Yearly Archives: 2006

I don’t know what to say

This is about a friend of mine named Marc. This morning Marc talked to his dad on the phone before going to work. After the phone call his dad went about his daily routine, including taking a bath. While he was in the bath, he died. A blood clot that had formed in his legs had travelled to his lungs, causing a seizure and killing him.

I don’t know how to deal with these things.

Marc and I worked together for two years and when we bought houses, we bought them in the same neighborhood. We’re one street over and we can see each other’s houses by looking out a window. So when he found out and came home, he came over to talk to me. Being guys, and not the 21st century metrosexual kind of guys, he didn’t come over for a shoulder to cry on. He wanted to let me know in a matter of fact tone what had happened, that he was going to be away for a while, and could I look after his dogs while he was gone?

Of course I can look after the dogs. We’ll probably bring the five of them over and keep them in the backyard with our two. The weather is just cooling down enough that that should work out well. Since he’s going to be gone for a while and I don’t know how long, and since I’ve been playing soccer with shoes that don’t fit and he has a pair that do fit me (but not him), I asked him if I could borrow the shoes before he left. I’m such an asshole.

I don’t know how to deal with these things.

I apologized for asking but Marc is probably the one person with less of a sense of propriety than me and he didn’t understand how being asked for soccer shoes five minutes after telling me his dad had died was in any way odd. He’s a good guy.

We went over to his house for the shoes and I talked with him for a bit while he was packing. He couldn’t figure out what to take. He was having a hard time thinking clearly. I tried to talk to his wife but she seemed to be taking things worse than him. She’s six months pregnant, due in December. That has nothing to do with anything and I don’t know why I’m bringing it up. Maybe it’s the whole cycle of life thing. As one passes another comes to pass. By Christmas everything will be better again, except that their baby won’t get the chance to know its grandfather.

My dad died when I was ten. The funeral was in Iowa and we lived in Texas. My mom and brothers flew up for it but I didn’t. It was my choice and I was scared. About ten years ago a friend’s father died and I took her to the wake. It was open casket. That was the only time I’ve ever seen a dead person before. I couldn’t then, and I can’t now, grasp the concept that the lifeless body that was before me was once a walking, talking, breathing person capable of thought and ideas. I kept waiting for him to open his eyes. April Fools! Of course that didn’t happen.

I’m 32 years old. My brothers are ten and eleven years older than me. My mom is in her sixties. My grandparents are all close to their nineties. Sooner or later people that I love are going to start dying and I still don’t know how to deal with these things.

My Baby’s Having My Baby

Little Lethal Weapon 4 homage there.

If the title didn’t give it away: we’re pregnant! Technically, it’s just Karina, but I have a feeling I’m going to do some suffering alongside her. At least that’s what every other dad has been telling me. We’re 15 weeks in and the due date is March 14th. So if you were looking forward to seeing us at SXSW, we might have to disappoint you. We’re still buying our tickets just in case the baby is late!

Sometime in the near future I’ll get around to scanning in the ultrasounds that we have. We’re also going to to do the 3D ultrasound, which’ll be really cool. I think that’s in five weeks, which is also when we’ll find out if we’re having a boy or a girl. Come on boy! I’m terrified by the thought of raising a girl, mostly because I know what goes on in the minds of boys. I’m not nervous … yet. But when I start flipping through those baby books that Karina has been buying, I start getting anxious.

We’ll try to keep everybody posted here but it’s pretty obvious I’ve been pretty lax about posting lately. Look for a baby gift list, coming soon though!

The need for project planning

I’ve been working on a largish website project and I’ve been falling steadily behind schedule. The reasons for the delays fall into two categories: data conversion and code conversion. Both turned out to be more complicated than I expected.

Data Conversion (Filemaker to MySQL)

Filemaker is a weird sort of database. Instead of tables you have “layouts” that show certain fields but all fields exist in the same bucket. The database is the table. In this case the Filemaker database had hundreds of fields in it that were spread across 16 layouts and all of it needed to be converted to MySQL. Unfortunately this was not an a => b scenario for several reasons:

- A lot of calculations and data manipulation are taking place in Filemaker
- The LDML code made extensive use of lists built into Filemaker
- A lot of data had to be translated
- Certain restrictions were placed on the MySQL databases (see below)

The data conversion is part of the larger conversion from Filemaker/LDML to MySQL/PHP. On the PHP side the client already has a database structure and code built out for several of the portions of the site being converted. In those cases some data has to be split across multiple tables, so data has to be converted to new formats, and various other tweaks had to be performed.

This is a longer term project (four months). Because the data conversion will have to be done several times, I chose to write a script to handle it. Again, because it will have to be run over and over again, it first starts by emptying the existing tables and resetting all of the auto_increment counters to 1. When the site has been fully converted and is ready to relaunch, we’ll be able to run the script again and at the push of a button grab the most recent data from the previous site. Whenever data turns out to need more “massaging” during the code translation process (i.e. something turns out to be wrong) I can make the changes and re-run the script without having to perform a lot of manual labor.

I’ll outline the conversion script another day — it’s about 800 lines of code. It took about a week to write and get right and since this project is ongoing it will almost certainly require more tweaks as the project moves forward. That’s a lot more than the one day I had estimated for the conversion.

Code Conversion

Once I had the data poured into 19 MySQL tables I could start setting up the website. First thing was converting the new layout into XHTML and CSS. No problemo. The second step was to setup the new navigation structure. A little bit more work and planning here but again, no problemo. The third step was to create pages for all of the static content. This was the easiest step in the process. The fourth step was, and is, where I get my hands dirty and start mucking around with the site code.

Now, it seemed easiest to start with the pre-existing PHP modules from the client and get those up and running. Unfortunately, this is where I ran headfirst into one of my own great shortcomings. I have a hard enough time reading my own well-formatted and well-documented code. In this case I’m reading someone else’s code with functions and classes that are spread across 25 different files. Everything is being generated or manipulated by something else. Coming into this from the outside it’s very hard to figure out what is going on. For me this has led to a lot of confusion, a lot of delays, and a lot of sleepless nights.

Finally, this weekend I decided that something had to give. I was trying to take the short route and fumble through things. Define a task, tackle it, and when it doesn’t work try to trace the code back through the various files to find out why. Fix, try again, run into another problem, trace it back through, etc.

For most people this would actually work. They can just learn from doing something hands on. For me that doesn’t work. I have to first read a manual, then get hands on and refer back to the manual as I’m going along. It’s not enough for me to know how something works, I have to understand why it works.

I determined that I needed to write a manual. In doing so I would develop a deep understanding of how everything in the various files worked.

Yesterday I spent the day printing out most of a ream (500 pages) of code. I got a binder and a bunch of tabbed inserts. I created tabs for each document, hole punched everything and assembled my book. Then I started the two day process of reading the book. For each file I created an outline of each class and function. I also outlined the structure for each include. This is my table of contents and is in the front of the book.

Now I have a much greater understanding of what is going on because I’ve read through everything once. I also now have a quick reference to any section of code without having to open five different files to track function calls. At a glance I can see what is going on and if I’m passing data to a function in the correct format or using a function in the correct way. This took two days and it could have saved me weeks of sleepless nights.

Planning and organization are incredibly important when working on projects. It may seem like wasted time but in the end it saves more time than it consumes.

Is Gentrification Bad?

gen•tri•fi•ca•tion n. – The restoration and upgrading of deteriorated urban property by middle-class or affluent people, often resulting in displacement of lower-income people.

This process has started happening just east of IH35 in downtown Austin. My wife doesn’t want to move there because she thinks it’s horrible. I desperately want to move there because the new developments going up are mostly mixed-use with condos upstairs and office space downstairs. They are also being largely occupied by artists and other creative industry people.

The lower income people, some of whom have lived there for years, are being displaced. The property values are going up and they can’t afford the rents or taxes that go with the increased property value. Some of them really don’t want to go.

I don’t want to be insensitive but we don’t always get what we want. I read an article the other day about a “distressed” neighborhood downtown. The residents were afraid to come out of their houses, there were needles lying in the street, and the area had an incredibly high crime rate. This is what happens in “distressed” neighborhoods and it affects the surrounding neighborhoods as well.

So it is inevitable that, when population density reaches a certain point, areas only a few blocks from the heart of a city will become prime real estate for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is location. The opportunity to reduce the crime rate, increase tax revenue, and create more usable public spaces are all strong reasons too.

The people who are renting in these neighborhoods will almost certainly have to move further away from the center of the city and lose out. People who own residences in these neighborhoods stand to gain quite a bit. In many cases they will be able to sell their property at a price that will let them move to a much better neighborhood with less crime and less fear. It seems to me the old owners win, the new owners win, and the city wins.

Maybe I’m just niave. Or maybe I really want to move downtown and I can’t afford anything West of IH35. But with every article I read about “distressed” neighborhoods, I feel more confident that gentrification is simply more good than it is bad.

Miscellaneous

June was “vacation month” for us. We went back to the Bahamas to visit friends and to take some friends with us. The trip was a mixed bag for us: we got to see friends, the beach, and go boating and I got to play poker but we once again didn’t make it to any of the family islands, we only spent a few hours at the beach, and Karina never got her massage — which I now owe her.

When we got back my brother Keith and his wife Cindy visited. It was the first time my wife has met them, which was nice.

After that we had a week to catch up on work before heading down to Brownsville and South Padre Island for Karina’s 10 year high school reunion. That meant I had to spend some time working on the reunion website and then be a human accessory (like a handbag!) to all of the events. It was actually more fun than I thought it would be going in. She has some cool classmates. Going into it I just remembered my own high school experience and I was not looking forward to something like that.

Now we’re home and still trying to catch up on work. I guess what I’m trying to say is: I haven’t had time, ability, access to post much for the last month. There have been lots of things I’ve wanted to talk about or mention though and I’m constantly coming across cool things both online and offline. Maybe I’ll share some soon…

Digby is Funny

From a post titled “Rush’s Law“:

Rush should be urged to share his story with America. Here’s he is, an impotent, thrice divorced, ex-drug addict, conservative, parolee who went on a sex tour in the Caribbean and found himself rudely embarrassed for carrying recreational prescription drugs in his doctor’s name. Who can’t relate to that?

Invasion Cancelled

I’ll admit it: I’m a TV addict. My favorite shows, in no particular order, include Lost, Invasion, The Daily Show, Numbers, Prison Break, and Two and a Half Men.

Last night was the thought-provoking season end to the dark and creepy Invasion. Families were torn apart and Sheriff Underlay had to make a life and death decision about Russell’s pregnant wife. His inability to answer Russell, or even speak, at the end of the episode was a powerful moment. And a perfect setup for the beginning of next season.

Today I find out that there is no next season. That ABC plans to cancel the show. I’ve never signed a fan petition before (they mostly get circulated for anything produced by Joss Whedon) but I signed this one:

http://www.petitiononline.com/33030/petition.html

I also sent a comment directly to ABC:

http://abc.go.com/site/contactus.html

Help me be entertained. Sign the petition and write a quick note. It only takes a minute.

Flooding the Fever Swamps

I don’t post much these days because I stopped posting about politics. Posting about design and development means taking time to explore new things, which means you have to have time to explore new things. In the meantime, a brief return to the days of old…

The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler has a post up that exemplifies everything that is wrong with the right wing of the Republican party. I’m not going to gloat or rant. I am going to excerpt a few choice bits and recommend you go read it for yourself. If you are a Republican, ask yourself if this is the party you want to be associated with.

From the Post: The Turd World Shithole Known as Mexico Whines:

…the pendejos from Drug and Whoresville are bitching and moaning…

Well, Pancho Villa, you could avoid all of that if you’d actually be the great “friendâ€? that Vicente’s bathhouse gay friend Jorge always claims that you are…

(Jorge refers to George Bush here. Pancho Villa refers to Vincente Fox, President of Mexico.)

Nuke Mexico

And, lest you think the people reading this crap are any less psychotic:

Don’t worry Verminte you pitiful shitstain, Bushito will be back on all fours licking your boots in no time. I highly doubt Bushito has found some self-respect and loyalty to Americans over Mexicans. I hope he proves me wrong and tells you to go fuck yourself. In the meantime here’s a message from Los Angeles with love: GO FUCK YOURSELF!

We have to be very careful after nuking Mexico, Mein Imperator! Burritos stay hot for a LONG time.

We could use their cadavers as an energy source for heating homes in the southwest for years to come.

Yeah…but they’re so pretty when they glow in the dark.

The biggest balls in America

I like Stephen Colbert but I have to admit that I prefer his mentor, Jon Stewart. After the White House Press Correspondent’s Dinner though, I have newfound respect for the man. My jaw dropped watching his ballsy, spot-on performance at the dinner:

Update: I realized after posting this that it doesn’t contain the full video (and it has an annoyingly long introduction). To see the full thing check out Salon’s Video Dog. They also posted his press secretary audition skit.

The Blue Marble

A lot of people don’t know that NASA makes their satellite images available for free. They actually have a lot of cool websites these days (a lot better than what they had a few years ago), but the one I’m most interested in right now is the Visible Earth website. That’s where I found the most amazing picture of planet Earth.

Blue Marble (Earth)

Click on the image to view a (very) large version.

It’s been a long, long time

Last May I bought a Sony PSP because it was a really cool portable device. I’m not big on games but I figured if I could play them for five minutes at a time here and there, I might enjoy that. More than that though, the device plays movies and music and it has built in wi-fi and web browser. The web is what really hooked me. And the USB port. I couldn’t believe it: a standard port on a proprietary device from Sony? Imagine the possibilities. All the wonderful toys that could run off of that USB port.

Well, it’s been a year and do you want to know what you can run off of that USB port: jack and shit. There is a 4GB external hard drive that looks cool but why can’t I plug in my digital camera and moblog with pictures on the go? That’s the kind of shit I want to do with my Sony PSP. That’s the kind of shit that would let the PSP dominate it’s market, whatever that market would be at that point. It would certainly be more than “portable gaming” and would probably cross-over into the “ultra-portable” category.

It looks like Sony is finally going to release Sony hardware for GPS and VOIP. Great. They can’t license these things out? This tells me that: a) they’re going to cost 4x more than it should and b) they won’t work very well until at least version 2.

This is a perfect example of a killer device being destroyed by the very company that released it. At least one of the predictions I made when I bought the thing finally came true: Sony will start releasing UMDs and DVDs together since nobody wants to pay twice for the same thing. I’m looking forward to being able to pay once and watch a movie at home on my DVD player or on-the-go on my PSP.

Bizarre Computer Problem(s)

If you know much about computers, I need your help.

Let’s start with the backstory: I have a homebuilt machine (my last homebuilt machine) that a friend and I put together a couple of years ago (stats listed below). We ghosted his hard drive to get me up and running quickly. Note: I already had the same applications on CD with the exceptions of some games that I didn’t play and a bunch of MP3s that I didn’t like.

I created my own admin user account and left the original one alone. My plan was to setup my workspace and all of my saved files from my last machine the way I wanted, pick and choose anything I wanted to keep from the ghosted account, and then wipe the ghosted account.

I didn’t actually get around to deleting the other account until very recently. I realized it had been a long time since I had pulled any files out of it and I went ahead and killed it. Then I started playing Civilization IV. Great game. And one that my machine should have been able to handle without a problem. However, when playing on a large map my computer would slow to a crawl. I took to reading magazines while waiting for it.

That was not an acceptable solution. I checked on the RAM usage and determined that my test web server running Apache, PHP, and MySQL was consuming some resources. So I could kill those before playing the game. I defragged the hard drive for the first time in two years. Then I ran error-checking on the disk. This is when things went horribly, horribly wrong.

The computer restarted to run the check, steps one, two and three went off without a hitch. When it got to step four it rewrote the file ID for every system file. When the computer finally finished the check and booted up everything went haywire:

  • The windowing system doesn’t work properly anymore. Minimizing windows now looks like the old Windows 3.1 (or Photoshop) where the window minimizes to the lower left of the application window which, in this case, is the desktop.
  • I can no longer save files or copy files, including copying them to CD, floppy, USB drive, or the hard drive.
  • The computer no longer shows up on my local network.
  • Some applications no longer run.
  • No audio — it doesn’t recognize that there are any audio devices.
  • Can’t view device details in Device Manager.
  • It doesn’t recognize that there is a hard drive.

That last one is the key to everything, I just don’t know how. When I boot from a Windows CD to repair or re-install the OS, Windows doesn’t recognize that there is a hard drive. When I go into the BIOS (Phoenix Award BIOS v7.8) it doesn’t recognize that there is a hard drive either. Keep in mind, things were pretty much fine until the error-check rewrote the file IDs. It may have done something else too but that was the only thing it reported when it ran. How in the Hell could that possibly affect the BIOS?

Does anybody have any idea how to fix my computer?

Other notes:

  • The computer did have one problem prior to this whole fiasco: it only worked on every other boot. The in-between boots either booted completely but froze or simply didn’t recognize input devices like my mouse and keyboard. I rarely rebooted it, so that wasn’t a major concern for me at the time.
  • I upgraded the BIOS from 7.0 to 7.8 but it didn’t help or even change anything.
  • The processor has never ran at full clock speed. In the BIOS it showed up as a 1.67Ghz processor instead of 2Ghz. After updating the BIOS it now shows up as something really low (1.27Ghz I think).

Hardware Profile:

  • OS: Windows XP Pro SP2 (latest patches applied)
  • Motherboard: K7N2 Delta-ILSR (MS-6570-030)
  • Processor: AMD Athlon 2600+
  • Hard Drive: 120GB SATA
  • Video Card: nVidia GeForce4 Ti 4800 SE
  • CD-R: Plextor CD-R PX-W4824A
  • DVD: Sony DVD-Rom DDU1621

I can’t view properties via device manager, so some items I can’t get the full details on without pulling them out of the computer altogether. I’m not opposed to doing that, but at this point I haven’t gotten to it. If someone wants that info to help me troubleshoot, I’m more than happy to get it.

P.S. Don’t mock the hardware, it’s three years old and was built on a budget. I’m not replacing it until I buy a high-end Intel Mac that can run both operating systems (OS X and either XP Pro or Longhorn). I’m planning to put 1.5GB RAM into it and run Windows via Virtual PC and have both OSs running simultaneously. I can’t do that right now though, so I need to get this machine working again.

One step closer to world domination

Apple – Boot Camp

As cool as this is, I’m not sure I want to sully my Mac with Windows. My desktop machine crashed this weekend after I rank a disk check. I’m going to have to pull it and send it to a professional. Argh. That has never happened on one of my Macs. And why would I expose my Mac to Windows virii?

The flip side is that this might bring in a lot of Windows users who will be willing to experiment with OS X so long as they have the option to switch to Windows at any time. Especially given the fact that the MacBook Pro is the fastest Windows XP notebook on the market.

You know CSS is mainstream when…

I’m a little behind on my reading (and posting) but work has been busy and taking time off for SXSW didn’t help things. I found myself reading the February issue of How while I ate my lunch today. February was the issue on typography. I was surprised to find an article on web typography but even more surprised by what it wrote:

Of course, you can create text as a graphic using any font in your arsenal. The drawbacks to this tactic are that it’s not easily changed later, it can’t be copied and pasted with other text on a page, it doesn’t scale in size when the user chooses a different default font size for the browser, and it’s not accessible to people with visual impairments who use text-speaking devices. The benefit, however, is that the text you create in Photoshop appears exactly as you want it to appear, with your font of choice and any graphic effects or other visual stylings.

Now, there was a little bit of FUD there about the screen readers (text-speaking devices). If you provide the text in an alt attribute for the image it will be perfectly accessible. However, I found it amazing that a magazine for designers, primarily print designers, would be so astute as to point out all of the failings of using images for text.

Later in the article was another paragraph, this one about Flash:

When designing Flash projects, most of the same typographical rules mentioned above still apply; you’re simply gaining the freedom to use whatever font you like. However, Flash isn’t nearly as accessible as HTML, and certainly not as flexible as CSS if you want to change the appearance. Frankly, waiting for Flash animations to load can be annoying to site users, even those with broadband internet connections.

Steering designers away from Flash because of accessibility and load times? I’m not religious but Hallelujah! I take this article as a sign of the maturity of the online design community, our tools and our pool of knowledge. We’ve come a long way in the last 10 years and pieces like this give me hope for the next 10.

MWD/W seeks I/A for fun

That would be “married web designer / writer seeks illustrator / animator for fun.” Not like that you dirty minded pervert. I’m married! I have a cartoon and website that a friend and I want to make. I’m looking for someone in the Austin area who can draw and might be interested in joining the project. The story is very South Park-ish. It’s written and ready to go. Interested? Drop me a line.

Apple’s Burning Ring of Fire

An amazing thing happened to me today. I was sitting at my laptop working when, all of a sudden, the connector for the power cord that plugs into the laptop caught on fire. I yanked the cord immediately. The thing gave off a few thin tendrils of smoke and then died a quiet, peaceful death.

Had I not been at my computer when it happened I’m quite sure my computer would have burned up. Had I not been home my entire house might have burned down.

Apple makes really shitty power connectors. What are the odds that on the same day this happens to me I would pop over to read the “Cult of Mac” blog and see a discussion about a power cord melting down on a MacBook?

Different laptops, different situations. I really doubt that guy’s cat pulled the cord out of his laptop. I think the magnetic link broke once the connector caught on fire and the thing fell out on it’s own.

In my case, my connector had been previously bent when it had been yanked out of the laptop on accident. Over time the thicker part of the cable at the base of the plastic plug (the one that goes into the laptop) split open. I can’t say exactly why. It could have been a stress fracture from the new angle of use or heat from the electrical wire inside acting on a point of weakness that developed when the cord was yanked or, most likely, some combination thereof.

The split got worse but the plug still worked. I was planning on using the Ultimate Tool to Fix All Problems (duct-tape) but I hadn’t gotten around to it yet. I really don’t know what the final straw for it was today but I do have some advice for people with broken power cords. This may seem like really obvious advice, but go with me here, as I made the mistake myself and I’m not a total idiot:

Don’t use broken power cords.

Bent may be okay but once the electrical wire inside of the plastic is exposed stop. It’s time to buy a new cord. It hurts. Apple charges $80 for the $%@! things. Your house or business most likely cost more than that though, so it’s worth it.

James is inside my head

I don’t know how he did it but somehow he managed to steal this list straight out of my brain. Sure he added a few things like move to New York and picking up music again, but it’s basically my list. Compare:

  • Start drawing (both offline and with a sweet pen tablet)
  • Write those stories I keep starting (and participate in this year’s National Novel Writing Month
  • Look out for myself (okay I’m stealing that one from him)
  • Stay in better touch with my friends — and get out more
  • Practice my Spanish*
  • Design more and code less — including designing some t-shirts
  • Start blogging about things I’m passionate about (design and the web)
  • Redesign my site — I’m using someone else’s design!

See? Same damn list. He might have tried to customize it a bit to “make it his own” but we all know the truth. James Craig reads minds. I don’t know if he has to get close to you to do it, so I want to make sure I get these out now:

  • Finally create my web-based cartoon — it’s been six years
  • Start a t-shirt company (hey, everybody else is)
  • Create some sweet WordPress plugins:

Okay, it appears that Structured Blogging is way ahead of me on the whole microformats-for-WordPress thing, so I’ll have to check that out.

* This one is major since my wife’s family doesn’t speak English and we visit them several times a year. I would also like to learn German since my own extended family doesn’t speak English either. As it stands right now I can’t communicate with her family or mine.