAX wrapped up on Wednesday and I spent a good part of the day thinking about my reactions to it …

I’m happy to have been able to put faces to a good number of names. Unfortunately there are a few folks that I just never seemed to be able to catch up with. Attendance this year was in the neighbourhood of 3000 people so I guess that’s to be expected. One thing’s for sure though - there are alot of really cool people out there doing some really cool things and the opportunity to meet some of them and just hang out was inspiring. “Zat alone is worth zee price of zee conference”. (Sorry Joe, I’m too lazy to work out decent phonetics).

I’m also pretty excited about some of the new things coming from Macromedia. Which I guess is a pretty natural reaction - I’d imagine something to that effect is at the top of the objectives whiteboard in MAX planning meetings, (a Breeze meeting collaborative whiteboard no doubt). For now atleast I’m going to take a pass on simply listing the things that have me so enthusiastic. I’d probably just wind up rattling off a bunch of product codenames and confuse myself. Again. (I know I’m getting too old for this but there’s a great drinking game in all those codenames - someone just needs to hammer out a few rules).

What really stuck with me coming from the conference is a sense of how things in this internet application space seem to be accelerating. Web 2.0 indeeed. It would seem to me that nearly everyone I’ve talked with whether they do elearning, web (or desktop) applications, mobile, web design, you name it, is excited and optimistic about the near future. I didn’t really get the impression from anyone that they had their foot on the brake.
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Phew. Delivered the 1.0 of a project just a couple of hours ago.

I’m leaving for Macromedia’s MAX in the morning.

Couldn’t of planned things better ;-)

Folks who attended last week’s TAAC have been reporting news of some features Macromedia are apparently working on for a future version of Authorware (presumably version 8). Everyone is quick to point out that there is no official word on any update to Authorware and that the features demonstrated may or may not be included in any future releases.

Flash component (swc) support for Authorware was the feature that struck me as the most exciting. Anyone who’s struggled with implementing swfs more complex than simple animations will know how needed this feature is. Presumably this feature would provide all the functionality of Flash Player 8 (including the On2 video codec).

The demoed feature that seems to be getting the most attention (and generating the majority of discussion) was an export to Flash option. I would guess that the rationale for this move would be to allow Authorware developers to target the more ubiquitous Flash Player. In my mind the success of such a feature would be dependent upon the comprehensivness and fidelity of the export.

According to reports the demo also included an overhauled One Button Publishing (OBP) system. From the descriptions I’m guessing it contains an implementation of the AICC Package Exchange Notification Services (PENS). (I’ve heard it argued that PENS is one of those standards that tries to solve a problem few (if any) people have).

Talk about keeping the party going. No wonder JD has a headache ;-)

Earlier today Macromedia announced their plans for a Flex 2 product line (Flex Builder, Flex Enterprise Services, Flex Framework and Flex Components) as well as Flash Player 8.5.

A brand new ActionScript Virtual Machine for the new ActionScript 3 scripting language, a bunch of new APIs (including the AWOL E4X and RegExp), and a whole lot more. Oh, oh, oh, a “compilation mode” too. Damn that sounds promising.

update: Sho Kuwamoto’s post here seems to confirm that the new VM will support JIT compilation of AS3.

update 2: I haven’t seen the Flex2 FAQ linked to yet. Plenty of good answers there. My question: how big will the 8.5 player be?