Category: computing

I am a gigantic dork. I’m also praying that Matt doesn’t post the kickball pictures he took (I got a sneak peek during the conference through his shared iPhoto gallery – aren’t you PC people jealous?). They’re my new weight-loss motivators. I’m going to print one of them out and super-glue it to the fridge.

In other words, the pirate flag is going up today. I’m taking over something. I don’t know what yet, but there may be some “yargh”-ing and “avast me hearties” heard. Be on the lookout.

Oh, thank goodness, you can now have acquaintances on Orkut. And if you don’t know what that is, or don’t care, fine. Move on along then.

First of all, I had fois gras for the first time last night, and it was fabulous. How come no one told me?

Second, I am so not a major geek. I’m a definite lower-case geek. Compared to the people here, I’m a guy off the street. Which makes me smile, in a way. A lot of the people here are big-G Geeks. They are implementors and the people who build the things that I use every day to communicate (web browsers, for instance). I am a user. I’m a user of the standards the W3C comes up with, and I’m a user of the products these standards are used in. I create documents that follow these standards and are displayed in their products. I am horribly out-numbered.

At least now, I know my role. I am the representative of the regular “author” or “user” of the standard, not of the implementor. It means I better get my act together (and to that end, I now own a module, which is kinda scary).

This week is alternately boring (when I don’t understand what’s going on), and interesting (when I do). The food is amazing for the most part, and I’m having a ball with the language (and my lack thereof). What fun! Next week… Texas!!

Can I just tell you how much fun Drupal is? It’s not fun in the traditional “Oh look mommy, a new toy” kind of way.\
It’s fun in the frustrating “gotta beat the next level of this game, but that stupid monster keeps eating me”. I just set up another instance of Drupal for a little work experiment, and the taxonomy still gets me. If you’re writing a book, you probably don’t want to use a big nested taxonomy because you probably want to use the book modules method of nesting pages into chapters. But, if you want to use the forum module, you do want to create a big nested taxonomy. Drupal is sometimes very confusing. It doesn’s sport the best documentation, although the community is very helpful. There are some default UI elements for regular users that are less than intuitive, the same for the settings.

This is the glory and the pain of using open source software. You have all this power to use it or change it however you want. But, you’re allowed no expectation of support or documentation and you might just hit a deadend with nowhere to go (for the new site, I ended up redoing the taxonomy three or four times until I got it “just so”). I haven’t had the time to learn PHP yet, so I can’t just go hack it apart and make it do what I want.

And it’s not that I don’t like it. I really do (this internal site will be my second with it, you know about the first already). Drupal has some outstanding features right out of the box (the forums are awesome, and I really dig the books module). There are some really cool modules out there, provided by really nice people. It could use some… polish. Yeah, that’s the word I’m looking for. I’m sure it’ll happen, someday.

This may be where I’m staying in France: Hotel L’Ermitage du Riou. Holy crap, I’m really going to France!

Last Saturday we made a trek to the local used book store, where I picked up a beat up French/English Dictionary and a French Grammar refresher. I also got biographies of Truman and Lincoln for the plane, a copy of Gray’s Anatomy for Max, a very cool Gray’s Anatomy coloring book, and Max got a couple books for himself. I’m excited. I have plane reservations, language, and almost hotel reservations. I have suitcases, will get plane snacks, an appetite, curiosity, and now need to go get some good walking boots and make sure I know where I put my passport.

And after that comes Austin and SXSW Interactive, and the chance to meet a bunch of bloggers I’ve been reading for years, and see what everyone else is up to in the web world. I can’t wait!! Oh, and I’m all set for Austin. I have plane, hotel, car, etc all taken care of. Thanks to Senor Brown, I have dinner plans for Thursday night.

Oh yeah… wait, I need to get back to work. It’s really hard to concentrate with all this travel on the horizon.

You’ll never guess where I’m going next week. No, really, you won’t. Give up? I’m going to France. Better yet, it’s not just France, it’s the Riviera. And the best part? It’s for work, so I won’t be paying for it (well, I’ll be paying for some of it, and then being paid back, but that’s a minor detail). Why am I going? That’s an excellent question. You are looking at the newest member of the W3C CSS Working Group, and I couldn’t be happier. It feels good to be involved (OK, I’m not really “involved” yet, but I will be), and to get out there in the world. I’m so used to working just within my own little world and peering out but not participating, that this should be a lot of fun.

And I’m still going to Texas, then Northern California in August and November. At this rate, I’ll be a “premier” level frequent flier in no time. Yippee!!

Information wants to be free, sure. But it wants to be free because it wants to find other ideas, copulate, and spawn whole broods of new ideas. — the cluetrain manifesto – chapter five

It’s all the things I think I thought, but were too chicken to come out and say… and that’s scary. If you’re in business, and your business is online, you’re missing out if you don’t read it (all online, and all for free).

Guess where I’m going in March. And work is paying for it!! Yeeeeee-haw!! (I never thought I’d ever be excited to go to Texas, but here I am, excited about a trip to Texas)

I’m creating database tables of my own for a new product of my own design, for my own purposes, for the first time in a very long time. It feels good… I’m calling it mormoNotes, since it’s really for church (I take the notes in all the meetings I go to, and well, doing it in a text editor just isn’t working). I want a tool that creates nice templates, is searchable, and makes it easier to take notes in a wonderful hierarchical sorta way that I can then e-mail out. I know, tall order, but I think I’ve figured out how to do it. I’ll show it off when it’s all done (who knows when, but now that I have broadband, I’ll be online and be able to search documentation and divert myself from it without tying up a phoneline or feeling guilty. Yummmmmm-may.

Max and I rented a couple games this week to play while I was off. We got Jak II and Lethal Skies 2. We were hoping to get SSX3, but they didn’t have it yet. I’m sad to bring you these reviews, because I had such high hopes for these games. I really did. So, let’s get this over with:

Lethal Skies 2: This game’s pretty fun, and the graphics are great. The only thing missing in the rental is that Blockbuster doesn’t provide instruction booklets or even a little instruction on the back for most games. I’m completely stuck because I can’t find the button combination to use the air brakes. Without them, I can’t land, which means I can’t finish mission four. So… this one’s not even the game’s fault. Stupid Blockbuster. Maybe I’ll do gamefly. Hopefully, they provide some kind of manual.

Jak II: Max and I loved the first one. Jak and Daxter is one of the all-time great platformers. The story is great, the characters were funny, and it was just hard enough to be challenging without being impossible. It was the first game we bought when we got the PS2. We played it for months. So, when I heard the sequel was coming out, I was psyched. Holy crap, am I disappointed. They tried to up the maturity level, so there’s a lot more rust, guns, flying things, and grim, big-eared bad guys. Max didn’t like it right off the bat, and I tired of it after the first hour. This game is a lot harder than the first, and it’s hard from the beginning. The story isn’t as compelling from the start like the first one, and it just falls flat.

I’m really looking forward to SSX3. Tricky was the second game we bought, and we still play it. It’s that much fun.

And yes, I’m still working on the community site… It’s slow going, but I have a logo, and am working on creating a new template. I’ll give y’all more details on what I’m doing when I get closer to launch.