Me On Golf
Saturday, August 4th, 2007I finally got around to doing something I’ve wanted to do for months; start blogging about golf. For anyone who’s remotely interested, welcome to The Long Road to Scratch
I finally got around to doing something I’ve wanted to do for months; start blogging about golf. For anyone who’s remotely interested, welcome to The Long Road to Scratch
It’s March 10th, and I just sat outside in a t-shirt, without socks, drinking a Newcastle Ale (in a delightfully diminutive stubby bottle) for about an hour. WX says it’s only 12 degrees centigrade, but I don’t believe it.
God, I can’t wait for summer.
Well, after many hundreds of deleted comment spams, I’ve finally made the move from a really old version of .Text to Wordpress. I feel like this was a case where going with the status quo definitely pays off, as I’ll be able to pull from the vast amount of material on the Web when I have issues now. Oh, and I can now moderate comments, which rules.
I’ve also completely updated the design (or as an art monkey designer like B-Rad would say, I’ve re-branded). The design has been around for over a year, so all that was left was to create a Wordpress theme out of it, which was pretty simple.
I also integrated my little Javascript code highlighter, which probably doesn’t work in IE 6, but I’ll fix that at some point in the future. It allows me to just paste code into a code element and have the text formatted and highlighted nicely.
It’s definitely a work in progress. I only bothered importing about a quarter of my previous posts, and none of the comments. But now I have search!
Are you male? Do you like to drink? Do you like to drink excessively? How about boobies… Do you like those as well? What about public humiliation of others? Well, if you’ve answered yes to any of those questions, then I’ve got a proposition for you:
Come to my stag.
If I know you, you’re invited. But be prepared to write off the entirety of this coming Sunday, and possibly Monday as well. Bring friends if you wish, but no females allowed (unless they’re strippers).
Details:
Once we’ve had a few drinks at The Point, we’ve got a bus that’ll take us to The Roadhouse sometime after 10:00pm. There’s no obligation to pay for anything, other than your own booze, however if you take the bus we’ve been advised that we should tip the bus driver (I’d say ~$10 each is pretty fair. Cheaper than a cab by far).
I also need to emphasize that this will be your last chance to party with me. Once I’m married, I’ll become a soulless automaton endlessly repeating the words “Yes, dear,” with an invisible leash around my neck that gets inexplicably yanked whenever I look at foreign booty. You’ve been warned.
If you’ve got any questions, please ask them using the Comments form on this page, so that everyone can see the responses. Feel free to pass the link to this page on to anyone we may have forgotten to notify.
Word.
“If you’re uncertain why something doesn’t behave as expected, the likelihood of the bug fixing itself when Jeff goes to investigate it is directly proportional to the amount of effort Jeff must expend to reproduce the error. “
…Most of the time, they don’t hold any logic. If they do, it’s extremely hard to understand, often backwards, and if you misunderstand something, all you’ll get back in response is a cryptic message that doesn’t mean anything.
I’m currently living at least a half-hour drive away from my workplace in downtown Calgary; on a good day, not during rush-hour. Driving to work actually takes me about 45 minutes each way, and can cost anywhere from $8.00 to $15.00 a day, not including the cost of gas and maintenance of my vehicle. This might not seem so bad to some people, but for me it’s pretty much unworkable. So I take the train, which includes about 30 minutes actually on the train, 5 minutes of driving to the station and another 5 to walk the final leg to work. No matter how you slice it, I’m out well over an hour of my time each day. If you choose to look at it that way, which I don’t.
I’m of the belief that an experience is what you make of it. Myself, I actually enjoy the time I spend commuting, which sounds rather sick and twisted. Here’s how I cope:
There you have it. I’m not sure how valuable any of this is, but I figured it would be good to put it out there.
I’ve got good reasons for slacking off on the blogging lately, I swear. First off, I bought a new house in southern Calgary with my fiance, Jackie. We’re just getting settled in, and things are going remarkably smoothly. Luckily neither of us had much in the way of worldly possessions, so the move was slicker-than-snot-on-a-doorknob. As a direct side-effect, I’ve been completely distracted from any programming or computer stuff for the past month, which is my main excuse.
Another major piece of news (where major equals minor to everyone but myself…) is that I’ve switched. Yes, Windows bitches, that’s right. I’m typing this post in TextMate, on a frickin’ 12″ Powerbook. To be honest, I couldn’t be happier. The laptop itself is so utterly beyond anything the PC world could muster it’s almost laughable for me to think that I was this close to buying a Dell.
Anyways, it feels good to be back. I feel like I still have a few good ideas worth posting, so hopefully I can amp it up here a little bit. Just to keep this somewhat on topic, Jeff Atwood is looking for good examples of CSS-based websites rockin’ the .NET framework. It seems he found David Shea’s The Zen of CSS Design, and liked the vibe ol’ Davey was puttin’ down. I can personally vouch for the awesomeness of the Zen Garden, which almost everybody has seen by now. I know it single-handedly inspired me to learn CSS. So if you have any examples, drop a comment on Jeff’s blog. Word
As a developer, I’ve had to personally implement at least one Intranet for a large organisation, and have been privy to the details that have gone into the implementation of several others. It seems that there’s a big batch of common functionality that goes into each and every one of them. It also seems like every company of decent size on the planet has one. So why do most of them suck ass? Well, I don’t have the answer to that question, but I know of at least one or two (massive understatement alert) articles on the web that go into this issue in depth. All I can offer is my own insight.
First off, realize that the individuals you are most likely going to be directly dealing with as a developer are decidedly non-technical (think, Communications Department). Their main goal is usually to provide interesting and relevant content to a large number of users. Remember that part about the content. You’ll most likely receive requests for all kinds of little features, but (as I’ve said before) content is what really matters. If the publishers of content can’t do their jobs efficiently, you’re in trouble. One thing you’ll come to learn, is that it’s quite hard to find or develop a solution that makes publishing and managing simple content entry easy. This is often lost in all the features of “Enterprise” CMS packages. (I’m pointing directly at you, Microsoft CMS).
Secondly, don’t forget about stats. At some point, whether it’s in an initial RFP, or several months down the road after implementation, somebody will ask for stats. Luckily, this one is easy. Every web server keeps a detailed log of every request made to it, so all you have to do is hook up a stats program that will make the information all pretty like. Do yourself a favor, and at least make sure that your web server is actually keeping these logs. That way, you can retrofit a stats package on later, when this feature is actually requested.
Next, think about search. There are actually more than a few CMS packages that don’t include this relatively useful (massive understatement alert) functionality by default. If you find yourself in this sorry situation, have no fear. Just think Lucene. It’s a Java technology (also available in a .NET version) that allows you to quite easily create a customized search solution for your particular situation. You can use it to index files, or you can base it off of an existing object model (like with Microsoft’s CMS). It’s quite easy to use, from a development standpoint, and will most likely provide results that are better than a package you might pay for.
Very importantly, you must realize that most users will write or receive content written in Microsoft Word. This means, that they will expect to be able to cut content from Word, and paste it as is into the CMS interface and just be done with it. This opens up a whole bunch of fun issues, (like what happens to images and charts). It’s hard to balance having this functionality with maintaining a good, consistent look and feel. I don’t have an easy answer to this one, unfortunately. Just be aware of it.
And lastly (at least for now), be wary of situations where the technology is actually chosen for you before you start development, without any input from yourself. This likely means that, sadly, the points I’ve mentioned above were not considered very well. It also means that a salesperson likely already sold a solution to somebody before they fully understood what was needed. This happens a fair amount of the time. Good luck with that.
That’s all I can think of right now, although there’s probably more.
Why are they British?
As of last Friday, the first company to employ me as a developer has gone belly-up. Kanga Communications is no more.
I have many good memories of Kanga, especially in it’s early days. I came on board as their third programmer in the summer of 2003, and had the opportunity to work on many interesting projects. If it wasn’t for Kanga, I’d have never met a bunch of great people (Mike, Mila, Christophe, Chris, Ross, Brad, Barb, Linda, Miia, Nick, Darren, Ivan, The Hobbits, Giovanni, and many more). If it wasn’t for Kanga, I wouldn’t be where I am now; working on probably one of the largest agile teams in Calgary. It seems strange to think that a year ago, we were all part of a company of over 40 talented individuals, and now… Nothing.
It really makes you think.
