I had a case on my latest project where I had a chart that needed to not start at 0,0 as most do. Rather this chart, and the data it represented needed to have it's Y Axis inverted. The better numbers were closer to the bottom, and higher in value. 0 was bad.

I did some searching and there seemed to be one common approach. manually invert your data. I wasn't sure that was what I wanted, but it turned out that that approach worked really well.

in the function that creates the data for the chart, I simply invert the values by subtracting 2* the value, from itself

val.perfRank = (performance - (performance * 2));
val.availRank = (availability - (availability * 2));
val.consistRank = (consistency - (consistency * 2));

After populating my dataprovider with the inverted values, all I needed was a label function to undo my voodoo.

private function rankLabelFunction(labelValue:Object, previousLabelValue:Object, axis:IAxis):Number
        {
            var newAxisValue:Number = Number(labelValue);
            newAxisValue = (newAxisValue + (Math.abs(newAxisValue) * 2));   
            return newAxisValue;
        }

You'll want to make sure to do the absolute value, LOL. Otherwise you'll be like me, "Why is the negative number, even bigger? Oh yeah! Duh!" Math, not my strong suit.

There may be more elegant  ways, I sorta hope there are or will be, but this is a pretty straight forward way to simply put your lowest value at the top of your axis, which is what I needed.

I was able to make it over to The Hive last night to see Juan "the hard core super star Degrafa Guy" Sanchez present Degrafa at the RMAUG. I just made up that name, but it fits, so he's welcome to it if he likes.

Dave and company have a new home at The Hive, which is a very sweet co-working facility here in Denver.

Juan's session was well timed, i had spent a good chunk of the day figuring out how to skin a link button. Turned out livedocs was spot on with it's example (go figure). But after watching Juan skin a button, I was wishing we had Degrafa in the project I'm on. I did think about using it, but figured that was a decision to be discussed before I committed a whole new library of code.

So my solution, worked well enough, but the Degrafa way is killer.

In a Skin file...

<code>

<fills>
        <SolidFill
            color="#936"
            id="myFill"/>
    </fills>

    <geometry>
        <RoundedRectangleComplex
            state="upSkin"
            width="{awidth}"
            height="{aheight}"
            bottomLeftRadius="10"
            bottomRightRadius="20"
            topLeftRadius="15"
            fill="{myFill}" />
        <RoundedRectangleComplex
            state="overSkin"
            width="{awidth}"
            height="{aheight}"
            fill="{myFill}" />
    </geometry>
           
</GraphicBorderSkin>

<code>

There's some AS at the top, but that's the jist of stateful skinning of a button. degrafa FTW!

I have a Seagate 250GB drive that I was using for Time Machine. Locally it was great Then Apple updated the AIR port base station. SWEET.

I've got two macs, a MBP and a MBA. The MBA uses a smaller 40gb drive hung off the Airport station, and backs up like a champ. I've got history back several weeks at any given time.

The MacBook Pro however has had zero luck! First I wasn't able to get the initial 126gb back up to complete. I read an article about starting the back up on the network, then completing it over USB to speed it up. Then reconnect to the network for all future backing up. NO LUCK.

Then I gave it a night to do a full back up over the wire, this morning it looked good. A few smaller back ups took place through out the morning.

I enter time machine, and all that is there is "now" no other days or anything. Not sure what I'm doing wrong. The MBA runs hourly, does it's thing and is done, but the MBP just won't get a good back up going. I'd rather not have to always think about ejecting a USB ext disk but may have to. WEAK