Conrad Winchester
Bio
After a mind-blowing trip through university, Conrad started real work in scientific programming at University College London. His forte was FORTRAN-90 and parallel FORTRAN for Cray-YMP8 super computers.
After briefly tiring of computers he became a free-lance body piercer for 3 years. During this time he taught himself a whole load of web technologies, and when the piercing bubble burst, got himself employed by Gameplay producing web widgets for their shop.
After several other java/web jobs he ended up working for gamer.tv where he programmed some multi-player online games in flash - DinkyBomb V2 and Oddballs Bowling. They were both in AS 1 and it hurt his Java sensibilities to use such a primitive language. However he enjoyed what could be made with it.
Conrad then moved on to the gambling industry at NT Media (later bought by Orbis) where he honed his AS2 skills. AS3 came out whilst he was there and soon that was the only kind of Actionscript he was interested in.
Probably his most famous contributions to the gambling world are Ladbrokes multi-player Backgammon and the ubiquitous Chain Reactors.
Conrad then started using flex as a tool for earning money and it became his main technology choice. Everything was wonderful, he could earn lots of money and make himself comfortable: The future looked great! Then it all started to unravel. There were big fights over technology and Adobe shook a lot of large companies confidence with their announcements about Flash and Flex last year.
Conrad realised that putting all your eggs in one technological basket was a mistake. He is still making extremely advanced user interfaces using Flex, but is also on a quest to find a new technology that can satisfy his creative and technical needs. He has yet to find the answer, and fears it may be a long journey.
Session
Love At First Byte
or:
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the AVM2
If you are an Actionscript 3 developer then your compiled code runs on a thing called the Actionscript Virtual Machine 2 (AVM2). It is the CPU of the flash player and usually you are not even aware it is there.
It is quite an amazing machine and I will introduce to its inner details. I will show you what compiled Actionscript 3 looks like and explain how it runs on the AVM2.
I will then explain how it is possible to alter this compiled code and and generate completely new code while the flash player is running.
I will even show you why you might want to do this and demonstrate a few real world examples, some fun and some serious.
So hold your breath and take a deep dive with me into the heart of the AVM2.