While preparing for a here’s what’s neat in development type presentation for bring your child to work day I ran into yahoo pipes which has been evolving nicely. I quickly found and modified a script to automatically search cleveland craigslist for ATV’s and have new results sent to my phone.

here’s some of the goodies I made in a few minutes:

Cleveland Craiglist ATV Search

ATV Parts

Jewelry making supplies

/**
* Quick and dirty, convert the object into a byte stream, save it off.
* For object with depth, be sure to cast them back before using.
*         public function saveCart():void{
*            ClientSettings.write(”cart”,_cartItems); //cartitems is an ArrayCollection containing many cart item objects.
*       }
*
* Read the object back in with:
*             var tmpAL:ArrayCollection=obj as ArrayCollection;
*            if(_cartItems==null){
*               _cartItems=new ArrayCollection();
*           }else{
*               for each (var item:Object in tmpAL ){
*                   var cItem:CartItem=new CartItem(item);
*                   _cartItems.addItem(cItem);
*               }
*           }
*
*/
package com.ackdev.utils.Serialize
{
public class ClientSettings
{
import flash.net.SharedObject;
import flash.net.SharedObjectFlushStatus;
import flash.utils.ByteArray;
private static var mySo:SharedObject = SharedObject.getLocal(”application-name”);

public function ClientSettings()
{
}
public static function write(name:String,obj:Object):void{
//create a bytearray
var bytes:ByteArray = new ByteArray();
//write an object into the bytearray
bytes.writeObject(obj);
mySo.data[name]=bytes;
var flushStatus:String = null;
try {
flushStatus = mySo.flush(10000);
} catch (error:Error) {
trace(error.message);
}

if (flushStatus != null) {
switch (flushStatus) {
case SharedObjectFlushStatus.PENDING:
break;
case SharedObjectFlushStatus.FLUSHED:
break;
}
}
}
public static function read(name:String):Object{
//create an object and deserialize an object from a bytearray
var myObject:Object =null;
var bytes:ByteArray = mySo.data[name] as ByteArray;
if(bytes!=null && bytes.length!=0)
myObject= bytes.readObject();
return myObject;
}
public static function clear(name:String):void{
delete mySo.data[name];
mySo.flush(10000);
}
}
}

Uses openedit CMS for the persistence layer:

http://trinketssales.com/flexstore/index.html

Released on sourceforge:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/riastore/

What an appropriate title!

This blog is intended as a shameless plug for the little bits of geekdom I play with.

Bit about myself, currently I’m 38, married with 3 children; 2 boys 1 girl, employed as a software developer, fortunately/unfortunately my areas of responsibility are changing so I don’t get to code as much any more professionally. Bright side is coding is a hobby I’ve enjoyed since I was 12 starting out on C-64’s and Atari 400 (Okay I’ll really date myself - my first lines of code were on an Atari 2600 using a telephone style membrane pad cycling through a BASIC like language)

In general I enjoy building and fixing things. Could care less about sports, most TV.

My main driver is a 1983 Mercedes 300sd which I converted to run on grease back when gas was approaching $1.50. My summer project includes fully converting a Silverado 2500HD (400 cubic inch (6.6liter) turbo diesel.. talk about torque! 500lbs) to run on grease and then I’ll probably tackle my wifes VW Jetta.

Work on my eldest sons fort some more, needs a better roof and maybe a window or 2. Need to weld up the homemade ladder he made. Oh ya, cut a bigger hold in the floor so dad doesn’t lose his pants climbing into there.

Pretty much workaholic, but do my best to balance with my children and try to teach them as much as possible but make it fun for them.

That’s all folks!