With the launch of the iPad yesterday I've read a little bit on it, not a whole lot as it really doesn't interest me that much. However, at my previous employer I did a lot of work on disaster response applications. These applications were designed to run locally out in the field and when an internet connection was available (usually via a tether to their blackberry if signal was available) to then replicate to the company servers. While in the field the techs used a tablet PC running Windows with Lotus Notes to enter their data. We tried using a laptop but it just didn't meet the requirements as they were difficult to tote around and use without dropping. The tablets fit the bill perfectly.

Enter the iPad. From my understanding, which may be wrong, this is just an overgrown iPod Touch running the same OS as the iPod touch, in other words, locked down tight by Apple. I guess it could still fit the bill with a custom app but I assume (and it's a pretty big assumption) you would need to be connected to the internet in some form or fashion in order to use this application as I'm not sure if these apps are able to run locally and then replicate their data. This provides a road block to using this thing, at least from a disaster response point of view, for any business type roles. Also, how many IT shops are willing to leave their security up to Apple, as I assume there won't be much you can do about customizing it's functionality/security settings. So for business I would say the iPad just won't fit the bill, and from my experience a business use of some type is the only thing a tablet is good for.

Now, for home use.... I can see a fairly good argument for purchasing an iPad. It's bigger than an iPod and smaller than a laptop and the iPod apps are mostly geared for an individual, but you still have to go through the iTunes store to install them. Also the price is good which is another plus for personal use but I still just see it as a toy more or less. Also, being bigger it'll probably be easier to see the text on the thing, especially easier to see and read than the iPod.

Me personally, I really don't see a purpose for me purchasing an iPad as it just doesn't seem to fill a void that my other gadgets of some sort don't fill. Maybe I'm missing something but that's the way I see it...

OK I'm currently sitting in the Orlando International airport waiting on my flight back home. But while riding the bus to the airport I was thinking about Disney. They really got it together on several fronts.

• Moving people from point A to point B. Once you're in the Disney system, they'll get you where you need/want to go in a fairly reasonable amount of time and with good service too
• Making Money. While watching the video on the bus Disney now has a Cruise Line, Adventure Vacations, Disney Land, Disney World, Disney Japan, etc, etc, etc. They do a very good job of marketing their vacations and services
• Feeding lots of people. While at LotusPhere at the Dolphin Pacific Hall, they would feed some 7,000 people in less than 2 hours. That's a rather large feat no matter who you are.
• Building a resort. I don't know how true it is, but I heard that Disney World was 47 square miles. Several resorts, heck we stopped at 4 on the way to the air port, and however many theme parks. All this draws an enormous amount of people, services and businesses to the area. Plus it's simply amazing.
• Entertaining people. No matter your age you can find something to entertain you while at Disney World.

These were just a few of the observations I made while at LotusPhere this year and also that people are crazy (pick one hair color folks and stick with it). So, with the laptop battery starting to complain I guess I'm done. Hope everyone had fun at LotusPhere and have gotten ammo for selling Lotus Notes within your organization and to your bosses who may/may not be looking at some other product.

I came across Last.fm last week or so. It allows you to play music for free. There are apps for iPhone and Android so you can listen via those devices also. But you define your favorite artists across different genres and Last.fm will provide recommendations of music you might like. For example, if you make one of your preferred artists say Trace Adkins, there is a link called "Listen to Trace Adkins Radio" and that will play music from Trace Adkins and also other artists like Trace Adkins. It's very cool and allows you to find music you otherwise wasn't aware of. As tracks are played you have the option of purchasing the track, tagging it, sharing it or send a ringtone to your cell phone. As you listen to different tracks they are added to your Library which you can then listen to.

There are way too many features of Last.fm to describe here plus I don't know what a lot of the features are for, but the whole premise is that as you listen to music, comment, tag, mark and search tracks everything is kept track of and the options seem to grow over time and use. The best part about all of this is the price, it's free! So, if you like to listen to music and don't feel like using iTunes or some other tool running locally on your PC or you're just tired of your music collection then Last.fm is probably for you.

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

- George Bernard Shaw

This year has been something else, both technically and personally and has been quite a ride. So without further ado and not in any particular order...

• The recession really hit home, with the new year both my wife and I labelled 2008 as the year from hell and that continued through 2009. We will get somewhat of a break come Feburary 2010
• Got my first real smart phone, the T-Mobile My Touch. This is the greatest gadget I've ever owned and it gets used a lot (Thanks Baby!), not only as a phone but also an internet device, portal to all things Google, data modem in a pinch, game platform (makes waiting in a waiting room almost bearable), shopping assistant and resturant finder
• Started using Lotus Connections Activities to keep track of my professional to-do items. This is a great product
• We became a Mac family with the purchase of 2 27" iMac computers and we wish this had happened sooner
• My family went and saw Sugarland (the country music group) and it was my daughters' first trip to the Fabulous Fox Theater in Atlanta. If you live in GA you really should visit the Fox. It's a very historical theater and a wonderful place to see broadway type shows, concerts and anything else that requires a stage
• My family went and saw the King Tut exhibit, which was amazing!
• I developed and continue to tweak the Google Charts class, what a handy-dandy tool that is, and the price is right
• I delved into the inner workings of BlogSphere which gave me all kinds of content for the blog and I think I ended up with a very good layout for keithstric.com in the end. I also supplied my changes to Declan for inclusion in the next version, hopefully and made the theme used for keithstric.com available for download
• The team I work with "finished" up development on the project from hell, however some develoment is still ongoing and probably always will be
• I started working on an Open Source project that will get finished at some point in time that is driven by XPages. This was/is quite the learning experience
• I worked on a PHP project for one of my other customers which may turn into a money making opportunity with a package for Zen Cart (an online store Open Source platform). I just have to get off my butt and document and then publish it
• While politics at my flying club have started to wind down, drama still manages to push it's way into our club meetings and club operations
• My Grand father gave us quite a scare and showed us just how tough he still is. At 93 he's still out farming and working. Hope I'm able to do half of what he does if I reach his age (there is a side story if you care to "Continue Reading...")
• This is the first year that our daughters will not be home on Christmas morning. One will be at her dad's and the other is in Michigan
• I labelled this year as the year of Family surgery with my Grand father, Mother and Dad having surgery this past year
• My daughters were involved in their first car accident which scared me to death. They were un-injured and handled it better than I did, even though the other motorist was a jerk
• I made my first custom computer background that was good enough to publish, and it gets quite a bit of traffic both here and at deviantart.com

Well that wraps up my year in review, everyone have a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

Continue Reading...

In an LA Times article Google states

We are excited that much of the technology in Gears, including offline support and geolocation APIs, are being incorporated into the HTML5 spec as an open standard supported across browsers, and see that as the logical next step for developers looking to include these features in their websites

We're continuing to support Gears so that nothing breaks for sites that use it. But we expect developers to use HTML5 for these features moving forward as it's a standards-based approach that will be available across all browsers.

I know that they say they will continue to support Gears so that it doesn't break applications, but for how long? I don't personally use Gears nor have I written any applications using Gears but I do know some of the Lotus Bubble bloggers have.

Yesterday Bruce Elgort posted a video about what to do if your idea is rejected by your boss. I thought this was an excellent video as I am guilty of some of the things mentioned in this video. So, go check it out, it's a good watch, is informative and isn't very long.

My current positition is with a company that has a government contract that is based on time and materials. This is my first job of this type as all my other jobs were that I was paid on a salary and didn't really have to account for my time. Since what the company is paid is based on how much time I work on each task this is monitored very closely and everything must have an estimate and once the estimate is approved you can't go over that estimate without a very good reason, and rest assured you are going to get grief for going over.

From my experience so far I don't think this type of contract really serves the customer's best interest. While yes, some things come out cheaper for the customer and yes the contracting company probably makes more money this way I don't think it's the best way to run a development shop. I say this because as I work on things most of the time I'm very pressed for time to meet the estimate. Things get thrown together to make it work, even if it's not done properly because there isn't enough time to do it properly. I don't like working this way, this actually comes out more expensive for the customer in the end. I say this because things are missed and more time has to be allocated to fix what wasn't done properly the first time around because it was rushed. Now, don't preach to me that that's the cost of doing business, I understand this, nothing is free and it shouldn't be free. But, why make it where things aren't done properly because of time?

Maybe I'm being shallow or maybe not seeing the entire picture, I don't know. I do know I don't like being rushed and I don't like leaving things I see that are wrong because I don't have time to fix them, that's just the way I am. I think it reflects on me that I end up leaving something I know wasn't right/could be better/just plain broken until the next ticket is submitted, even if what was broken has probably been that way for a very long time. The problem usually comes out during testing and the customer tries to say it was working before in order to get it lumped into the existing ticket and of course we then have to show it wasn't working before (more time/more grief).

I know I'm rambling but this is just something that has really been bothering me and I'm sure it will continue to bother me. I don't like turning out sub-par applications that leave me feeling that I didn't do my best. You can only accomplish so much in 4 hours.

Rant On...

This kinda ticks me off. I just got spammed from a vendor of VOIP products. I won't state the name and provide them advertising, but why would I stop by their LotusPhere booth if they are already sending me spam? I get enough email after LotusPhere (when I get to attend) from vendors I authorized to send me email by allowing them to scan my badge.

I know a lot of other folks also got this email as the "To" list was very long indeed. But I am curious as to how they got my email address as I've never visited their site or been interested in VOIP products, not really anyways. And if they did scan my badge at a past LotusPhere isn't it kind-of late to be emailing me now?

Rant Off...

This article over on Business Week states what I've been preaching to small companies for quite a while now.

JasperSoft is thriving as other vendors struggle because it provides software at a lower price than competitors. In fact, JasperSoft supplies the basic software for free, making money by selling support services or additional features. Its annual fees can be as much as 85% to 90% lower than its competitors. "We're seeing more interest from companies looking to replace an older software product they can no longer afford," says Chief Executive Officer Gentile.

Open Source software has a lower TCO than proprietary systems. Of course, if you have a medium sized company or plan on using all the features of an Open Source platform, I highly recommend you purchase the support to help solve problems when they arise and to support the Open Source company to ensure future support of a product you're starting to become dependent upon.

These Open Source companies are able to provide free software because they can keep their staff low and there is a wealth of developers improving their software for free, these new features and fixes can then be incorporated into new versions. The staff can then be dedicated to helping the paying customers who call in for support of their software.

JasperSoft can afford to sell its reporting and analytics software for considerably less because it relies on what's known as an open-source model of development, wherein the source code—essentially the blueprint of a software program—is openly shared. The company's product benefits from the input of some 90,000 developers worldwide who volunteer their time writing code to enhance the program, though few work for the 80-person company.

With these economic downfalls and with more companies looking to Open Source software to help shore up their budgets could this be the beginning of more software products moving to an Open Source paradigm? If so, the people questioning whether there is room for growth in the Open Source market, do they question because they really don't see the potential or because they have an alternative agenda? I think you know what I think.

I believe that Open Source is the way of the future and that everyone that don't embrace it in some form or another will be left behind. It's already been proven that the Open Source paradigm can be profitable (i.e. Red Hat, Apache, MySQL, Google, etc.) as long as the old ways of thinking a software company should be run are left behind. But no matter what I think the future of Software will be in the future it'll at least be very interesting to watch and be a part of in the years to come.

I've recently become addicted to Boston Legal. I really like that show, I don't think anything on TV has ever made me laugh so hard. But here's a clip that was on last week (I think) that I thought hilarious.

On another note, I've been very busy of late. I've redesigned our flying club's website. It was in dire need of a face lift and to be brought current with features like internet voting, online dues payment and that sort of thing. That has taken me a lot of time to get it all working and rolled out so that the club members would find the site useful. But the site is running on Joomla! 1.5 and I must say that Joomla! is a great opensource product. Out of all the PHP CMS type sites I've messed with this one is much more elegant, easy to use and more robust than all of the others put together.

I've also been working on the website for Mike's RC Hobbies which is running on Zen Cart, which seems to be a great opensource shopping cart and supports many payment type options, templates and configurations.

That's about it really. I haven't been doing much new development for Lotus Notes apps so I haven't really had any new epiphanies of late, which is kind-of a bummer as I really enjoy coming up with new ideas and trying to incorporate them in my applications.

So, until next time.....

I came across a website today while browsing one of the RC Helicopter forums which I thought was pretty cool. It's called Photosynth by Microsoft. You take a BUNCH of pictures of an object, room, area, whatever from all angles and then feed it to the Photosynth software and it creates like a 3D walkthrough of whatever it is you took pictures of. It's pretty cool. I didn't try to create my own or anything so I don't know the details of creating a "Synth", but I did look at a few that other people had done. I think something like this would be great for selling a home, car, boat or whatever.

I think it's a cool idea that does have a place in the world. The only bad thing is that you have to install the software to view the synths, it would be better if it were just an activex control or something.

Well, I only have a couple of days left at my current position until I move to another government contract with the EPA. I'm excited about the new opportunity and dread leaving my current position at the same time. I've spent the better part of 2 years constantly writing code, even in down time I would try new things and come up with ideas for my next project. Now with only 2 days left I find myself in a position where I'm not writing code because I leave in 2 days and I'm bored just waiting in between doing a turnover of everything that I'm currently supporting.

I'm leaving because of instability in my current government contract. They laid off most of our team and those of us that remained were told "No New Development". So, it's time to move on. But I do hate to leave as the stuff I've been developing has been good applications that were perfect fits for Lotus Notes. I've had leeway to put in features the customer wanted and some extra value features that I wanted to learn about, which is always something nice to be able to do. I'm hoping my next opportunity will be something similar. Also, remember a while back I posted about being a lone developer, with no one to bounce my code and ideas off of. Well, at the new location I will be part of a team of developers of whom I'll finally have someone to confer with on various aspects of Lotus Notes development.

But it's been so hectic here lately trying to finish up everything I'm currently working on and turn over the other stuff that I've not had time to do anything, especially blog. Hopefully I'll have more time when everything settles down and I'll be able to resume normal posting and adding technical articles again.

I was speaking with one of my co-workers Friday that has kept me thinking this weekend. Ever since I've got started with Lotus Notes/Domino development/administration I've worked for very large companies (i.e. Coca-Cola, U.S. Govt, Sprint, Etc..) and somehow I've always been a lone developer/administrator with no one to run my work by, no mentor. Now while the things I do seem to get the job done and I like to think that the job is done elegantly, but I really have no way of knowing.

But this conversation got me wondering how many other developers/administrators are in this position?

I came in this morning to some weirdness with FeedDemon 2.6. It seems to be showing 7 pages of feeds from "N/A" with "N/A" in the body. Kinda weird. I'm wondering if leaving it up all the time causes it to freak out a little bit. Don't get me wrong here, I've been extremly happy with FeedDemon with the exception that you can't use a browser other than IE with it, that's really my only complaint. I think it's a great reader, not to mention that now it's FREE, so you certainly can't beat the price

Heard about this today on the Mark Levin show. (Text from Navy Times)

SAN DIEGO — A California-based SEAL who threw his body on a grenade to save his comrades in Iraq will posthumously receive the Medal of Honor, a Defense Department official has confirmed. Master-at-Arms 2nd Class (SEAL) Michael A. Monsoor, of Garden Grove, Calif., was holed up on the roof of a Ramadi house with three other SEALs on Sept. 29, 2006, when an insurgent grenade landed nearby. Monsoor, a 25-year old with SEAL Team 3, grabbed the grenade and clutched it to his chest. The blast killed him, but his actions, officials said at the time, saved the men on the rooftop. Monsoor will be the second member of the Navy to receive the Medal of Honor since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began, and the first sailor to receive it for combat in Iraq.

Monsoor, a platoon machine gunner, had received the Silver Star, the third-highest award for combat valor, for his actions pulling a wounded SEAL to safety during a May 9, 2006, firefight in Ramadi.

There have been 3 other Medals of Honor awarded posthumously during the combined missions in both Iraq and Afganistan. To all these brave soldiers and their families I give Thanks and you will be in my prayers. If you see one of our soldiers on the street, in a resturant or elsewhere, please tell them thank you. If you can, cover their meal for them. While it may not mean that much to us to tell them thank you, it means a lot to them.

Instant manufacturing or manufacturing as a service is on the rise. I read this article over on wired.com. It's a pretty cool concept. You submit your blue prints/designs to an instant manufacturing facility and when someone orders your design they manufacturer it and ship it. You then give them the cost of manufacturing it and you're left with pure profit. That's pretty cool, no inventory to manage along with the costs of keeping an inventory and no manufacturing facility and the associated costs of that.

Welcome to the age of the instapreneur. With nothing more than a design, amateurs can manufacture jewelry, robots, T-shirts, furniture — anything. No warehouses. No minimum orders. And no money down.

Now that's pretty cool

I apologize for the lack of blogging here lately. I've been extremely busy and it don't seem to be letting up anytime soon. So hopefully we will return to our regularly scheduled blog here shortly. Please bear with me.

Looks like Lotus911 has a hit on their hands with the Bleed Yellow website which went live yesterday. I know I'm late on catching this and you've already read about it on other blogs. But poking around a little bit within the site it's very cool. You can search profiles for tags, blog, browse and share dogears (links), create and join communities and participate in activities. Very cool indeed and it appears to be built on Lotus Connections.

I was looking at Idea Jam this afternoon and came across this idea posted by Adibabu Kancharla. While I didn't promote the idea I did find a humorous comment, here's a quote from it:

And then AmigaOS 4.0 is just around the corner and will show once again to the whole IT industry how things should be done, for the next 20 years again.

Now I did a little (read very little) bit of research about AmigaOS 4.0 and found these screenshots of AmigaOS 4.0. Looking at these shots, it looks like early Linux, I say early from about 5 or 6 years ago. Then, yes this look was very new and fresh, but not so much so now.

As for the idea itself, there are several websites which show different techniques for accomplishing rounded corners which have served me well this past year in quite a few applications. Rounded corners give your application a clean modern look in my opinion. Now that's not to say that everyone shares that opinion:

Rounded courners are obsolete, it was just a fashion trend. If you see anywhere rounded corners you can say "omg this site is so 1980!" :)

But the gist of the comments in the above linked idea is that it's not a good idea, that this sort of functionality should not be included in the client but instead for the client to have more CSS support, with which I agree. CSS support in the client would make it so much easier for our notes applications to match the corporate colors, logos and styles present within any organization. I can't speak much for web development as I don't get to do very much of that in my current position, but what little web development I do, I make extensive use of CSS.

Maybe I'm just rambling, but I found the discussion intriguing none the less

Here's another idea jam idea....

Idea Jam is getting better and better every time I look at it. Today I noticed they've added a "Blog or Embed this idea" script. I've included an example in this post. Idea Jam was released on the 20th of this month (sorry for being late). I found this post over on Chris Linfoot 's site which I assume is a press release but I couldn't find it anywhere else. But a quote from that post I found interesting

The development team used the ideas entered by beta testers to improve Idea Jam’s features and functionality. We used the system to build the system,” says Bruce Elgort, President of Elguji Software.

That is just too cool, like a vault I saw built in a federal bank, it was built from the TOP DOWN, not the other way around.

I've recently started messing around with idea jam. My initial feeling of this site is that it's a great idea. The look and feel of the site is excellent and quite intuitive. Looking at the Completed ideas shows that the experiment works and is useful for communicating the legitimacy of ideas with a set group of people.

While browsing the different ideas I followed a link to another site called jyte. This seems to be a very similar idea with the exception that it is not targeted to a set group of people but to everyone. This results in ideas or "claims" that are based on peoples racism and bigotry (example, first claim I saw was titled "I hate gay people" ). If you ask me, this sort of thing just diminishes the overall validity of the site and it's purpose. But, the user interface is similar in the regards of the visual cues and the flow of an idea/claim.

After looking at idea jam and jyte together I feel that idea jam is a solution, not a novelty, to the issues that developers normally encounter with their applications, which is finding out what people really want in the application and then a vote on if that idea is legitimate or not. I think this sort of functionality would be of great benefit in the corporate realm to determine what users would like to see in a new or existing application and then keeping track of those requests that bubble up as a result of positive votes.

So, I think Bruce and team certainly have another hit on their hands and have done an excellent job with idea jam and it should be of great benefit to the Lotus community. Thanks Bruce.

Keith

Powered by ScribeFire.

Yesterday I got my Cable modem and self install kit from Comcast. I just got it installed and I must say it's MUCH faster than DSL. I was able to connect to Prominic with the Lotus Notes Administrator client and things moved along at a steady clip. Now we'll just have to see how dependable it is over the long run. Our cable hardly ever goes out, so I think it'll be OK. I just wish I had done it a long time ago...

Keith

We visited Biloxi, Mississippi this weekend for a gambling trip which, needless to say, we lost . But, we drove down the coast to see if Treasure Bay was open or if they were re-building. The entire treasure ship was gone (saw it on the news sitting in the middle of U.S. 90), the hotel was a chambles but they did have the 1st floor open for slot machine gaming and they were rebuilding.

The devastation down the coastline from hurricane Katrina was very sobering. All of the old houses down that strip were just gone and the land was for sale. The one home that was noticably missing was the Thomas Jefferson house on U.S. 90. Talking to the people that live there, they informed me that after the hurricane the Thomas Jefferson house was demolished and that only 3 walls remained standing. The loss of the house isn't nearly as bad as the loss of everything in the house. This was a Presendential Library for Thomas Jefferson and contained a lot of the inventions, writings and memoribilia that he had personally collected. There were also some buildings that were just abandoned, they had fences around them to keep people out as they were barely standing, furniture hanging out and still had writing on the wall where the building was searched for the deceased after the hurricane.

Seeing the devastation from Katrina on the news is one thing, you're disconnected from the actual picture, but seeing it in person you realise just how bad it was, and this is almost 2 years after Katrina. Driving around there were also still FEMA trailers on the land and from my understanding quite a few FEMA trailer parks. We spoke to some of the dealers at the Casino that still lived in a FEMA trailer and they are finding it difficult to rebuild because they can't afford the home owner's insurance on a new house, the price of home owners insurance in that region has tripled.

There are however signs of life moving on everywhere. There is new construction everywhere, new condos going up, new casinos being built and existing casinos rebuilding, most of which are open. I imagine the casinos are one of the saving graces in that area as they provide people a place to work and to get their lives back together as they employ thousands of people and attract visitors to come and inject money into the local economy.

While the devastation in that region is overwhelming I encourage you if you like to gamble to visit Biloxi, the people are friendly, the casinos offer elegance, gaming and relaxation on a grand scale and not to mention we enjoyed our trip to Biloxi very much and are looking forward to visiting again.

Keith

I just wanted to take a minute to thank Nathan Freeman for a set of articles that he wrote about creating a fluid UI, rounded corners and using gradients. Nathan’s and Chris’s websites and LotusPhere 2007 session also showed me about using layers to display additional information about information in a form or for additional controls, etc. So Thanks Nathan and Chris for all the information you put out about creating better user interfaces. Hopefully I will be able to use some of your techniques to improve the applications I develop. They have certainly made me be more aware of how the applications I develop look and flow. I don’t really have a knack for UI development, but using the techniques pointed out by Chris and Nathan it makes it appear that I do .

Keith

Here’s a quote I read this morning. This is how I imagine Duffbert’s collection.

Books to the ceiling,/ Books to the sky,/ My pile of books is a mile high./ How I love them! How I need them!/ I’ll have a long beard by the time I read them.
- Arnold Lobel

quote

The book Lotus Notes Developer’s Toolbox: Tips for Rapid and Successful Deployment by Mark Elliott arrived on my doorstep today. I was one of the editors for the book and my name shows up in the Acknowledgements, it’s the last name there, but it’s there. I know that’s not a big deal for quite a few in the Lotus Blogosphere, but for me, seeing my name in that book was really cool. This is the first book I’ve ever been asked to participate in and I wasn’t so sure to begin with as they asked for some personal information, but after talking with the publisher on the phone and being given proof that they were who they said they were I broke down and gave them the information that they were asking for. I’m glad that I did now.

So, give the book a read. I’m sure you’ll get something out of it.

Keith

I’ve recently had the need for a new tool to make icons. I stumbled across this tool from Axialis. The ease of creating quality icons is absolutely fabulous and for someone with little to no imagination, like myself, it’s a breeze to create very appealing icons for navigation purposes.

The IconWorkshop comes with many different icon shapes and symbols, pretty much everything you’ll need to make an icon. It’s all drag and drop and if there isn’t a symbol that will fit your needs there are free image object packs that you can download to include in your icons. The IconWorkshop will also allow you to turn an image into an icon and then modify it to fit your needs.

If you just need a tool to create icons for a few days or so you can download the trial version which is not restricted in any way. I think that is a nice touch, but if you do want to purchase it the cost is only $39.95. I certainly feel this is a fair price for such a quality product.

So, if you’re in need of an icon creation/editing tool go check out Axialis IconWorkshop.

Keith

icons, Axialis IconWorkshop

Sorry I haven’t posted of late, but it’s been very hectic here. I’ve started a new job with Unisys supporting the GSA which is a government entitiy which takes care of federal buildings. But once things settle down a bit I’ll be back to posting.

Keith

I read this quote today and I thought to myself that this is so true:

To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worthwhile. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter.
- Aleister Crowley

Now while I do think it is important to stay up to date on the happenings of the world, I don’t think the newspaper is a viable alternative to a piece of literature or some other book, even if it’s a book of poetry or whatever.

So, I must ask, what has the newspaper ever taught us other than what the biased author wanted to tell us about something happening in the world today? Are they a great means to distribute the goings on in the world? Of course they are, but, they are not a means of educating a person.

I know, this is kind-of a silly post, but it just made me think

Keith

Aleister Crowley

I hope everyone had a Happy Halloween. I really enjoy seeing all the kids dressed up as pirates, princesses, vampires, vampiresses and every other thing of the imagination, they’re so cute. Now we’re all left with taking down the halloween decorations and getting ready for the Christmas decorations.

At work I’ve been messing around with sending MIME encoded emails. It’s interesting but confusing. I tried setting headers to match basically a plain text message but also include the header for HTML e-mails. It works for the most part but it’s a lot of trial and error. I assume I’ll get it working sooner or later (probably later rather than sooner ). But the problem is 2 headers, Content-Type: multipart/mixed and Content-Type: multipart/alternative. I need to have both but I can’t seem to get it to work. Without multipart/mixed you can’t have an attachment, without multipart/alternative you can’t do HTML e-mail. I need to do both. So I don’t know, I’ll have to do more research and see what I can find. I’m thinking you have to define child headers for each type.

I’ve also been playing with the Principal field. This field will allow you to change the “From” address in a programmatically generated email. It kind-of works but without a person document in the domino directory for who you set the e-mail to be from, it adds a lot of canonical stuff which I can’t figure out where it gets it from to the “From” address and is also sent “On Belhalf” of the agent or script signer. I’m thinking here I have to set some of the “INET” fields in order to get around this, I’m not sure. Heck, I can’t even find where those “INET” fields are defined as to what their names need to be. If anyone knows that would be great info.

Well I guess that’s enough for now. I’ll keep you updated on what I find out about the MIME encoded e-mails. If I get it working I’ll even post some code.

Keith

I’ve written a short review of Black & White 2. If you liked the original Black & White check it out.

Keith

I was reading my weekly blogs and came across a recommendation by Mike Golding to try the IE Developer Toolbar. So, I installed it and had a quick peek. The things I noticed are that it’s much slower than the Firefox equivalent. Also, displaying ID and Class details puts the boxes on top of one another. The toolbar for Firefox does a better job and laying out the little boxes that contain the ID and Class names so that they aren’t on top of one another. Another thing is you have to restart your computer after you install it, don’t care much for that. But one cool aspect of the toolbar is the ruler. When selected it gives you a cross hairs type cursor that you can draw from one point to another and it’ll tell you how many pixels wide your drawing is. This is certainly cool and I’m sure it’ll get much use.

So, since I’m not sure yet how much more or less useful it’ll be than the Firefox equivalent I’m sure it’ll get some use. Maybe even use the 2 products in conjunction with each other as one does things the other doesn’t. I guess only time will tell which one gets the most use.

Keith

The other day while at Best Buy I noticed a game guide for Black and White 2. Now, I don’t play that many games, I like mostly the RTS type games such as Sim City 4, Command & Conquer: The Generals, The Battle for Middle Earth and of course the original Black and White. If i’m in the mood to play a game, I usually end up playing one of these. The kids like Black and White also because of the creatures.

But anyhow, I went and checked out the website for Black and White 2 and looking at the screenshots for Black and White 2 and the video reviews on IGN.com I must say that this looks really good. I totally enjoyed the original game and I think we’re gonna have to go and purchase the second installment. I just hope I have enough machine to run the thing as my current windows box is getting quite old.

The original Black and White worked against you some if you played as an evil God. According to the reviews and text I’ve read about it, not so anymore. Also the line between good and evil is a little less defined. With Black and White 2 your disposition is determined by how you use your armies. You can be a warmonger which moves you to the side of evil or build glorious cities to attract more followers, which aligns you more to good. Also, the creatures look wonderful on the screenshots. Your creature should be able to interact with things a lot better now and also you affect how big they grow. If you let your creature constantly eat, he will get fat and slow, if you make him work out, he’ll loose wait and get bigger and stronger. Really cool.

Black and White 2 should hit store shelves today according to this news article on the Lionhead Studios website. So I think a trip to Best Buy may be in order this weekend .

Keith

Apple has Widgets but Windows has Konfabulator. This is a free software package that has many “widgets” to put on your desktop. It comes with some already installed.

I really like “The Weather” widget. It has some good eye candy to represent the current weather conditions in your area or wherever you configure it for. I also use a widget called Google, this puts a Google search bar on your desktop and when you enter your search terms and hit enter it opens a new web page to Google with your search results. Kinda cool.

You can also download other widgets which do various things, some useful, some with no apparent use at all. There are about 1500 to 2000 different widgets you can download. So if you’ve got some time to waste, go check it out.

Keith

I was looking on Technorati’s website for sites that have linked to me, just wasting time really and came across this post on this site. I followed the links there and came across a guy who does 3D sidewalk art with chalk. This is really cool. The pictures he draws are meant to be looked at from one angle only, else they’re distorted. His name is Julian Beever and from reading the text with the pictures, he does this mostly in Europe. But check out his site and also here are some more pictures here. I’ve included one of the pictures on this site just so you get an idea of what I’m trying to explain. Enjoy…

Keith

I had once started reading the article that Chris Linfoot had discussed, Follow the bouncing malware. Well another piece of that article has been published. You can see the whole saga by visiting this post on Chris’s site.

Keith

Well, after yesterday’s post, I was trying to get the post to format correctly. Specifically the last list item of the LDAP Tab was doing strange things. But in a strange turn of events, IE displayed the page correctly but Firefox did not. Firefox would push the right column off of the page and the spacing is still weird with the last 2 list items of the LDAP Tab. Now this is certainly interesting. In my experience Firefox has always displayed things better than IE. So, I don’t know what has changed but I’m not sure I like it whatever it is. Maybe it’s an I.D.10.T error?

Keith

OK, I’ve changed the theme here again. At one point in time the site had a look similar to this one, but I never could get the rounded corners to work correctly and it just wasn’t very clean looking (here’s the post about it). So, I changed it. The site’s look has changed many times over the years, I can’t seem to find something and stick with it. I’m always looking for something which will look better, cleaner, niftier or just different than what I currently have. I don’t know why I’m this way, I just am. I need to have something to tinker with.

So, hopefully I’ve found something that I’ll like and stick with. I really like the WordPress XOOPS module I’m currently using for blogging and hopefully this will keep me happy for awhile along with the XOOPS CMS system. I don’t like some of the visual elements of XOOPS but for the most part I believe it to be a sound and secure CMS system. I can always change the look of the different modules, especially the reviews module, I really don’t like the interface there and the downloads and Weblinks modules also.

The only problem with changing all this stuff is that sooner or later a new version of something will come out and include a fix to something I really don’t like or offer some “must have” feature. So, when I upgrade to the newer version I of course loose all my customizations. A perfect example is that I’ve modified the layout of the WordPress module posts to better fit my tastes and ideas on how a blog entry should be laid out, now there is a new version out. It really doesn’t address that much, but one certain feature that I like:

8 Added hierarchical structure and post count to categories in sidebar

Now, I’m not going to upgrade just for this one feature, I don’t want to have to go and figure out my customizations again, or try and figure out if just using my originally modified file will break one of the new features. So, I’ll just wait until another release with more features comes out. So, like I said, hopefully this combination of systems will hold my interest a little longer than the others did, if not, guess I’ll end up writing yet another “New Look… Again ” post.

Keith

Yesterday I posted about the gas lines on Wednesday. Well, now the lines are gone but the prices remain. The prices went down some but they’re still anywhere from $2.70 to $4.00 per gallon. Hopefully this won’t last very long. In the mean time however, my employer has authorized us to work from home for 2 days next week. That should help a little bit. I do however feel for the truckers. Seems a big rig holds about 240 gallons of diseil fuel and at $3.00 per gallon that’s almost $800 to fill up.

Hopefully this will all settle down in the coming weeks.

Keith

Well, Georgia is getting a price shock on Gasoline now since hurricane Katrina. The cheapest I’ve seen is $2.87 per gallon, but it seems the norm is between $3.49 per gallon to $3.89 per gallon. At least in my area. I did see on the TV that some places were over $5 per gallon.

Last night there were lines at all the gas stations to get gas. Seems a rumor was circulating that all the pumps were going to close and there would be no gas. We had enough gas for us all to go to work for the rest of the week so we didn’t go add to the panic and confusion at the pumps.

Hopefully things will return to normal before too long and before it’s just too expensive to go anywhere. On the whole as a society I think we need to redefine how we use our natural resources. To the government, rid us of our dependency on oil. There are technologies available to do this. Bring out fuel cells or other alternative means. The technology to do this is already here, lets use it and ensure that it’s affordable for us to convert our vehicles to use the new technology.

For the people on the Gulf Coast our prayers and thoughts are with you. God speed.

Keith

My wife bought the Big and Rich - Horse of a different color cd the other day and I’ve just finished listening to all of it. I must say, this is something different and I like it. They’ve been playing Big and Rich on Country Music Radio and they’ve performed on a couple of awards shows. I really like this band. The music they play is a mixture of country, rock, heavy metal and some rap. It’s unique and certainly all American. If you haven’t given it a listen, go buy it, it’s an awesome cd. It’s got funny songs and comments, serious songs, fun songs and just some awesome music no matter how you classify it.

Keith

I’ve created a new How-To on migrating from a weBLog blog to using the WordPress 1.5.2 blog. Both of these are XOOPS modules and thus the How-To is not geared for just a standalone install of WordPress.

Hope you enjoy the new How-To and find it useful.

Keith

I guess it would help if I posted a link huh?

I received these pictures in an e-mail and thought it was pretty unbelievable. Here are the thumbnails. You can see the full pictures here.

In case you’re wondering what is in the mouth of this fish, it’s a basketball

Keith

Well, my search for a CMS system continues. I wish I could find a blog utility with the features of BlogSphere. It seems to be the total solution, but, it runs on Notes and I just can’t afford the licensing for that.

I’ve come up with a list of criteria which it must provide either natively or via a plug-in:

• Support for static pages
• A way to display links
• A way to display and organize downloads
• Blog categories
• RSS Support
• A way to integrate Gallery or an equivalent Photo Gallery.
• A way to organize reviews, this could also be done via static pages, either way, doesn’t matter.

I was looking at a product call Nucleus. It covers a lot of the bases with the exception of downloads and links. So, I dunno, we’ll have to keep looking.

Keith

Yesterday I came home from work just like any other day. Nothing very exciting to report and I was thinking I would just sit down for a few minutes before starting the evening routine. Boy was I mistaken. The second I walked in the door my Wife is complaining about the air and it being hot in the house. So, I run around the house checking to see if the A/C was froze up or somthing, checked the air filters, etc. Upon inspection I deduce that it was just a hot day and maybe one of the kids left the door open or something, because the air conditioning was working.

So, I had no more than finished the A/C inspection than someone was saying the toilet lid in the down stairs bathroom was broken. So, off to fix that right quick, well one of the little plastic nuts on the bottom of the toilet which holds the seat was busted. Can’t fix that at the moment.

While messing with that I hear my wife scream that there is water everywhere! So, I’m thinking now what?!? I go to look and sure enough there is water all over the floor in front of the kitchen sink. Upon inspection there, the left side drain in the kitchen sink had come apart and all the water my Wife was using to wash stuff was now under the sink and in the floor. So, I clean that up, fix the drain pipe (it’s one of those plastic pipes, not PVC, with a connector) and put everything we had taken out of the cabinet back. All this within about 30 minutes of me walking through the door.

Some days it’s just better to stay at work

Keith

I read an eWeek Article about WordPress adding a bunch of pages to it’s website with popular search terms while making those pages basically invisible to it’s visitors. In the article it says:

Bloggers and search-engine marketers are accusing the open-source WordPress project of spamming the major search engines, while at the same time being one of the advocates in an effort to combat comment spam in blog postings.

Now, I think this is VERY BAD JUDGEMENT on WordPress’s part. I hate to see such a large name in the blogging community besmearched (?sp). But, if this is true, whatever the search engines decide to do about it I have no problem with. I have to constantly stay on top of comments posted here on this website as here lately it’s all been spam. This is a real headache and major pain in the a$%. I also know that other people have experienced the same aggravation on their sites.

When this sort of thing happens it doesn’t help anyone, especially the people who happen to use WordPress. In the article a WordPress user who is helping with a foundation to help support the development of WordPress had the following to say:

He also cautioned against calling the technique “spam,” saying that while he opposes the attempt to game search engines, it is not the same as filling e-mail inboxes or blog comment sections with unwanted messages.

Now I kind-of agree with that statement, but doesn’t it give the impression that these sorts of things (i.e. “Filling e-mail inboxes or blog comment sections with unwanted messages.”) would be condoned by the WordPress community at large since WordPress basically put the same type of comment spam (for lack of a better term) found on other blogs on their own site?

I’m really not sure how reading this article made me feel about this. I can understand using this as a way to generate some revenue, but, does it do so at the chance of making all of it’s users and the blogging community look bad?

Keith

My Wife was complaining that her computer was running slow and that she couldn’t open Internet Explorer without being bombarded by Pop-ups. So, of course the first thing I figured was malware/spyware issues. I had read an article in CPU about Microsoft Windows Antispyware so I decided to give it a try and see how it went.

After installation and answering a couple of questions I ran the scan and it ran pretty fast compared to other spyware scanners. It identified quite a few issues and once done gave me the options to quarantine the items, remove them or do nothing. At this point it also gave me an option to create a restore point, which I did. I picked to remove the issues and it did remove them save one (I don’t remember the name of it).

This package also has a good selection of tools for manipulating your startup programs, see currently running services and programs, restore your IE settings to their initial state and a few others. I think this is a very nice touch. You usually only see this sort of stuff in a “pay for” application. I was able to identify a couple of services which started and disable them from within the antispyware tool.

So, just to check it against a known good spyware scanner I downloaded and installed Ad-Aware SE Personal and ran it’s scanner of which it didn’t find anything. This is good.

Now after the Antispyware scan I noticed that my Wife’s PC also had the Cool Web Search spyware. It used to be that only CWShredder was able to remove this. Well now, apparently, the Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware utility does also, which is really cool.

Now you won’t normally get me saying that many good things about Microsoft products or Microsoft in general. But my initial impression of this utility is that it’s top notch and I really like it, which is another first. OK, well not a first but an uncommon at most. So go check it out, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Keith

My wife sent me this e-mail and I thought it would be good to post:

As you may know, I spent five and one half years as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War. In the early years of our imprisonment, the NVA kept us in solitary confinement or two or three to a cell. In 1971 the NVA moved us from these conditions of isolation into large rooms with as many as 30 to 40 men to a room.

This was, as you can imagine, a wonderful change and was a direct result of the efforts of millions of Americans on behalf of a few hundred POWs 10,000 miles from home.

One of the men who moved into my room was a young man named Mike Christian. Mike came from a small town near Selma, Alabama. He didn’t wear a pair of shoes until he was 13 years old.

At 17, he enlisted in the US Navy. He later earned a commission by going to Officer Training School. Then he became a Naval Flight Officer and was shot down and captured in 1967. Mike had a keen and deep appreciation of the opportunities this country and our military provide for people who want to work and want to succeed.

As part of the change in treatment, the Vietnamese allowed some prisoners to receive packages from home. In some of these packages were handkerchiefs, scarves and other items of clothing.

Mike got himself a bamboo needle. Over a period of a couple of months, he created an American flag and sewed it on the inside of his shirt.

Every afternoon, before we had a bowl of soup, we would hang Mike’s shirt on the wall of the cell and say the Pledge of Allegiance.

I know the Pledge of Allegiance may not seem the most important part of our day now, but I can assure you that in that stark cell it was indeed the most important and meaningful event.

One day the Vietnamese searched our cell, as they did periodically, and discovered Mike’s shirt with the flag sewn inside and removed it.

That evening they returned, opened the door of the cell, and for the benefit of all of us, beat Mike Christian severely for the next couple of hours. Then, they opened the door of the cell and threw him in. We cleaned him up as well as we could..

The cell in which we lived had a concrete slab in the middle on which we slept.. Four naked light bulbs hung in each corner of the room.

As I said, we tried to clean up Mike as well as we could. After the excitement died down, I looked in the corner of the room, and sitting there beneath that dim light bulb with a piece of red cloth, another shirt and his bamboo needle, was my friend, Mike Christian. He was sitting there with his eyes almost shut from the beating he had received, making another American flag. He was not making the flag because it made Mike Christian feel better. He was making that flag because he knew how important it was to us to be able to pledge our allegiance to our flag and country.

So the next time you say the Pledge of Allegiance, you must never forget the sacrifice and courage that thousands of Americans have made to build our nation and promote freedom around the world.

You must remember our duty, our honor, and our country.

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Keith

Update 02/23/2005 - This text is from a speech senator John McCain made on 08/15/1988 before the Republican National Convention.

Well, the team I work with and I are currently in Kansas City, Kansas. Not a whole lot going on in this town. They do have a Casino which I WILL NOT be visiting . We did purchase some excellent steaks to cook in the room which were very good. We have a meeting tomorrow with a team building session. We come back home on Thursday and I look forward to getting back to my Family.

On another note, I am almost done with version 1.2 of the User Administration Utility. It will include some pretty good features, including a dynamic HTML menu from LotusGeek, CA Process support and added support for Password management in the NotesPerson document.

Keith

Last night our oldest got home and it turns out we needed to do some work on his vehicle. It’s a 97 Ford Explorer XLT that eats brakes like there’s no tomorrow and we can’t figure out why. Other than that, it’s been a very good vehicle.

As I was saying, last night we needed to work on the brakes but we didn’t get started until around 8:30 or so. Well, the flood light on that side of the house is out and we didn’t have a replacement bulb. It takes one of those halogen bulbs that’s shaped like a little tube. So, we went to the parts store and I bought a floor light that has 2 500 Watt rotateable/adjustable lights on a tripod that is extendable up and down. Man, this really did the job. It lit up the work area like daytime and even produced quite a bit of heat .

I’ve been looking for an excuse to purchase a light such as this and this was the perfect excuse and I must say they worked really well. We were kinda bumbed as they had to be totally assembled as they weren’t even partially assembled. But that’s ok. Those lights were a lot more productive than trying to use a flashlight.

Keith