I know of two ways to cast something from one type to another:

1.  var myvar:Type1 = mything as Type1; // does not work

OR

2.  var myvar:Type1 = Type1 (mything); // works!

I was using the “as” keyword, and I couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t cast my string to a number.  I finally drilled down, and replaced it with usage #2 above, and it fixed my issue.

So annoying!

I found some posts on LocalConnection, and this post… but the issue with LocalConnection is that you can only have on instance open at once.  So, if you build something and a user opens two tabs of it, it will fail to connect to the second instance.  Blarg!

The solution is actually simple: good old events. I tried this earlier but failed to add the “.content.add” piece.

Check out this example, and download the code.

var tmpThis:Canvas= EV.target as Canvas;
var tmpHighest:Canvas= highestPanel;

removeChild (highestPanel);
removeChild (EV.target as Canvas);

addChild(tmpHighest);
addChild(tmpThis);

I’ve tried about 10 times to start a blog.  Each time I always run out of time to work on it, I get way to many spam messages… ehh whatever.

Now I’m going to do it.  This blog is mainly going to be about Flex, Flash, amf-php, and the web.  I’m also going to talk about entreprenuership, (dealing with) people, and whatever else is on my mind.

Here’s what’s on the table for my first two blog posts:

1.  amf-php authentication sample application

I told some people in the amf-php community that I’d post my sample application online.  That was July.  Well now I’m really going to do it!  Coming by Friday 11/28/08.

2.  using svn to auto-publish to your dev server, and backup your database…

This is a neat trick we use in-house to manage multiple-team-member web projects.  This trick is thanks to Tom Petr at Schedr (www.schedr.com).  I’ll do this in January.