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Remember to check out these musicians.
Stanley Jordan
Louis Johnson who doesn't have a web page.
I saw these guys on a Jazz TV Channel yesterday. Louis Johnson plays an unbelievable slap bass funky style, and Stanley Jordan uses both hands to play notes on a guitar, and sometimes two guitars at a time (one hand on each ;-) ). It really just blew me away. |
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In a digital handbasket.
Have you ever gone to Blogspot and just clicked "next blog" for an hour? Well, this brings upon some enlightening thoughts about where the internet is going. Every other site is spam. Every third site is some young kid who uses sentences like "ive bin bz lol and work sux lol and my cat dide lol". Once every 10 clicks or so you'll find a nice, intelligible person who writes in proper English (or almost, like me), complete sentences, and has something meaningful to say. The rest of the sites are in some other language, so I have no say on them.
There are numerous sites out there that let people have a website and write thoughts on it. That's all good and dandy. But it's like a guy at the beach wearing a speedo, when you know that guy shouldn't be wearing a speedo, and no one will tell him that he shouldn't be wearing one. So, it's not against the law, but it's not pleasant for anyone... His daughter won't even be on the same beach as him, the wife is hiding under an umbrella, pretending to be asleep and/or reading a book, you know the scene.
I have nothing against free speech, free press, free anything. There are consistently low quality performances in all walks of life. Some movies suck, video games, books, tv shows, the Phillies, etc. Some are expressions of emotion, like a "blog" would be. There are also those on the extreme opposite end of that spectrum. Like, for one thing, the Eagles rule. Also, Plato's books rule, and I'm sure there's a good video game out there somewhere.
Obviously, I don't have to view those websites, and that's the other freedom granted in Free Press, Free Speech, and everything else free. The freedom to ignore. God Bless America.
OK, so while the Internet isn't going to hell from all the n00bs out there posting incoherent ramblings using long-ass sentences consisting of words of no more than 4 characters in length, it's still going to hell.
So, I'm going to look for a domain name to purchase to park this site at, and I try like a hundred different things that might closely resemble something that I would be proud to have as a domain name. I search the WHOIS database like nobody's business, finding all these domain names taken. I have to investigate, right? I visit the first domain name, and it's a "GoDaddy" site. The next one is a "Register.com" site. This happened for about 10 different domain names and at least 4 different registrar sites (like Network Solutions also). So many people, or "abstracts" even, own so many domain names. Luckily I was able to get the ones I wanted because of a cleverly inserted hyphen :) I say abstracts because these people buy domain names, and then try to get a sucker to buy it from them for at least 10 times what they paid. This just sucks for the future of the internet. It only costs $35 (max) a year to keep a domain name and not use it. Domain names are allowed to be pretty long (you can pretty much find the history of the internet on this site), so there are infinite, or close to it, permutations of domain names. I'd hate to know someone at an newly established domain name 20 years from now. Hey what's your website? Oh, it's www.mydomainnameissolongbecausethestupidpeople
inyourdayboughtupallthedomainnamesandididnothaveabazilliondollarstobuytheoneiwanted.com
Great. So, how do I email you? It's bob@my... no, I'm not going to type it again. That wasted 5 minutes already.
Other reasons the internet is going to hell...
Spam is too obvious. Worms are too obvious... Virii is a cool word, but it's still too obvious. Fraud... too obvious. Porn even... what else is bad with the internet?
I'm not a lawyer, but open source is good. Knowledge sharing is good. Being able to easily find something that you're looking for is great. With the internet growing at a rate that it is (google is now indexing 8 BILLION+ websites, just a few years ago it was at 2-3 billion), there won't be any tools capable of searching the internet and bringing back relevant results. I searched for my name, and figuring I'm searching for my name, it should return my website. I got to the 7th page before I gave up. One of these days there will need to be artificial intelligence of the human kind to be able to search the internet. Not that AI is bad (unless you think the Matrix is real :) ), but it's HARD! I'm no genius, but I worked with AI in college. VERY interesting subject. Mind boggling, even. Exciting. Fascinating. It's awesome. But anyways, back to the internet...
One thing that comes to my mind when I hear the words "The internet is going to hell", is the obvious notion of compatibility. Sharing information between sites can now be done in a thousand ways, as long as those sites share their methods of sharing information. Let me list them... SOAP through Web Services, plain XML, RSS, ATOM, XMLRPC, RPC, Remoting, and anything else that someone may want to program. Granted, the WWW Consortium is trying to get a grasp on all of these methods, almost none of them are standardized through them. The happy internet is the standardized internet. Imagine, if google, instead of just reading all of the HTML through a website url, can just ask a website "Yo, what's your deal?!" and the website can respond back "Dude, I am a guitar shop, here are my wares." And google says "Awesome, Jason Connell was searching for guitars the other day, he wanted a new stratocaster, I'll email this to him right away. He found one for $500 but judging by your prices, he's gonna crap his pants. In fact, let's just place the order now, shall we? I have his credit card and mailing address..." Without standardization in server methods and in browsers, we won't even come close to that point :)
So, that was my very compelling argument on why the internet is going to hell. I hope you enjoyed it. Please comment below. |
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A while ago I bought a QuickTime Pro license. I wanted to make the movies smaller so I could not have to worry about going on for 3 minutes and having people download a movie all day long. I had formatted and reinstalled Windows after I bought it, and I couldn't find the registration key for a while, but I found it. So there are 2 new movies up there for your viewing and listening pleasure, and they are all a lot smaller than they would be without the magic of Apple software. View the movies here.
[Update] I've simplified (but not beautified) the process of downloading. You will be prompted with a link after you click download, so that way you can right click and save it instead of opening the file in the browser. Also, I've added a file size to each download so you get an idea of how much free time I have... oh and how long it'll take you to download. |
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But I work in the city
Check out the whole photo album here. |
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Netscape 8 is out now. I'm set in my ways with the Mozilla Suite, but I'll give my initial reactions on Netscape 8 anyway. From what I've read, it can use Mozilla's rendering engine (which is Netscape's, it's called Gecko) or IE's rendering engine which, from what I know, doesn't have a cool name (Do any of Microsoft's products?? Longhorn, Whistler, Yukon, ... No, none of them have cool code names, and all of their product names suck). So judging from this style of compatibility solution, I wouldn't use it. From what I can tell, Microsoft doesn't have the security background as some people may think, they also piss people off.
I don't think a hybrid solution will work. Ahh, here's a nice piece of crap information. Take the tour of Netscape 8, go into "Security", click the right arrow 2 or 3 times... you'll find that the browser will render safe sites using "the Internet Explorer method" for "maximum compatibility"... Oh man, Netscape's hit the bottom, they're now kissing Microsoft's butt. First off, Mozilla is the "standards compliant" browser, however, most web developers write their Javascript and HTML to pretty much only work in IE. ECMAScript (JavaScript's other name) was invented at Netscape and later taken and seriously altered by Microsoft, so now there are two versions. You can learn about Javascript here.
In conclusion, Netscape 8 uses IE so it inherits all of its flaws with respects to standards compliancy. Eventually, IE will need to conform to these standards, but it will still have the security flaws. Mozilla or FireFox are based on these standards, which make web developing not as complex as it used to be, back when the browser market share was a tight battle between Netscape and Microsoft, coinciding Windows 98 which came with IE4 and Microsoft's version of ECMAScript. Mozilla based code doesn't even know what an "ActiveX" object is, so it gains a TON of security advantages there. It's the safe way to browse the web on a Windows machine. |
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Having no Phillies to watch last night, Jeff (my brother) and I scraped our funds together for a movie night. Having just $8.37 between us, we got two movies. Blade Trinity and The Aviator.
Stay tuned for reviews! I woke up at 5:30am yesterday, I fell asleep an hour into Blade Trinity (which was cool from what I saw) and was asleep for the whole night, so I don't know if Jeff put on The Aviator or not. I wanted to see that one. But now the Phillies are on again tonight, plus it's Friday. So we might be watching the game at Casey's or some other local drinking establishment :) |
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If the sum of the odors of a pile of clothes (or clothes in a closet) passes the sniff test, than any item of clothing in the whole is acceptable for wearing.
This is only a theory. |
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In Philly, you will not be able to smoke in bars or restaurants. Bars have 2 years to comply, and there will be exemptions for private clubs and stuff like that, but everyone else has to comply by the beginning of next year.
Thankfully, I live and party in the suburbs :) Well, I wonder if Conshohocken will be doing anything similar, although, it really doesn't matter that much, the Great American Pub already is 1/4 non-smoking. Everybody is in the non smoking room, so to be hip, you can't smoke (a little different from High School and typical peer pressure). I'm glad they are outlawing it. Whenever I get a slight urge to smoke in a bar, I just do it. There's no thinking, by the time I think I might want a cigarette, it's in my mouth and lit. So, having everything non-smoking will help me a bit. But again, the ban is only in the city for now, and not even now since bars, again, have 2 years to comply.
Source (registration required) |
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Now that I have the gmail accounts and domain names all registered, I can start to share them. I'm going to have some logos and images designed so I can be cooler. The names and email addresses are : (drum roll)
Caffeine Fueled
Digital Tattoo
Email Caffeine Fueled
Email Digital Tattoo
Being a non-schizophrenic and also not having all the time in the world, I will pretty much only be using one domain and email, and that will be caffeine fueled, since I am caffeine fueled. The other one was just too cool of a domain name to pass up. I had to get it, Mom, I had to. How cool is a "digital tattoo"?! I can't even grasp the concept. Of course, in that analogy I say a domain name is a digital tattoo.
So, if I get offers for the domain name, I'd consider selling it. It could be a good name for a graphics design company, or software, probably anything in computers. If that's the case, I can't hold back the dreams of an entrepreneur, and will practically give it away. I don't do this for money, do you see ads on here? :-P |
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I went to sign up for another gmail account today, and the default desired login name made me laugh...
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| I woke up today, without an alarm clock blaring in my ear, at 5:30am. Of course it's without an alarm clock in my ear because who in their right mind would set the alarm clock for 5:30 when they don't have to be up until 7?! I don't like it, although I do like it... I don't like it because I'm going to be really tired tonight by 9 or 10 pm, but I do like it because I can work on the web page :) I also like it because, if I want to, and it's still an option, I can lay down and set the alarm clock for 6:30, fall asleep for a good 40 minutes now, and still wake up way too early. I think I'll go with that option. Good night! |
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| Yup, I still am listening to Cracker with every waking moment. 11:24 PM, Eurotrash Girl blares from my speakers. I put on my Cracker playlist about 3 hours ago. It was about 3 hours ago that I realized I have to go to the bathroom, however, I haven't moved. I'm writing the content management system part of this site because I got held up over the past few days with the calendar and photo album fixes, and other boring things like vacation and recording movies and playing guitar and buying stuff. No more, I promise. Back to writing software. |
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| Besides the fact that this site just looks a bazillion times better in Mozilla or Firefox, Internet Explorer has been exploited again. This worm encrypts all of your files and places a ransom note on your computer that tells you to pay $200 to get the files unencrypted and usable again. Use Mozilla for Pete's sake. It's based on standards and it's well implemented. But always be careful when downloading a file, however, with IE you can install software on a client computer without having them download a file... |
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Here's a neat function I wrote as part of the photo album part of the site. It takes an image, a width and height, and an output image and creates a thumbnail with size "width by height". I will add that no part of this was with aid :-) Except for the Java 1.4.2 API Specification and a little brain power and some memory about how to scale geometric objects...
public void writeThumbnail(ImageInputStream iis,int w, int h, ImageOutputStream ios) throws Exception {
BufferedImage img = ImageIO.read(iis);
BufferedImage tnail = null;
double sx,sy;
sx = ((double)w)/img.getWidth();
sy = ((double)h)/img.getHeight();
AffineTransform at = new AffineTransform();
at.setToScale(sx,sy);
AffineTransformOp xop = new AffineTransformOp(at,AffineTransformOp.TYPE_NEAREST_NEIGHBOR);
tnail = xop.createCompatibleDestImage(img,null);
tnail = xop.filter(img,tnail);
ImageIO.write(tnail,"JPEG",ios);
ios.close();
}
I should add that there is another function that takes two strings instead of Image streams, both full filenames. I could add one that takes just an input stream and output stream for both, not image input and output streams. That way you could potentially write a thumbnail over the internet :-P A practical example (I like practical) would be to enter a URL of an image on the internet and save a thumbnail of it on your computer.
[Update] Check out the much quicker load times on my album Trip to Lewes. If you've seen it before you'll know. The next step, per Doug's very angry suggestion, is to have some sort of easy image navigation system... We'll see if I want to do it.
[Final Update] I made the photo albums a little easier to navigate. I'm still stumped as to a good way to do it for this site. It goes along pretty well with how the rest of the site is laid out, so, I guess we'll hear from Doug about how I did :) |
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I don't like blogs, so I'm not going to call this a blog. It's partly to do with the word "blog"... it's a buzzword almost. Everyone's doing it. I've always tried to stay away from stuff that the masses are doing (except that one time in sixth grade when I had to get Reebok Pump sneakers). Look at the big picture of this. When you say "blog" you encapsulate EVERY site out there that has one to a few people's thoughts written in a format that always looks the same. Even down to the font. Of course, there are a lot of thoughts out there, but I'd rather read humorful ones... ones that are like mine, ones that smell nice, ones that talk about Philly sports and guitar and programming... this site isn't another blog. It's a personal site, but not a blog. There's more than a "log". This news part might be called a blog, since it is blog-like. I tend to look at things in terms of technology. In that way, there's no way that the whole site is a blog, blogs don't have s!@#! :) I put too much into the technology behind this site to just have it classified with around a billion other sites :) Now I know how people feel when they are stereotyped. I don't want my little site to be stereotyped!
Ok, I've vented. Thanks for listening. It's not a blog. |
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I can't get angry at someone too quickly, and I also can't stay angry at anyone for too long, especially if that someone or something shows that they are improving their behavior with respect to what made me angry.
The Phillies have my respect for now. Hopefully for a long time but probably until the next series against the Marlins. They played the former National League Champions, and took two out of three games. They played the second best team in the American League this year and took 2 out of three. Through six games you see most of your team's pitchers, and with the way this management does lineups, you've seen about 6 out of an infinite list of permutations of lineups. The games they won weren't in the greatest fashion, or with the greatest pitching (arguably, perhaps, except for yesterday when Cory Lidle threw a 6 hit 2 run complete game with 99 pitches), or with the greatest fielding. But they did win. Bobby Abreu's hitting streak started over, however, David Bell is up to 9 me thinks.
For the meantime, the Phillies are off of my "DO NOT BET FOR" list, and even off of my "BET AGAINST" list. I don't see them making my "BET FOR" list until they start sweeping teams like the Marlins and the Braves. So you should not expect them to be etched onto that one. Maybe they'll surprise me. |
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I ordered some things from Outpost last night (that's another story, my love affair with Outpost.com) which came today (see why I love them?) I got a new digital camera. It's neat, it records videos and has zoom unlike my other one which isn't very powerful at all.
The other thing I got was 1 GB of memory for my laptop. A huge upgrade from 512, it's the computer that does the most work for me. I thought it would be a nightmare replacing RAM in such a compact unit as a laptop. But, I found 2 manuals on hp.com, one for the lower memory module and one for the upper memory module, which I had to flip off the keyboard and get into the guts of it. I'd always be maxed out on memory after about an hour of using it... unacceptable. I work on that thing for about 5 hours at a time. I'm so used to it I could do everything on there blindfolded with my arms tied behind the chair. This is the more impacting purchase of the day. The camera is cool and everything, but just because I got a new camera doesn't mean I'll be using it more than the old one, except during the honeymoon period.
Also, we got a new couch for our living room, I'll take pictures of it with the new camera and put them up. I'll probably install the Canon software that came with the camera, until I get sick of it. |
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Have you seen the specs for the PS3?
PS3 Specs
Tell me you're not going to buy at least one of those.
Now read this one.
Nintendo Revolution Specs
I'll take out a loan if I have to, those two systems will be mine. The who-box? Oh, the XBox. Yeah, no way. Zatko said it best when he said
"yea i think xbox is gonna get pounced"
What kind of stupid name is the XBox 360? One sports guy said "we need to turn this team around 360 degrees" which he thought meant to go in the opposite direction. Turn 360 degrees and all you've accomplished is a little dizziness. I wonder why they call it 360 if they didn't mean a circle. It's the only 360 I can think of. On that note, I will again be showing no interest in the XBox. It's funny though, it's the least powerful one by far. The PS3 is just an amazing piece of machinery, and Nintendo has all the great Mario games and other franchises. There's no need for an XBox for me since I have a PC that plays games. |
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I never really refered to this site as a blog. I developed the first version way back in early 2001, even late 2000. I'm not sure when "blog" (short and mangled form of "Web Log") was originally coined, but I only started hearing the term last year. I guess this is a blog though. There are some "blogging technology" that it's missing, but I have more stuff than your average blog... downloads and photos being the major things. I could make it look more like a blog, but there's more to it. Most blogs usually blog about something specific. I've seen ones that are political blogs, music blogs, news blogs, techno blogs, etc. I lack the interest and expertise in any one specific topic to dedicate my blogging to just one topic. The approach I take is just talk about a ton of stuff, let the 1 to 2 people a day read it and criticize it, and post some music and photo albums. My website also lacks a cool (or weird) name. I've got some ideas floating around up there, but they are all based off of Cracker songs or are corny. Yes, corny. Or they are too topic specific. Like if I called my site "Philly Web Hacker", then people would come on here expecting to read about web hacking or something. So the name can't be a noun. Nouns are bad. So I need a good verb or adverb, maybe even an adjective, or a conjunction, or possibly a pronoun. e.g. ifandthe.com is a good one, but it's probably taken. Post your ideas...
[Update] On the topic of a new name, I think I have one. Tonight when I get home, I'm going to write it down on a piece of paper and stare at it for a few hours. That's how I always decide on something. A domain name is like a digital tattoo. You always have to make sure it's what you really want, it will be your mark on the giant body known as the web, but unlike a real tattoo, you can just let it expire. |
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Even Bobby Abreu couldn't win the game for the Phils tonight. Down 8-0 in the sixth, Bobby had a 3 run homer to make it 8-3. Chase Utley almost had a 2 run homer to make it 8-5, but there was fan interference, so it was a double. Bottom of the 9th inning, bases loaded, 2 outs, 8-4. Bobby steps up to the plate and strikes out on pretty much the nastiest curve balls I've ever witnessed. Nothing you could do about it. The key is to not let the other team score 8 runs so you don't have to hope for a miraculous comeback. One more loss closer to having the upper management fired :)
Another thought I had was that the Phillies fired Larry Bowa because they wanted someone who would be nicer to the players. You can get rid of the "mean" managers, but the fans aren't going to lighten up. Here in Philly, we are relentless. In an article today on Philly.com (Registration required), Mike Lieberthal (catcher) said he expects to be booed. Even the great homerun king Michael Jack Schmidt got booed in his day. We reward for great performances (ask anyone what they think of T.O. for catching 9 passes for 122 yards on a screw in the Super Bowl), and we definitely let you hear it if you screw up.
"The last couple of years it seemed like I was booed for bad performance," Lieberthal said with a laugh. "Now they just don't like me."
That's from the paper, credits to Jim Salisbury of the Philadelphia Inquirer.
We pay for this stuff and we haven't seen a championship since 1983 with Dr. J and the Sixers. Someone win something :) |
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I just added comments to pictures, so now you can comment and tell me what a good looking guy I am. Or the opposite. But I will warn you: if you call me a good looking girl, I'll probably get upset. The photo albums now take a nanosecond longer to load. I have to figure out how to do it without making trips to the database. I can do it but it won't be backwards compatibleable, if you can read that word. I made it up kinda. The earlier stuff I made don't have what I call a "Count Property". The news has a comments "List Property" but no comments "Count Property". I can just add them in there, but it's a few hour project to take out all of the extra code that I wrote very foolishly when I could have just done it the way I'm thinking and make it really fast. Damn I am smart and yet stupid.
Other updates include some bug fixes, a new control to format text, some new bugs, and the content management system is up here but I won't be creating content with it until the menuable objects thing is done. I'd rather do a little work now rather than a lot of work for the remainder of the life of this site :) Someone once said that the lazy programmer is the smart programmer. I'm not so lazy but I make up for it with my smartness :-D I'm kidding... but I think the smart programmer tends to think of ways they can be lazy, so I think the other way around. Anyway, I could make a whole news section on the philosophy of the non-industrious ultra brain-powered software developer, but I won't. |
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| I have this worm. My computer sent out a ton of emails. I didn't know it was on there until I got emails back from an email server saying that something around 40 email addresses where mail was sent to from my account were not found. If you get emails in German, don't open them. The title of mine was something about the bombing of Dresden 60 years ago, and I'm a sucker for history. I'm not sure if opening the email really caused it, I think somehow it got through somewhere else, because the news site it was linked to was a legit German news site with an interesting article about how bombing Dresden was not necessary, but it's a valid argument from either side. I think I've found the source of the worm and it's gone from my computer now. |
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| I am a night owl. Although it's only 11:46 PM right now, I'd bet $10 that I won't fall asleep until 2am. It's one of those things where I have a lot on my mind at all times. I like playing guitar, I want to buy a mac or some sweet music software (mac's have GarageBand), and play music with drums and violin or other stringed instruments, maybe a synthesized orchestra. Other things I want to do are be on time for work tomorrow, program more for this website, meet people, finish the project at work tomorrow, create new cool software projects, check out what's going on at E3, play video games, make girls laugh, hang out with my family, hang out with my friends, exercise, buy new cool electronics equipment, etc. I have a lot of things on my mind. Who invented this 24 hours in a day thing? If I were alive back then, I would have said "dudes, 24 hours is like way too short or something. We should make it like 100... wouldn't you agree Socrates?" And Socrates and I would raise our glasses full of hemlock and share a toast. |
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Today, I was trying to make a simple content management system, and one part of a CMS is to be able to put that content onto a menu so you can have it easily show up and look like it's part of your website. Well, I have a menu system that seems to work. So, do I build capability into the content management system to be able to use my menuing system or do I build the menu system to be able to add content to itself???
Well, keeping to my philosophy as of late (besides just reading Plato), I like the second option. Sure, why not have a way for a menu to add a content page to itself? Of course you ask, isn't that stupid? Well, yeah, unless you make it completely reusable. In other words, the menu system can add anything to itself, as long as it's a menu-able something or other. And to define something as menu-able, you basically have to say, ok, what things are needed in order to add something to a menu. Well, in my system, all you need are a page, some text to display, and maybe you want to be able to supply parameters, which are built into the menu system. Ok great.
So, in a file called menu-objects.xml, I can define menu-able objects and supply parameters for them.
There are a few more things needed for the database. You want to have a list of things that are menu-able that you already have in the database. So, the screen can popup and say "what do you want to add a menu item for?" and you pick, say "content", and then a list of the content will show up and you can select it, type in a menu title, pick the menu, pick where on the menu you want to put it, and it's done. These are all simple mouse clicks.
Why can't content add itself to a menu, you might ask? Well, what if I want to add a ton more stuff that can be menu-able. What if I want to make news menu-able? I don't want to have to rebuild news... content isn't the only thing that's potentially menu-able. Also, I built the menu to be swappable later if I wanted to make another one, or add new features, I can just inherit the previous menu, add new features if I want, and without too much work, there's a new menu up there. Plus, I just don't like things depending on other things. Why have content depend on a menu system? Why have news depend on a calendar? Just have each thing be self contained, that's what I always say.
This philosophy I realized when I built the calendar. Do I want to add code to each object that is "calendar-able"? Code that, as it is, already works for the most part? No way. The only thing is, should the calendar be able to exist without this notion of calendar-able objects? Absolutely. And besides just not having any objects listed. This calls for the notion of a very advanced mechanism. One that brings joy to my once joyless heart. Interfaces and abstraction.
So, I want a calendar to be just a calendar at one time, but later transform into this amazing thing that can get events from your database, plot them onto itself, and have it clickable so you can see those events. Well, the fact is that it can't. At compile time, it should know that it might have to deal with calendar-able objects. That's pretty much the nature of programming. The best solution though, is to have an interface for something called a CalendarableObject and another interface to supply these items, called CalendarEventSupplier. The beautiful thing is, you can create a NullCalendarEventSupplier, set it as the supplier in an xml file somewhere, and your calendar is now just a plain old calendar with no mapped events. However, create a DatabaseCalendarEventSupplier, and it's now transformed into something that makes calls to your database, gets events, and plots them onto the calendar.
I love programming. |
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| So, I have a new debit card that no one else has except me and my bank. The money is back in the account as the company said it would do. Looking back on it, it wasn't that bad of an experience except for having to get cash out against my credit card, but I paid it off since I knew I had money in the bank and the credit card goes against just your routing number and bank account number, not a credit card. I got money out at a branch of our bank before we went to Lewes this weekend, and more importantly I had money for Friday night. That was a great time meeting up with a bunch of people I worked with two jobs ago. We always end up having a good time. |
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I'm not really superstitious about this, I'd just thought I'd mention it in case you are reading this and you forget until now, and then you become all nervous and won't travel or do anything but sit at home and play with your rabbit's foot. :) It'll all be over shortly, hang in there.
But it reminds me of one of my favorite Cracker songs, "Lonesome Johnny Blues".
"Lucky number 7 passed me by. Lucky number 7 called my name and passed on by. Well he came back don't you know, with his brother 6 in tow, and that's how number 13 wound up at my side."
Quality stuff. |
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I was at the game last night. It was a good time. Our department at work went. There were around 15 of us I think? I like gatherings like that at work. They make work more than work. Speaking of gatherings of employees, tonight I'm going to the Great American Pub in Conshohocken to visit with a bunch of people I used to work with. We'll be there from 9pm til it closes, meet me there!
Anyway, back to last night's Phillies game. It's fun to see all of the players, even though from where we were, you can't see where the pitches were landing. That's what I like to watch the most, the pitching. I like to see what pitchers do on certain counts, what batters do on certain counts, and of course I like to see home runs. Bobby Abreu had one. We couldn't see the right field wall that well so that's where he hit it obviously. He's had 5 games in a row now that he's homered. That's the story of the Phils, always one person does well, the others take turns being in a slump... |
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| This server now has 1000 GB monthly transfer. I have an 80 GB hard drive on here, if I could fill it up, I could transfer the entire contents of the hard drive twelve and a half times. Or, more practically, if I have 100 MB of stuff on this website, i could have 10,000 people a month view everything I have on here. Even more practically, I'll never use 1000 GB a month. That total, however, includes my FTP and SSH usage, although SSH is really no percentage of 1000 GB. Using SSH, I may transfer 1 GB every 10 years :) The cap used to be 100 GB and I never used it, but the websites I have on here before this one hardly got used, although this one isn't used much either, but I visit it everyday :) Anyway, feel free to hoard my music. |
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Read this... We'll all have electronic ID cards in May 2008. It's not cameras in our homes, so it's not that bad, but that's what the government wants to do, step up the invasion of privacy in increments so we can painlessly get to the point where we have cameras in our houses :P
Actually, I'm not an activist on this subject. I jest. So I will have to carry one more card with me, I have a wallet. If I have to renew it, if I can renew it when I have to renew my drivers' licence, then it's fine, it's one trip. Also, it shouldn't cost anything. Do we have to get it insured? :P It's 3 years away. Moral of the story is, this isn't that big a deal ... dot dot dot ... yet.
I was just reading the comments by some people on that article. They are interesting. Some are complete dillholes, but others make good points. What criminal do you know that will have an ID card that says their name on it? This leads to a point that says this is a method that will only be a hassle for us law abiding citizens, which is somewhat valid. It's an interesting argument. |
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I can't speak for the rest of Phillies fans out there, but I've started cheering against the Phillies sometimes. Actually, it's not completely cheering against them, but I'll be cheering for both teams. Every time the Phillies lose we are one loss closer to getting certain upper management fired, whose name sounds like something you do in water when you're not quite swimming to keep your head above it and not drown. That's all I have to say about that... It's midnight, I'm beat.
[The Next Morning] Ok, more on the Phillies. I'm glad that David Bell got so pissed and threw his bat, threw his helmet, got kicked out of the game, kicked his helmet, and later got dragged off the field kicking and screaming :) Well, everything happened but the last part. It's good to see emotion though. It gets people on the team fired up. It would be better harnessed in a way that doesn't get you kicked out of the game though. Our pitchers are awful for the most part. Adams walked the bases loaded then got pulled. Way to do your job, dude. It's the sentiment going around town. Registration required. |
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| Have you ever noticed when reading reviews or generally opinions by other people, even when people talk, they always say something is "One of the Best" 'whatevers' out there. Why can't they just say "It's the best one ever." I'm guessing people don't want to be held responsible for saying that, for instance, a restaurant is "one of the most exciting new restaurants of the year" (from Philly.com), they don't want people to come back and say "That restaurant sucked, that guy from Philly.com is full of s@#%@". I see it a lot on game sites, like GameSpot. I'm almost positive it's used to protect their reputations as a reviewer. If they say "it's the best game" then someone who plays it and finds Game X better will not trust what that reviewer says anymore. However, I'm not in the business of keeping readers, so I'll be very extreme in my opinions. If I think something rules, you'll know it. If I think it's the best, I'll say it. The opposite is true. On that note, this post rules, but it's not my best. |
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I check my email about 3 times a day consciously. "Unconsciously" (from Tin Cup), I check it about 100 times a day. It's one of those things where you have no control over anything your hands, eyes, and brain are doing, they just check your email. They scheme against me. They get together every 10 minutes or so and say "Hey, he's not doing anything, let's check email." That's the hands talking, they're clearly the leader of the pack. After about 2 hours of this, I'll obviously have no recollection of these acts, and I'll wonder if I have any email, so I check.
I'm kind of forgetful about things like that. When I leave my car in the morning, I HAVE to lock it with the remote at least 5 times so I'll remember that I did it, so I don't have to worry about it that day. It really has to do with the fact that I don't pay attention to what I'm doing. When I leave in the morning, I check to see that I have the 4 or 5 things that I need in my pocket.. these I check 4 times. Keys, check.. Security Card.. check.. Wallet with SEPTA pass.. check. Smokes and Lighter... check.. Phone.. check. It's a time consuming routine with the number of times I go through it. After that, when I get out of my car, I check again, but this time I make sure I have some more items, namely my iPod and headphones to listen to on the El. There's another minute wasted.
Making coffee in my combination grinder/brewer is a similar embarassment. Beans, check, filter, check, water, check, coffee holder thing, check, GO!!! Recently, I've had to add some things to the list since I forgot to put the lid on the coffee holder thing, and water and grounds just poured all over the countertop. One time I forgot the filter... Luckily, before any water came out, I emptied the grinds into a filter. Close one.
I really should start paying attention more. |
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This sucks. I went to deposit a check today, after hours at the branch, and I can't because I realized you need a MAC (ATM) card to do it. And I won't have one until later this week. So, I probably have to go to the one in Center City tomorrow at lunch. That should be fun. I need it in there because I have bills to pay, but every bank has these awful hours, like 9-4. I need to be in Center City by 9, and I can't leave before 5. No way I'm making it to a bank before or after a work day. Saturdays they are open from 9-12 but this past Saturday was rough, and it can't wait until this Saturday.
This fraud person really screwed me this week. The closest bank to my building is half a mile, perhaps I could take the bus because walking is just plain out of the question :) I hardly have the "walk on the sidewalk" part down in the city, crossing the streets is a whole other matter that I'm not ready to partake in. |
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Today, I log into my bank account to see if I have any money, and there's this charge on there that I didn't make. So I call my bank and they say contact the company on the statement, which turns out to be this internet payment services company. So I call them, not knowing what to expect, and I get this nice girl. We eventually figure out that it was in fact a fraudulent charge, and she cancels the order and says I'll be refunded, and I should just call the bank again and get a new number. So I do that. I call the bank again, tell them it was a fraudulent charge, they shut down the card and are shipping a new card to me this week. All that took less than 25 minutes, and I won't lose any money.
My problem is though, that now I'm all flustered, I didn't think that would happen to me, so I'm typing this all shaky and stuff. Also, what about the person who made the charge... they have records, an address, phone number, and everything. Will that person go to jail? How did they get it? This still sucks. But, I won't get any more charges on that card. I pretty much only order from places with a trustworthy name, encryption, and all the other good secure stuff. My card is completely shut down, I'm going to have to borrow money from someone to get me through the week until this card comes. Those A-HOLES. Plus, they have to be dumber than a box of nails. Like, with the internet, and online banking, anyone can find out anything that goes on with their account in about .00001 seconds. Sucker. Judging from the site, it's a software sales place. I'm sure the company will pursue the fraud because they now have software that they didn't pay for. $81 worth of it.
But, I have to thank the companies involved for being quick to act, being open on a Saturday, and getting things done. Hopefully those A-HOLES will get a job and pay their own money for stuff in the future. Alright, I'm not as shaky as I was when I started typing this. Just, be careful with how you use your credit card. There are cheap, desperate people out there. I like to call them criminals. |
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| However, they played a hell of a series against Detroit. Allen Iverson is the best player ever, I'm convinced. He limped badly off the court last night, and in 30 seconds, after having his ankle taped up pretty well, was back on the court playing the same as he would without a twisted ankle. If he doesn't get inducted into the hall of fame the millisecond he announces retirement (whenever that is), it's a crime. No one plays like him. You can't be 6'1" and excel in the NBA unless you do play like him. That's why he's fun to watch. I'm looking forward to next year. |
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I've decided to show 3 months on the calendar for my own personal reasons. I know there will never be anything new posted to the site in the future lest I unveil what I've been working on in my basement for 10 years, that which has previously been called science fiction, but still, the clock on the server still says May 2005. It's so simple to change it. The only thing that I have to fix about this site is that I can't reload it in Tomcat. It'll re-compile JSPs if I upload them, but I need to restart the application, and something in the server.xml file in Tomcat is preventing me from easily doing that (right now I have to go to the Linux shell and restart Tomcat, shutting down every site on this server...)
Next thing I'm working on is a simple content management system so I can easily add pages with stuff on them, and after that the forum, and then finally a poll system. The casba will be rocked. |
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I love Cracker. They make software development possible. Right now it's 2:10 AM and "Shameless" is blaring out of my speakers. Check out their website I have posted in the links section.
I have been on a Cracker kick where I can't get enough of them. I listen to them right when I get up, on the train on the way to and back from work, whenever I go out, and the most time I listen to them is when I'm developing this website! I'll listen to all of the albums I have (all those listed on their "Discography" page except Countrysides) and when it gets to the end, I'll restart it. I'm pretty much addicted big time. You might even say that this whole site was developed while listening to Cracker. If so, I owe them big time. I can't list my favorite songs. Go to the discography page and find a song, chances are it's one of my favorites :)
Nice, as I'm typing this sentence "What You're Missing" came on. It's a rap song :) |
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| Woohoo! I have a calendar now. The site is nowhere near done. Keep checking back for updates. I'm going to add a forum and some kind of cheap content management system. Those two are going to be added just because I'm using this same site for different sites. I just change the images and stylesheets, remove systems or leave them the same, and voila, you won't recognize it as being the same exact software but it will be :) |
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| December 2008 |
|---|
| Sun | Mon | Tues | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | | | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | | | |
| November 2008 |
|---|
| Sun | Mon | Tues | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | | | | | | | | 1 | | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | | 30 | | | | | | |
 |
