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The Mind of a Web Developer
0 Comments | Posted by Brent Danley in humor, programming, technology, web
The Mind of a Web Developer: An Illustrated Diagram
Matt, Mingle2, June 13, 2007
The Mind of a Web Developer
The iPhone 3GS is, to put it mildly, the most amazing device I’ve owned. This shouldn’t be too surprising since sophistication, design and my purchasing power are expected to increase with time. I love to listen to live air traffic control communications, tweet, manage email, play amazing games and locate local businesses on my iPhone. The marriage of GPS, multi-touch screen, accelerometers, microphone, speakers and a magnetometer (compass) enable developers to create amazing applications. It also happens to have a phone, but that, for me, is hardly its greatest feature.
Old and new iPhone theme
It isn’t perfect, though. Only a few of the standard apps can be run in the background (mail, phone, email) and none of the apps in the App Store can. This means that if I want to listen to Pandora Internet Radio or LiveATC or track billable hours I cannot use my iPhone for anything else for the duration of time I’m using those apps. Also, the iPhone cannot be tethered to a laptop to share its internet connection. The iPhone won’t let me customize the background or icons, either (this is a minor issue).
Next time you decide to arbitrarily hate a group of people (blacks, Jews, Muslims, atheists, …), think of this and ask yourself if you are qualified to have an opinion.
Use those frequent flier miles.
Jessica Hagy, Indexed, August 9th, 2006
Xenophobia
Be careful if you ever find yourself on Mars’ moon Deimos. One misstep and you could wind up in outer space.
XKCD: Gravity Wells
(View really big.)
25
TCMHS Web Dashboard Project
4 Comments | Posted by Brent Danley in development, programming, web
Since July I’ve been working on a large web dashboard project for Tri-County Mental Health Services in Lewiston, Maine. It’s been fun learning their business and working with the great people there. Although the project is moving more slowly than I’d like, progress is good and I think it looks nice. It will certainly be simpler to maintain than their manually generated legacy Excel spreadsheets. Not only do the charts tell stories about the business impossible with tabular data, they will see significant reductions in the amount of time spent generating their business analysis tools.
The user is able to not only change the date range, but also toggle the display of each individual metric series on each chart, including goals for each. The interactive changes are made dynamically, without requiring a page load. Kinda cool, eh?
The data is culled from disparate data sources and aggregated into a Microsoft SQL Server database I designed. Some of the data is entered via web-based forms I also developed. The server side code is written in PHP and the client-side scripting, obviously, is a combination of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. I make heavy use of the jQuery JavaScript Library and the flot plotting library. All data is sent from the server to the client in the JSON data-interchange format.
Site navigation is done utilizing CSS lists and the fixed zoom buttons–which change the range of all charts on the page simultaneously–use a single CSS sprite image technique.
There’s a lot of work to do, and I’m having a great time.
TCMHS Web Dashboard
January 26, 2010 – While there is much to be done on the web dashboard, there is not enough money to do it. Today my contract is over and, unfortunately, it has not been extended. Here are a couple screenshots of the product as of today.
TCMHS Web Dashboard - AGENCY
TCMHS Web Dashboard - ADULT
25
Ubuntu 9.10 Replaces Windows XP
6 Comments | Posted by Brent Danley in development, programming
Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala
Tonight I installed Ubuntu 9.10. The process was wicked simple. I burned the image to a disk and rebooted my machine. I verified the language and location and told it to use the entire hard disk and in a few minutes it was installed.
Configuring the wireless card was a breeze. It automatically recognized Kirsten’s Windows XP box so I could access her files. I got all the updates downloaded and installed. I’m currently listening to mp3s in Rythmbox and editing a screenshot in GIMP. Bliss.
Tomorrow I’ll set up the LAMP web server stack and configure dual-monitor support.
My new Ubuntu 9.10 computer
22
Be Good For Goodness’ Sake!
2 Comments | Posted by Brent Danley in humor, philosophy, religion
This is just as instructive if you replace “Santa” with “God”.
Wondermark #474; In which you better Watch Out, December 23, 2008
Be good for goodness' sake
Wow! Just one more reason to like President Obama.
Obama to Back New Heavy Rocket, Bigger NASA Budget, Cancel Ares 1
Jesus Diaz, Gizmodo, December 22, 2009
Reporting on a White House and NASA meeting last Wednesday, sources say that the President has decided to give NASA an additional $1 billion in 2011. The extra funding will serve to create a new, simpler heavy lift rocket, as well as to increase the fleet of satellites controlling Earth’s land, oceans, and atmosphere.
Rocket size comparison
Someone emailed this to me. I thought it was good enough to post for your enjoyment.
Jose Cuervo Christmas Cookies
1 cup of water
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup of sugar
1 tsp salt
1 cup or brown sugar
4 large eggs
1 cup nuts
2 cups of dried fruit
1 bottle Jose Cuervo TequilaSample the Cuervo to check quality.
Take a large bowl, check the Cuervo again, to be sure it is of the highest quality, pour one level cup and drink.
Turn on the electric mixer. Beat one cup of butter in a large fluffy bowl.
Add one peastoon of sugar. Beat again. At this point, it’s best to make sure the Cuervo is still ok, try another cup just in case.
Turn off the mixerer thingy.
Break 2 leggs and add to the bowl and chuck in the cup of dried fruit.
Pick the frigging fruit off the floor.
Mix on the turner.
If the fried druit gets stuck in the beaters just pry it loose with a drewscriver.
Sample the Cuervo to check for tonsisticity.
Next, sift two cups of salt, or something. Who geeves a sheet. Check the Jose Cuervo. Now shift the lemon juice and strain your nuts.
Add one table.
Add a spoon of sugar, or somefink. Whatever you can find.
Greash the oven.
Turn the cake tin 360 degrees and try not to fall over.
Don’t forget to beat off the turner.
Finally, throw the bowl through the window, finish the Cose Juervo and make sure to put the stove in the wishdasher.
Cherry Mistmas !
This is wicked cool.
