Month: October 2008

Error #1056: Cannot create property x on loaded clip in AS3

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I had a particularly sticky flash problem where a MovieClip worked perfectly when run on its own, but when loaded into a container clip using a loader, would give:

Error #1056: Cannot create property someProperty on loaded clip myLoadedClip
At first I thought it was some kind of timing problem or failure to declare the items in the clip, but it turned out, simply adding the word dynamic to the class definition fixed the problem. Dynamic classes can have properties added at runtime. The MovieClip class is already dynamic, but apparently, the dynamic property is removed in some other part of my code.

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useButtonMode = true not working in AS3

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In Actionscript 3, you may find yourself wondering why when you use “useHandCursor” on a MovieClip, the cursor remains an arrow on mouse_down.

In AS3, useHandCursor is a property of the SimpleButton class. if an object has “buttonMode” set to true, by default “useHandCursor” will also be true. If is is not set to buttonMode, setting “useHandCursor” to true will do nothing.

On objects that are set to buttonMode, setting “useHandCursor to false will prevent the cursor from changing to a hand on MOUSE_DOWN.

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Stem cell tourism

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While stem cell research funding remains bogged down and encumbered in the United States, other countries, most notably China, have forged ahead. Patients are travelling to foreign stem cell clinics, to try treatments not available in this country, whether they follow standard testing and clinical protocols or not.

Lab research with stem cells has been extremely exciting and suggestive of great potential, but the current artificially embargoed situation in the US and several other countries provides ground for less than scrupulous treatment centers.

Beike Biotech, in Shenzen and other cities in China, is one bio-technology company which offers stem cell treatments for diseases that are usually considered untreatable. Their site offers many testimonials from people who have been treated for conditions like Spinal Cord Injury, Autism, ALS, and brain injury, but little in the way of systematic followups. Reading their patient blogs, although very interesting, it is difficult to tell for any given patient exactly what was done beyond “injections of stem cells” and exactly what their outcome was after they left the clinic. Most of the blogs end one or two entries after leaving. Beike’s treatment philosophy is summed up in this paragraph from their website:

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Clarke’s law # 3 in action – Shazam, an amazing iPhone app!

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Shazam
Shazam Listening to a tune

I just got my mind blown by “Shazam”, a new FREE application for the iPhone. Shazam uses the iPhones microphone to listen to songs or music happening anywhere in earshot. It will then tell you what song you are listening to.

Just click “Tag it” and point the mic end of the phone in the general direction of the sound. It twirls for a while, then reports back, usually extremely accurately what song you were listening to.

IMG_0007.PNG
Shazam sending song info to the web for processing.

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SCORM 2.0 workshop

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The SCORM Workshop held by LETSI (Learning Education Training Systems Interoperability) is over, and some clear direction emerged from the blizzard of whitepapers, informal submissions and comments over the last few months. I was very impressed by how fast they moved things forward in a few days.

The design process will be driven by use cases generated by the people who actually use SCORM applications in their work: Instructional designers, administrators, teachers, and other strategic adopters all over the world. This is significantly different from the way SCORM was originally designed, by a small community of LMS vendors and the U.S. Department of Defense, one of the BIG USERS of training and tracking.

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Update on Autism research

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Although repeated studies show little or no correlation between vaccination with the MMR vaccine and the onset of autism, there is a lot of popular support for the idea that there is some causal link. Originally the use of mercury in the form of thiomersal in vaccines was suggested as the culprit, but this seems less likely since mercury was removed from vaccines in North America and Europe by 2001 and the incidence of Autism continued to rise

Still many people remain unconvinced there is NO link between vaccination and autism, despite all the negative results, so other ideas have been floated. These include:

  • Some children’s immune systems may be predisposed to be overwhelmed by the combination vaccines, and they develop high fevers and sometimes febrile seizures which cause or contribute to the onset of autism.
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