Developers can now use the Adobe Flash Builder platform to develop applications for iOS devices, such as Apple’s iPad and iPhone, as well as for the RIM BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

Support for the devices (which had been announced in April) in Flash Builder 4.5.1 allows developers to create apps for a variety of popular devices and platforms using one code base with different presentation layers.

“The reaction from developers to the new mobile capabilities in Flash Builder 4.5 and the Flex 4.5 framework has been absolutely fantastic,” Ed Rowe, vice president of developer tooling at Adobe Systems, said in a statement today.

Adobe’s Flash Platform evangelist Serge Jespers shows us what “one tool, one framework, one codebase” means, and demonstrates an app developed for different devices using Flash Builder and Flex:

Developers from different industries have been using Flash Builder 4.5 and Flex 4.5 to help them reduce development time and the cost of delivery to build some pretty amazing apps across the major platforms:

• Politifact.com: A project of the St. Petersburg Times and a 2009 Pulitzer Prize winner, the PolitiFact.com team extended its website content into a mobile app available across leading app stores. The PolitiFact.com app helps readers find truth in politics by investigating statements by members of Congress, the President, lobbyists and other Washington D.C. personalities.

• Netflix Queue Manager: Using Adobe AIR 2.5, Flash Builder 4.5.1 and the Flex framework, RIA design and development group UnitedMindset created the Netflix Queue Manager, which allows users to connect with and manage their Netflix queue across devices and features intuitive search capabilities. With success in the Android Market—over 340,000 downloads since October 2010—the app is coming soon to BlackBerry AppWorld and the Apple App Store.

• Mr. Mixit and Pyramix: Web design and development agency HD Interactive first released Pyramix, a word game combining the strategy of Cryptoquote and the simplicity of Boggle, and Mr. Mixit, a spin-based matching game where you mix record labels against the clock, to Apple’s App Store. The new updates allowed HD Interactive to use the same code to deliver the apps to Android Market and BlackBerry AppWorld in record time.

• Muni Tracker: Are you from the San Francisco Bay Area or maybe planning to visit? This app helps you track locations, arrival times and bookmark your favorite stops and lines for Muni (San Francisco Municipal Railway), San Francisco’s public transit system. The developer was able to quickly and easily port this original Android app to iOS.

• Conqu is an easy to use yet powerful task management tool designed to help conquer an e-mail inbox and get things done. Using Flash Builder 4.5, the developer, AsFusion, was able deploy the app on multiple platforms with minimal effort. They were also able to reduce the time to develop the app since there was no need to debug different code for each individual platform.

Adobe is pleased to announce the availability of Adobe AIR 2.7 SDK and the Adobe AIR 2.7 runtimes. Adobe AIR 2.7 includes new features for both desktop and mobile applications with mobile support for Android 2.2+, BlackBerry Tablet OS* and iOS 4+ operating systems. Companies can build and deploy AIR 2.7 apps using Adobe Flash Builder 4.5 with an upcoming update to AIR 2.7 later this month.

*BlackBerry Tablet OS is scheduled to receive an OTA (over the air) update of AIR 2.7 by the end of June.

New features in AIR 2.7

Mobile

• Enhanced rendering for iOS: AIR apps for iOS render up to 4x faster in CPU mode.  This change will improve the performance of many AIR for iOS apps, including those built with the Flex framework.  Watch the performance improvements
• Video: Adobe AIR 2.7: Faster App Performance on iOS (Renaun Erickson, Adobe Flash Platform Evangelist, demonstrates faster AIR 2.7 app performance on iPad)
• Faster development time for iOS applications: Developers can now debug and build iOS applications faster than with previous versions using a new mode available within the AIR Developer Tool (ADT). During the development of an application, developers can now choose to use “interpreter mode” to streamline the testing and debugging development cycle.
• AIR installation on SD cards for Android devices: This feature allows end users to install or move the AIR runtime onto the SD cards within their Android devices so they can free up storage space on the phone.

Desktop

• Integrated support for Media Measurement:  The Adobe AIR 2.7 runtime now includes the same built-in support for media measurement as Adobe Flash Player 10.3, allowing companies to simplify the collection of real-time, aggregated reporting data for how content is distributed and viewed by users. With direct support for Adobe SiteCatalyst, powered by Omniture, developers can implement video analytics for existing or legacy video players with as little as two lines of code. For additional information, see the article on measuring video consumption in Flash.
• Acoustic echo cancellation: With integrated support for acoustic echo cancellation, developers can now add real-time VoIP capabilities to games, enterprise, and other types of applications without requiring users to wear a noise-canceling headset. Users can now chat using the speaker built into their desktop or laptop computer. This new capability is also available in Flash Player 10.3.
• Navigation Improvements for HTML Content: Enables seamless weblink-style navigation within desktop apps such as magazine viewers and eBook readers.  Developers can now respond to a new event to be notified when content within the HTMLLoader control attempts to change the location of a page. This enhancement provides developers with a better way to implement intra-application navigation.

Rossignol Experience iPad Application was created and designed by La Haute Société thanks to Adobe Flash technologies.

For more information go to the Adobe AIR and Adobe Flash Player Team Blog and read this article http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/2011/06/adobe-air-2-7-now-available-ios-apps-4x-faster.html.

A few weeks ago, we decided to fly to Johannesburg to attend the “Meet The BlackBerry® PlayBook™” event at the forum | the campus on 24th May 2011 in association with Adobe. The event was split into a business track and a developer track, which catered for most of the attendees. A few of us went to both tracks and found the presentations to be very useful, gave us an insight into what markets BlackBerry are aiming PlayBook at compared to the Apple iPad and other tablet competitors. After chatting to many of the BlackBerry representatives at the event, they all said there has been a lot of interest from small, medium and large enterprises in South Africa regarding the PlayBook. So we are looking forward to the official launch of the device next month.

The reason ThoughtFaqtory is so interested in this device, is because we can leverage our existing Adobe Flash and Flex skills to develop great user experiences for the enterprise market. If you are interested in getting an app developed for the BlackBerry PlayBook, please get in touch with us on our website at www.thoughtfaqtory.com or email us inquiries@thoughtfaqtory.com.

We have also ported some of our apps over to the device already, if you are interested in seeing any of them please let us know via the details above.

Also, check out this video below regarding the “BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet for Business”.

Another video called “BlackBerry PlayBook – Flash”.

“AppsWorld” – powerful word wouldn’t you say… makes me think of how our world is changing and revolving more around Apps in the IT Industry… hence the reason we didn’t want to miss out on the opportunity to a be a part of an exciting conference happening this week. ThoughtFaqtory is thrilled to have the chance to exhibit our thoughts and experiences at the AppsWorld Africa 2011 in Cape Town at the CTICC on Wednesday, 1^st June and Thursday, 2^nd June 2011.

This conference will offer you and us the opportunity to engage with leading developers and a whole host of different specialists involved in the Mobile Apps Development industry, who will be able to swop useful information and find out more about what is actually happening in that world some of us know a pinch of salt about….!!!

Our founder, Simon of ThoughtFaqtory will be on the Enterprise App Developer Panel & the MD, Phillip will be chairing the Developers Workshop Stream.

We will have some exciting new mobile apps to showcase.

For more information about the conference go to AppsWorld Africa 2011.

A year after Flash Builder 4 and Flex 4 SDK were released, new versions are available with Flash Builder 4.5 and Flex 4.5 SDK! The main focus for Flex 4.5 SDK and Flash Builder 4.5 is the ability to build mobile applications that target the Google Android, Blackberry Tablet OS, and Apple iOS operating systems. Additionally, Flex 4.5 SDK introduces new Spark components and improvements for large application development while Flash Builder 4.5 introduces dozens of new coding productivity features for faster ActionScript and MXML development.

Adobe have really focused on mobile development for this release, offering developers one tool, one development framework and one codebase to build mobile applications on Android, BlackBerry Tablet OS and iOS. Flash Builder 4.5 also helps developers make these applications ready to deploy for an app store/market. You can immediately develop applications for Android, and support for BlackBerry Tablet OS and iOS will be available through free Flex and Flash Builder updates in June.

Here are a few resources to get things started:

Build your First Mobile Application in Flash Builder 4.5

Build your First Flex 4.5 Application

Flex Developer Center

Mobile development using Adobe Flex 4.5 SDK and Flash Builder 4.5

Examples and case studies

Be more Entertained

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is your ultimate entertainer, delivering a multimedia tablet experience at the grandest scale ever!

Watch Full HD movies, take 8MP photos, and play games or surf Flash websites on the large 10.1″ display and dual surround sound speakers! Everything runs smoother, faster and better with the powerful 1GHz Dual Core Processor and Android 3.0, Honeycomb platform.

Incredibly lightweight at just 599g and yet still fully loaded with features, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is your consummate entertainer and it’s always ready to perform.

Your life tools

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 has everything you need to keep tabs on your life-at home with your family, at work and even on the go! Running Honeycomb, Android’s newest platform made just for tablets, the Galaxy Tab excels at smooth web browsing and fast downloads thanks to HSPA+ 21Mbps and Wi-Fi access.

Enjoy the same access to Google Mobile Services on the tablet as on your PC – from Gmail to Google Calendar. Choose from over 3 million Google Books to read on the tablet without the burden of carrying multiple books with you. Download a myriad of apps from the Android Market to customise the functionality of the tablet to your needs.

Specifications

Hands-on Video

BlackBerry Tablet OS key details

• Reliable, high-performance kernel engineered for multi-core hardware
• Multi-threaded POSIX OS (Portable Operating System for Unix) for true multitasking
• Built from the ground up to run WebKit and Adobe® Flash®
• Built with the security, efficiency and seamless connectivity from the ground up you’d expect from RIM

Application development approaches

There are currently two application development approaches for the BlackBerry Tablet OS:

• Web Applications with HTML5 — Developers will be able to create compelling applications using HTML5, CSS and JavaScript®, which leverage the WebKit rendering engine.
• Web Applications with Flash — Leveraging Adobe’s tools, developers will be able to create visually rich applications using Flash 10.1.

Application distribution through the BlackBerry App World™ storefront makes it easy for end-users to discover, download and use your application.

Application creation

Leverage your existing Adobe Flash tools and content and create breakthrough mobile applications for the new BlackBerry Tablet OS.
Or add a new dimension to your BlackBerry development skills and create compelling applications for a new mobile form factor that complements your existing application.

Traditionally, RIM exposes the hardware and software on the OS for developers to create rich and stunning applications.

Learn more about the Flash Platform Development for BlackBerry Tablet OS

Register now for early access to the BlackBerry Tablet OS Software Developer Kit (SDK)

The current positions available including the skills required to perform this job effectively:

Flex developers

• Adobe Flex
• Rich Internet application development
• Strong working knowledge of usability focused interfaces
• Object-oriented programming, analysis and design with ActionScript3
• Custom Flex component development built on Adobe’s Flex framework.
• Flex-Database integration using Web Services, Flash Remoting, and/or Data Services.
• Adobe LiveCycle Data Services ES/ BlazeDS, Flash Communication Server / Media Server
• Eclipse and Ant
• Java
• AJAX development experience a plus.

UI developers

• Adobe Flex
• ASP.Net
• C#
• MVC Architecture
• Silverlight
• JavaScript
• CSS
• HTML/HTML5
• XML
• AJAX

Java developers

• Oracle, MySQL
• JVM (J2EE, JDK, JRE), API, XML
• Apache Tomcat
• Spring
• Redhat, Linux, Solaris
• Hibernate / JPA / ORM
• JCR
• Any web application framework
• Java2D, PDF, Postscript programming
• GWT, AJAX development
• Test-driven development
• Adobe Flex/AIR Development a plus

iPhone/iPad developers

• Experience in iPad Development
• Expertise in Mac OS X, Objective-C 2.0, Xcode, Interface Builder, and Instruments
• Expertise in device partitioning and code signing
• Expertise in consuming web services from iOS applications
• Expertise in SQLite and database work
• Experience with SCM toolsAbility to design consistent, easy-to-use UI’s
• Mastery of iOS API’s
• Self starter, able to work independently
• Good communication skills
• Ability to explain development concepts to other developers
• Experience with Subversion
• Experience with both SOAP and REST

Award-winning health insurance provider uses the Adobe Flash Platform to create a unique interactive online service empowering customers to lead healthier, happier lives.

A new take on healthcare
For many people, the concept of wellness is relegated to an occasional visit to the doctor at the first sign of illness or for an annual check-up. But with climbing insurance premiums — particularly for employees who make contributions to employer-sponsored plans — and frequent coverage from news outlets about the dangers of an unhealthy lifestyle, more citizens are rethinking their approach to healthy living.

“We’ve always viewed ourselves as a leader and innovator in the insurance industry,” says Paulo dos Santos, CIO at PruHealth. “Encouraging and rewarding our customers with discounted premiums and other services for living a healthier lifestyle would certainly distinguish us from our competitors. We needed to create a unique program to deliver that message. Adobe software and technologies proved to be the most logical choice to achieve that goal.”

Working with our business applications development team at ThoughtFaqtory, PruHealth adopted the Adobe Flash Platform, including Adobe Flex Builder, to create an interactive online, incentive-based curriculum that encourages physical activity, healthy eating, and smoking cessation among the many ways for customers to earn redeemable points and valuable rewards. The challenge for us was to build a rich experience, that was easy to use, enjoyable to work through and be able to retain the users interest throughout the completion of the health and fitness goals process.

With the Adobe Flash Platform, PruHealth provides customers with richly detailed and dynamically animated graphs and charts, giving them a comprehensive understanding of how their habits affect their health and wellness.

Leveraging the Adobe Flash Platform and Adobe Flex Builder 3, PruHealth delivered its innovative online Vitality Interactive application, a secure online portal to accompany the long-standing Vitality Program. The dynamic portal features a range of interactive wellness tools that enable customers to create their own health and fitness goals and timelines.

“With the Adobe Flash Platform, we created a richly animated site that brings a unique visual perspective to show customers how their daily habits contribute to their overall health and wellness,” says Greg Peringuey, development manager for PruHealth Online.

The application provides customers with a questionnaire about their current lifestyle choices—exercise habits, calorie intake, and lifestyle choices, among many others. They can watch as rich-media charts and graphs update instantly with their answers to paint a comprehensive picture of lifestyle changes they can make to live healthier, and save money.

The full Adobe Success Story is available here.

It is pretty simple process, just follow these steps:

• Download Flash Player 10.1 Beta 2 and AIR 2.0 Beta 2
• Test your content on the new beta run times
• Log any bugs you find at http://bugs.adobe.com

Also, please spread the word on Twitter – Improve Flash 10.1 & AIR 2.0 via Beta 2 http://bit.ly/cty7Nm READ & RT #Flash #AIR #QUALITY

Discussing New Printing Features in the AIR 2 Beta 2 from Ryan Stewart on Vimeo.

Adobe® have released AIR® 2 beta 2 on Adobe Labs. Adobe AIR 2 provides end users with exceptional application experiences while giving developers the easiest and most powerful way to develop desktop applications across multiple platforms (Mac, Windows, and Linux).

AIR 2 builds on the success of AIR 1 by giving developers new capabilities, and even tighter integration with the desktop. Some new features of AIR 2 include:

• Enhanced support for interacting with printers (beta 2)
• Support for TLS/SSL socket communication (beta 2)
• Support for the detection of mass storage devices.
• Advanced networking capabilities like secure sockets, UDP support, and the ability to listen on sockets.
• Support for native code integration.
• The ability to open a file with its default application.
• Multi-touch and gesture support.
• New APIs for access to raw microphone data.
• Webkit update with HTML5/CSS3 support.
• Global error handling.
• Improved cross-platform printing
• Improved security and support for enterprise and government standards.

Two new features that developers may be particularly interested in are the following:

• Print Job Enhancements
  New properties and methods have been added to the PrintJob class to give you better control of the way content is printed from an AIR application, including the choice of printer, paper size, and number of copies. New properties also give you more information about the printer, such as printable area, whether the printer will print in color, and whether the print job is currently active. The new PrintJobOptions.printMethod property allows you specify whether to use bitmap or vector printing. The PrintJobOptions.pixelsPerInch property allows you to specify the resolution of print jobs. The new PrintUIOptions class allows you to control how much the end user can change the page range to be printed. See PrintJob, PrintJobOptions, and PrintUIOptions.
• TLS/SSL Sockets
  You can now connect to a server that requires TLSv1 or SSLv3 for socket communications. See SecureSocket.

For a complete list of features and to see what’s new in beta 2, please refer to the Release Notes. For an overview of the new features in AIR 2, please take a look at the following:

• Article: Rob Christensen’s Introducing Adobe AIR 2 beta
• Video: Kevin Lynch, CTO, demos AIR 2 during the MAX 2009 keynote (5:50)
• Video: Christian Cantrell’s MAX 2009 presentation, What’s Coming in Adobe AIR 2 (62:52)

The AIR 2 Public beta is your opportunity to explore new features and communicate your feedback. Please remember that that this is beta software, so there will be bugs, incomplete features, some performance issues, and some missing documentation. Therefore, please use the AIR 2 beta only for testing and exploratory purposes.

Demos

Adrian Ludwig demos various games from Armor Games and Miniclip.com with Flash Player 10.1 on Palm webOS using the Palm Pre (3:44)

Adrian Ludwig demos video and animation on the BBC, The New York Times, and Angry Alien websites on Android using the Motorola Droid (3:35)

Adrian Ludwig demos Flash Player 10.1 on Nexus One, the new Google branded phone (3:41)

Kevin Lynch demos multi-touch and gesture capabilities on the HP TouchSmart using AIR 2 beta and Flash Player 10.1 (2:54)

Adrian Ludwig demos various websites with Flash Player 10.1 on Palm webOS using the Palm Pre (3:02)

Adrian Ludwig demos Google Finance on Microsoft Windows Mobile using the Toshiba TG01 smart phone (3:04)

If you are a Flex developer or wanting to learn Flex, i highly recommend you look at Adobe’s video training course called Flex 4 beta in a Week.

The course is broken up over 5 days as follows:

Day 1 – Exploring the basic, Introducing object-orientated programming and Understanding components and layouts
Day 2 – Handling events, Validating and formatting data, Navigating application content and Animating components and states
Day 3 – Controlling text display, Controlling visual display and CSS and Skinning Spark components
Day 4 – Extending events, Accessing remote data and Creating a typed data model
Day 5 – Displaying data with the DataGroup container, Displaying Data with the DataGrid control and Deploying Flex and AIR Applications

Seasoned Flex developers may only find some of these areas useful, such as the Skinning Spark components and Displaying data with the DataGroup container (Coming soon).

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This is the the first post in the series, and each one will highlight a different component we developed for various projects throughout the year.

ThoughtFaqtory has been working on numerous projects this year and one of them required our team to develop a host of custom components with a specific look and feel. We had a couple of choices but we are very familiar with Degrafa and decided to use it to skin our components.

In the example application above, the component gives the user feedback on the progress of the slide show. This can be very useful component to show feedback within a wizard style user interface.

The progress bar has quite a bit of logic to work out the size of the sub-sections and labels based on the available width and height. It also supports vertical layout but had no requirement for this in the project. The colours (background, active and inactive) can be set using styles. The animation is done using AnimateProperty with a slight delay, and the easing function can be set in the styles.

In our next post we will use Flex 4 to create the exact same component and wait for it… the source will be included. This version will contain user interaction and we may even go as far as adding multi-touch events.

More to come…

This project required me to implement functionality that would allow the end user to export groups of images to PDF. The PDF needed to be high quality, 300 ppi (pixels per inch). After some searching I came across the AlivePDF website which appeared to be perfect for my requirements. Initially after using AlivePDF to generate a few PDFs, I couldn’t believe how easy it was to use and I thought that I had found Utopia. My joy however was short lived after the following error message was received:

AlivePDF had no alpha channel support for PNGs and the PNG encoder provided by Adobe always returns a PNG with an alpha channel. Even if you turned off the transparency you will get back a 32 bit ARGB PNG.

I continued searching for someone who had a method of successfully removing the alpha channel but my search proved fruitless. Hence I decided to do my own research into PNGs and found the following:

A valid PNG consists of:

PNG signature
IHDR chunk (only one)
IDAT chunk (one or more)
IEND chunk (only one)

The PNG signature:

89 50 4E 47 0D 0A 1A 0A.

The IHDR image header:

The IDAT chunks contain the image data.
The IEND chunk marks the end of the PNG.

The colour type under the IHDR chunk needs to be mentioned here as that is where the image type is defined.

After familiarizing myself with PNGs, I revisited Adobe’s PNGEncoder.as class again and eventually managed to make certain changes that allowed the removal of the alpha channel all together.

After all the research this ended up being a lot easier than I had originally thought, all that I needed to do was change the colour type and extract the RGB values. Adobe’s colour type was 6 (True colour with alpha) I changed it to 2 (True colour only). Next I needed to isolate and extract the RGB values, this was done with a bitwise right shift operation and a bitwise AND operation.

// Build IHDR chunk
 
var IHDR:ByteArray = new ByteArray();
IHDR.writeInt(w);
IHDR.writeInt(h);
IHDR.writeUnsignedInt(0x08020000); // True colour (no alpha)
IHDR.writeByte(0);
writeChunk(png, 0x49484452, IHDR);
 
// Isolate RGB values
 
for (var j:int = 0; j < w; j++)
{
	p = img.getPixel(j, i);
	IDAT.writeByte(p >> 16 & 0xFF);
	IDAT.writeByte(p >> 8 & 0xFF);
	IDAT.writeByte(p & 0xFF);
}

The changes implemented resulted in the removal of the Alpha channel which allowed me to successfully embedded the encoded PNG image into a PDF with AlivePDF. This was the first of many problems I had working with PDFs, maybe you will get to read about the others in the not too distant future. Attached below is a sample application that will embed a PNG into a PDF.

[kml_flashembed publishmethod="static" fversion="10.0.0" movie="http://thoughtfaqtory.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/pngalpha1.swf" width="630" height="400" targetclass="flashmovie" ]

[/kml_flashembed]

[/kml_flashembed]

My transformation started with ThoughtFaqtory nearly a year ago and before that I was a new vehicle salesperson with a propensity for pyrotechnics. . . like blowing things up! With a burning desire to be in the IT industry, but without an opportunity to make the move to becoming a software developer, I was up the river without a paddle! A couple of years ago the motor industry experienced a downward trend in sales, realizing that this maybe a blessing in disguise, a Plan B was necessary. While sitting on the sales floor watching tumble weeds roll past, I embarked on teaching myself Java, as I was more than willing to invest that time in my future.  By the end of last year I felt confident enough to find myself an employer that would be willing to take me on. ThoughtFaqtory was on my radar, through a newspaper editorial, and contacted Simon and Phil Barber. They offered me this huge opportunity to learn from within their company and then spent the next 6 months on a rigorous training program using Flex.

So the former sales person was morphed into a developer, but I must share a little secret – my father was a programmer for Siemens, so let’s say it’s in the blood. ThoughtFaqtory offered me some time to research a technology of my choice and was given the opportunity to post this blog. Two weeks was invested learning how to use Pixel Bender; there are numerous amounts of resources that you can look at if you want to learn how to use it.  Keith Peters had a fantastic chapter on Pixel Bender in his book “Advanced ActionScript Animation” which was a great help and also adapted one of his examples to my needs in this example. Also available was some excellent info from Lee Brimelow and his tutorials on www.gotoandlearn.com.  A shout also goes out to Jonathan Hart who had an awesome example of RGB sine distortion on http://synja.com, which was adapted for this presentation.

This article does not cover the actual Pixel Bender code but shows you how to import the filters in Flex and create a small animation using 4 filters that were created in Pixel Bender. I implemented a base class that each of my custom filters could extend. This would give them the ability to dispatch an event when any of the properties on the filter have been updated. My application could listen for this event on each of the filters and reapply them to the image and update the display.

An animation class was created that would control this and allow various properties to be animated. I do realize that Flash actually provides such classes already but wanted to discover this unknown territory for myself and see how well I would do in solving any obstacles that were cast in my path.  It was another learning curve and an enjoyable one. The AnimateFilter class takes an array of Properties on the filter that should be animated. Provision was made for reversing the animation, setting a delay to start the animation and also setting a delay to reverse the animation. The AnimateFilter takes a target, which is the filter that contains the properties to be animated.  This can be set up in MXML.

The resulting image has the filters applied and you can see the result when you move your mouse over the image.  Four filters have been attached to the image and have an animation set up for each of the filters, which plays on the mouseOver event.  The combination of all 4 filters gives an unusual effect. . . at least I think so. CHECK OUT MY EXAMPLE ABOVE.

So there you have it. I am very proud of how far I have come from being a salesperson less than a year ago to where I am now. I would never have been able to absorb this amount of information without the help of all the awesome staff at ThoughtFaqtory. There is a realization though that with this kind of opportunity comes the responsibility to apply myself and work hard to achieve my goals. But in the meantime, I’m loving every minute of it and still blowing things up . . . only kidding.