I've been making an animated button using a MovieClip in Flash using ActionScript 3. The problem I had was making the hand cursor appear over it, firstly at all and then when my button had text in it.

To make a MovieClip behave like a button and use the hand cursor set the following properties for the MovieClip.

clip.buttonMode = true;

clip.useHandCursor = true;

Next, if your MovieClip contains a TextField set the following property for the TextField.

clip.labelText.mouseEnabled = false;

This means that the button underneath deals with the mouse, so the cursor will behave in the way that …

This Flickr viewer uses Flash CS3, ActionScript 3 and the Flickr API to display public photos from a selected user's Flickr account. I've created it because I've got a few project ideas where you will need to select a photo from Flickr. I've been impressed with the improved object orientedness of ActionScript 3 and this has let me build this in a way where all the different bits can be re-used very easily.

This has been a nice project to get my head round some of the new features in ActionScript 3. I've been particularly impressed with the new way of loading and using XML. It's so much …

Adobe has been running round the country doing lots of workshops. Their campus tour is aimed at students and university staff, but I was lucky enough to be invited by a member of staff.

I went to three 45 minute workshops about different Adobe products. The instructor raced through the various useful new features and I tried to keep up with my note taking. I was able to relax in the Dreamweaver session because I knew a lot of it, but I couldn't afford to blink in the Photoshop and Illustrator session.

The instructor made it all look very easy, but now I come to look through my notes I realise …

PaperVision is an open source project to make 3D in Flash much easier than it has been.

I've only had a very quick play, but I was able to create this lovely photo cube very quickly.

It's based on an example on The Flash Blog. I can see a lot of potential for including this in my future flash work. 3D can make things look more impressive, but a sense of space can also make things easier to use.

Some very nice people have called me brave for handing in my notice and deciding to become freelance. They're wrong though. I've just not let myself think about it too much. If I had, then I would have talked myself out of it. They also seem convinced that I will be really successful and have no problems. I'm hoping they're right about that, the confident part of me thinks they are.

I've worked in government communications for five years in the web team of The Department for Work and Pensions. I sort of got the job by accident, while I wasn't really looking for a job. After the software …

This is my favourite recent discovery. A fantastic site for the new Simpsons Movie. The site is so good that I may go and see the film again.

The site is full of brilliant ideas and lots of cool games to play.

The part that has captured my imagination most is the create your own Simpsons character bit. Once you've made one, there are lots of ways to share it with your friends. What a brilliant piece of personalised viral marketing.

Here is my attempt, although I couldn't quite get the hair right.

Yesterday I went to my second OpenCoffee event. I've not done a lot since the last one, but this is mainly because I've been away to the exceedingly hot Zakynthos.

This is the fourth OpenCoffee they've had. I'm wondering how long they'll be able to keep up with the {quattro} naming convention. I'd be lost by the time we get to double figures.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun and met a lot of interesting and great people. I met less people this time, but talked to them more. It was great to find people with similar interests and find out what they were up to.

I've started a little scrap book of …

I went to OpenCoffee Leeds {Tre} yesterday to sample the coffee, cake and geeky conversation. All were excellent, although I got there a bit late and missed the best cake.

I met a lot of interesting people and collected a lot of business cards. I’m not completely sure I’d be able to match faces to cards now. Hopefully I’ll see many of them again. I tried to talk to as many people as possible, but this meant that I only talked very briefly to some people.

I also tried out my new origami business cards, which seemed to go down well. A few people suggested the excellent idea of making them a bit …

When I went to the first GeekUp event in Leeds I became very jealous of everyone's lovely business cards. I decided it was time to sort that out and make my own. I wanted mine to be a little bit different and hopefully be something that people would remember.

I've loved origami since my trip to Japan in 2002 and thought this would be an excellent thing to use. I'd also tested the idea in a previous project and it had been very successful.

Now the design is done, they're quite easy to mass produce. The hardest part of the design was drawing the diagrams and making the instructions clear. It's …

Code Complete is a book that talks you through how to construct computer programs. It doesn't look at any specific language and the things covered apply equally to web applications and pacemaker software.

It talks about the process and really makes you think about the way you do things and the best way to do things. Every chapter has really made me think and hopefully I'll be a better programmer for it. It's the sort of stuff I wasn't taught at university, but think I should have been.

It's been like having a wise programmer share with me a wealth of experience and knowledge. It's made me …