Contemplating Wrinkles in Time. 2008-08-22T01:46:53ZAdam ChristianCopyright 2008, Adam ChristianSPHPBLOGTrapped in Canada, Mozilla Summit 08 Monday we took a flight from Seattle to Vancouver, minus the screaming kids it was relatively painless flight. Meg was planning to meet me up here, and crash in my room... somehow she left SF that morning and still beat me here. I have no idea how that happened. Anyways she was here waiting when I arrived, and I quickly had to check in and get to dinner. Huge buffet with all kinds of delish foods, a pretty impressive spread with a solid bar.
Tuesday was a good day.
Wednesday morning I wake up and turn on the news and find out that the only reasonable road between Vancouver and Whistler (highway 99) has been closed due to a rock slide. Not only was it a rock slide, IT WAS A FREAKING HUGE ROCK SLIDE: http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/s ... VNewsAt11. Apparently it wrecked the entire road, and the train tracks and to remove it they will have to BLAST the van size boulders with dynamite. I didn't panic until they told us that it would take a bare minimum of 5 days to start getting the road back open. As you can imagine, poor Mozilla crew organizing all this must be pretty stressed. Two funny things happened as a result of this incident, during the "Travel Update", Mike Schroepfer yell out "Have we determined if Microsoft is responsible for the rock slide?" which under the circumstances broke the intensity in the air. The second was that a bug was logged in the Mozilla Bugzilla which marked the messed up road with severity:blocker, and that we may want to look into convincing Google to "Come pick us up".
Thursday, we woke up to silence, no lights, TV's, dead laptops and the quick realization that the power was out for the whole hotel. As you can imagine, this is a slight problem for a "Tech Conference". I actually slept in a bit later in the nice quiet darkness and caught up in probably a month of lost sleep. In the lobby they had posted that the hotel transformer had been "hit by a laundry truck"... UHM, are you kidding me? The giant green metal box sitting in the woods next to the hotel was "hit by a laundry truck". This HAS to be Micorosoft's doing, I can't image any other way something insane like this could possibly happen. We got to spend half the day without computers or A/V doing presentations off of notepads and then discussing in the dark. This did make for an interesting dynamic, and in a lot of ways was still pretty productive albeit very strange. Fortunately right before our 5:45 presentation of GristMill, our firefox automation framework "Talk" the power came back on so that I could give my sweet demo. I really like doing talks at conferences because people immediately have ideas, and uses for whatever it is you are doing. It's very gratifying to know that people are going to go home and start playing with your stuff.
Thursday night dinner we jumped on the gondola and headed up to the top of the mountain for a pretty rockin shin dig. A beattles/elton john/other cover band was playing, it was snowing outside, and they put on a huge spread. John Lilly talked, Mitchell Baker talked and after many toasts and rounds of applause Shrep went up and clearly fighting his emotions, thanked everyone for the last few years.
A wise sage told me, that when you go to a conference/event it's always a good idea to make a list of the people you want to worm your way into a conversation with. So this time around, I made my list. During the day people have been crazy running around all over, but last night people were a bit more relaxed and in a social mood so I had the chance to introduce myself to some folks and have a couple conversations I had been waiting to have all week.
Today is friday, its 11:58 AM, my float plane was supposed to take off at 11:45 AM... clearly this is a problem. The word I was given was that the planes couldn't fly because of the high tide and that the planes weren't able to land safely at the moment. Well, the way I feel about this is that we basically have tides mapped out like clock work... someone booked a flight to leave at a time when they would be landing during an unsafe high tide? I don't think so. There is a massive cloud cover, but mostly I think it just makes sense that the trend of insanity would continue.
I am feeling a little bit burned out, pretty tired, sick of eating, drinking, and talking frankly. Please someone send your private jet and get me the hell out of this beautiful, tree covered resort town before I do something insane like deciding to go backcountry snowboarding on the glacier in the middle of the summer!
Please leave your base.]]>http://www.t0asted.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry080801-1425202008-08-01T00:00:00Z2008-08-01T00:00:00ZLeaving Rearden Commerce, Announcing new BLOG For the last few years t0asted has been my only blog, so anything I wanted to write about -- be it professional, silly, etc. all came here. However I have seen a growing need recently to separate the two different kinds of content.
T0asted.com is now going to return to being my personal blog, for fun blog and all around whatever comes to mind place to rant. If you want to read my career/professional ideas about business, technology and all things 'more' serious, feel free to go check out my new website at Adam Christian on Life, Business and Technology.
I thank you all for keeping up on me, I hope this makes it easier to find what you think is interesting.]]>http://www.t0asted.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry080627-2126262008-06-28T00:00:00Z2008-06-28T00:00:00ZUpNorth Web Design Inc.
This is more of a side note, but since I did find our logo while I was looking through my backups today I figured I might as well do a short post.
UpNorth Web Design took many of the ideas from my previous small ventures about doing contract web design/development and made them a little bit more realistic. At this point I was working with a guy who was pretty decent with graphic design, and another guy who was a really solid perl/cgi programmer.
We did a hand full of contracts for sites in the Bellingham area, and contracted to a few companies that did web development and had more work than they could handle. This small business also faded over time, as the three of us went off in different directions, however again I learned a few things.
1. Resume's are really important to get any big contracts (people want to see examples, and recognize names). 2. Working from home with a small team is a very realistic way to do this kind of work. The lower the overhead the better. 3. Be persistent, build a portfolio.. and keep your domain alive and up to date - you never know when you are going to want to jump back into picking up more web design work to generate some spending money for your upcoming trip to Europe. :)
I have actually come up with another Business idea I worked on while I was still in high school, but it has a bit of a twist -- so stay tuned.]]>http://www.t0asted.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry080621-1947112008-06-21T00:00:00Z2008-06-21T00:00:00ZI forgot how much fun Photoshop can be
Liquify is the coolest photoshop filter ever made.]]>http://www.t0asted.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry080621-1945012008-06-21T00:00:00Z2008-06-21T00:00:00ZBoxBay Computers Inc. Conception The original idea came from a trip to CompuCare to buy a bunch of computer parts for a machine I was building. I drug along a friend of mine and my parents probably have a better idea of when exactly this was -- but I am going to guess the summer of 1997 or 1998. The idea was that if a place like CompuCare can build relationships with vendors and get all these great deals on computer why can't we do that too?
Execution I knew enough to know that there would be money involved, and the friend of mine happened to be pretty good with numbers, so we decided that he would handle all the money and I would handle all the computer stuff. Before I really knew what was going on, he had headed down to the city to apply for a business license. Another good friend of mine was knee deep in design as he cranked out an actually very attractive web site and the next thing we knew we had boxbay.com online and sorta ready for some attention. BoxBay of course coming from the fact that we lived right on Bellingham Bay, and that we would be selling computer 'boxes', sounds like reasonable logic to me! The garage at my house had tools, gardening equipment and a couple boats in it, but it was the summer so what would be a better time than to move everything out to make way for our new computer business. At this point we have a business license, a metal box with about 40 dollars in it, a nice to look at but otherwise useless web site, and absolutely nothing to sell. The next step was to mail off all kinds of things to hardware vendors so that we could get really kickin' deals and sweep all of our competition off their feet. After signing up for all the whole sale programs the mail started arriving.
After the initial excitement of the free posters and stickers we got, we quickly realized that the only way we would get any deals on hardware was if we ordered it in bulk. The more we ordered the cheaper things would get by the unit. This is very simple stuff that you would think a couple smart high school freshman would have known at this point, but nothing drives the point home like a real world example.
Collapse We collected hardware orders from everyone we knew, including going far over our budget for our personal 'upgrades' to our machines and were still somewhere around 195 orders short to get the very lowest discount a business could get. Somewhere around this point we sort of became bored of the whole thing, and had 'hung out' for too many long summer days in a row and it was now time to head off to something new and interesting. I have no idea what that was, but I do remember running around the neighborhood playing tag with roman candles (So that puts us in the ball park of the 4th of July for this whole endeavor).
Conclusion Never go sign up for a business license until you really plan to do something with it. The thing costs money, they continually contact you and if you don't take care of it you can wind up paying a bunch of fees. This will not be the last time in my career to make this exact mistake. We received mail for this dead computer company for many years after this, and as you can imagine my folks were not super happy to be the mailing address for anything 'BoxBay Computers' related that showed up at the house.
Additionally, a very important lesson I didn't forget from this whole experience was that businesses cost money, doing business costs money, and making money costs money. This point came up daily, in almost every class I took while I was on the road to my BA in Business -- but by that point I was fully prepped for that multiple choice question in Economics, Finance, Accounting, Entrepreneurship etc. wow, that makes me think school should actually make people try to start a business instead of... well that's a story for another day.
Note
Coronix.net (I was really into Unix, and thought I liked Cervesa..) was even shorter lived than BoxBay, however in reality did have a much higher chance of survival -- and it did for a few weeks :)
Coronix was going to be a Web Design company, that did custom web sites for every business in town. You are probably thinking 'Oh man that market is flooded', and it is, but it wasn't in 1999. The web site was covered with images I had designed in Bryce 2, there was text jammed in between the massive images of completely out of context items including trees, rocks, probably a modeled waterfall I found in a tutorial and many kitchen appliances I found in free Bryce object files. There was a contact form that called a CGI and sent my hotmail account a completely unformatted string of inputs from the user.
I was the 'web developer' in that I knew how to use Dreamweaver, had learned HTML in 7th and 8th grade and considered myself a master. I also knew how to do roll over buttons with JavaScript, but really had no idea how it was possible to do what I was doing. Eventually this web site evolved into me downloading the entire source for the Microsoft.com web site at the time (which was baby blue, with JavaScript drop down menus to all their products) and CSS to make the hyperlinks change color. The bar across the top also rounded in the right corner -- which I had to have.
Coronix died a peaceful death, as the domain expired the content stayed alive on a friends 9.99 a year hosting account until he forget to pay the bill. However during this period of time I did wind up doing about 5 web sites for people I knew in the area, and sparked my interest in CGI... which slowly evolved into PERL, then PHP and finally Python (also a story for another day). I would forever enjoy making money off of web sites, and making web sites for absolutely no money, reason or purpose other than my creative zing.
We will jump a few years into the future next time, and check out how facebook really did steal my idea.. no seriously they really did -- I have a newspaper article written by the WSU news paper about this web site about 2 months before wsufacebook.com showed up! Okay okay, all that goes in the next entry, stay tuned.
]]>http://www.t0asted.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry080620-0248542008-06-20T00:00:00Z2008-06-20T00:00:00ZBusiness Ideas Category At this point it looks unlikely that I will be going back and resurrecting these projects from the dead (especially at the rapidly evolving rate of change in todays technology industry). So I am going to start sharing them with the world, and if you have an inspiration -- feel free to go ahead and use it. You can even feel free to send me huge gobs of money for the great idea I inspired..
My plan at this point is to start as far back as I can date wise, and do an entry a week on a different business (or variation of a business). This way I can recap what was good about them, what killed them, and maybe learn a bit from this whole process.
There are a few stealth things that I probably won't be sharing, and many of these were in collaboration with other people so if I accidently post your inner most secret project you are still working on from seven years ago -- please let me know.
To give you a small preview it looks like the next entry will be a few of my very early ventures lumped into one.. because when you are 15 it's hard to concentrate on any one thing for too long. Upcoming startup recaps include (coronix.net and boxbay computers), stay tuned!]]>http://www.t0asted.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry080618-1631132008-06-18T00:00:00Z2008-06-18T00:00:00ZMarvel Studio Saves the SummerIncredible Hulk movie and a few weeks ago I saw Iron Man. With movies based on comic books I am always a bit skeptical considering that the comics were able to avoid any constraints imposed by concepts of reality. When these stories are ported to feature films the public is now watching them, and don't have the same context or even imagination that one would have after spending time in the comic book world. Having said that, I would like to thank Marvel for making my two favorite movies so far this year.
From what I've heard, the goal here is to maintain a cohesive world for all the characters in order to make possible an Avengers Movie in 2010. However in the mean time we will have the pleasure of watching Thor and Captain America to complete the squad.
Iron Man As a geek, one of the deep desires you hold dear is the wish to transform yourself into a super hero. For as long as I can remember I have found super heroes absolutely fascinating and spent the better part of my child hood in costume. Iron Man brought all that back because he is a 'guy', a brilliant and rich guy but none the less he hasn't been infected or exposed to substances not of this world to obtain his abilities. This film is funny and action packed, Jeff Bridges makes a fantastic villain. I did remain hopeful that he would consume a white russian at some point in the film but I do acknowledge that Scotch was a much better fit for the scene.
Tony Stark is a character that you find yourself irritated by, jealous of, but somehow can't help yourself from cheering for him. Marvel set up all of the important pieces for more films including a set of really pissed off Middle Eastern villains, War Machine, and the after credits visit from the leader of the Avengers. I would recommend this film to anyone that likes a serious ride, feel free to bring a little Scotch and join the party.
Incredible Hulk I must admit that I do like Eric Bana, and as a Bruce Banner he was pretty believable. Unfortunately the CGI and special effects really let him down in Sony's disappointing stab at the epic green creature. My favorite part about the new Incredible Hulk is that they gave me all the bone crunching, power, fury and out right ass kicking that I wanted to see in the first Hulk but never got. Edward Norton was a very good Bruce Banner and I thought Liv Tyler did an adequate job (she could have looked and acted a bit more professorish) but as a hopeless lost love she was very effective. The villain evolved slower in this version and was much more believable.
My only criticism was that at a few points in the movie it felt a little king kongish with the big monster and his soft spot for the girl -- but fortunately they kept it to a minimum and slipped it in between shots of the hulk literally ripping the US military a new one.
I liked the setup of the future villain of "Mr. Blue", I wonder what kind of brainiac evil mastermind he is going to make. Thumbs up for never having to watch the Hulk jumping for thousands of miles -- since we already got enough of that in the last movie we can just assume thats how he got in the middle of the Jungle on foot in less than 24 hours.
A final note on the Hulk is that I was very pleased to see that each time the Hulk had a major night of fighting Ed Norton woke up with a pretty serious hangover. What else can be expected from pouring gallons of acid directly into his brain! I'm looking forward to the extended version on DVD.
Side Note Indian Jones was the biggest disappointment since the new Ninja Turtles. Spielberg/Lucas: WTF MAN.]]>http://www.t0asted.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry080616-1520162008-06-16T00:00:00Z2008-06-16T00:00:00ZGraduation is Upon Them I would like to congratulate all you graduates, and wish you the absolute best. Don't let the attention overwhelm you, don't let the thoughts of "what's next" cloud your thoughts... just sit back, crack a beer and take a moment to enjoy where you are and the feelings you get from what you have accomplished.
We all know that your educational experience isn't about that piece of paper, it's no secret that over 50% of your time there was socializing and figuring out who you are.. but that is exactly the point. You are now as prepared as you will ever be for whatever comes next, and I know you don't feel that way -- but trust me, it's all going to be okay.
After the gut wrenching emotions from the graduation speaker subside, and your parents head out, you are left with an empty apartment a big round of hugs and whatever comes next. This blip in time is what we call a defining moment. Do you crumble and succumb to the intimidation of change, or do you pull yourself up by your boot straps and take life head on... do you have a choice?
As I am a celebration expert, I will be contracting my skills to a few graduation parties in the next month and I look forward to witnessing every moment of euphoric relaxation as you realize you are done with finals, done with tests and may very possibly never have to deal with "school" again.
Welcome to the big leagues graduate -- life starts now!]]>http://www.t0asted.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry080521-1917522008-05-21T00:00:00Z2008-05-21T00:00:00ZWindmill 0.4 Released easy_install -U windmill .
Since the OSAF shake-up we have been very distracted with all kinds of things, and if it hadn't been for the community asking for features and actively using Windmill it wouldn't have seen a fraction of the attention that it has. Over the last four months we have worked with lots of you out there in the community stepping up our browser compatibility, python compatibility, IDE usability, Performance basically every piece of the project has become better because people have made themselves heard and there is nothing quite so motivating as an active community.
We have maintained our accessibility in #windmill on freenode and are glad to see more and more users there every day. Right now we are in the process of slating the bugs/features that will go into Windmill 0.5. Please feel free to make your voice heard in this process as well.
This release contains a revamp of the IDE, fixes for usability in IE, major performance tweaks, tweaks in the server for continuous integration and a whole slue of bug fixes that you can go view at http://windmill.osafoundation.org.
Thanks for your continuing interest, involvement and support!]]>http://www.t0asted.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry080423-0223082008-04-23T00:00:00Z2008-04-23T00:00:00ZWeb Development in IE, no longer quite so painful. For years now, we have had to 'suck it up', and pour a glass of scotch to get through an afternoon of testing in IE. As I am now a Web Developer at Rearden Commerce who currently caters to an audience of enterprise users instead of your standard bay area geek population -- I have to make sure everything I commit works nicely in IE.
Last week after a few hours of IE testing, and dirtying my code I worked so hard to organize with alerts, I decided that there HAD to be a better way to do this. I went ahead and spent many hours searching the web, installing everything I could find that promised to make IE development easier and happily I can say -- it was a success.
First and foremost however, there are a few tips I can give you right off the top that will make your life easier. Before you take the plunge into line by line alerting, go through your code and do the following;
1. Remove unnecessary commas in your data structures: ( FF ignores this one, but IE will give you an error that isn't helpful ) ex. var superNinjaObject = { me: 'adam', home: 'oakland', };
2. Don't try to access characters in a string as if it was an array: ( Works in FF, but IE will simply give you undefined and not tell you a thing ) ex. var myString = 'Welcome to the Jungle'; $('mynode').innerHTML += myString[14]; //Broken in IE $('mynode').innerHTML += myString.charAt(14); //Compatible alternative
Now we can get to what you are really interested in, the new tools:
This is Microsoft's best stab at a firebug equivalent. This gives you all the flexibility you need to inspect the DOM tree, look at CSS, Scripts, Images, Network etc. To put it simply, it makes IE development something you can swallow. I can't image going back to IE development without this. Unfortunately it is missing two things, the first is the absolutely necessary JavaScript shell. This can be solved by using the IE JS Bookmarklet that you can find at http://blog.monstuff.com/archives/000287.html. Add this to your favorites and then whenever you need a JS shell, pop this up and hack away ( I agree it would be nicer if it was built in ). The second is the ability to set breakpoints and step through your code debugging and introspecting objects and variables. I do have a solution for this, see new tool number 2.
This is the solution to your break pointing, stepping, introspecting needs. The way you use it is a bit awkward, but it does complete the development experience. To use this you need to create an empty web project and then start debugging. This will launch IE and bring you to a blank server page off the local MS web server instance. At this point you can go ahead and plug in the URL of the app you are wanting to test. Additionally if you have set any 'debugger;' statements in your source it will pick that up and automatically ask you if you want to start debugging there, or continue on. When you stop the debugging session in VWD it will kill your browser, so beware if you have to navigate to some deep point in your app you are probably going to get frustrated if you write buggy code. :) At it's 1.4 Gb space requirement it's hardly a comparison with firebug -- but it's certainly a step up from alerts all day long.
Update: If you don't already have it installed, a good midpoint between nothing and Visual Studio Express is the Microsoft Script Editor which comes with office 2003, heres a video on how to use it, http://www.jonathanboutelle.com/mt/arch ... _jav.html. Thanks for the feedback blogosphere.
I hope this made your life at least a small amount easier, happy IE developing. ]]>http://www.t0asted.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry080423-0037572008-04-23T00:00:00Z2008-04-23T00:00:00Z
