KevBurnsJr.com :: Blog

Learning Rails

I'm 5 days into learning Ruby and Ruby on Rails.

High road, baby.

Moar Time

It's a big day for me.

Today, I unsubscribed from CuteOverload's RSS feed in an attempt to focus my attention away from fucking around on the internet.

Mostly in response to defunkt's Ruby Hoedown keynote :

http://rubyhoedown2008.confreaks.com/08-chris-wanstrath-keynote.html

Down with lolcats.
Long live the side projects.

A use case for Usability

What if your website was so usable that even someone who didn't speak the language could navigate it sufficiently to purchase an item?

http://www.davinci-cykler.dk/Cykel+hjelme/YAKKAY/YAKKAY+Orange+Denim/Paris+Army.html

Best Birthday Ever

You know what I think would be really cool?

Having been born on January 1st.

Every year, 90% of the western world would count down the remaining seconds to the day of your birth. Live. On Television.

And Ed McMann would be there

And people would light fireworks

And then everyone would kiss

And drink champagne all night long

In the streets of New York

And the Irish would get wasted

And the Danish would get wasted

And the Mongolians would be getting wasted

And the Aussies would be wrestling crocodiles

Wasted

And then everyone would get the day off

We'd all wake up the next morning and be like

Whoa. Why am I sleeping in the street

And then everyone would go out to brunch

And all the restaurant staff would be hungover

And your eggs benedict would take 2 hours to come

But it wouldn't matter

Cause you'd be oddly content in jabbering around making silly faces in your spoon

And then cotton candy would shoot out of a volcano

And tacos would crap ice cream

If my birthday was on January 1st.

Publicity

Everybody wants to be a superstar.

Yet nobody wants you to know who they are.

If you're going to join a social network and amass an entourage of close friends and distant acquaintances, you'd better be prepared to stand up for what you believe in. Privacy is not really about privacy. It's about integrity. And seldom few in our culture pay respect to those who stand to hold us accountable for our actions.

Facebook recently backed down on their privacy policy which, if you ask me, is a huge loss for the human race at large. They got privacy right from the get-go. Security through obscurity. But now that they've begun opening the flood gates to cash in on what they've created, they're beginning to turn toward the dark side.

Facebook was the shit when Facebook was 2000x better than MySpace. MySpace still sucks, but the gap is beginning to narrow. MySpace never had any magic. Facebook had magic. Now that they're bending to the will of the public, they're losing that magic. Decisions made in the best interest of their bank rolls rather than the health of their userbase.

In this new paradigm of online social networking, Facebook was a shining beacon of hope. Now dulled, as investors gain clout. Slave drivers perverting the human soul in the name of a buck.

Just another agent encouraging each of us to live our lives without integrity.

SEO Headaches

Product wants to sprinkle H1s and H2s all over the page.

<h2 class="hdr">This is a module header</h2>

<h2 clsas="fakeh3">This is a header within a module</h2>

<h3 class="fakeh2">This is a fake module header</h3>

So much for semantics and well-formed data.

Optional

Hidden wisdom from the JQuery Docs :

" All options are optional. "

Down Time

Everyone needs a little down time sometimes. Rest is important, and if you want to learn to perform effectively and continuously, gaining a mastery the art of non-action is a great place to start.

BUT

Sometimes, the situation calls for action. Convention may tell you to it's time to head home and waste a few hours until the clock hits 9am, but if :

you're feeling fired up,
there's a queue to chomp at, and
you've got your priorities pointed at the sky

... then you'd best drop that hesitation like a bad habit and jump back to the grindstone while the iron's hot.

Choosing JQuery

The angels have spoken.
http://blog.rebeccamurphey.com/2007/12/03/choosing-jquery/
http://ajaxian.com/archives/prototype-and-jquery-a-code-comparison

No more debates, we're going with JQuery.

Why I Really go to Peru

I read this today in a book and I think it does a better job of explaining why I go to Peru than I ever could :

" To do good work you need a brain that can go anyhwhere. And you especially need a brain that's in the habit of going where it's not supposed to. Great work tends to grow out of ideas that others have overlooked, and no idea is so overlooked as one that's unthinkable...
Training yourself to think unthinkable thoughts has advantages beyond the thoughts themselves. It's like stretching. When you stretch before running, you put your body into positions much more extreme than any it will assume during the run. If you can think things so outside the box that they'd make people's hair stand on end, you'll have no trouble with the small trips outside the box that people call innovative. "

Open Social

Wow, I go to South America for 2 weeks and the industry changes. OpenSocial? Wtf is that? That didn't exist when I left the country. I leave the country for 12 days, and my job description has been redefined.

Its going to take me that long to figure out what I missed.
( RSS: 1400+ )

New Years 2008

I just bought a ticket to a rave.

http://newyearsevela.com

Shoe

I just bought a $180 pair of shoes over the internet.

http://www.rbkcustom.com/content.html?direct=ltd

1000+

Its official, my RSS feed reader broke the 1k barrier.

Guess its time to hunker down and find out what's been happening in the world of web development while I've been busy having a real life ;)

Nuts

Wow, this week has been nuts!

I started my new job on Tuesday, I just got the keys to my new place in Santa Cruz, attended an IMBA meeting and things have been gaining momentum non-stop. There are two walls in my new place that are just screaming to be transformed. Two huge, 12x8 foot blank canvasses with good built-in lighting.

I have to take a load of stuff to Santa Cruz early tomorrow and go for a ride with the IMBA folks while they're in town so I am out.

Uncertainty

Wow, what am I doing? How am I ever going to pull this off? I've never done this before. I don't know what I'm doing. What are people going to think if I fail? How will I ever get the courage to do this again when it all blows up in my face? Maybe I should just go back to the couch. Maybe I should just do it the easy way. Maybe I should just back down and go back to my normal life.

Take a step back. Take a deep breath.

Pause.

Now... who the fuck gave you the authority to judge yourself? Since when are you in any sort of position to know the world so well as to judge your own actions? Look around and you will see nothing but a thin disguise laid over the chaotic, blooming and buzzing confusion of the universe. You think anyone has it figured out? You think someone has a handle on the situation? Think again!

You are the only person on the planet that can give your own life validity, and I can tell you right now from hard-earned personal experience that it's not something thats going to come easy. That's the greatest part of it all. The challenge. Waking up to the light of the sun with the knowledge that there are forces out there in the big bad world much bigger than yourself that are just screaming to be tamed.

" A man never crosses the same stream twice. For just as the water in the stream continues to flow and is never the same stream from one day to the next, so the man is never the same man. "

That voice you use to question yourself is not your self. That voice is a parasite. You need to shed that beast, and the best way to shake a parasite is to stop feeding it. Quit talking to yourself like you had it figured out. Are you worried about whether you will succeed? Are you regretting a poor decision? Are you considering a move back to the normal comfort of your lay-z-boy and universal remote? Welp, fucking forget about it. You don't know enough to be worried, you don't have the power to change the past, and you will never achieve anything greater than contentment until you quit feeding that content.

You can not begin to fathom what you are capable of, and neither can anybody else. There's only 1 way to find out, and that 1 way does not involve sitting on the couch eating potato chips.

Now... Take a step forward. Exhale. Look around the room.

What can you do right now, in this very moment in order to bring yourself to the heightened level of personal satisfaction in which you once relished?

The present is all that matters. The past is forgotten and the future will take care of itself. The now is all we have.

Your future self is here in the now.

A Tale of Two Packages

One shipped UPS

One shipped FedEx

Both accidentally shipped to a non-existant adress

UPS takes a best guess and leaves my Amazon order on the doorstep of a stranger

FedEx calls my cell phone to confirm the address

Go With Your Gut

Have you ever had one of those times in your life where you were faced with a tough decision? I know I have. This week has been one big, hairy, gigantic tough decision for me. Do you ...

A) Take a phenomenal opportunity to advance your career in precisely the direction you'd always seen it progressing

B) Jump ship to pursue a healthier, happier lifestyle in a new city

Hesitate for a moment and the window of opportunity is lost. Life is riddled with those who would not trust their own selves to make the choice. The options have been weighed. There is no more need for rationalization. Quiet the mind, let the soul shine through and trust your instinct. What do you want, for your self?

Wireframing

I don't know if this counts as rapid prototyping...

http://www.hemmy.net/2007/09/28/wireframe-toyota-corolla/

Yahoo Search Assist = Goldmine

Google Suggest has been around at least since January, but it looks like Yahoo has a new twist with their rollout of Search Assist.

Type " meatloaf", and notice the search terms with (result counts from google suggest) ...

meatloaf recipe (1,390,000)
metal (334,000,000)
meatloaf (3,080,000)
easy meatloaf (1,790,000)
meatloaf recipes (1,390,000)

"meatloaf recipe" ranks much higher than the term "meatloaf" itself, despite having fewer search results and being a less popular search term.

Why is this?

From what I've seen, buying ad space on popular search terms can be really expensive.

Picture this...
If nobody used more than 1 keyword while searching Yahoo, the advertising cost for each of these keywords would be a billion dollars per pageview.

The long tail doesn't want billion dollar pageviews.

By promoting more obscure (and consequently more relevant) search terms, Yahoo can more effectively drive traffic to more obscure search terms. By aiding the user through the suggestion of potentially more relevant (obscure) terms, Yahoo stands to pump its numbers for this goldmine of undervalued search terms. If Yahoo succeeds even a tiny bit in boosting relevancy to the results of a user's query, that will be realized as a boost in click-through percentages.

Boost in click-through percentages = more money.
Traffic to obscure search terms = more money.
Yahoo! Search Assist = goldmine.

The quantification of a quality such as relevance can be tricky.

Which of these two sets of search results has a higher degree of relevance :

in which the largest number of relevant documents is returned
in which the largest percentage of the documents returned is relevant

Peter Morville's book Information Architecture introduces some terminology ...

Precision refers to the relevance of documents within a given result set.

Recall refers to the proportion of relevant documents in the result set compared to all the relevant documents in the system.

and a few equations ...

Precision Ratio = Number of relevant documents retrieved / Total number of documents retrieved

Recall Ratio = Number of relevant documents retrieved / Total number of relevant documents in system

He goes on to say ...

" While both high precision and high recall may be ideal, it's generally understood in the information retrieval field that you usually increase one at the expense of another. "

So if :

a) People choose more elaborate terms which are in alignment with their query

then necessarily

b) Recall Ratio (how many of the many relevant documents did we find) will be lower

but by Peter's principle of the Recall/Precision tradeoff

c) Precision Ratio (how many of the documents returned are relevant) will be higher

So is it always the case that more obscure keywords will be more relevant?

Yes and no.

The key here is user choice.

Many search engine mechanisms attempt to guess what the user is searching for and will apply some sort of Controlled Vocabulary to attempt to retrieve the most relevant set of results.

When the system does the guessing, a search for ...

meatloaf

becomes ...

meatloaf or "meat loaf" or "meatloaf recipe" or "easy meatloaf" or "meatloaf festival"

... by way of any number of mechanisms ( Synonym Ring, Authority File, thesaurus, etc).

But If I'm searching for a "meatloaf hat", then I'm less likely to find what I want given all the extra results in the set.

So allowing the system to choose more obscure search terms in this fashion will actually tip the scales in the other direction, having the opposite effect, increasing recall and decreasing precision.

So, to be more precise,

I believe that the use of a more obscure search term would indeed increase the precision ratio of a result set when the user chooses the search term.

The higher the Precision Ratio, the better targeted the ads, the higher the clickthrough rate.

... or maybe I'm just seeing things...

Jack of all Trades

The term "Jack of all Trades" fits pretty well with what I do. It might seem a bit cliche, but it's a badge I'll sport with pride. What bugs me is the second phrase that usually accompanies this honorable title ...

Jack of all Trades, master of none

... I seriously consider myself an expert in relatively few technologies. HTML, CSS and maybe Photoshop. Masterful as I my skills may be, you can bet that there will always be more to learn in each of these spaces. I also maintain another list of tools that I use on a daily basis... XML, XSL, PHP, MySQL, SVN, Javascript, Flash, Linux, JSP, etc.

Have I mastered IA? No. Can I still apply its principles in a constructive fashion? Yes. Does that make me a master? Probably not. Does that mean that I can't be a master in other spaces? I don't know... but I do know that I've grown a lot in the last year. As my skills continue to progress, I'm sure some of those technologies on my long list of secondary skills will creep over to the Master list.

I might be preaching to the choire here, but the moral is this :

If you really are passionate about what you do for a living, then it ought to be your goals that drive your technology portfolio. Not the market. Focus on the challenge at hand. Do what it takes to make it over the intellectual hump and remind yourself to forget about the naysayers.

The Cupcake Paradox

"Nobody wants to be the only person to show up at a party. Not only does it make you look like a loser, but it undermines the whole point of going to a party in the first place. Nobody gives a damn how good the cupcakes are; if scarcely anybody shows up, your party is a failure. Equally, nobody goes to MySpace or Match for the cupcakes—or, to be more precise, the quality of the user experience. People flock there because that's where everyone else is."

-- Vitamin

Featuritis has scaled in proportion from epidemic to full-fledged plague in this mashable medium we call the internet. The rate of change in the industry at the moment is staggering, and things are only accelerating.

When I began to approach the end of my 2 year California community college education, I began to search for a 4 year institution where I could continue my education and earn a degree. This was my fortune. This was my story. This was how it was done. Work hard in middle school , work harder in high school, work harder in college and land a rewarding job whose execution you are expertly prepared to facilitate.

In my search I found a number of institutions that offered degrees relating to computer science, but none as specialized as what I was already doing in my work at Santa Barbara City College. I had done a lot of soul searching to find my path at SBCC, and I felt it would prove a tremendous leap backward to return to burying my head in code 24/7. So I stayed.

I spent 5 years in that 2 year institution taking classes ranging from figure drawing and animation to Javascript and JAVA Design Patterns. 3D Animation, Portfolio Development, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash, Graphic Design, I ate it up. I got a taste for everything. That kind of exposure is something I never would have had in a UC Davis Computer Science program.

To this day, I have not completed my AA from SBCC. I have 1 class to take. I've probably got over double the required units, and yet its just a single 3 unit class that stands between me and my degree. I've taken the class twice and failed it twice. But more important than that, the class failed me. I expected to gain something from the investment of my time in its pursuit, and both times come up uninspired and empty-handed.

Why fish in a dry lake?

Many of the technologies I work with in my profession didn't exist when I was in college. That's saying a lot, considering that it's only been 2 years since I gave myself my imaginary diploma. I've expanded upon the same basic skillset I employed in my internship with City College, but it's professionalism accompanied by an ambition and willingness to learn that employers are looking for in this budding field.

When you wear as many hats as we web developers do nowadays (html, css, xml, xsl, php, mysql, javascript, photoshop, apache, IA, UID, IxD, etc.), these hats begin to speak less of a mastered skillset, and more of a trophy. The mastery of each is recognition of an aptitude for learning, rather than a badge of skill acquired. Next year, that list may be 6 accronyms longer. But it doesn't matter. As long as it has the hotness.

Pre-Production

Wireframes, tech/functional specs, briefs, user journeys, mood boards, personas, sitemaps, flow charts, etc. ad infinitum.

Tools

I use html for wireframing, as its a markup language that I'm fluent in. Wireframes can be done in nearly any medium. The creation of Wireframes is about communicating the layout and presentation of information. The visual style is low priority and usually low fidelity. You should use whatever tool you are most comfortable with. Photoshop, Illustrator, HTML/CSS, Javascript, MSPaint, Powerpoint, Pencil and paper, Microsoft Visio, Microsoft Word, these all contain the necessary features for creating a potentially useful Wireframe.

Direction

Once you have a basic layout (3 column fluid, 1 column 720px fixed centered, header placement, etc) you can begin filling in the details for what you might expect to see. Start with 1 home page, and 1 interior page. They will, in all likelyhood, have different layouts. Find a place for the primary navigation, secondary navigation, breadcrumbs, actions menu (login, logout, etc) and logo.

Specs

The Wireframes tell you were pieces of link lists, text and media will be placed. Technical specs tell you what each will contain and what they will do. I like to start by drafting a rough site map, then a list of unique page types. From there I might work out a list of features to be implemented with general descriptions of expected functionality for each feature (don't get too specific just yet).

Estimation

After the specs are complete and you have a general idea of what each piece of functionality entails, you can draft an estimated time range for each task. Do use ranges rather than discrete values. Ranges ( ie. 2.0 - 4.0 hrs ) can help communicate the amount of uncertainty involved in the implementation of a given feature. There's a balance to be struck between risk and value in development. RSS syndication for a blog application is probably low risk ( 1.0 - 1.1 hrs ) and high value ( core functionality ), whereas Scriptaculous GeoCache GoogleMaps API Mashup Integration is probably higher risk ( 2.0 - 8.0 hrs ) and lower value ( complimentary functionality ).

Prioritization

Once you have a list of features with estimates, you can weight the risk/value and create a prioritized feature list. This will tell you what to do first, and what to do last. It will also give you a rough timeline ( 30.0 - 36.0 hrs @ 20 hrs/wk = 1.5 - 1.7 wks ).

Pulling the Trigger

From there, you can map this timeline to a calendar to create a working Project Schedule.

May 15 - May 19 : Core Functionality
May 22 - May 26 : Complimentary Functionality
May 29 : Drop-Dead Launch

This last date is the most important, and should be included in any project schedule. How many projects have we seen run through deadlines like mile markers? Punch this date into your forehead. Do not change this date without first updating the project schedule.

Conclusion

These are several tools of a bazillion. If there's one thing I hope you would take away its this: Recognize that all involved are doing their best to make the site happen, and refrain from making promises. Give ranges (and be generous). Promise yourself little and always over-deliver. This will ensure that when you set a date, you aim to keep it. This will help build respect with your clients and direction in your work. If something doesn't feel right, say so. Now. If the project is going to fail, let it fail today rather than 3 weeks from now. People will resist this like the plague. Be real. Be brutal. Be honest. Do what you love, and do it well.

Database Refactoring

I started this project with a simple principle in mind:

Do the simplest thing possible to achieve the desired result.

Many solutions to a given problem may not seem viable at first glance. They may not be as robust, elegant or reusable as you might expect, but so long as one of these solutions works accordingly in the present situation with relatively little additional thought required, you've got yourself a potential stepping stone toward the future.

Time is always a factor. If a less robust solution takes 80% less time than a complete solution might take, you've got a good candidate for compromise.

It's all about pragmatism.

Spending time on the foundation of the application, crawling over the system patching up loose ends, will give you a more thorough understanding of the mechanics behind the madness. This understanding is essential for sustainable growth.

Following this principle of laziness will help ensure that when you finally do have the chance to really shake things up and give it that proper refactoring you've been itching to throw punches into, the pieces will settle nicely back to their rightful places accordingly.

You don't need a plan.

"You don't need a plan, you need a skillset and a problem."

"An amateur cook needs a long winded recipe to prepare a dish and it still will be mediocre at best. The seasoned chef needs just the idea and he will turn it into a masterpiece."

I agree wholeheartedly with this. If you start with fresh ingredients and work to the taste, things are bound to go right. Feel the food and predict it's cravings.

Needs more .... Celery - will do.
More .... Ginger - ought to kick it.
More .... Walnuts - just for fun.

Starting with an intention and working in a constant state of re-evaluation is the only way I've found to foster a sane development environment. When development is done, then you can start making plans for production. Just remember, plans were made to be broken.

Looking Back...

In implementing the archive functions for this blog, I combed through all the old content, and came across the first posting. I was reminded that this blog was begun on the first of the year. I had just begun my first full-time job about 3 months prior, and I was soaking it in.

I was a front-end developer at a large agency. I was wheeling and dealing. I was making and breaking. I was in the hotseat, churning through the groundwork. Punching the keys. Swaying the code.

It's amazing to recall the energy that I brought to my work. How passionate I was about every detail. I purchased books on subjects ranging from PHP5 Design Patterns to Information Architecture to Project Mangement to Interaction Design to Agile Development and even Personal Leadership.

I was going to take the industry by storm.

But like all ambitions truly novel, zealous and grandiose, it was not set to last.

Somewhere in the 6 months that followed I managed to ...

Become jaded to the details of my work
Stop reading through my stack of brand new books
Stop drawing and painting
Stop going out on the weekends
Lose interest in my projects at work

... and subsequently, I feel that I truly ceased to enjoy my life.

So I quit.

In Peru, I found my motivation. I found that source which fuels my hunger. I found my reason for being. I found my inspiration.

But how does that translate? How does one integrate such a vastly abstract and intensly emotional experience? What I've come to understand is that the integration of experience is one of our many blessings as human beings. Growth is not something you do, it is something that happens. The best that we can do is to consciously align our actions with the way that we feel in the present moment. To keep that channel open, and respond accordingly.

CSS Consolidation

Cascading stylesheets, they run through your hands like that wierd cornstarch silly putty stuff.

Trying to consolidate CSS files is like... staying up all night. Cause you will. I guarantee it. If anyone ever says to you, "lets just keep moving forward, we can consolidate the CSS at the end," I advise you to run away fast.

Okay, it's time for a Line Count...

Lines of CSS across 5 sites prior to consolidation :

5 files @ 1963 lines total

Lines of CSS across 5 sites after consolidation :

6 files @ 996 lines total

Using common stylesheets is a great way to save time and stay consistent. But what happens when you have 4, 5, 6, 12 projects based off of similar CSS that you'd like to fold into one massive project? You must extract! It's a messy process, but it can help to show you where you may have been tying yourself in knots. After just having gone through such a heavy process, I feel as though I've gained a better awareness of where I'm laying my hand heavy, and how I can better live lightly upon the code.

All that matters is that you grok your code and cross as few wires as possible. Don't use ul#nav li.selected a:hover { color: pink; } when you could set a link color for the whole page with a { color: #c99; } .

And if something really is !important , it's probably worthwhile to fix the right way.

Blog Machine!

It may not look like it, but things are beginning to shift. There's a lot going on under the hood right now, and things are really starting to take shape on this rendering engine. I've deleted several hundred lines of mush today, and consolidated a great deal of code from distant corners of the system. I am writing this from the add blog post form which had been in serious disrepair until... just now.

Also, I am listening to Happy Hardcore, which is BUMP BUMP BUMP

Down with Dunbar

So I found a cool little gem whilst parusing the Facebook space in an attempt to locate an email address where I might report a bug I found in their pagination algorithm:

Facebook Jobs : Superpatterns
http://www.facebook.com/jobs_puzzles/?puzzle_id=8

It's a puzzle, and it relates directly to social networking through network theory, a coincidiary of graph theory. The puzzle itself is purely mathematical and programmatic. Perhaps a homework assignment for a PHD computer science student double majoring in applied mathematics. But the nature of the problem reaches deep into the heart of social networking algorithms.

Who are my friends?
Who are my friends' friends?
How many degrees am I from Kevin Bacon?
Whats the best way to use information about my sociological patterns to classify me as a consumer?

Investigating a trail leading from a link on the problem's page, I came to learn of a principle in the study of social networking known as Dunbar's Number.

"Dunbar's Number, which is 150, represents a theoretical maximum number of individuals with whom a set of people can maintain a social relationship, the kind of relationship that goes with knowing who each person is and how each person relates socially to every other person."
- http://en.wikipedia.org/

It is my sincere belief that this number is in the process of being blown out of the water. Online social networking is destined to be the catalyst for a global tranformation of group conciousness that I strongly feel will lead us to a level of societal organization untouched in all of the natural world as we know it. 10 years from now, we will likely look back upon this number and marvel at our exponential progress.

Too many tools

PHP 5, MySQL 4, Javascript 1.5, XHTML 1.0, CSS 2.1, XSL 1.0, XML 1.0, SVN 1.4, Ruby on Rails 1.2.2, Apache 2.x, and linux (GNU Bash on Redhat). I've never used so many tools to build a website in my life. What ever happened to: Dreamweaver. ? I guess thats what i get for bein a tinkerer.

So my development process goes a little something like this (lets assume adding comment functionality to a blog posts)....

1) Create a new table in the database using phpMyAdmin
2) Populate the table with some typical data
3) Write some PHP to extract my data from the database using Pear DB(1.7.9)
4) Tranform that Array into XML using Pear XML_Serializer(0.18.0)
5) Write some XSL to transform that XML into XHTML
6) Whip up some CSS to keep that XHTML lookin' sexy.

I keep all these files in SVN, and I'm commiting it using TortoiseSVN. On the server side, I'm using hooks to call a Capistrano deploy function for auto-deployment. I'm also using Firebug 1.0 for error checking, XHTML inspection, and OTF css prototyping.

About half the time it has taken me to get to this point in recoding my website has been spent trying to figure out what it is I need to do, searching for tools that fit the bill, learning to use them, and (to a far lesser extent) using them. I've pulled from countless resources from across the web, and try to kick down a few bucks to any open source projects with a Donate button.

PHP5 FTW!

So I've been working here and there to try and object orient my blog.

So far, so good.

I also got hooked up with a Lighthouse beta account. SIIIIIIIICK! Can't wait to see what it can do.

On the move

Tired of downed servers, poor performance, complicated rails installation, high prices, and limited virtual server use, i'm making the move.

This is my first time switching hosts in quite a while, tho so far its been relatively seamless.

More updates to come!

Broken!

Does anyone else visit sites and wonder why they are broken?

Myspace is a perfect example of this. There are many many things about MySpace that are just plain flat out broken.

This Edward Tufte entry from 2005 at upcoming.org, another very well-known site, is a great example.

You are looking at an event entitled, "Edward Tufte: Presenting Data and Information"

Now use the search box to do a search. For anything in the article. Anything at all.

You will not come up with the page you are looking for in the search results. It can not be found by search. 

Oddly enough, it was Google that deep linked me onto that seemingly non-existant page. Does Google now more about Upcoming's content than Upcoming does?

Open source pain

It's free. It's available for download. It will run on your system out of the box, and it can do everything.

BUT...

You won't understand how it works
You might have to go back and get your Masters in order to make changes
You'll invest countless hours studying the system

There are a few qualities of Good open source software that apply at every level

It does one thing, and it does it well.
It is simple.
It is easily extensible.
It implements common standads
Making it easy to use as a module of another system

Open Source should save you time, rather than trying to turbo-charge the wheel.

See KNopaste for a prime example of good open source.

FCKEditor FTW

Well, this post represents the switch from manual html to WYSIWYG.

I'm using FCKEditor to write this post. The first time ever that I've entered a blog post using a rich text editor. Wow, i'm reeeeally behind the times.

I'm not sure whats going to happen, this might blow up and save nothing so i'll keep it short and free from special characters.

The New Hotness

Howdy.

In case you didn't notice, i just threw a new skin on my blog.

There are also some major changes under the hood as well. Hit this url with a /xml at the end to see my XML, /xsl to see my xsl templates.

I've spent the last few hours killing bugs and getting my database to be have properly. It's gettin' late and I've got work tomorrow, so I don't really have much to say except for...

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

What's your latest skillset?

So its true, I'm a noob.

I'll wear that hat. Its a funny hat. It never fits quite right and it has the potential to make one feel a little... silly. But I think that no matter how prestigious our situation, we all have to wear this hat every once in a while. So the question becomes not so much whether or not we wear the hat, this much is clear. If any of us is to truly progress, the silly hat is our destined fate.

No, the real question is: What do we do while we're wearing the hat?

Do we bitch about the hat? Do we dye it pink and pose for our camera phone like some dorked out hipster? Do we laugh at other people wearing the silly hat? Do we join Silly Hat support groups? Do we crawl into a cave and wear our silly hat with shame?

FUCK NO!

We write code. We may be keeping the pace of a retard monkey, but that don't matter none. We keep it simple. We continually feed on exposure to new practices while gathering resources and keeping our code humble.

We do not :

bite off more than we can chew
re-invent the wheel
employ unnecessary hacks
or hard code page IDs

Head down, BCC on High Octane, we crunch. Little by little, our code evolves into something a little more elegant.
A little more stable.
A little more modular.
A little more abstract.
A little more extensible.
A little more robust.
And A little more scalable.

Suddenly, we look up to find that our silly hat has transformed into a statuesque Green Beret.

Okay, so you're a fucking Ninja. Now what? Welp, I suggest you branch out and find yourself another silly hat to work with. Quick.

Web 2-point-OMFG

Saturday in #web on irc.freenode.net:

<mlingo> KevBurns: Ajax isn't a language

<KevBurns> is Web 2.0 a language?

<fulgoren> no but i heard yod you can download it on torrent

Cynthia Says...

Who am I to heed with regards to the correct interpretation of the WCAG 1.0 level 2 recommendation if not Cynthia? Common sense? How's that going to hold up in court? I figured I would do what she says, so that way if my motivations ever came into question I could say... "Hey, don't look at me, Cynthia made me to do it." This way I don't appear lazy, and don't have to take responsibility for my actions. Win-win.

Now, if I had an opinion on the matter formed through... oh, say... experience... that might be a different story. As it happens, the whole of my experience with accessibility could probably fit into a 30-second blurb. "Some people are blind. They use the internet anyways. Thats why we have to listen to Cynthia. But don't listen to her all the time, cause she's not actually a person, she's an algorithm with a misleading name. WCAG 2.0 is crap, and flash is the devil. The end."

Happy New Year!

It's a new year, full of new hope, new promise, new life and yes, even new blogs. It is 11:20 on December 31st, 2006.

Am I drunk in San Francisco? No.

Am I watching parades and fireworks on a television? No.

Am I coding in jeans and a sweatshirt with a new haircut? Yes.

Last years' New Year's Resolution was achieved with unanticipated success. This year, it's time to raise the bar. Can a man write in an online journal at least once a week for an entire year? Will the imposed limit of no more than 7 posts per month prove too restrictive to bear? Will the content offer an adequate level of intrigue and findability to fulfill it's minimum requisite of 1 blip per quarter?

The answer to these questions is rooted deep within the hopefulness, promisitude, and liveliness of its author. Promisitude is not a word, but i think it has just been invented. Oh, is that you Webster Dictionary? Yes, I'm right over here. You may accredit the discovery of this superfulous new word to KevBurnsJr.

On a more serious note, I'm genuinely looking forward to producing some exceptionally readable posts with flexible grammar, whimsical punctuation, and plenty of smilies XD

Ideally, I'd like to get this ported over to a WordPress install, but I've decided to use this old hand-rolled blog code from a class project in 2004 for the time being because I like the design. Turning the design into a WordPress skin is going to be fun, but it's 11:44 and i've only got 16 minutes left to get this blog live.

So, i'd like to close with a few promisitudes:

1) I will not be too wordy

2) Minimum 1 post per week

3) Maximum 7 posts per month

4) Minimum 1 blip per quarter

5) I will not be too wordy

6) I will write onlyabout things that are interesting.

7) I will not tell my readers what to do

8) You will not see any advertisements on this site. Ever. Period.

9) Rules were made to be broken. Except for rule #8.

10) When writers block sequesters all creativity, hamster dance will be my ace in the hole.