Coming soon.
Tuesday, December 31, 2002
Coming soon.
Some things I noticed this year.
Rather than the usual year-end top ten of fave rave discs or some hopeful, yet unattainable set of goals for the next twelve months, I've come up with this simple list of things I noticed over the past year.Have a great new year. Learn lots. Discover things. Enjoy it all.
- A new job is exciting.
- Two new jobs is overwhelming.
- A new job is terrifying, even if you know what you're doing.
- Working with old friends makes things better.
- It helps if old friends know what they're doing too.
- You can forget a lot about print production after working in web design.
- It's hard to start from zero.
- It's easy to start from zero.
- Previous employers sound nervous and bitter during analyst calls whenever a business started up by former employees is mentioned.
- Maui is a wonderful place to vacation. Again.
- A dead cat washing up on a beach after a storm isn't any less gruesome because the beach happens to be in Maui.
- Sunsets always amaze me.
- The hard drive that has gone the longest without a backup is invariably the one which will crash and not be recoverable.
- Storage is cheaper than I realized.
- I get more excited about little things than I used to.
- You can never give or have enough hugs.
- My kids loved summer art camp.
- So did their mom.
- Artwork that my daughters created at summer art camp makes a wonderful starting point for our annual hand-made Christmas cards.
- The project to put together your annual hand-made Christmas cards should be started in August when you first get the idea in your head that the kids summer art camp projects would make a wonderful starting point for them.
- Not all fresh business ideas are winners.
- Taking pictures for no reason whatsoever is very therapeutic.
- Kids will finally learn to ride a bicycle after the younger kids down the block learn to ride their bicycles first.
- Puppies chew everything.
- Martinis have become increasingly enjoyable.
- Active Server Pages hurt my head.
- On the bright side, JavaScript and I have much become better friends than I could have possibly imagined.
- A plecostomus is generally not supposed to live 14 years.
- You can't flush a 14 year old plecostomus.
- A newly paved back alley makes a fantastic playground.
- If you keep putting lids on your bird seed in the shed, you'll get fewer mice.
- Unix still baffles me, but in a different way each time.
- Puppies poop. A lot.
- My mom scared me.
- Crying hurts.
- Crying helps.
- My mom is going to make it.
- My dad is strong.
- My wife amazes me over and over again.
- My family is more important to me than it ever has been.
- My friends are many.
- Puppies know when you need one in your lap.
- Turning 40 next year probably won't be so bad after all.
Monday, December 30, 2002
Back at it.
My body didn't have any problem jumping out of bed around six this morning, but I'm having a bit of difficulty convincing my brain that it should be at work today. As has been the case for the past several years, the company that signs my paycheck is dropping a new catalog immediately after the new year begins. This means that pages need updating, server-side redirects need implementing, dynamic functionality needs modification and testing, style-sheets need caressing, and naturally several bits of product data that should have been sitting on my hard drive prior to Christmas need to be tracked down at the last minute. Before the web settled into our lives like a bad head cold, all I had to worry about was making sure the new fonts and clip art collections were copied onto a set of freshly labled floppy disks before we winged into San Francisco for Macworld. Of course, I was usually stuck in front of a Mac Classic in the hotel room, finalizing the kerning pairs in a typeface the night before the show started, but at least there wasn't a web site needing attention at the same time. Ah, the clockwork regularity of a monstrous year end deadline never ceases to bring a tear of joy to my eye.
Sunday, December 29, 2002
Just glad she's so stubborn.
It's been a while since I've written about what's happening with my mom. That's partly due to things going well over the past few days, and partly due to a setback which threw me and my family for a loop prior to that. The thing is, we almost lost her on Boxing Day. Her condition had been stable, but not really moving up or down the scale one way or the other. That evening after dinner, we got a call from the nurse on duty that something had occurred which caused a drastic and dangerous increase in her heart rate. Things didn't look good, but the fact that an intern was checking on her when this happened more than likely saved her life that night. There was a cardiac reaction to the amount of fluids being pumped into her body to keep the vascular spasms in check. Her heart apparently had enough of it, thank you very much. The ICU staff managed to get her heart rate back down, started a blood transfusion to dope up the quality of her blood, and put her on two different types of IV drips that would help strengthen her heart and regulate its beating. My wife and sister and I had met my dad at the hospital after the initial call from the nurse. Although there was really nothing we could do, we slept in the ICU waiting room that night. My sister and I didn't stay there for my mom or for ourselves. We stayed there for my dad, who obviously needed family around him while the details played out. Thankfully, my wife stayed for me, as I was teetering somewhere between frustration and betrayal. In the morning, all of the science and magic and prayer must have worked, because my mom was still with us. She's almost weened off of the special heart medication and the ventilator is being used less and less. Yesterday, when I was holding her hand, she grabbed it tight and raised it up to my chin. When my prickly five day beard touched the always soft skin of her fingers, I swear she turned her head suddenly, winced and then scowled at me. She never did like it when I left my face unshorn. She still doesn't. Thanks for being so stubborn mom.
Picking up the slack.
See what happens when your life gets turned upside down? You tend to forget to keep doing the little things that make the days enjoyable. Things like updating the domain name of the week, for example. I've never been one to completely shirk my duty, I just let it slide a bit. That being confessed to, let me present three weeks worth of potential internet address consumables for your bookmarking enjoyment: lostshot.com; shiftings.com; and the strangely appropriate prayingmadness.com are now in the house. Ah... I'm sure we all feel better already.
Friday, December 27, 2002
Oh, the weather outside is...
Frightful? Not in your life. Joyful. Peaceful. Cleansing. Enough of the grey and brown already. It's winter for goodness sake and I've never been so happy to see it snow. This the first time in ages that a change in weather actually made me smile. Well, that and the fact that the kids have been singing Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow! ever since the first flake fluttered this afternoon. I'm not getting my hope up, but maybe it will even stick around until the morning.
Sunday, December 22, 2002
Keeping us on our toes.
As if we didn't have enough current affairs to keep us occupied this week, my not quite two year old nephew decided to liven things up a bit more by taking it upon himself to ingest part of a blown-glass Christmas tree ornament. He's fine, but my sister isn't any calmer due to the incident. I guess he just couldn't let grandma hog all the spotlight this week. By the way, my dad was talking to my mom in ICU earlier today and asked her to give him the thumbs up if she could hear him. She did. I think she topped my nephew after all.
Friday, December 20, 2002
How do I loath Microsoft?
Let me count the ways...
- Klez Wins Virus of the Year
- Windows XP, Winamp Flaws Endanger File Swappers' Computers
- Microsoft's Patching Problem
- One Click Fraud: More Microsoft Scammers Likely
- Microsoft To Bump Apple Into Sync-hole?
- E-mail Viruses Double In 2002
- Microsoft Flaws Could Hit Music Traders
- New Windows Network Worm Detected
- Windows XP Wi-Fi Access Insecure
- Microsoft Issues Triple Set of Security Bug Patches
Merry Christmas.
Thursday, December 19, 2002
No news is good news.
It was a day of pretty much next to nothing new. That's good. My dad slept at home and had a decent enough rest to sound energetic and chipper when I spoke to him this morning. I went back to work, actually enjoyed a meeting, accomplished a ton of stuff that needed to be taken care of sooner or later, and for the most part, felt almost normal again. That's good too. As for my mom, her last CT scan didn't show anything out of the ordinary. Today's angiogram was a clean slate as well. So was the echocardiogram. The gastrointestinal swab showed some preliminary signs of pneumonia, but that's to be expected in these situations. The one thing that amazed me was the fact that she has been off the Morphine since last night. Today, things looked and felt better. That might not be the case a couple of days from now, but I'm not thinking that far in advance.
I'd also like to thank everyone who has contacted me regarding my mom. Some of you have known my mom nearly as long as I have. Some of you I've just met. The words and thoughts and prayers shared with me and my family have been appreciated and remembered. Thank you.
Wednesday, December 18, 2002
At least her feet are warm.
It's been almost 48 hours since my mom collapsed. Doped up on Morphine, even when she opens her eyes or moves her toes, she may as well be completely asleep. Her blood pressure is up, but not as up as the doctors would like. Her cranial swelling is down, apparently never ballooning to where they had predicted. A couple more wires and tubes go in today, just to be sure that stuff that I honestly don't want to know about, isn't there. My dad is saying that he'll probably spend the night at home this evening, rather than scrunched into one of those awful, squeaky vinyl waiting room sofas. I think he's doing ok. My mom is doing ok too. At least her feet are warm. Her feet were never warm at home.
Tuesday, December 17, 2002
Mom?
I want to call out her name and have her answer back. But I can't do that because everything is different today. My mom suffered a grade V intracerebral aneurysm yesterday afternoon. My dad found her unconscious on the bathroom floor. She underwent surgery last night and is currently in critical condition in ICU. She made it through the night. So did my dad. So did the rest of my family. My mom is a tough old bird and she's already responding to some external stimulation. I can't help but take that as a positive sign. The next two days will be more telling. Our hopes and prayers are getting us through this one hour at a time. That's all we can do right now, because now everything is different.
Monday, December 16, 2002
Input. Output. All around the port.
When your company name is straddling the chasm between typographic awkwardness and nerdy self-awareness, your product better be damn good and useful. From what I've seen so far, IOXperts seems to have avoided most of the issues surrounding its corporate moniker by developing some dearly needed device drivers. USB and FireWire-based cameras, webcams and other devices that were stuffed in their original boxes with the intent of working for a Windows master are now available for users of OS X using their drivers. They've got a universal 802.11b wireless networking card driver on the bench as well. Nice.
Friday, December 13, 2002
Photo of the day.
Graffiti on wall of disused school. Here's another view.
55th Avenue & 2nd Street Southwest, Calgary.
Thursday, December 12, 2002
All together now...
Deck us all with Boston Charlie, Walla walla, Wash., an' Kalamazoo! Nora's freezin' on the trolley, Swaller dollar cauliflower alley'garoo! Don't we know archaic barrel, Lullaby lilla boy, Louisville Lou? Trolley Molly don't love Harold, Boola boola Pensacoola hullabaloo! Bark us all bow-wows of folly, Polly welly cracker n' too-da-loo! Donkey Bonny brays a carol, Antelope Cantaloup, 'lope with you! Hunky Dory's pop is lolly gaggin' on the wagon, Willy, folly go through! Chollie's collie barks at Barrow, Harum scarum five alarum bung-a-loo! Duck us all in bowls of barley, Ninky dinky dink an' polly voo! Chilly Filly's name is Chollie, Chollie Filly's jolly chilly view halloo! Bark us all bow-wows of folly, Double-bubble, toyland trouble! Woof, Woof, Woof! Tizzy seas on melon collie! Dibble-dabble, scribble-scrabble! Goof, Goof, Goof!Copyright © 1961 Walt Kelly / Okefenokee, Glee & Perloo, Inc.
Zoom. Zoom. Zoom.
We launched a nifty little gizmo on the Veer site today. Something to play with. Something to click on. Something to make life easier for all you designers who have to make image purchasing decisions day after day after day. Something we like to call Image Zoom. Enjoy. By the way, it requires Flash 6, but it's really worth it.
Wednesday, December 11, 2002
Upping my dosage.
Another Newton-related weblog has hit the bitwaves. I've appreciated Daniel Padilla's nifty hardware tweaks and awfully useful Newton utilities for quite a while. Now, I can enjoy him in text form as well. Please welcome Newton Dose to the daily reading list.
Driving a hard bargain.
When you stumble across the opportunity to purchase a genuine replacement hard drive for that dusty Macintosh Portable languishing in the corner, and the price is a quarter of what you'd pay if you sent the old, flaky hard drive in as an exchange, what would you do? You buy the darn thing and not ask any questions, that's what you'd do. Jump in while you can and take advantage of the situation. These suckers aren't getting any more plentiful you know. And ding dang it, I'm going to get that old MacAnchor up and running again if it kills me. Now, if I could just find a surplus Widget drive for my Lisa, I'd be beside myself.
Tuesday, December 10, 2002
I'm just happy to be nominated.
It's time to cast your final votes for the 2002 edition of the Newtie Awards. What the heck is a Newtie? A fair question given that most upstanding folks haven't been hanging around Newtons as much as some of us. The Newties are annual awards given out by Mr Rich Lindsay of This Old Newt fame, celebrating the best Newton-related software releases, upgrades, hardware hacks, web sites, and personalities the community has to offer. This year, there just happens to be three projects I'm spearheading in the running for awards. I don't normally enter these on my own account, but this year the Newton Glossary, the Newted Community web site, and my personal Newton web server were all nominated by my green-ensconced peers. If you've got a moment to spare, head on over to the official Newtie Awards Voting Booth and flip a lever for one of your favourites. If any of my humble projects happen to be included on your short list, that'd be great. No ballot stuffing please.
Photo of the day.
Neon sign in salon window. 5th Avenue Southwest, Calgary.
Monday, December 09, 2002
An all-star celebrity domain name spectacular.
After reading this, you'll likely think that I'm compensating for being a week behind on posting the latest available domain names by resorting to overly cute and forcibly clever candidates. Well, you'd be mostly correct on that assumption. However, you also have to admit that there is something inherently smileworthy about the availability of mattdaemon.com. Snicker. And to be completely honest, I've been chuckling over the victormanure.com address for at least five minutes already. Crap, I'm showing my age again. All right, that's enough. Sigh.
[ Update ] Dear Jane send me an email and was all in a tizzy over this posting. Unprovoked, she jabbed her blunted instrument of query at me thus: "What? No benafflict.com?" Perhaps next week my friend. I hear there's another position opening up.
Saturday, December 07, 2002
Mei camera obscura.
Fresh from the in box:I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to cease and desist in the usage of your "Grantcam." You see, I'm Grant... I have a camera, granted, it's not a web cam, but still... obviously mine is the true Grantcam. I searched all over your lovely little site for your date of birth, but couldn't find it anywhere. I'm sure I'm older than you, so my camera is probably older than yours and therefore would have been named first. It's all about longevity...you know it, I know it... and the cameras sure as heck know it!! Anyhow...that's that then. Enjoy your weekend, and your Hutchinsoncam, as I'm sure you'll be referring to it from this point forward! Grant Cummings Elmore, OhioWell, Mr Grant Cummings from Elmore, Ohio - if that's your real name - you must realize that most government agencies and publicly funded arts groups actually hold the rights to the term 'grant', so we both may be out of luck. For the record, I landed on this big blue marble in 1963 (Ha! Top that!) and the Grantcam has been in commission serving up the occasionally embarrassing, but always pointless, image of my mug since July 1996 (Double ha!). Prior to this internet thing smacking me upside the head, I was in fact a photographer. And you know what that means... I used a camera. A Grantcam as well. So there.
Friday, December 06, 2002
When webcams go bad.
I found this image staring back at me from the EvoCam preview window when I came into work this morning. The camera was working, the timestamp was updating and new files were being uploaded to the server, but the images (taken yesterday) were frozen in some sort of suspended (and yet composited) animation. It's a rather nifty state of pixel corruption, now that I think about it. I just wish I knew how to duplicate this particular effect on the fly.
They don't call it boilerplate for nothing.
This is an actual signature found at the end of an actual message that I actually received today. Bulletproof and bilingual. What more could you possibly ask for in an email transmission and any accompanying attachment?----------- IMPORTANT NOTICE - AVIS IMPORTANT -------------- Computer viruses can be transmitted via email. Recipient should check this email and any attachments for the presence of viruses. Sender and sender company accept no liability for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this email. This email transmission and any accompanying attachments contain confidential information intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. Any dissemination, distribution, copying or action taken in reliance on the contents of this email by anyone other than the intended recipient is strictly prohibited. If you have received this email in error please immediately delete it and notify sender at the above email address. Le courrier électronique peut être porteur de virus informatiques. Le destinataire doit donc passer le présent courriel et les pièces qui y sont jointes au détecteur de virus. L?expéditeur et son employeur déclinent toute responsabilité pour les dommages causés par un virus contenu dans le courriel. Le présent message et les pièces qui y sont jointes contiennent des renseignements confidentiels destinés uniquement à la personne ou à l?organisme nommé ci-dessus. Toute diffusion, distribution, reproduction ou utilisation comme référence du contenu du message par une autre personne que le destinataire est formellement interdite. Si vous avez reçu ce courriel par erreur, veuillez le détruire immédiatement et en informer l?expéditeur à l?adresse ci-dessus. ----------- IMPORTANT NOTICE - AVIS IMPORTANT --------------
Unofficially, we're a user group now.
I am pleased to report that the first meeting involving two of Calgary's four or five remaining Newton users occurred last night. I say four or five because the count varies based on who happens to be in town and responding to their email at any given time. As far I as can recall, this is the first time I've been in a room with another Newton user in Calgary since about 1998. That is, if you don't count the numerous times my photographer friend Grant Waddell shows up on my doorstep with his eMate. Anywho, getting back to the original story, a fine gentleman named Norman Palardy and I met at the Cocktail Club. An oddly upscale-sounding name for an rather average bar. Zymeta, the company Norman works for, has an installation of their slick video jukebox technology at this location, so it seemed like a good choice to meet and get acquainted around a beer or two. As it turns out, I went to high school with his younger sister and she was good friends with my current boss' wife. Indeed, the world gets smaller and smaller. As we chatted, I discovered that Norm enjoys collecting old computer crap and relating geeky anecdotes nearly as much as I do. And his boss - who showed up a bit later on - is an old-school Mac developer who once was a beta tester for the original MessagePad. Just for kicks, I brought one of my prototype MessagePads along for the ride (a pre-release OMP with the snap-on screen protector) and I promised to bring more goodies out the next time we get together. All we need to do now is get the rest of the Green Toting Fools in town to join us and then come up with an official name. What are user groups wearing these days?
Wednesday, December 04, 2002
The flash cards were nestled all snug in their slots...
While my serial cable was tangled in knots. Yes, it's that time of the year again and wouldn't you know it, the December update of the Newton FAQ has just slid down the chimney.
Photo of the day.
Service station signage. Southeast Calgary.
Tuesday, December 03, 2002
My company can beat up your company.
The humble little startup I work for and enjoy immensely, is currently scrumming for one of the positions in the annual Fast Company Fast 50. As is with the rest of the entries, we have our own tale to tell and vision to share. Hopefully, if enough other people pause to consider our story, we may enjoy the pleasure of being featured in a future issue of Fast Company. Not that we're in it for the glamour or anything. Feh. Who needs that? We're just a neat bunch of folks who like what we're doing, and do it damn well. Read the thing, and if you like it, leave a comment. If you don't want to leave a comment, that's ok too. But tell me what you think anyway.
He's dead Jim (Von Ehr).
That's it. Fontographer is dead. Done. Buried. Toast. And FontLab, that wiseacre kid with the intercap haircut, killed it. Finally. The Mac version of this current, supported, stupidly powerful typeface creation tool just started shipping and there is absolutely no reason not to plunk down your $200 measly US dollars, punch in your geriatric Fontographer serial number, and sidegrade that sucker. Need a few more subtle hints? Read Adam Twardoch's review, gawk at the voluminous feature list, and then download the massive 716-page user manual for a bit of Bézier-controlled escapism after dinner.
Blogger control undergarment.
BloggerControl is a new kid on Pyra's block specifically for users of Blogger Pro and Blog Spot Plus. Great. Wonderful. It's about time. I love it. So when did this happen? Does it actually work? Has anyone used this mechanism to report problems and get feedback since it appeared? It's got to be better than trying to locate a solution in the current knowledge base. I just wish I had a current issue to plug into the system to give it a whirl. Maybe I should poke around underthe hood and find some obscure template formatting bug, or an entity translation problem, or dig a but further into why the lastBuildDate declaration in my RSS feed doesn't quite validate.
Now you see it. Now you don't.
And now you see it again. Mozilla 1.2.1 hit the shelves late yesterday and fixes a DHTML-related bug found in version 1.2 last week. As usual, the release notes are awaiting your inspection.
Monday, December 02, 2002
They'd apparently rather fight than switch.
I'm not sure which is more revealing of the current state of the whole InDesign vs. XPress tug o' war, this article over at MacCentral concerning Adobe and Quark scrimmaging for both mindshare and workflowshare, or the vociferous pissing match taking place in the MacCentral discussions. Oh yeah? Yeah!
Frustrating Transfer Protocol
Following a fairly common web development practice, we work with duplicated HTTP and FTP instances set up on a co-located server. One instance is our staging environment and one is the production or live environment. Today, I can't transfer any binary files to the staging server if those files are larger than 16KB or if my machine is assigned a DHCP-leased IP address outside of a certain range. Text files are fine. Small files are fine. Certain client IP addresses are fine. And like I mentioned, the exact same configuration on the production server works like there's no tomorrow. Using a different workstation with a lower IP address, I can transfer to my hearts content. This problem has generated the biggest pile of WTF I've seen in the office in a long, long time. Meanwhile, I suppose I'll just build stuff directly in the live site and backup to the staging environment when the server feels like cooperating again. Fug. Has anyone ever run across something similar to this? I should probably mention that the servers are running IIS. Maybe that's enough said right there.
What's for lunch?
Why, it's a cut of leftover herb-roasted pork, a dollop of home-made jalepeño mustard, sliced button mushrooms and Cheez Whiz® on a bagel, of course. Thanks for asking.
