February 2006 Archives

Yesterday my co-worker announced that he's moving to Idaho and leaving Go Daddy's employ. It stinks because he was the second developer on board and he's been instrumental in so many aspects of the app. We've been through a lot and I felt really comfortable having him around. I even told him that reading his code made my eyes bleed because of his Hungarian notation and he didn't key my car. That's a team right there. Luckily, he's converted to a paying customer so there will always be a part of Dave in Go Daddy.

That leaves Greg and me to work on 1.3 and releases beyond. Unless, of course, you're a kick-ass C# developer who's passionate about blogs and wants to join our little revolution. Because, hey, do you know any better programmers than yourself?

[The views expressed on this website/weblog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Go Daddy Software, Inc.]

So Wordpress now has Widgets and a sidebar editor, available depending on the theme. I tried to drag and drop like they said but I couldn't get it to work on Firefox 1.5 or IE6 on a stock Windows XP installation. Crazy!

This is especially timely for me since I've been working on a revision to Quick Blog's Manage Sidebar functionality for our next release. I've always liked the current clickfest version pictured to the right. I spent a lot of time getting its Javascript just right. It's not easy to keep those little arrows looking just so as the components are moved through the list. In fact, there's some pretty sophisticated DOM scripting there because you're actually moving table rows within a table and between two separate tables.

The new version, frankly, rocks the Casbah.

This 1.2 release—due soon—is cram packed full of features. I seriously think that it is our biggest release ever (well, except for 1.0 because that let the cat out of the bag). We'll also soon have a public blog where we can really discuss things and give the releases their due. I came up with the name that we're going to use for it, but it's provisional until we can come up with something better. Of course, I'll link to it here when it happens.

[UPDATE (2/26/2006): One of the commenters on that entry said, "This is why Wordpress is lightyears ahead of the 'other guys'!" I have to suppose that that comment was out of ignorance.]

[UPDATE 2 (2/26/2006): Looks like the WP.com drag and drop is done using script.aculo.us. It really is a lovely library, but there are some quirks using it. My pet peeve is that there's no onDrop callback for the Sortable, even though there is one on the Droppable. I found an awesome suggestion to use the onMouseUp event.]

[The views expressed on this website/weblog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Go Daddy Software, Inc.]

I’ve wanted to try one ever since Mr. Burns scolded someone for interrupting his lime rickey. Carbonated, but not overly so. Can hardly taste the lime. Zero aftertaste. Solid drink, nothing spectacular.

3 of 5 stars

Tastes like a carbonated orange drink. Close to seltzer water or ginger ale. Ahh, there’s orange juice and carbonated water listed on the label. That’s it. Schartner Bombe | American importer

3 of 5 stars

Very lemon-y. What did I expect? Something more akin to lemonade than lemon with some flavoring to take the edge off. No real aftertaste, just sourness.

2 of 5 stars

Moderate flavor, perhaps sweeter than most. Slight vanilla aftertaste, but nothing bad. I'd rate this a middle of the road vanilla cream. Official Site

3 of 5 stars

Smokey flavor, citrus-based drink. Best sipped. Hits hard at first sip, leaves a bit of an aftertaste. Somewhat unpleasant. Review

2 of 5 stars

I've long said that I've never met a strawberry soda that didn't suck. They're invariably too sweet. This one, however, isn’t half bad. It’s got a distinctive can/bottle and no aftertaste. Official site

4 of 5 stars.

Ginger beer strikes quite a contrast with root beer. It’s a little more spicy, a little more ker-pow. Not sure I like that in a beverage. Burns the throat and upsets the stomach. Stewart’s

2 of 5 stars

Dr. Pepper knock-off. A microbrew soda from a restaurant called Fitz’s in St. Louis, MO. A little bit more cherry-flavored than Dr. Pepper and definitely lower in the flavor index than its more famous father.

2 of 5 stars

"Sparkling orange beverage." Pretty tasty. No negatives. No aftertaste. (Second taste report: liking it more and more.) Pop the Soda Shop | Wikipedia

4 of 5 stars

In other news, I received my brand new digital camera, the Casio Exilim EX-Z750, and I couldn't be more excited. (Side note: what the hell is with that name? I am going to have to Google it whenever I need to refer to it. Geesh.) I ordered it based solely on this exhaustive review; I actually hadn't even seen one until it was already shipping. I love taking pictures and, to me, the most important thing about taking good pictures is having a camera handy. In that vein, the smaller the better.

Previously, I had the Canon PowerShot S200 and I loved it. It was the smallest thing going at the time, but it's really aged since I bought it. The two batteries I had stopped holding a charge; it was far larger than my cell phone and thus cramped in my pockets; it lacked the sophistication of newer models; and the shutter speed was lethargic. I could start to take a picture of my daughters doing something and completely miss the action once the picture was actually taken. We bought the Fuji FinePix S-5000 for precisely this reason: it has a fast release and it feels solid. But it clearly isn't pocketable and so we often don't have a camera handy for life's special moments.

I'll give a better report after I've used it awhile, but I've already noticed some serious pluses. (I also ordered this super fast 1 GB SD card for only $58.99, which seems like a great deal. Would have been better had I ordered before 1/30/2006 and gotten the $20 mail-in rebate. Darn.)

[UPDATE (2/16/2006): Oh yeah, I also found this review helpful.]

[UPDATE (2/26/2006): Darn. Amazon's got it on sale for $298.99, a full $20 off what I paid. At the time, Amazon had a price of $349 so BuyDig.com's $319 was a steal. Darn.]

Today the Quick Blog team moved into our own office. With a door. And one wall that's a window! Yeah, it kind of stunk having to move all my crap again but come on—it's my own (plus two co-workers) office. I seriously can't complain.

Here's what this means for Bill:

• No more waiting until 9:30 am to get access to the communal stock of Mountain Dew.
• No more having to listen to people run their hands down the length of my cubicle as they walk down the hall.
• No more of nose-blowing guy—well, no more of me hearing nose-blowing guy.
• No more people stopping next to my cube for impromptu meetings.
• No more loud phone conversations piped directly into my brain because of direction and wave travel.
• No more being at the mercy of whatever thermostat might be controlling my small little section of the climate.
• No more teacher's dirty looks.

I'm hoping that having the entire team in one room will foster some excellent communication and knowledge transfer. I'm also hoping that our personal phone conversations don't drive us to loathing each other. But mostly I'm just ecstatic at getting a luxury that most of the Go Daddy developers don't get. Err, another one.

[The views expressed on this website/weblog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Go Daddy Software, Inc.]

Think Secret is posting a rumor about a brand new iPod Video coming out April 1st. I can officially confirm it. How, you ask? Well, the 60 GB iPod Video I bought just arrived last night. There you go; you can take that to the bank.

I've been glancing through some of the blogs that we host at Quick Blog. Most of the time I am filled with warm feelings at families planning reunions, students travelling the world, and the inevitable baby blog. Other times I've seen some pretty sick stuff. It was truly one of the things I was most looking forward to while I was developing during pre-release.

Today I found one run anonymously by someone in the New Orleans Police Department. I'll confess that I don't understand half of it, but what I do strikes me as reminiscient of Mini-Microsoft. This guy or woman is trying to bring the police's voice to the public or give a voice to the police men who might otherwise suffer reprisals. I totally dig that!

I feel enormous pride that I've helped someone there find a forum. Okay, not me personally, but my and my co-worker's work. It puts a different spin on things that you might not get when you're focused on slinging code.

[The views expressed on this website/weblog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Go Daddy Software, Inc.]

I got moved to a new section of the building so that our entire team can be in a single row. Overall, I'm pleased with the move. I was in an extremely high-traffic area with my back to the executive suite door across from my wing's bathrooms and break room. I was constantly distracted by moving shapes in my peripheral vision.

Because I wear Etymotics all day, these shapes always seemed to be in my cube wanting to talk to me. I'd whip around to find no one there and then I'd resume working. As I said, it was very distracting. My new cube has higher walls and no movement in my periphery. I have definitely noticed a difference in my productivity over here.

The downside is that it's in one of the dark areas that programmers seem to love and I've never liked. Rather than requesting Facilities to turn on my light (and simultaneously causing some programmers to recoil and hiss like a vampire near a just-opened door), I'm going to give it a shot and see if I still abhor the darkness.

[The views expressed on this website/weblog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Go Daddy Software, Inc.]

To this editorial in Der Spiegel, I say "Hear, hear!" The reaction of the Islamic world to the Danish cartoons has been wholly irrational and consistent with past lunacy. I am disgusted by it and at the same time I hope that it provides such a stark contrast that the world will finally see what might be the scourge of the 21st century.

I am sick and tired of being told that we need to respect their rights when they so wantonly fail to reciprocate. If they could keep to themselves, then I'd say they could live however they'd like. But when they bomb our cities, kill our troops, kidnap our journalists, and now destroy buildings because they don't like a political cartoon, I say that they've abrogated their right to tell us what we should do.

The Rule of Reason has got some great links on this matter.

[UPDATE (2/9/2006): And of course there's now Mohammed Dance. {via}]

[UPDATE 2 (2/9/2006): Ironically, 900 Danish websites and 1,600 Western sites were defaced today. Do we need any more evidence that this whole flare-up is just a ruse for general anti-Western sentiment? If it were anything else, wouldn't the attacks and vandalism have been centralized around the actual "perpetrators"? Moreover, can you imagine if we painted Islam with such a wide brush because terrorists were Muslims? Oh wait, I remember what happened: we stopped "profiling" Muslims for special treatment aboard airplanes and started treating them the same as 70-year-old grandmothers flying the friendly skies. And our wonderful president took to the airwaves to remind the American people that Islam is a wonderful religion that deserves oh-so-much respect because it is so peaceful (unless you're a woman or run afoul of Sharia) and just as good as Christianity (except it's not and you should really go to church more, you heathens). This whole mess is so sickening.]