Started a Photoblog

So yesterday I started a photoblog. I plan on updating it once a week or so. So far, I have gotten some nice comments about my train picture. Check it out

The next Wave of blogging

So I have been reading about mobbloging. It's been around for about a year, but with cameraphones getting cheaper, it is becoming more and more popular. What is a moblogging? Simply put it is the practice of submitting text messages and images directly to online diaries. This article from the Guardian Unlimited explians the whole thing better than I can.

It's an interesting movement. I have thought for awhile that some of the beauty of the photos that I've seen from cameraphones is the candidness of them. That the picture was very much of the moment, and had very little to do stoping everyone and getting the camera out and taking the picture. While I love those pictures, they aren't as truly a representation of day to day life. I really love the fact that moblogging lets you share those real life/real moment images with your friends and family and even the world.

Some links to check out:
textamerica
http://www.buzznet.com
http://cellphones.engadget.com/

DNS Changes

So yesterday, I made some (scary) changes to the DNS for our Domain at work. I changed the DNS Servers used for the domain, and transfer all of the records to the new DNS Servers. If I  goofed up, little things email for the entire company would of been down, and no one would of been able to get to our website.

I am happy to say that none of those bad things happened. The transfer and propagation happened in about 14 hours. (which is incredibly fast) Which means when I show up on monday, I get to keep my job :-).

Meetings are options, days off required

So I am not sure how it worked. We were suppose to have a meeting today about a project that is on a tight timeline. So feeling miserable, I get myself out of bed to come in to work, for this meeting. I was suppose to present what I have coded up. To show the protype site (1/3 of it with functionality built and usable) and get feedback. Little design and usability tweeks. Anyhow not one of the other people sheduled to be in the meeting were in the building today. Now, most people have a good idea earlier in the week that they are going to take friday off don't they? My boss was the only one that told me. And truth be told, he deserves some time off, he is a hard worker, and does his best to make my job easier. Sometimes he is the only reason my job is even doable. But how come the others couldn't reschedule.

In the end it was probably good I came in, there were issues that I needed to take care of. But still it would of been nicer to be sick at home instead of sick at work.

feeliing Ill

Just not feeling well today. Got sick at work. Can't seem to keep anything down. But tomorrow is friday, maybe it will be better tomorrow.

Wrote something cool, saw something cool

Wrote something cool
So as a programmer, it is in my best interesting to be lazy. Not afraid of hard work lazy, and not slacker lazy. I mean lazy in a way that I never want to write the same code twice. Moreover, I don't want to write code, that I can generate with other code. Funny enough about this kind laziness, you can spend longer on writing a solution, then just doing the task at hand. Fortunately I broke even today. So what I wrote today, is a little utlity, that you feed a xml document, and the xsl stylesheet that your wrote for the xml, and it creates a html file from your xsl. So including the xsl I wrote 270 lines of code (145 for the xsl, 125 for the utlity), to create an html document, that only has 185 lines of code. Why would I do that?

Several reasons come to mind. First, accuracy, the xsl is going to more accurate, in writing the links, that I am going to be. In 185 lines of code, there are 150 links. Anyone would started to get a little bored and start to let their mind drift off, and the links won't of been as accurate because they are thinking about lunch or that movie they just saw. Second, flexibility, what if tomorrow, my boss says hey, 'Russ that looks great, but lets try this format instead'. Correctly changing the html page around could take a lot of time. However, changing the format of the xsl, is much quicker, and I can regenerate the html in half a second after the xsl is finished. Finally, that laziness factor we were talking about earlier. I don't want to write the code, when I can have something else do it for me.
An example of this would be the electric handsaw (skilsaw). Now you know it took longer to make the first skilsaw, then it did to cut 10 boards. But did it take longer to create the skilsaw then it would of taken to cut 5000 boards? Probably not.

In a couple days once I get my little utility all polished I will post it. I still need to write in some error checking and clean up the UI. (Ed we can do a command line version if you want :-> )

Something cool I saw
Checking the logs today I saw that I got a someone who came to my site from a yahoo.com search. I was pretty please to see with the keywords "Real Life Adventure" I was ranked 6th on the search results. So, I am thinking, right on, movin my way up the search engine ladder. Out of curiosity I typed in the title of my blog "Adventures in Real Life" and I came up ranked 2nd in the search engines. Now how cool is that.

All About Blogs and RSS

Here is a good article on what blogs are technically all about. It doesn't go in to the community that bloggers have, but it is quite informative. Check it out!

New Dev site

Ziff Davis has started a new developers site just for Windows/.NET Developers.  It's called  DevSource. On my first spin around the site it looks like it has some very useful articles and great tips. One of the articles that caught my attention was under their using VS section. ".NET Rock Stars: Chris Sells", it's an interview with Chris on windows development. It's pretty much a must read. The other article interested me was again, under the using VS section "Framework Patterns", this article specifically is targeting exception handling. It's good stuff, check it out.

Geek Glossary Part I

It was brought to my attention that I use a lot of acronyms ;-). And it's true, I do. With my job, it saves me about ten hours a week using acronyms in emails, phone calls, and in meetings. The computer industry is just over flowing with them. However, some acronyms have a different meaning depending on how they are used. It's like all the rules we have in the English language at it's worst. Let me give you an example. Here are two sentences using the same acronym to say two different things.

• wrote something in ASP today.
• I need to call our ASP to find out what happened.

So if that wasn't confusing enough I use phrases like "Classic ASP" and "ASP.NET". These are referring to versions of Active Server Pages. So in truth "Classic ASP" means version 3.0 and "ASP.NET" means version 4.0 and 4.1.

During a recent meeting at work, we were discussing the "API" for interfacing with this or that, and one of the people in the lending department asked what an "API" was. I thought this was a great question, because as geeks we forget that not everyone knows or even has any clue as to what we are talking about. So what does "API" mean? Well, it stands for Applications Programming Interface. Don't you feel better knowing that? So now you are going great, what does an Application Programming Interface mean in English. What it really means is, it is a way, or more correctly an program that someone has written that has methods of letting you talk with this other program, without having to know the particulars about it. Now, you are thinking so APIs are something that makes it easier to program for something. And the answer to that is a very positive, ummmm sometimes, maybe...

The last one we will cover today is "blog". It isn't really an acronym, and it's barely a word. Basically it's slang. What blog actually started out as was "Weblog". Then someone started to drop the "we" of "weblog" to make it "blog". So basically a blog or weblog is a web page that is updated almost daily that consists of someone?s ramblings, rants, raves and even geeky thoughts. (Kind of like this one).

Until our next installment of Geek Glossary, here is a link to a great Geek Glossary to look up computer acronyms and other computer industry mumbo jumbo.

Thing one and Thing two

thing one
 I noticed something the other day but didn't have time to mention it. The blog has passed 1000 views. What's even cooler than that is for the most part my views aren't counted. Which is kind of cool because it is just the count of you guys visiting.

 When I started this blog four months ago, I didn't think about anyone visiting it. It was more like writing to the ether. However I have had people visit the blog from Sweden, Italy, Japan, Spain, Germany, China and of course from all over the United States. It's interesting to see on my little blog, the effect the internet has, and the whole global village idea coming true.

 Now I know that most of the readers of my blog are friends and family and I thank you for thinking that I have something interesting to say. Even when I go on and on about ASP.Boring (as one comment suggested ;-D ). I want all of your feedback, so please don't hesitate to use the comments feature. Just click Comment(n) and write away. If you have a popup blocker on, you may have to turn it off to use comments.

thing two
 On tuesday's blog I talked about a little utility called BlogJet. What it is, is a windows applications that works like Word for your blog posts. You don't really have to know any html to write you posts and have it look like you want it to. It has bold, italics, underline, bulleted lists, images and hyperlinks tools built in. It also as a really nice feature for people like me that lets you look at the code. (Being that I dream in code, I couldn't image not being able to see before posting my blog.)

 Every post since tuesday has been done through Blogjet. I am not sure why, but I find it more convenient to write and edit my posts in it. It's fairly intuitive and is really easy to set up. It even has settings to allow you to post blog account (for example I use blogger.com) and upload any images you are using for your blog to another server. While I haven't used this yet, it is a great idea and really speeds up the time it takes to post content to your blog.  Another nice feature is it allows you to connect to different blogger accounts. Not everybody uses only one  blog service and the creators of blogjet understand this.

 While I do think this is a great little product I do have a short feature wishlist. (Remember it is still in beta 1)

• Spellchecker
• CSS support
• Cleaner HTML code in Code View

I am happy to tell that these features are on the feature request list on the BlogJet forum.

Got to code today

Today ended up having fun coding this afternoon. We needed something that let people securely move the data. So that is what I wrote. It was in classic asp and it was made up of little components that I have created over the last year or so. I also used some components from AspUpload that are really nice and easy to use. We also purchased and are using thier XUpload product which is a very user friendly way of uploading multiple files. It even lets the users drag and drop out of windows explorer.

It has been a little while since I've done anything in classic asp. It was actually nice. I am surprised about how easy it is to switch languages some days and so difficult others. I didn't have any problems today. Everything just flowed from a code point of few. For the most part I got a secure upload and download application done in a couple of hours including the user interface and security. Don't get me wrong, this isn't a modular piece of code that is reusable and perfect to use in ten other things. It was a one off solution. But it works and it solved a problem. Sometimes it's really nice to be able to solve a problem quickly.

Of course I am working on a .NET version of the same thing that is way more modular and will use Active Directory for security of the internal users and a salted hashed password for the external users. It will always create and delete directories and documents on the fly or scheduled. It will allow the helpdesk group to create the secure transfer sites on the fly.

late train early day

So today started at 5:00am, to make it to the train at 5:30am to get to work by 7:15am to get work done before the meeting at 8:00 am. After the Meeting at 8:00am ended at 9:00am, we had a meeting that lasted from 9:15am to 5:30pm. I caught the last train for home at 5:50pm. Got stuck in union station because the train taking me home at 7:00pm hadn't even showed up yet at 7:15pm. So I took the gold line to pasadena that left at 7:20pm to get to old town pasadena at 7:50pm. My beautiful wife picked me up at 8:00pm and we got home at 8:45pm.

XML-Based page templates

So at work I am trying to find ways of automating and templatizing everything. One of things that I found today with this goal in mind was an article on xmlforasp.net regarding XML-Based ASP.NET Page templates. This is such a nice was to things. While all of the internal/intranet applications that Ed and I write have different functionality, we are trying to keep them having the same look and feel. This goes a long way to help that happen. The other great thing that this article addresses is making it easier for Jr. Developers and Content Publishers to use these templates. They only need to know basic html to get the job done. If you've ever tried to discribe a for loop to a non-technical person, you know how wonderful this is.

Test of something new

I downloaded this cool little utility called BlogJet. It seems to be working okay. I will try it for the next couple days and let everyone know what I think.

Happy Monday

Well today is my Beautiful Wife's and my three year anniversary. Three years has gone by so fast. It is such a pleasure to be with her. I so enjoy her company, her wit and sense of humor and even her `onery streak. (I find it so adorable, I can't help but be completely in Love with her.) She really is the love of my life!

Today is going to be a happy monday. I am playing hookie from work (with the proper forms filled out in triplicate and signed by the correct people in human resources and management) and the little boy is play hookie from school (told the bus driver friday he wasn't coming in) and we are going to Disneyland. It should be a beautiful day for it.

I do have to say, I got the coolest thing for my anniversary present. I got a 20gig apple iPod.It is an amazing device. This little mp3 player will hold up to 4000 songs and is about as thick as two CD cases stacked. The other thing about it is the sound quality is so amazing. It's really nice gift. I know I will enjoy it for a long time.

I know that it's been like three days since I've blogged, it was almost a test to see if I could go a weekend without writing anything in C#, XML, XSD or HTML. So apparently I can, however the withdrawals and terrible :-). I ended up dreaming in code. Speaking of code, one of the other gifts I got was a gift card to Barnes and Noble. This was very nice indeed, and of course I ended up picking out a book on C#, XML and XSD. (Not a big surprise now was it). It's called ".NET and XML understanding the code and markup behind with Wizards", its one of those great O'Reilly books, that us techy geeks love to have on our bookshelves.

Welp, I am off to get ready to go to the happiest place on earth....The Apple store... hmmm I mean Disneyland.

It's okay to Love Cartoons but...

It's okay to love cartoons, but trying to live them is something completely different. Apparently someone loves the Simpson so much that they built a really life replica of their house to live in. Now that's going just a little bit to far don't you think? I mean, I loved the cartoon the transformers growing up, but I'm not in the garage night after night trying to make a porcshe that transfroms into a robot.

Now don't get me wrong. I do enjoy watching cartoons. With a three year old in the house the view choices are rather limited. Fortunately there are movies like "Finding Nemo", "Toy Story" and "Monsters Inc" that were created by people who know how to entertain children and adults in the same film. Like I said, it's great to love cartoons, but don't try to live one. In the life of a cartoon, you never know when a piano would get dropped on your head.

Which OS are you?

Which OS are You?

iPodraces

I love it when someone is as creative as they were here in iPodraces. You got to like when someone merges the best MP3 Player on the market with the best part of Star Wars Episode I.

If you catch on to it quick enough you can pretend you where there

Friday night, I was reading by blogroll and came across some that struck a cord. It was on ComputerZen, it linked to a post called "Real Coders, Real Code" by Mat Warren.

It's late, do you know where your coder is? Really, it's a very good question. You think your spouse is sleeping next to you at night. They are not. They are awake, bleary, weary and barely lucid, secretly feeding their addiction. Yes, it is sad and depraved, and utterly reprehensible. Of course, they don't want you to know because they need to keep the mystery. It will make it all the more poignant when the truth does come out, because they have a plan, and it is big. They need to code. It is what makes them go; the juice that makes them feel alive, and it is all leading somewhere. You see, there's an app, and it does something wonderful, and you'll understand when you see it, but it's not exactly done yet. It would be if they could just figure out that frigging API, but the doc sucks straws and the on-line help is out to lunch.

It's nice to know your not alone stressing and obsessing over your code. The comments on the post sure reflected that. My favorite comment was from a women married to a man that is struck with the same "affliction". What she had to say was genius.

Oh yes, I knew this already! I pray for the day my husband comes up from the cold, dark, stinky basement and asks for a beer and plops down in front of the TV to watch the Packers play. Heck I'd settle for a white wine spritzer and figure skating at this point! I sit with a smile on my face nodding as I listen to him excitedly rant about .Net and how he got a (whatever you call it) down to .003 seconds from its previous 3.8! I hug him and tell him I'm proud of him and he can do anything because I know that one day, that idea that's clawing and chewing its way out of his brain will make it out! Yep, I love that coder of mine!

First Review: Dell Latitude D800

So I got the laptop Friday morning, of course I wasn't able to get switched over in an afternoon. (despite how hard I tried) So this weekend took it home, and of course it passed the first test, the curbside appeal. My Beautiful Wife said that it was a very nice looking machine. (from a Mac user that is a very nice complement) The next test was the home network. I have a DLink WiFi router (802.11b, yeah, I know only "b" but, my DSL doesn't do 54mbps, yet so..) and of course it found it immediately. I had no problems with the connection all weekend long, in every room!.

I definitely think that ordering the faster 5400rpm harddrive was the way to go. Between the faster drive and 1gig of RAM it is amazing how fast applications open up. When I got into work today, the last test was completed. Dual Monitors. I have two flatscreens at work and it is something that I am very used to having. I've been running dual monitors since Windows 98. So it was important to me that it worked and it did. After a little Tinkering I set my 1st Monitor up with the DVI connection in the back of the port replicator and then the 2nd Monitor with the anolog VGA connection. They are working and looking great.

The screen on the laptop itself is simply stunning, the color depth and the resolution is awesome.

I can tell that this is going to be a real workhorse of a laptop. I am sure that we will create many wonderful apps together.