My family and I had planned to go to Japan this August, but the plans were changed when my father-in-law was diagnosed with cancer. When my wife found out from her sister, she learned that the doctor’s felt that it might be in advanced stages. So she decided to go to Japan a few weeks earlier. Unfortunately, I could not just leave due to the responsibilities and tasks I had to care for at work… so she left with the kids and I was left alone. But her Dad really needed her as the family business is demanding all of her mother’s and brother’s time and her sister works full-time and also does not live nearby.
Author Archives: james
Site Update
The code behind the site has been updated. If you notice anything looking out of whack let me know. The update involved mostly scripting updates and a change to the database schema, but there were also some tweaks to layouts and entries. Just send a comment to any message to let me know if something is wrong. All comments are reviewed before posting (because I don’t get that many posters… and I will never let the poker spam get posted) so don’t worry about it being seen by the world. You can click on the “more” link to get some of the boring details… otherwise, thanks for visiting.
~jim
HCI 430: Prototyping & Implementation
I just finished HCI 430 Prototyping and Implementation. This class involved designing interfaces for windows applications and writing the code to make them work. I was a little nervous about taking this class because although I can write code, most of it is procedural scripting; PHP, VBscript, JavaScript and all of that is focused on web applications. Despite that, I wasn’t sure how I would handle this… it turned out to be trivial. I have never written a formal windows application in any great detail (I’ve done “hello world” and temp converter tutorials, but that’s it), yet this turned out to be only slightly more complicated than developing web applications. Especially when using the Visual Studio IDE.
Why Mac on Intel is Good
We’ll I’ve been busy commenting on message boards everywhere that the move by Apple to use Intel is a good thing. And since I have my own part of the web, I figured I should comment here as well since some may know that I am a Mac fan/user. But I am one, who even when it was thought to still be a rumor, was arguing for the move to be made and why it makes sense for Apple to do it.
In Search of a Better Editor
I have used Windows for my work system (it is required) for over 8 years now. I have migrated through a number of code editors as my abilities and needs have changed over time. I have used WebEdit, HomeSite/ColdFusion, and now UltraEdit. On the Mac it has been BBEdit all the way. Yet, especially in the last year or so, I have been looking for something on the Mac that would work more like UltraEdit on windows. Specifically, something that would allow opening more than 1 file via FTP at a time. And didn’t require pallettes to access common code snippets (I like keyboard shortcuts). Simply, the macro features of BBEdit just don’t cut it for me. I should mention the version of BBEdit I have is v6.0… and it is a great editor. So perhaps if I weren’t too cheap to upgrade, I may find some of these features added in the most current version.
New Mac
Ah, being a Mac user today was a sweet day… Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, announced a New Mac in a Keynote presentation at Macworld Expo in San Fran. This was a totally new creation for Apple, as it is a low end system that people have been begging for several years now. Previously, the low end consisted of the eMac, a system with a built in CRT monitor. The eMac was meant for the education market—hence the “e” in the name, but as Apple’s next lowest costing system was $999 for an iBook (and if you didn’t want a laptop, it was the $1299 iMac), they made the eMac available to the general public.
Why, Oh Why, IE
[Edit: Life is getting much better these days with IE 9 beginning to support standards and be consistent as Firefox and Safari (and now Chrome and there is always someone on Opera)]
Usually, I start out creating my designs for this site by testing them in Safari (yes, I am a Mac user… so consider this my first contribution to the holy war of mac vs pc). I also test Mozilla on the Mac/Windows and feel that if it looks good in those two I am generally on track. Eventually, I get around to checking in IE on Windows and then IE on the Mac (although, I don’t know why anyone would still use IE on a Mac). Here, I typically find some fatal flaw that IE just craps on. If it were not for the fact that Windows forces users to use IE (software update with Moz, I don’t think so), most everybody would have chucked it a long time ago. Now, only due to the security lapses in IE, has Firefox (Mozilla’s light and fast version) begun to claim some users back from IE… but you still have to use IE. And most users still do…