RTE#17 Atomic Corona

In Runtime show 17, we were joined by Jake Scarano (@touchjunky). We found Jake as Meetup.com advertised that he was starting a Corona SDK meetup in the Raleigh area. While his first meetup is next Thursday, we wanted to snag him to talk about games, mobile, Corona before that!

Jake Scarano (@touchjunky)

Jake and his family run a business called StayToooned making “edutaining apps for kids”. He is the artist and animator of this outfit.

Through StayTooned, under the iTouchiLearn moniker, Jake and his family have made games for preschool, kindergarten and special needs kids.

Jake gave his non-developer take on making a game with Corona.  He compared it to Flash calling it a lot easier to understand and get off the ground running with.  We briefly mentioned the physics engine and talked about it usage in C++, Flash, Corona, and Angry Birds.

We also talked about Sprite Sheets and SpriteLoq - a tool to convert Flash animations to Corona Sprite Sheets.

Adrian got distracted and started playing Jake’s game “Atomic Aliens” available for iPad and iPhone for free until February 9th.

Ben thinking really hard

Towards the end of the show we wrapped things up, but talked a little bit about Kinect for Windows, how Hasbro re-invented Lazer Tag, and finally the Triangle Startup Factory.

Jake and the good people at Ansca Mobile were nice enough to give away a free independent subscription to the Corona SDK.  We gave it away to Michael Harrison (@oldbie) – who is actually a future guest on RTE, so maybe we’ll hear from him how awesome it is a month from now.

RTE#16 DepOps and Build Automation with rPath

We kick started Episode #16 with a few announcements. The first being our brand new website: www.runtimeexpectations.com. Secondly, we talked about our recent resignation from the Adobe User Group program and our various reasons for doing so.

Adrian mentioned the trouble selling anything but developing for the “open web” to his higher ups, repeating a Forrester article.

After talking about ourselves a fair bit, we let Brad Murphy (@murf80) who runs engineering and Steve Burnett (@steveburnett) the documentation lead talk about rPath.  rPath prides itself for its cloud based build automation solutions.

Brad Murphy and Steve Burnett of rPath

Brad talked about how their system works, what goes into it, and how quickly they can start get customers setup.

Ben interrupted and back-peddled a little into the conversation to talk good things about a great web debugging tool called Charles Web Debugging Proxy (which hopefully everyone knows about).

We tried to goad Brad into talking smack about Flex and Flash in favor of HTML5 – but he didn’t bite.  He gave some pretty great reasons for sticking with Flex, and went into some detail about it.

Also mentioned was rPath’s various partnerships with Cisco – namely CITEIS and CIAC.

We also just had to make sure we had time at the end to talk to Steve Burnett about his ambient/improvisational looping sound project called Subscape Annex….or as he puts it “soundtracks for movies that don’t exist”.

rPath is currently hiring for a UI developer (Flex), an API developer (Python/Django), and a Professional Services Engineer.  They are located in Raleigh, and are a short walk to the RBC center.

Steve and drop-in guest Jake sitting cautiously back

RTE#15 Cajun Style Fogbeam Labs

To see all photos during this episode, checkout our Meetup album

It’s a new year!  We at Runtime were kind of bored with calling all of our episodes “hot this” or “hot that”.  It’s time we branched out, so….Cajun Style?

Either way, we were joined by Phil Rhodes and Sarah Khan of Fogbeam Labs.  Phil started Fogbeam, and later asked Sarah to join the team after being impressed with her CAJUN style (see, we can follow a theme) UX skills after working with her at Lulu.

Phil Rhodes

Sarah Khan - UX Engineer at Adzerk and Fogbeam

Fogbeam purports to be a little reminiscent of Reddit.  It’s a suite of collaboration tools that all come together to cut through the clutter and better help your organization manage it’s information in a social way.

Of course Phil and Sarah can explain better! Listen in to Episode #15.  Unfortunately our audio equipment got the best of us, so there’s a bit of background noise in the first 6 minutes, and I’ve tried to splice it together the best I could – we certainly didn’t want to miss out on any of the CAJUN style bits.

After talking Fogbeam, we grilled Sarah on UX design and engineering.

Ben also took advantage of having two Mac people and one Linux person in the room to talk about his recent exposure to Linux from his Windows background.  We also talked about the legalese in newly funded startup Spool.

Finally….the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) conspiracy theories started.  Luckily it was nearing the end, so instead of getting too political, we wrapped it up.

Ben and Adrian - A Thinker and a Talker

Twitter:
@FogbeamLabs

Blog:
fogbeam.blogspot.com

LinkedIn:
www.linkedin.com/companies/fogbeam-labs

RTE#14 Hot Ads and Stuff

In this, our last episode of the year, we invited James Jeffers (@jdjeffers) to join us. James is an engineer/devops guy at Adzerk (www.adzerk.com). We talked about how Adzerk works to enable people to easily traffic ads through their platform at a low cost, even for small sites. Of course, being an engineer AND in devops, James talked passionately about wearing both hats and about Adzerks continuous integration and deployment.

We also briefly talked about an article on thestreet.com, where the tech reporter confused Flash memory with the Adobe Flash plugin. Also mention is a cgchannel.com video with 3D model makers TurboSquid talking about people buying their 3D models thinking they are real objects.

Lastly, a dead horse was beaten, with us weighing in on the Flex Summit!

We were joined both by Dave of Robot Factorial and Travis in our studio audience.

End of the show plugs included the Triangle’s DevOps Meetup, Refresh The Triangle, trycapsule.com, and James’ final sales pitch was for publishers in need of ads through Adzerk to call Ron Nelson at 919-757-4414.

This episode is so big, we needed to break it up into many pieces.  Adrian, Vicky, and myself attended ClojureConj in Raleigh this past month from November 10th-12th.  Chris Reddinger and Lynne Grogan, who organized this conference focused on the Clojure language were nice enough to welcome us when we asked if we could cover the event.

We were given a table right out in the middle of the lobby.  This was awesome as we were able to pull in some great guests to interview as they walked by.  We were also able to snap lots of photos as evidenced by our Flickr page.

Adrian and I were taken aback by the great community in presence that weekend.  The Clojure community represented itself well – as down to earth, brilliant, and overall great people.  In fact, Adrian went home the first day we were there and wrote a blog post covering what we noticed right off the bat.

www.uiandtherest.com/ui/index.php/2011/11/11/a-refreshed-view-on-community-clojure-conj-2011/

Runtime Expectations also announced a contest going into Clojure Conj.  Basically the best answer to our wacky questions would win a prize.  We had some great answers to questions like “Everyone needs a theme song, what’s Clojure’s?”.  Or “Who or what is Clojure’s arch-nemesis?”.  Listen in to the interviews to hear the answers.  At one point we got a couple gentlemen who stepped up to talk about how great Clojure was and that WITH Clojure you could chew bubble gum and kick ass at the same time.  Then Cory Brigette (@groovy3shoes) stepped up the game talking about “multi-threaded ass kicking”.  We invited him over to sit down, and he answered our theme song question with “Oh Yeah” by “Yello” …yeah, you heard us, remember Ferris Bueller?

Anyway between the ass kicking, Ferris Bueller song, and his willingness to sit down and be grilled by us, we’re awarding Cory a copy of Adobe’s Creative Suite 5.5 Premium Design Collection.  Congrats Cory!

On night one of the Conj, we had some great lightning talks, which I snuck in a microphone and recorded
Night One – Clojure Lightning Talks
RTE#13.1 Night One – Clojure Lightning

Starting from Day 2, we had some fantastic guests, like “meme wrangler”, author and developer Neal Ford (@neal4d) who joined us alongside Relevance CTO Stuart Halloway (@stuarthalloway).

RTE#13 .2 Neal Ford and Stuart Halloway

Stuart Halloway (@stuarthalloway) and Neal Ford (@neal4d)

Right as the conference was letting out, we got a chance to sit down with developer and concert pianist Ghadi Shayban (@smashthepast).  Also, core Overtone contributer, researcher, and Software Architect Sam Aaron (@samaaron).  We were also joined partway through by Scala fanatic and functional devotee Daniel Spiewak (@djspiewak).
RTE#13.3 Sam Aaron, Ghadi Shayban, and Daniel Spiewak

Daniel Spiewak (@djspiewak) and Sam Aaron (@samaaron)

As Relevance had a huge presence at the conference, since they ran the thing, we got to speak to a lot of folks from there (not just CEO Stuart Halloway).

Relevance Designer Michael Parenteau (@parenteau) joined us.
RTE#13.4 Michael Parenteau

Michael Parenteau (@parenteau)

…As well as Relevance’s President: Muness Alrubaie (@muness)
RTE#13.5 Muness Alrubaie

Muness Alrubaie (@muness)

…And Relevance coach Marc Phillips @turbomarc
RTE#13.6 Marc Phillips

Marc Phillips @turbomarc

…Finally Relevance developer Craig Andera @craigandera sat down with us as well
RTE#13.7 Craig Andera

Craig Andera @craigandera

We also had probably the youngest Clojure developer Anthony Grimes (@orayne).  At 17, Anthony has already put in 3 years of Clojure dev.
RTE#13.8 Anthony Grimes

Anthony Grimes (@IORayne)

Like I said, being in the lobby had it’s perks, because we were able to randomly get some rants and interviews from Corey, Patrick, and Arthur.
RTE#13 .9 Clojure Rants and People in the Lobby

Corey Burgett (@groovy3shoes)

Lastly, Vicky led a roundtable discussion with the people that introduced Codebass to Clojure – the Coldfusioners who came to learn some cool new tech: Roger Austin (@RogerTheGeek), Charlie Griefer (@CharlieGriefer), and Sean Corfield (@SeanCorfield)
RTE#13.10 Coldfusion Roundtable

Roger Austin (@RogerTheGeek), Charlie Griefer (@CharlieGriefer), and Sean Corfield (@SeanCorfield)

All in all we had a great time, and it was very cool getting to know the Clojure community in their second year running the Conj!  Thanks to Chris and Lynne for inviting us out!

RTE#12 Hot Web Comics!

We’re thrilled to have Rachel Nabors (@CrowChick) join us back on the show! She’s been a guest before, but we wanted to focus in and hear some more about her as a local talent in our community.

Rachel spoke at NCDevCon talking about “Comics and Design: How to Tell Stories with Pictures and Words”. You can watch her presentation at textiles.online.ncsu.edu/online/SilverlightPlayer/Default.aspx?peid=ddead7f8d5e045628ba2a7a64001582c1d

We talked about how a comic artist can translate their skills to web design to make a web page tell a story. We spent an inordinant amount of time talking about ricebowls.org.

After talking to Rachel, Ben – to coin a term, talked about his “Flash Freakout” a year ago and how others are following suite. That is to say, as someone who specializes in Flash technology, freaking out over the recent buzz of HTML5, and wondering if their skills are still relevant. We brought up Jesse Warden’s recent RIA Unleashed Conference post-mortem: jessewarden.com/2011/10/ria-unleashed-2011.html.

Preshow with Adrian and Rachel

Adrian with the situation room to his back

Rachel @CrowChick

Mic Check

RachelTheGreat.com

RTE#11 Hot Robots and Factorials!

It’s been awhile, but we recovered from both NCDevCon and MAX.  We’re back, and chatting with Dave Sroka (@dasro_kast).  Dave is one of the folks behind a new startup company in NC called Robot Factorial (robotfactorial.com).

Robot Factorial is an Android development shop focusing on games and applications.  We chatted for a bit about his company, music composition in games, and Dave’s acapella group: Cognitive Resonance (cognitiveresonanceacappella.com/).

We also got to chat a bit with Travis Hurant (@thurant), another developer who popped by.

After introductions, we chatted a bit about both the RIM developer conference today and the Motorola keynote.  From the keynotes today we moved on to talk a bit about Adobe MAX and how Flash/AIR is now positioned vs HTML/PhoneGap.

We also discussed the North Carolina area for work, it’s startup community, and some of the user groups in the area.

Unfortunately, Ben’s wife couldn’t make it, or we’d have some good in-studio pics.   Here’s a couple we snapped of our new digs though:

The Situation Room. Now with Twitter!

Ben commandeering the situation room

RTE#10 Hot NCDevCon 2011!

Hot off the heels of Bucky’s NCDevCon session “Writing Javascript that Doesn’t Suck”, Adrian, Bucky and I sat down in the lobby of NC State University on the last day of NCDevCon 2011.

We were joined by some fantastic guests – we had Tim Cunningham, Vicky Ryder, Daria Norris and Simon Free.

We were also able to talk with Nolan Erck and Ben Nadel.  Nolan talked to us about his time making game dev/production tools at Lucas Arts, while Ben talked about his fantastic Teen Wolf t-shirt.

RTE#9 Hot Corporate Takeovers!

Adrian said it best – despite a summer lull with everyone on RTE being away, some major news was underway.  The news, of course, was the impending buyout of Motorola Mobility by Google.

With Bucky out of pocket and Adrian joining us from home via Google Plus, we covered a fair bit of this buyout, the patent wars between Apple and Samsung, and possibly between Google and Apple in the future.

Our Android and iOS discussion turned to WebOS by HP with the news that HP was dropping the platform like a hot potato, and in fact spinning out their entire PC division.

As we started talking Javascript topics, we were joined by Tim Cunningham (@TimCunningham71) who was able to mention his Angular.js talk at NCDevCon.

Adrian mentioned a very mal-informed article from Streaming Media Magazine (www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/The-TouchPad-Is-Dead;-Is-Adobe’s-Mobile-Strategy-Next-77213.aspx).

We closed it down with an article from the Adobe Developer Network talking about Enterprise development teams (www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/forging-enterprise-flex-team.html).

RTE#8 Hot RiaC…Boop Bleep Bloop!

In episode 8, the Runtime crew went full force into Google+.

2 of our 3 co-hosts, Adrian and Bucky, attended the show remotely on a Google Hangout. As we broke new ground, we ran into our share of silly Google sound effects when people would join or leave the chat.

Luckily, we had Phil Nacelli join us. Phil organizes RIACon, which is the DC area RIA conference that had just taken place the weekend before. Phil talked about all the good things that happened at the conference, meeting the new Coldfusion prodRuntime Expectations Episode #8 – Hot RiaC…Boop Bleep Bloop!
uct team, and more.

We were also lucky to have Luis Casillas with us to give us some perspective on Adobe Edge.

The Hangout

Adrian Pomilio in his cave.

Ben Farrell and Luis Casillas.

Phill Naceili the day after RIACON. Looking good for having busted butt to help organize and run the conference. He graced us with his presence to talk about it a bit.

Christian Ready. RIACON speaker, attendee, sushi lover, up to no good.

Roger the Geek! RIACON attendee and fellow sushi lover. He helps with the great NCDevCon, so I think he was just there as a corporate spy.