Taking the fun out of fishing

I was taking a little break from coding this afternoon and decided to check out some of my regular blogs. While surfing Engadget.com to check out the latest geekwares and what do I find? The Fishing Cam, a camera that goes on your line like a floater and then inline you add the wireless transmitter. Of course right about your Penn reel you have a video screen showing you what the camera sees. No don't get me wrong, I am a big fan of technology. I mean I program for a living.

However somehow this fish cam idea seems just wrong! I mean one of the great things about fishing is being outdoors on a beautiful lake, with friends and family. I mean some of my favorite fishing trips was with my two brothers, Dad and Granddad K. We rented a couple of boats and fished lake skinner for the day. We told stories and jokes all day long. As far as the fishing catching goes I think only K got a fish, and we all had "the one that got away" stories.

The other thing about fishing is the thrill of the hunt. Your pray is almost invisible to you and the only way for you to get your pray is to have knowledge of it. Trying different lures and baits. Trying different ways of moving the bait. All the guess work is removed, you see the species and know exactly what bait to use. At that point why don't you just buy the fish at the market and pay a fishing video game.

XSL in ASP.NET the Easy way

Well Boys and Girls, I am about to get geek here. I've just spend an hour trying to figure out how to write a function in C# that will let me display my xml transformed with my XSL Stylesheet. That is nothing cool then seperating the data from the presentation layer! So how come it took an hour? Well, because I was thinking in Classic ASP mode. Yup we all do it from time to time. You see in Classic ASP if you were going to transform your xml with an xsl it looked something like this:
dim xmlDoc, xslDoc
Set xml = Server.CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument.4.0")
xml.async = false
xml.load(Server.MapPath("book.xml"))

Set xsl = Server.CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument.4.0")
xsl.async = false
xsl.load(Server.MapPath("output.xsl"))

Response.Write (xml.transformNode(xsl))

So of course this is how I was thinking that I was going to have to do it in .NET. I won't bore you with the details of everything I tried. Let's just say that after trying the StreamWriter and still not getting what I wanted I was frustrated. I was thinking this can't be harder in ASP.NET then it was in Classic ASP, that would be a step in the wrong direction. So I did one more google search. Ah-ha, there was what I was looking for. It was easy I knew it had to be. So here is how to do the same thing in ASP.NET...Ready

< asp:Xml ID="books" DocumentSource="xml/books.xml" TransformSource="xsl/output.xsl" Runat="server" />
Yup, that's all there is too it! I have to thank aspalliance.com for doing such a great job of documenting the controls and giving great example code.

Happy coding :-)

A Nice surprise

So yesterday my Beautiful Wife surprised me with some gifts. Presents are always nice. Just little things to know you are thought of always makes one feel good. Anyhow she got me something that I have wanted for years. The movie "Animal Crackers" on DVD. This is so amazing, because amazon hasn't had it for over two years now. I don't even know how she found it.

I am just a huge fan of the Marx Brothers. There is something about their humor being witty and corny at the same time, I just love.

"One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I'll never know."

Plus the characters, that Harpo and Chico always played, they were the underdogs but you knew they would make it. And of course there is always something amazing about the way that Harpo played the harp, and Chico played the piano. Two completely different styles, yet both filled with showman ship.

And we can't forget Groucho shooting off the oneliners like a machine gun.

Well in the words of Jeffery T. Spaulding - "Hello, I must be going, I'm glad I came all the same I must be going, I'll stay a week or two, I'll stay the summer through, but what I'm telling you is... I must be going"

typographic illustration

Surfing the blogs and found this link. Typographic illustration
Having a background in typesetting and pre-press work, I found this illustrations to be both beautiful and intriguing.

How to Read a RFP response

A good portion of my afternoon has been spend reading some of the RFP responses we have received for a project we are doing at work. What is an RFP? Well friends it is an acronym for Request for Proposal. So we sent out a fifty page RFP. What we get back ranges in size depending on how bored the sales and marketing teams are at each company. From this I have come away with some useful information. No so much on the products but on how to read a RFP response.

1. If within three paragraphs they mention how flexible the product is more than five times, it probably isn't.
2. Gleaming technical information from marketing materials is like reading hieroglyphics, it is doable it just takes a lot of studying and it may not be a true representation
3. A RFP response is like staring at the sun, if you look long enough you will burnout your retina.
4. Brevity is our friend...All of those marketing people out there, repeat after me brevity is our friend.
5. Sending me a RFP response in PDF format is great, but don't expect me to read 200 pages off of the screen, cause, I'm just not going to.
6. Most important of all, the ones that include pictures keep you from getting bored as fast! If their in color it's even better.

Saturday night....

Well, it is Saturday night. So party party party, right...no not so much. I either have a really good cold or a really bad sinus infection. It hasn't decided what it wants to be yet. So I'm sitting in bed, watching movies on my puter DVD player and curled up with a good RFP (Request for Proposal) response. Unfortunately the cold medicine has me groggy. Happily the RFP is a really page turner, and the movie, Second Hand Lion is wonderful. Being that sudafed has left me with a peanut the size of a brain. I'll leave you with a couple of quotes from one of my favorite comedians.

I must confess, I was born at a very early age.

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.

Why was I with her? She reminds me of you. In fact, she reminds me more of you than you do!

Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others.

I have had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn't it.

I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception.

I must say that I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a book.

-Groucho Marx

quiet

Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world.

- Hans Margolius

McGyver's iPod

This is the kind of story I love. Guy, buys iPod, guy wants more battery life from iPod, guy builds iPod battery pack. Mr. Drew Perry is a real life McGyver, Folks! He had a need and with a couple of rechargable batteries and a deck of playing cards later he had his iPod battery pack! Better yet, this fine gentleman has even posted schematics on how to build your own battery pack. He says that he is getting an extra 10 hours out of it.

New Gadget Blog

Surfin some of my favorite blogs, I found a link to Engadget. This is a great blog for those that have to have news on the latests and greatest gadgets. It covers the whole spectrum of gear. Cellphones, Desktops, Digital Cameras, Handhelds, Home Entertainment, Laptops, Misc. Gadgets, Peripherals, Portable Audio, Portable Video, Robots, Tablet PCs and Wireless. Basically, if it's geek, they'll tell you about.

So far my favorite article is on the "Devil Duckie". I love the fact that someone had a enough of a sense of humor to make a rubber duckie in to a USB storage device.

The toys of my Childhood are now Online

When I was growing up we use to love rainy days. Why? Well first off, growing up in Southern California, there just weren't a lot of rainy days. And secondly and most importantly was our rainy day toys. These were Lincoln Logs, Tinkertoys and Legos. My favorite was the Legos. I was always building castles and cars (okay, things that looked like cars if your crossed your eyes and used your imagination).

So today I was just kind of surfing around and I went to one of my favorite design site. Chopping Block.com. I mean any site that has a theme song by "They might be Giants" is pretty cool if you ask me. Anyhow one of their newest projects was for Legos. So I checked it out, and what did I find? My childhood rainy day toy is now available 24/7 on a computer near you. I was taken back for a moment. I thought about this and was a little hurt at first. My toy was now a computer program. Then I thought about it a little more, humm if it's on the screen that means there isn't any little plastic pieces to step on in the middle of the night. Whoever thought of this is a Genius! My poor parents must of stepped on about four hundred million of those little legos at night. I won't have to now. When the little boy wants to play with legos we can just fire up the computer and way he goes!

So with Legos found, its off to google to see about Lincoln Logs and Tinkertoys. There is still a version of Lincoln Logs around. Infact they even have PDFs of how to build the bank, and the barn and other buildings. Tinkertoys however took a little more searching but I did find something about them. Hasbro still sells Tinkertoys. Somehow it is nice to know that they toys of ones childhood are still around in some fashion.

Win a Date with Javascript

So I have a couple of pages on our site that use javascript to display the date and or time. And of course none of them have the same format. Right now each page has a different javascript to display the date. And if course that isn't very modular. So I wrote an fairly complete javascript function, that if you tell it the format you want it in it will give today's date in the format.
Here are the formats available:

shortdate: 3/2/2004
shortdatetime: 3/2/2004 10:35
shortdateUTCtime: 3/2/2004 18:35:27
longdate: March 2, 2004
longdatetime: March 2, 2004 10:38
longdateUTCtime: March 2, 2004 18:40:12
longweekday Tuesday, March 2, 2004
longweekdaytime Tuesday, March 2, 2004 10:41
longweekdayUTCtime Tuesday, March 2, 2004 18:42:18


You can download the source code here. Download the text file and change it to a iDate.js. The file is commented on how to use it. Feel free to use it in your projects.

Which Forgotten 80s Cartoon Character are you?

I got this link from PixieStitch. She was Butterbear from the Wuzzles. Too Funny!

You are He-Man from Masters of the Universe! You
take life very seriously, and you should, considering you are the keeper of all that is good and right in the universe! However, your nonstop suspicion of Skeletor and his henchman can start your friends wondering why you don't loosen up once in awhile.

Which Forgotten 80s Cartoon Character Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

The funny thing about this, is He-man was one of my least favorite cartoons. I always thought if it as filler. I always thought I would me more like Lt. Quicksilver, from the Silverhawks.

"This land was once, green and good"

Yesterday I bought the movie "The Dark Crystal". I knew what all of the characters where named for the most part, but I didn't remember the story. The details of the story anyway. So my Beautiful Wife and I are watching the movie. The narrator is telling the history of the story. He says, "This land was once green and good, before the crystal cracked". I thought, hold the phone, I have heard that recently; in fact I know all of this. It isn't that my memory was that good. It's the opening lyrics for "The Crystal Method" song "Trip like I do". Which I thought was very hip. It's not the same voice as the narrator in the movie, which somehow I like even more. I forgot how beautiful and enchanting this film is. It is simply amazing to me that this film was made in 1982. Jim Henson was a genius.

I have seen "The Dark Crystal" tons of times when I was a kid. Not in the movie theater though, we didn't go to the movies that often. You see when I was growing up we had the movie on CED disc. Our first CED player was a Zenith and we got it at GEMCO. Mom and Dad had put it on layaway. I remember when we picked it up. It was a Friday night and we even got the movie "Dumbo". I remember going home and watching it all the way through and feeling like I had stayed up really late (9:30pm). I must have been 8 or 9 years old. Then the next morning we got up early to watch it again.

It’s really funny the flood of memories that comes back thinking about these CED movies. The little store in Arcadia that we use rent the CEDs from, the library of CEDs that Grandma and Grandpa use to have. In fact we had just come home from the Video store when I got my finger partial cut off in the car door of our old 1973 ford pinto station wagon. I had the movie ”Alice in Wonderland” in my left hand, and I took the tip of my ring finger off with the car door on my right hand. The same car door, that my Brother and I would ask Mom to leave the window rolled down so that we could jump through it like they did in “the Dukes of Hazzard”.

I remember when Dad figured out to hook up the CED player to the stereo. (This was like in 1985-86 mind you) and Dad had these big tower speakers that he had built. They were taller than I was at the time. Anyhow us kids were watching the movie “The Neverending Story” and Mom was ironing. It got to the scene where the Rock Biter was riding his stone scooter and the floor shook. It was so cool. It felt like you where in the movie. I looked over at Mom grinning and she smiled at me and pointed at the measuring cup full of water on the ironing board and you could see the ripples in the cup from the stereo. We also use to watch the CEDs that were music videos for kids, It was called DTV (Disney TV). and it would have a montage of cartoons edited to go with songs like Hall and Oats’ “Private Eyes”.

I just did a search on ebay for CED. I was amazed with what came up. Hmmm, I may have to pick a couple up for Nostalgia.

Quick observation

If you don't get much sleep the night before, and you have a lot of busy work to do in the morning, A Quad (4 shoots of espresso) White Chocolate Moca is the only way to go. I just got three hours worth of work done in an hour. On the flipside, I am hoping that I will be able to blink again fairly soon.

A musical interlude

How about a little break from all of the technical mumbo jumbo that I talk about all of the time? How about music? I was talking about music with a friend tonight on the train home. We were talking about what we were each listening to, and what we liked or didn't like about each band or artist. Then we got on the subject of music that we didn't like.

Interesting enough for me, it is music that is over produced. Music that feels like it has been overcrafted by the A and R man at the record company. For example any song where the band or artist has their name in the song more then two times, definitely out. If all of the human qualities are carefully edited out of the track, thah is another one that is out. The other thing that I don't like is the band in their songs, or interviews telling me that they are hip and that I should listen to them. That's not how It works, they get to play the music and we as fans get to tell them if they are hip. Of if they shouldn't quit their day jobs.

I listen to a fairly wide variety of music. Techno to Jazz, Singer Song writer to Big Band. And some of my favor music has little mistakes in it. It makes it human. When the singer stands back to take a breath and you hear it. The sounds of the guitars fretting the strings as he moves his hands up the neck of the guitar. The drummer slowing down just enough to notice at the end of a long set. I like these things in a recording. I think that some people have gotten away from the true meaning of a album or a recording. It to me was to represent the live peformance, that you were either present at, or wished you were. Now don't get me wrong, I am not saying that all bands should peform each song exactly as it is on the album. I mean almost the opposite. The albums should have a flow, and a freedom that a live concert has. The freedom leave those little mistakes in.

So when I got home, I was in the mood to listen to some Jazz. So I grabbed my copy of Blue Miles, Miles Davis. This is an amazing album. I forgot how good it really is. This album isn't the kind of Jazz that has musical runs for the sake of the musicians. Nothing like that, you can tell, that Miles felt that each note was valuable and that runs like that was wasting a commodite of music. Each song is a master piece in Jazz. The best way I can describe it is, the he plays these very logically musical phrases, and them builds on them, and lets them build on themselves. Each note feels handcrafted. When he plays it, you completely expect it to be there. Which is simply stunning. Think about the songs that you add an extra note to, or leave one off when you hum or sing. That is because something about that note didn't make sent to you. Your mind says this should be added or this should be removed. There isn't any of that with this album. Every note needs to be exactly where it is. It is quite amazing.

Something about music that I have always loved is that it can be completely logical and completely emotional all at the same time. That the music has this structure yet in our minds we link a song to a time, place, feelings, people. There is something so strong in that.

So what is your favorite thing about music?

Quote of the Day

<quote source="DuckSoup">you are consumed with thoughts of ASP.boring </quote> Okay DuckSoup I will try (I make no promises) to not go more than two entries in arow about Programming. Hummm I may have to start pickup the news paper again, or I can use Google News.

A little .Net issue reminder

Ed asked me if I had used hidden field in ASP.NET. I said, "I think so?". So we went to check out the issue. And it is simply this, even if you are using an html control in ASP.NET, if you are going to fill the value of that hidden field from a function or programmatically, the html control needs the attribute runat="server". when you think about it, it makes sense, how else would ASP.NET know that the html control exist. Ah the joys of programming for a stateless protocol

things to do at 3:30 AM

I guess I couldn't sleep last night. So at about 3:30am I gave up trying to. Now there are a couple things you can do at 3:30, I mean hey, the 7-11 is open, some of the finest informercials are on at that time. So what would I do? Humm, I think I'ill start studying and creating an XML Schema for our real estate rates at work. Now, I know what you are think, 'hey man, you can't have that kind of fun at the time of the morning, it is illegal or something.' And in all truth it should be, but it isn't.

So I started looking around for some good sites on XML Schema. The first site the showed up on my google search was of course the W3C. They are the people that create most of the standards that are using on the internet link HTML,XML and XHTML. I am thankful they are there, but I have never been able to sucessfully read any of the documentation on their site. So I looked a little more and I found w3school. This was a little more like it, they broke the content in to byte size pieces, and in an hour I had the startings of my first XML Schema.

.Net Rocks and the CMS goes on

So I finally got to hear the .NET Rocks show with Scott Hanselman. Well what can I say, the guy is brilliant. He introduced a concept that was very new to me, but instantly made sense. It's called "Declarative Programming". He talked about writing code that generated the code for you. So you write an XML schema that follows the business logic of the application you are writing. Then you write an engine to render your schema. So now you can change parts of the schema at will, without having to rewrite all of your code. Also you can test sooner and faster. Like I said, this is a new concept to me, but I plan on studying it.

I am still working at putting the content in to the CMS. I have approximately 120 pages of the site in the CMS now. It is looking really good. Now I have to track down all of those pesky orphan pages and give them some structure. Also I think that I am going to rewrite the Site Map page to take advantage of the fact the CMS is so structured. That way I never have to update the Site Map. I can just let the CMS take care of that.

Well, my handy dandy Sony laptop just keeps plugging away. I took it to work today, because I usually do so work on the train or work at home, and needed to sync up with my station at work. Man, am I glad I did, It seems this weekend the power supply or more specifically the power supply fan had felt the need to give up the ghost. The fan still spins, kind of, it sounds terrible and you just know that at any minute that the thing is going to freeze up. So I worked from my laptop today, and left the workstation shut down. That means this little machine has been going for almost 14 hours today. What a great computer. It's hard to believe it is already three years old. This laptop is more reliable then some people I know.

Is that a Peacock in my livingroom or are you just happy to see me

So Friday I didn't have much excitement. I worked from home. I was going to drive in for the interview we had for the eMarketing position, I got about halfway there and my boss (The coolest boss in the whole world ) called and said, 'hey, if you haven't already just turn around and go back home'. And being that I had already been driving an hour and the way traffic was going it was going to be another hour before I got to work. I took his very wise advice. So I had them call me in to the interview and I did my part on the cell phone on the way back home.

Oh, on Friday Scott Hanselman was going to be on .NET Rocks. And I made sure I told everyone at work that would even be remotely interested. So what did I do? I forgot that it was on 9am PT and missed it! D'oh!

Friday night, over at the Folk's playing darts on the new dartboard my brother had just bought for Dad. (It's a really nice one, way to go big-little brother!) So we are joking around and I let something out of my mouth that was sharper and flew truer than the darts. You see Dad has been a city inspector now for about a year and four months. Before he was, we always had this saying about inspectors, but no one had said it since Dad became one. So I did. <quote src=”me”>You know what they say big-little brother, those that don't do, inspect!</quote> So my two brothers, I and my Dad and laughing so hard we are crying. What can I say, it had to be done. Of course Dad has a great sense of humor, and took it great!

Saturday I worked from home, on getting content into the CMS. It's a lot of tedium but in the end it is going to be a good thing. Saturday night we went to my Folks house, for my Cousin's anniversary dinner. What can I say never a dull moment at the Folks'.

Today was a nice day, this afternoon My Beautiful Wife and I where just relaxing and decided to go to the movies. We saw “Something's Gotta Give”. It is the second time we've seen it and we laughed harder than the first time! It's a great movie and very funny, however it is not made for the 18-35 year old demographic. You need a little life experience to get how funny this movie is.

Anyhow so we come home and what do I see in my living room? A peacock! No, I am not talking about the terrible sunday night lineup on NBC, I mean a real life, bird brain, crapping on the carpet peacock! I have to admit this took me back a moment. It isn't everyday that you walk into your living room and see live poultry.

It seems that my step-daughter's friend found it and brought it over for us to see. I don't like birds, I really don't! All I can say is being 10 years old and watching Alfred Hitchcock's “The Birds” at 2am will scar anyone for life, okay! So they are telling me what the thing eats (mind you there is a flippin' peacock in my living room!) and so I ask how it feels about garlic. The look at me with a puzzled look and I suggested that it would be best served with garlic and walked out of the room.