November 2006
VideoBlog for Hersch
Herschell did the non-callout callout on his blog, and so here is my video blog. It’s just a live telling of this post but it’s possibly entertaining and only about 4 minutes long. I’ve got another one queued up too, so watch out! This one is super quiet so crank up the volume.
P.S. If you catch this post too soon, you might not be able to play the video because YouTube is still processing...
The Django book is free and online!
Adrian, Jacob, and Apress have put a beta version of the upcoming Django Book online for free! Find bugs, typos, and errors and we can all make the final version that much better. Only chapter 1 ([Introduction to Django]) and chapter 2 ([Getting started]) are up now, Adrian says they’ll be releasing two chapters each week until the book ships:
This is a pre-release, which means we’re...
October 2006
Hollaback Chicago
I’ve always had a good time (simultaneously entertaining and demoralizing) reading the original NYC version of this site, but just today I found the Chicago Hollaback site. For those of you unawares, the basis for this site is as follows:
Holla Back NYC empowers New Yorkers to Holla Back at street harassers. Whether you’re commuting, lunching, partying, dancing, walking, chilling, drinking,...
Fixed your link, Chef Taghap!
P.S. Whatever happened to that thing you said you were gonna do that time? eh? eh?
Notice anything different?
So, I'm an idiot
So lest anyone be confused, I’m a complete dolt. On Thursday I had one of those experiences that almost anyone new to a city has invariably had. I was riding the brown-line train home after I’d gone to work out at DePaul. I’m just sitting there with my nose in Ender’s Shadow; reading, reading, more reading. I look up at one point and think I see the “Southport” stop, which is great because it...
Stay the course!
Pissed
My glass of POM Black Tea exploded this morning. I was not happy.
Curse Gaming: Powered by Django
Curse Gaming is an international gaming website, but what’s unique about it is that their web team has totally re-written their site from the ground up using [Django]. Here’s what their new site does:
All content on the site, is now based off a robust wiki-like system.
The wiki formatting is used throughout the site for almost every text field. In files, forum posts, and news you...
Nerd stuff: Magpie 2.0 alpha, Wordpress MU 1.0,...
Just wanted to make note here of some stuff that was announced today: Wordpress MultiUser has hit version 1.0. I had totally forgot they were working on this :) The WordPress guys have also released version 0.72 of their forums software that integrates with WordPress, [bbPress].
Also, if you’re interested in parsing RSS using PHP, the Magpie library is probably the way to go. They’ve released...
Chocolate truffles!
After getting all our household chores done this morning, me and Jacqui took a trip down to 951 W. Armitage to visit Vosges Haut Chocolate, a chocolate boutique that has other stores located in SoHo, NYC; Michigan Ave., Chicago; and Las Vegas. You can buy their stuff in some other places:
New York City ~ Bergdorf Goodman Honolulu ~ Neiman Marcus Los Angeles ~ Neiman Marcus San Francisco...
My first week of lifting out (a success)
I’ve finally wrapped up my first full week of working out again and I’m feeling great. Still no real “cardio” unless you count the 1.5 miles or so I’m walking everyday ( I don’t because my heart rate goes nowhere ;) ) but I’ve already started to gain weight. That’s right, you heard correct I’ve gained weight since I started lifting. I’ve put on a pound or so of good muscle. Ever since I...
The blogging bundle in TextMate will upload...
…when you drag them into the window. It’ll also insert the markup for the image along with the correct path. Wow.
Gosh do I love Ender's game
I finished up the book yesterday evening and today at lunch I bought Ender’s Shadow. Wee!
Also, I found out today that I am getting 11 days off for Christmas :) Not sure how we’re gonna split that up between Chicago, Wichita, and elsewhere, but I’ll make it known to the right people when we do.
Also I’m tracking my weight lifting stuff [here]. Let me know if it works for you.
I am so sore
You never really notice now many stair steps you take each day until you start doing squats again.
Media Temple looking into adding Django support to...
A few days ago, after reading about Media Temple’s Grid-Server, I questioned whether they’d be extending the technology they use to run Ruby on Rails to Django. Jay Graves responded to that post that he’d contacted Media Temple about it and would be getting back to me. This is their [response]:
After being in contact with Media Temple about their (gs) server implementation I have received...
Quick snippets
I am halfway through Ender’s Game
It is supremely gross outside today
I am now a full fledged member of the DePaul fitness center (also known as the Ray Meyer fitness & recreation center) and I lifted for the first time in almost 2 months. It felt great and I’m happy I haven’t lost much in the way of my progress. This place has all the equipment I could ever want, and it’s only a...
Marriage, like Habeas Corpus, is on it's way out
Married couples, whose numbers have been declining for decades as a proportion of U.S. households, have finally slipped into a minority, according to an analysis of new census figures by The New York Times. The American Community Survey, released this month by the Census Bureau, found that 49.7 percent, or 55.2 million, of the nation’s 111.1 million households in 2005 were made up of...
Anyone out there looking to make a hot website...
Speaking of web design, I’ve really wanted my website redesigned for a while, but I’m too freaking busy to do it myself. I’m half tempted to just offer up a few hundred bucks and a color scheme and hope a brilliant person would take such a small pittance to help me out.
Let not even mention how awesome it would be to add something like that to your portfolio ;) I’m still waffling, but if...
What does it mean to be a...
Jacqui has expressed to me many times the frustration she’s felt working with some of the following people who have somehow wormed their way into the Web Design/Developer market:
There is a serious problem in our industry that I believe we professionals need to address. The problem is is simply that many people never made that leap from hobbyist to professional. And yet, these people are...
Music downloads this week
Do you like [Cartel]? I’ve [mentioned] them here several times and they’re one of my favorite groups right now.
Well if you do like them, here’s some other music you might like. I downloaded these 3 albums this weekend:
Put Up or Shut Up – All Time Low
Warped Tour Session – EP – Cartel
Boys Like Girls – Boys Like Girls
Enjoy!
Keith Olbermann on Habeas Corpus
Habeas Corpus is on its way out:
Was there ever any doubt?
HowManyOfMe.com
There is: 1 person with my name in the U.S.A.
How many have your name?
312
Represent!
CTA Officials A Bunch of Dipshits
I agree with the following:
What the point is, and let’s not let it get away from us now, is that CTA officials announced yesterday that there is a $110 million hole in the authority’s projected budget for 2007 that they really, actually expect lawmakers to fill for them. Ridership is expected to increase next year by 3 percent, but customer fares only account for half of the...
Akismet has caught 173,985 spam for you since you...
How about you?
Don't read into this photo too much
Chicago Beta
Last night we attended TechCocktail and it was awesome. However, around when we arrived, we met a girl named Jessica who seemed pretty cool. She told us about [Chicago Beta]. It’s basically like a “users group” for people involved in Web 2.0 stuff (lol Web 2.0, lets just get it out of our systems).
Anyway, I went to find the site and a search for “Chicago Beta” didn’t really get me...
Stripes
DNS Servers
Whoop Whoop, nerd post ahead:
I’m the “server guy” in our new office so I get tasked with doing server stuff from time to time. Right now our ad-hoc server is a 1GHz Dell laptop that I installed Ubuntu Edgy on. So far I’ve setup Apache2 to serve up multiple Django projects, a SVN server, and a trac install for multiple projects.
Today I had the unique experience of setting up local DNS...
Grid-Server by Media Temple
==
Now, I’ve been asked a lot of questions about exactly what this grid-server technology does. Well, let this designer try his best to explain it to you. You’ll have dedicated servers and dedicated fast storage that’s optimized and linked together to create sort of a super server. That means, if Kevin Rose blesses you with the Digg effect, that’ll be no problem. I believe at the time something...
Synchronize Swatches
I found this awesome watch this weekend at… Target :o
Sure it’s your typical annoying neon yellow jelly watch, but check out what it looks like when you hit the “illuminate” button:
Damn that’s so hot. Also check it out in action:
Yeah I know my shirt is too big and my neck is weird. SORRY! :D
MR. TAGHAP! Chop chop!
_
MarkupMaker
Want to put together an (X)HTML template real quick? MarkupMaker converts a text list of id’s into a structured, valid HTML template. So for example you’d type out:
wrapper
header
logo
search
body
content-main
content-footer
footer
And you’d get something like:
==
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"...
Rentometer
Rentometer
You:
Put in your address
How much you pay in rent
How many bedrooms are you in your apartment
How many units are in the apartment
Rentometer does a lookup on how much other people in the general vicinity with similar apartments pay and tells you if you’re getting ripped off or a great deal. Us? Gettin’ a great deal of course :)
My computer, my desk, my office
Did I ever show you guys pics of my new office?
Check it:
I sit here:
except now I have this:
Two gigs of RAM makes me a happy guy. I need to bump up the RAM in my home iMac :)
Ars Secret Santa
Is everyone ready for secret santa this year? I’m about 25-50% done with the new site :)
iPod > Zune
Wired [writes]:
It’s not cool and never will be, the Zune will be locked down tighter than the queen’s knickers, Wi-Fi song sharing will not catch on in public.
I came to this conclusion a while back. Here are my top 2 reasons why the Zune will never, ever succeed where the iPod has:
http://www.zune.com http://microsoft.com/zune
In regards to the Wi-Fi stuff creating social...
Blogging from Textmate
I don’t know if many of my readers use TextMate on OS X as their text editor, but I’ll forge ahead with this post. Did you know that there’s a [blogging bundle]? I just tried it out this morning (in fact I’m writing this post in TextMate) and it’s pretty darn cool (if you’re into nerdy stuff like that). It supports HTML, Textile, Markdown, and plain text formatting and you can post to Drupal,...
QOTD: Riding the train
If you can’t find a seat on the train, where’s your preferred spot to stand? What if you had any choice of seat on the train?
This morning I didn’t get a seat on the brown line and I get on at Montrose! Since I was seat-less I took the plexiglas wall by the door.
Pros
When the train’s decelerating, the wall will prop you up
You pretty much don’t have to move around the whole...
Storm
So check it:
I took some videos. They’re about 20-30 seconds each and are really cool if you’re into thunderstorms :) The first one features this awesome giant lightning boom at the end, this was taken at night:
Here’s the movies:
October Thunderstorm in Chicago #1
October Thunderstorm in Chicago #2
October Thunderstorm in Chicago #3
Camera phone dump
For Rich:
Riding the train today:
Simple eggs benedict
Okay, so it’s not really eggs benedict (LAY OFF ME HERSCHELL!) but it was really easy (took about 20-30minutes) and tasted delish. [Simple Eggs Benedict]:
Every wonder where to find a blue USPS mailbox?
Well we did today. I went to ask the USPS website and apparently the USPS has no idea where their own blue mailboxes are located. Fortunately there’s a website at payphone-project.com that tracks them.
Pic by Margaret Lyons
QOTD: Has Apple retail jumped the shark
Filling in a gap in mid-west coverage, Apple has plans to open a store inside the Jefferson Pointe mall in Fort Wayne (Ind.) during 2007. The outdoor, lifestyle center will not only serve southwestern Indiana, but southern Illinois and most of Kentucky. It will be the second store in the state. URI: Fort Wayne Future Store.
“God, I hope not.”
Laptop Bag
Jack Spade by Kate Spade has provided with my new laptop bag, the [Field Tech bag]:
It was a bit more expensive than other bags I’ve bought before, but then again I’ve not had a commute like I have now. It’s pretty hot. I got [some more pics up at Flickr].