04.19.08
Einstein on ModBook
Drooling, sputtering… Einstein on ModBook… WANT!
04.16.08
History meme
From the History meme, which I find kinda fascinating. Here’s mine, with the command split into three lines for display purposes. If you try this, you should put it all on one line.
history | awk ‘{a[$2]++}END
{for(i in a){print a[i] ” ” i}}’
| sort -rn | head
72 ping
72 ls
63 curl
62 cd
37 cal
32 whois
20 ssh
19 man
15 sudo
7 traceroute
I would suspect this is a common set for most web developing people. That ‘cal’ entry is because I often want to pull up a quick calendar for the year to check dates, but I don’t want to open iCal. Terminal is often open so it’s an easy reach to type ‘cal 2008′ or somesuch.
04.01.08
Timing is everything
In 2 and a half years, we expanded the use of Collage, our content management system (CMS) at work. And not just by a little bit, but by a whole lot. We had 9 separate sites that are all supported through this tool, and it was great. Then came the Web Server Crash of March 2008. In stark relief it became apparent that all of the sites that were in Collage were in the perfect position to be deployed to a new server within literally minutes.
BUT the few remaining straggler sites were not so lucky. We had to go through a painful re-construction of the sites that were either haphazardly structured, or used a “devageduction” platform (Development/Staging/Production as one server! Bad bad bad!) These sites are supposed to be EOL and the resources consolidated in a whole new project, but since that hasn’t yet materialized, we’re still supporting these sites without a safety net.
Well, worry no more. As of yesterday at about 3 pm, all of our sites were migrated into Collage. We now have the versioning, check-in/check-out functions, deployment tools all set up for every one of our web sites that we can support in this manner.
And at about 4pm that same day, I read this: The Scoop on Serena Collage. The CMS is to be sold or put down. It’s been backed up with some other more official announcements as well, but those are buried or hidden behind secure sites.
Serena’s already committed to supporting the software for another 18 months or so and even after that point, the software will continue to work, but it’s the timing that really gets to me. “Interesting times”, indeed.
03.03.08
Wither X-UA-Compatible?
IEBlog : Microsoft’s Interoperability Principles and IE8:
We’ve decided that IE8 will, by default, interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it can. This decision is a change from what we’ve posted previously.
Yay. Nice of them to come to our senses.
02.23.08
i've been contemplating referrer logs but…
When the search phrase “i’ve been contemplating suicide but it really doesn’t suit my style so i think i’ll just act bored instead” places your site at number 3 on the Google results, you really need to re-examine your online activities.
02.20.08
WebVisions rides again
While everyone else is getting ready for SXSW, the WebVisions board has been busy getting this year’s edition ready to go. I’m really excited that Jeffery Veen is back. His presentation (5 or so years ago) was one of the best ever and even though we usually don’t have return speakers, Veen is one of the few that I’m truly glad to hear again.
WebVisions: May 22 – 23, 2008 – Portland, Oregon
Media, technology and consumer trends visionary Lynne Johnson will join WebVisions to deliver the Thursday keynote address. Lynne is the Senior Editor and Community Director for FastCompany.com, a leading website and community for people passionate about business ideas that also offers the complete content of Fast Company magazine. She also writes a technology blog following web, media, and consumer trends for FastCompany.com, and guest blogs for techPresident and Black Web 2.0.
An internationally sought-after sage, author, and user experience consultant, Jeffrey Veen will return to WebVisions to deliver one of the event’s keynote addresses. Currently a Design Manager and project lead for Google’s Measure Map project, Jeffrey is returning to WebVisions to share his vision for the future of the Web.
At this point, WebVisions as an event runs really smoothly. We get a good set of volunteers returning each year, and my Tech Crews are always on top of things. I’m the stage manager and try to make sure that each speaker is prepared and comfortable, the audience is undistracted, and the volunteers understand that the audience members are expecting to have a great experience and we want to give them an outstanding experience.
WebVisions is incredibly cheap and for the quality of the speakers and the location, it cannot be beat. I hope you’re coming!
02.18.08
And the winner is…
I love the idea that the death of HD-DVD means that BluRay gets to be the one killed by downloads. It’s really time that we gave up this whole spinning platter thing and just went solid-state for anything that needs to be stored ‘off-line’ or transfered across non-networked machines.
02.17.08
Recent Timbers News
Here at Casa Del Futbol, we’re gearing up for the Timbers 2008 season which will open April 17. As part of the lead up to the season, a few articles that recently came out worth mentioning for their timbery content:
- Nice little prologue to an article covering the Timbers’ owner from the Business Journal.
- Amy and I were devastated to hear that Timber Jim is retiring. The press release was notable for calling Timber Jim what he should have always been known as: an icon.
- Chicago Sport Weekly looks at the new USL team and reflects on the differences between Timbers fans and Victory fans.
02.10.08
Corny SF Joke
Q: What did the Dalek dermatologist say to it’s patient?
A: “Exfoliate!”
(I’m truly sorry… I thought that up this morning. I realize that there are only a small sliver in the venn diagram subset between the circle of “UK SciFi TV enthusiasts” and those “familiar with skin care techniques.”)
02.06.08
Notes for the Smash Lab
Would someone please let Smash Lab‘s voice-over guy know that the Richter Scale does not ‘top out’ at 10, that it’s an open-ended scale? Thanks!
