When I managed to track the installed versions of things down, it turned out that there really isn’t a slick WordPress shopping cart that will work with the stuff I’ve got.

I took the easy way out. PayPal. You don’t need a PayPal account (but it’s not a bad idea regardless), and the site now uses PayPal’s shopping cart directly.

Simple. Easy. But (one t) ugly.

Now that’s what I call service.

Anyway, I’ve gotten some of it all back up (by building the pages by hand). The eCommerce module is just plain broken. WIth the demands on my time this week, I won’t be able to fix it until next weekend (like Haloween). Until then, email me, we can set up a PayPal payment or something. I should have things back by next week at the latest.

Thank you for understanding, and thank you, Yahoo for “helping”.

When I create scripted extensions, I always break things up into files that make things manageable. A large project for me might contain 200 script files. Rather than try to stuff it all into a single script for delivery, I came up with a template that I use for just about all my InDesign scripting projects that makes this about as easy as it can be. This concept really only applies when a script will reside in a persistent (named) scripting engine and adds menus to the InDesign menu bar and/or context menu.

I have made the template available in the Free Stuff page of this site, so go ahead and download it.

When you unzip it, it creates a folder. Inside that folder is “startup scripts” that contains one jsx, “loader.jsx”. That file loads the entire extension. It recursively looks through all the folders and loads the entire project into the named scripting engine for you.

There’s a “resources” folder. It contains things, like images, that are not jsx files. The loader script does not load anything in the resources folder. As another freebie, I put some ESTK extensions in this folder. There’s a PDF that describes how to install and use them. One of those extensions does a batch conversion to jsxbin. It places all of the scripts into a “bin” folder except those in the “startup scripts” and “jsx” folder. The loader script that creates the names engine can not be a jsxbin. Files in the jsx folder are those script files which should not be converted to jsxbin (basically any class definition that might be serialized and deserialized using toSource()).

When you convert a project to binary for delivery, the loader script contains a flag, “loadBinary”. If you set that flag to “true”, it will load the binary files. You then remove the jsx’s to hide your source code, and yer’ done.

Just to be clear – use the tempate (it has examples of menu creation, context menu creation, and some handy libraries), complete and test the project, convert it to binary (one step), remove the jsx files (other than those in the jsx folder), set the loader’s loadBinary to “true”, and you are ready to ship projects that are arbitrarily huge.

Enjoy!

I’ve uploaded a Flex project that received APID (http://www.rorohiko.com) events in PatchPanel.

If you’re interested, take a look at the free stuff page.

Since no one else we know has a heat pump for heating and cooling, you all should know that when the outside temperature drops, heat pumps lose efficiency. Moral of the story, heat pumps air condition pretty good, but at times, don’t heat well. Old heat pumps are worse. Ours was old. Hence the high tech wood stove.

This wood stove had an automatic fan that blows hot air from the stove casing. It turns on when the stove gets hot, even has three speed settings for when you really get it cooking. It also had this really nifty “ejecto-log” feature. When you load this thing with wood, you had to be really careful when you open the doors. If you’re not, the damned logs would fly out all over your living room. Burning logs. On the carpet.

By now you’re wondering how cleaning house on Sunday night deserves a detailed description of the wood stove. I’m getting there.

MB has (MB is my wonderful wife) done the dishes. I’ve folded the laundry. Now it’s time to dust and vacuum. MB notices the fire is almost out, and casually mentions to me to throw some wood in there. Knowing about the ejecto-log feature, I’m super careful. No logs fly out, new wood goes in, the doors get shut, and I move on to the dusting.

MB fires up the vacuum. First the entry hall, now the family room, and on to the living room. By now, National Geographic had this cool show on about the raising of the Monitor (Civil War famous ship), and I’ve forgotten all about dusting. I’ve also forgotten those two little embers that fell out of the stove onto the little lip on the stove that catches these little buggers so you don’t burn down the house. Evidently the manufacturers didn’t know about the ejecto-log feature or they’d have built a bigger lip.

MB goes on to the living room, vacuums up all those little log leavings in front of the beautiful white brick hearth for the stove. She takes the vacuum nozzle and sucks the stuff up on that lip. The embers, of course, were now black and looked very much like dust.

Until of course, they got sucked into the vacuum cleaner. You know what happens when you blow on embers? The same thing happens when you suck on them. Vacuums suck.

MB continues on behind the sofa. About then she notices all this smoke coming out of the vacuum. I hear something like, “Uh Bob!”. By now there’s LOTS of smoke coming from the vacuum, and all the smoke alarms in the house are telling us all about it.

MB takes the vacuum to the door, still vacuuming all the way, bless her heart. We get it on the deck, open it up, and, by God, the bag’s on fire. She yanks it out, throws it on the ground, where I douse the thing with the garden hose. I ask her why the heck didn’t she stop vacuuming. Her thinking was that this was the last chance to vacuum until we could afford a new one, so she had better get the stuff at the front door. Now there’s an example of keeping one’s cool under pressure.

I have posted that Flex project in the Free Stuff page. So all you geeks that want to know how I did it, some and get it.

I’ve added a Flex project to the free stuff page. This was in response to a posting on the Patchpanel forums (Adobe Labs). The poster wanted to react to InDesign events in ActionScript. This Flex project shows you how to do it (and yes, it’s in a persistent scripting engine that is launched by InDesign at startup.

Please stay tuned!

The experience was great. The orientation meeting pretty much kept to what we needed to know on day 1, and the basics of how to get things done.

With about 5 hours of presentations, highlighted by a surprisingly witty video from the security group, I got the feeling that working better Adobe will be better I than thought possible. Pretty much across the board, Adobe does whatever it can to make balancing personal life and career easier. I’ve worked for large firms before, and I’ve never experienced anything like this. There’s definitely a reason why Adobe is perennially in the top 50 places to work (Forbes’ ranking, I believe). Last year, they were #11. If this is #11, what’s #1 like?

Now that I’ve been oriented, it’s time for work!

Working for Adobe has been something I have wanted to do. They are a great company to work for, the people are excellent, the working atmosphere is among the best in the world. And I get to spend my time working on the kind of software that I love to do.

It’s a little early to tell exactly what’s going to happen with Contact Sheet scripts. Suffice to say that while the specifics are not yet know, I will continue to support them for the foreseeable future.