Lots of trouble with my normally trouble free blogging setup due to my system problems last week. I should be back on a regular schedule starting now. I did lose some posts unfortunately.
If you do any sort of Web Application development where you interact with form data, you owe it to yourself to check out the qForms Javascript API. It does all sorts of great things with validation and manipulating form fields dynamically, and it makes it easier than handcoding the scripts or cobbling together functions from other places. I haven’t had the time to check and see how it stands up to cross platform and cross browser testing yet because we are developing for a fixed platform/browser combination.
Top XML : XML-ify your stored procedures. Funny, this, I was just thinking about this while I was working this afternoon, and poof, there is an article up on dangerous meta. Perfect timing, I think I can use this tomorrow.
News.com: Viewing secrets are safe with Sonicblue. This is good news. I had started to think that big media could pretty much roll over technology from a legal perspective whenever it chose. I’m definitely going to look into picking up a ReplayTV for my TiVOless Television at some point in the future when the economics permit.
The ColdFusion MX Tag Updater for Cold Fusion Studio 4.x and 5.x has been released.
Here’s a listing of Actionscript Editors
Jeez, seems like everyone is switching over to Mac OS X from Windows these days. All I can say is welcome, it’s nice here.
O’Reilly Network: Flying High with AirPort. I wonder now, as I sit in my living room watching the NBA playoffs and surfing through my blogroll, how I ever lived without the wireless network in my house.
Atlanta Journal Constitution: Pair’s vision enabled avocation to build These women live next door to me, and the house that is featured in the article is across the street from mine. It really has been incredible watching them turn a shack back into a beautiful house.
They have released a new build of Chimera. It’s up to about 40 percent of my browsing now. It’s so much faster than IE that I think it is only a matter of time before I completely switch over.
Three Reasons to Migrate from ColdFusion Studio/HomeSite to Dreamweaver MX. There are a real lot of people in the Cold Fusion community that are nervous about this particular aspect of the transition to MX, and I’m one of them.
Such a great weekend, and computers played only a minor role. I trimmed the hedges today. While it doesn’t make for interesting bloggage, I enjoyed it thoroughly, and the front yard looks much better. This afternoon featured the first multi-user session at my backyard swimming pool. Much chlorine was then washed from my person, and Mexican food was then promptly consumed. To bed now I must go.
This Windows XP Service Pack 1 Preview reveals some interesting details about Microsoft’s plans to comply with the consent degree that is going to come out of their anitrust situation in Windows XP and future operating system releases. It seems, as always, that they are taking advantage of wording in the consent decree to do what they want, even if that flies in the face of the true spirit of the decree. I think this proves, for the umpteenth time, that they really need to be more strictly punished in this situation because it shows that they have little or no intention of actually changing the way they do business even if it has been found to be illegal by a court of law.
I’m currently watching the NCAA Lacrosse Semi-finals. It’s such a great sport. I really don’t understand why it hasn’t taken off more. I enjoy watching it more than virtually all of the professional sports that I’m a fan of. I have to admit that I played, and that I have a brother who plays, and that probably makes a huge difference in my level of interest.
Google is a fickle beast. I’m now in the fifties of a search for Robert.
Wow, out of over 25 million pages, I’m in the top fifteen Roberts listed on Google. I wonder what I need to do to get myself up in the top ten?
Card’s ‘Ender’s Game’ coming to screen This might be the best Science Fiction book ever written in my opinion. I’ve wondered why it had never been made into a movie, actually even out loud a couple of weeks ago. Between Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, the Matrix movies and all the comic book movies that have/are being made, we might just be in the golden age of science fiction/fantasy movies. I wonder which of the major cyberpunk works will be the first to be made into a major motion picture. I haven’t heard much about the Neuromancer movie that was being made lately. I would also love to see Snowcrash made into a movie someday, but it will be a very tough book to do justice to in a film.
It looks as if I’m going to be way too busy during the day to update, so I’m resolved to get a morning post in before I go to work starting tomorrow. It was, like most first days, both exciting and somewhat boring at times. I can tell that I am going to extend the limits of my skillset while building these applications. Now, I’m off to reward myself with a coffee while I clean the pool.
I start a new contract gig tomorrow. Web application development using high end SQL Server stuff and Cold Fusion. After the longish layoff, I’m really looking forward to building stuff again.
I’ve been a magazine addict for most of my life. I especially like discovering new magazines. I think that this is part of what made the Web so attractive to me initially. ReadyMade has to be the most amusing new magazine I’ve come across in a long time. I loved the first issue, and the second issue is out now. I would describe it as the magazine that Martha Stewart would come out with if she was actually cool and if she had a sense of humor about things. You should find this magazine, and then read it.
Xbox Live will cost $50 a year. Seems like a reasonable price to me. Especially with Star Wars Galaxies coming to the console. I think that Sony and Nintendo are leaving open the backdoor to the game market by neglecting this particular part of the console market. It’s a dangerous mistake in my opinion that may cost the entrenched companies their markets.
Well, I’m back today after a fun weekend in Northern California with my main squeeze. It was a short trip for the amount of flying involved, but I’d never been to Monterey and Carmel before. I enjoyed both, but liked Carmel much more, it’s less trashy and touristy, although it is still quite touristy. Today, I’m recovering from flying back on the redeye.
The chipmunk suicides continue. I estimate the death toll on my local chipmunk population at 12 or 13 now. This afternoon, I went out back to skim the pool, and floating in the middle of my pool was a baby chipmunk clinging to one of the pool noodles for dear life. I’m not sure how long he had been floating there, but he seemed like he had been there a while. I fished him out and dried him off, hopefully he will have learned a valuable lesson that many of his peers never learned: stay way from the ocean in the middle of the backyard.
Attack of the Clones was incredible. I won’t spoil anything here, but I heartily endorse it. As anyone who has been reading this site since 1997 or 1998 knows, I’m quite the Yoda fan, and his role in this movie was fantastic. This movie was much much better than the last one. I can only imagine how much this movie will gross at the box office. Update: Well, I slept off my midnight movie hangover, and now I’m reading what others thought of this movie. I’m really surprised at the mixed reviews this movie got. It was fun, it didn’t take itself too seriously, and it seems like a lot of other folks are taking it too seriously. I almost think that there is no way that George Lucas can win on the review front. On the other hand, there is almost no way he can lose on the dollar front, and what do you suppose is more important to him?
Yesterday, Dave was complaining(sort of) about the Smart Business interview he did. Today, Ziff Davis shuttered Smart Business magazine.