jun :: realeyes

I found out last week that I had to upgrade my Flex 2 certification to Flex 3, and quickly…my ACI certification was on the line.  Of course this happens when I’m completely swamped and have too many other things to do.  In other words, I needed to pass the exam and do it with very little study time, in other words, after finding out last week, I took the test this afternoon and passed.

So what helped me with getting an 88% on minimal study?

1. I’m an experienced Flex/AIR developer.  Flex/AIR is what I do every day at work and that’s what I’ve been doing since Flex 2 beta.  That being said, if you’re just getting started, “results may vary” if you know what I mean.

2. I downloaded the Adobe Flex 3 with AIR Exam Preparation Guide from the Adobe site. It can be found here.  Basically, I scrolled to the bottom and took the 9 question practice exam to get a feel for what the questions would be like.

3. Over the course of a week I ran each of the three 50 question, and five 25 question practice exams in the Attest simulator once.  Immense kudos to the Attest team.  It’s a great product with a great comprehensive feel, and a very awesome price tag…free!

4. I spent an hour before the test skimming through the Adobe Flex 3 LiveDocs.  An hour goes quick, but the questions I got wrong on the Attest gave me a good idea on what I needed to concentrate on.

5. I got good sleep the night before, visualized myself passing the test, and spend 15 minutes or so before the test thinking of other things and concentrating on slowing my breathing and pulse rate. (I was pretty nervous, I always am)

6. During the test I took my time, read all the answers before jumping to conclusions, and unless I was 100% sure, ruled out all the FAIL ones before deciding which one was the correct.

7. Most importantly, I told myself what I would do for myself if I passed.  In my case today, I took myself out for one of my most favorite and unhealthy burgers in the world, the Big Daddy at Good Times.

Needless to say, success tasted good this afternoon.

Overall, I thought the exam was somewhat challenging in areas and easy in others.  If one really understands the concepts covered during the exam, I think that the resulting certification is at least a good way for someone to get their foot in the door to an interview for a Flex job.

For those wanting to take the exam soon, I can’t disclose any specific details about it.  However, I can say, if you’ve built at least a couple Flex and AIR applications and if you take all the practice tests provided in the Attest simulator and pay attention to what you miss, you’ll have a pretty good idea on what you need to study in more detail.

Now I can relax again until the Flex 4 exam comes out…ugh.

I’m gonna ride my co-workers coat-tails and just reference his post.  This has happened to other people I know in the past and I don’t see Google’s bureaucratic process changing anytime soon.  C’mon Google, with all the uber-tech-mojo you claim to have you can’t come up with a more expedited system of taking “bad” sites that have been fixed and making them show up in peoples browsers again without the FAIL warning for a month straight?

<rant>First it was the US financial and automobile sectors that were on my @#$# list, and now it’s Google too.</rant>

Google, you need to keep in mind that no matter how hard any one tries these days they may get hacked or have a DOS attack launched against them.  It’s unfortunate that you make the process so difficult for the little guys.  I mean without our content, you would have nothing to index to begin with.  So cut us some slack.

Oh, and btw, just say you were us?  How would it make you feel if your site looked like this for a month after you had fixed it and submitted it for evaluation?

Doesn’t feel too good when you’re in our shoes does it?

Anyway, the indexing on my blog will probably be turned off now…oh and btw Google, we’ve got our DOJ hounds hot on your heels…

I’d like to thank everyone that attended my Intro to Flex Debugging and Profiling here at CFUnited this morning.  I’m sure the slides will be made available elsewhere later, but here they are for download now.

http://www.iheartair.com/samples/cfunited/267_Jun_Heider_IntroToFlexDebuggingAndProfiling.pdf

As I sit through my layover here at ATL, I continue to put the finishing touches on the Intro to Debugging and Profiling presentation I was asked to do for the CFUnited crew.

My presentation will be on Thursday, 8/13 @9:45am in Sandtrap.

Not only will I be giving a 100 level introduction to Flex debugging and profiling, but I will also be highlighting the new debugging and profiling features in Flash Builder 4.  As a final added incentive, I will be giving away one copy of the book Professional Adobe Flex 3, which I had the pleasure of co-authoring with an excellent team of Flex experts.

See you at CFUnited!

I had previously blogged about the Silverlight – First Impressions – Through the Eyes of a Flex Developer session I would be giving at the InsideRIA conference.  Unfortunately, that conference has since been canceled.  Hearing about the cancellation was a bummer since I was really looking forward to treading new ground on the other side of the fence and saving other Flex developers some time by doing some of their research and feet wetting for them.

That being said, I’m pleased to announce that I will have the opportunity to give this session at 360|Max!  So, if you’re going to be attending MAX, are a Flex developer, and want to learn how to get started with Silverlight you should come check it out!

By the way, as a little teaser, I’ll tell you that the application will have a widget in it to view streaming video.  In other words, as time allows some very basics on the difference between streaming video with the Adobe platform vs. the Silverlight platform will be covered.  As always, my slides and code will be available after I present, and I’ll be kickin’ it at MAX if you feel like tracking me down for extra info.

So get registered for MAX and most importantly, get registered for 360|MAX!

The computerized voice of a Mac Book Pro speaks a live public Twitter timeline during our TweetJam.  Our Iphone player utilizes the AppStore to find cream of the crop audio applications to integrate into our tunes.  With Merapi, and open APIs like the one that Twitter provides we’ve transformed a regular old rock band into a 21st century band of ultra-geeks rockers.

The Compilers: Powered by AIR, Flex 4, Merapi, and The Cloud.  Iphone players, and lovers of good old analog instuments.

Read all about what we’ve used for our apps in a previous post.

Check out our recent lofi rehearsal room mic recordings on Facebook and MySpace.

Follow us on Twitter and get a chance to take part in our next interactive TweetJam.

Get a feel for our live set from our Vimeo channel.

We’ve got some great ideas up our sleeves and we’re not done geeking yet.  Special thanks to RealEyes Media for providing our jam pad HQ!

I’m debugging an issue with my application today and want to know when something gets set but with no length.  That way I can debug the call stack to find the offending method…back in the Flex Builder 3 days it was a matter of letting the breakpoint hit over and over.  Now I just set a conditional breakpoint.  Sweetness.

Oh…and the result after debugging down the call stack? It’s a data service issue and I can get someone else to fix it.