Catching Up

The realities of developing a reasonably large project solo are anything but trivial. Hence, my lack of posts in the last month or so. Not that I was that regular at it anyways.

Here's what's been happening.

In case you've been under a virtual rock or better yet, are a video blog virgin, Amanda Congdon and Rocketboom have parted ways. Incredibly, I never really got into the video podcasting craze until this thing exploded. Rocketboom is currently back with interim host Joanne Colan, former MTV Europe VJ. Along the way, I discovered Geekbrief, hosted by Cali Lewis, totally adorable.

In Adobe news, Flex 2 got released. All details are here..

In Microsoft news, Vista will be delayed yet again, or wait, that's old news. Ah yes, Office 2007 will be delayed yet again. That's the most recent one.

Art Direction

In the process of coming up with a visual layout for a website project I'm currently developing which hopefully I should be blogging about soon, the importance of art direction as part of the design process became re-emphasized. I was having trouble coming up with a satisfying design concept so I started just adding and removing things without much thought. I was frustrated and eventually realized that that just was not going to do. The concept of design with a purpose was one of the first things I learned as a designer.

As far as Art Direction goes, it is a term without a specific definition. The words below help to explain what it is from this excerpt from our good friends at A list apart

What is art direction? That’s a hard question to answer. In the movies, art directors are usually responsible for creating the “look and feel” of the film. In advertising and print work, art directors (often teamed up with a copywriter) come up with “concepts,” the creative ideas which communicate with us on a gut level through such devices as theme, metaphor, and symbolism.

One of the first things a designer learns is this - "Good design informs". As I browse the web more and more these days, I get blown away by impressive designs constantly that inspire me to be better at what I do and give me ideas for my own work. Very often though, it is very easy to get caught up in just publishing a website based on a little bit here and a little bit there that you forget to think about what you are doing. Why is that icon there or why did you choose that color? What is the audience supposed to get from the design of the website? How does the design help the overall purpoose of the project?

For now, as I sit back and think for a little bit, part of my design process will involve asking myself - yes, it looks pretty, but why do like the design for a certain website that I want to borrow a concept from? How do I feel when I look at it and how did the designer accomplish that?
A little thought on those questions go a long way to help me build the concept for my designs and ultimately come up with something that isn't just visually appealling, but is aesthetically satisfying.

In terms of visuals, the CSS Reboot has some goodies.

Ajax a la carte

The Ajax phenomenon is everywhere. The buzz is palpable, undeniable,even suffocating sometimes. But undoubtedly, it is a technology that is way overdue. The limit of the web user interface as we know it - html, forms etc - was reached a few years ago and as technology can't be stifled, innovation had to come from somewhere. This is Web 2.0, the web re-inventing itself. It's almost the late 90's again.

I am typically one of the first to learn about new technologies, but I'm definitely not an early adopter. One way or the other though, it catches up with you and you can't help but join them. Here is a list of Ajax libraries and frameworks I've had a brush with recently that seem interesting. As with all web technologies though, caveat emptor (buyer beware)

1. Dojo Framework
2. Mochikit - not for the faint of heart
3. Prototype
4. Moo.fx - "The next little thing"
5. Spry Framework
   - Simple and elegant

Blazing Trails

In reviewing my blog roll this morning, I ran into a couple of awesome devevlopments that left me totally stocked.

HH0 Gas technology , a replacement for oxyaceteline or propane gas in industrial use which is sure to revolutionalize the world as we know it. Here's the kicker. It's derived from water. Clean, efficient, awesome!

For those looking for performance on the cheap, how does 4.1Ghz P4 at approx $130 sound to you? Yes, you read that right. It's not a hoax. Now close your mouth and let Tom's hardware let you in on the secret.

Smelling some roses

In line with that school of thought that says you should look up once in a while and smell the roses, I figure now that I'm having a creative block, I should exorcise some of the thoughts I'd been wanting to mention in the last few weeks.

I caught this totally awesome edition of Primetime Live on T.V a couple weeks back on Game Theory. Six sets of total strangers were tasked with finding another six sets of total strangers. In the sense that, the first six were paired up, two by two at totally different places in the city. None of either of those sets had seen any of the other sets. Literally. All they were told was that somewhere in the city two other people were looking for them. I can't begin to tell you how complex that exercise was, in a city of approx 8 million people. I wouldn't even know where to begin.

Yet, they all found each other, somehow or the other. All of them, in about 6 hours or so. Blew my mind.

In other news, the webbys are back in town and the nominees for the 10th season have been announced. Congratulations to all the nominees for contributing to the best of the web

........

Uh, can you say that in English?

I'm participating in an open source project at the moment, a cool new server called "Red 5", something I may have mentioned previously. In particular, I'm am tasked at the moment with translating the geek speak of the developers into usable english and examples for the not so technically versed. But more than anything, I quite glad that this project sees the need for it on their website currently being developed.

More than anything, in my opinion, one of the many shortcomings of opensource and a large part of the tech world is the assumption that everything must be in geek. The reasons for the obscurity of many excellent open source projects is simply that they have no interest or to be fair volunteers who decide to help out with building an informative and user friendly website around their software product, and quite frankly, that's what it is, a product. More often than not, those websites look like after thoughts and when they are developed, they look like they were made by the geek who wrote said software who is content to type along all day on a linux box.

One of the advantages of being symmetrically brained (a new term I'm coining, go with me for the moment) is that while I am a techie in all senses of the word, I have a fully developed and active artistic side and can appreciate why Apple spends all their time simplifying everything for the end user. I like simple. I would pay for simple. There is enough complexity in this business with the alphabet soup of abbreviations, terms, protocols etc that are being develped on a daily basis that when I happen on a website that puts things in simple terms it is an amazing breath of fresh air.

There is then the question of why there is a lack of visual/user interface designers in the open source world. Even the opensource graphics software tend to sport terrible interfaces. Is it that they are not invited to participate on open source projects or is there more complexity. - a topic for my next post. Definitely something I should look into.

For the moment, catching up on blogs that rock,I caught the podcast of Jason Kottke (kottke.org) and Heather B. Armstrong ( Dooce.com) at South by Southwest today. Interesting insights.

Also, the podcast of Jim Coudal and Jason Fried of Coudal Partners and 37signals fame.

To be continued..

Origami a la Microsoft

Microsoft releases the Ultra Mobile P.C platform codenamed "Origami", what appears to be a much smaller version of the tablet pc. It comes with touch and writing recognition software which allows you to use it with a stylus/pen or by touching the screen.

It appears to be an interesting concept with a lot of room for growth. What makes it really cool in my opinion is that it runs the full Windows XP operating system and therefore almost any software that can run on said OS. But referring to the room for growth, the two hour battery life leaves a lot to be desired.

Visit: Microsoft UMPC

When you're smling, the whole world smiles with you

So I was riding the ferry yesterday, tired out of my mind and of course consequently cranky. I rest my head back to take a nap and five seconds later, I hear a cackle and a cute little "helloooo". I open up my eyes and there was this adorable little baby on the other side of my seat smiling at me. She played peekaboo with me for the rest of the ride.

Sometimes, you just gotta enjoy the moment. I'm going to take a cue from her and have a good week. I hope you all do, you know, all two or three people that read this blog.

:)

Hit the ground running

I'm baaack. Boy, that feels good to say. Although technically, I've been up and running for a few weeks now, unless you buy a new computer, sometimes dealing with repaired or upgraded computers is like watching a patient in post-op. You hope for the best, but ya never know.

So, it's been two weeks now, computer is out of recovery and it is now bigger and badder than before. This new computer comes with a mirrored hard drive setup. My days of living dangerously are over. I of course now have to catch up with a bunch of projects that were left hanging during the crash.

In the mean time, the world keeps moving. While I was out, so to speak, two projects I monitor constantly had releases -

1. Good ol Macromedia Adobe had an epiphany and decided to release Flex framework for free. A new beta is up for downloads at the Adobe Labs.


2. PHP framework - Prado v3 is now at alpha
   

And to all, a good night. NOT!!

So, It's never a good sign when you ask your computer to reboot, and said computer reboots... and then takes it upon itself to reboot, and reboot, .. and reboot.

All in all, I'm sitting here at 5:00am on a Monday morning, technically the end of my workday, watching my week about to go down in flames. This is my primary work computer, my workhorse. I have backups on one other system and my laptop, but I'd like to think that this is the one that the other computers look to for guidance and advice.

I forsee a very long day ripping out computer parts and booting and rebooting and ripping out more computer parts to save this one. It's very much like surgery, only a little less messy. Oh oh, there it goes again about to reboot. Somebody get me the paddles

CLEAR!!

And the Shout Out goes to

It's been an explosion this last year or so it seems, of good stuff on the internet. Reminds me in no small way of the early years of the dot com boom. Everybody was discovering the internet, everybody started a dot com and I couldn't aquire enough e-mail addresses. I stopped the count at 15 which I believe was offerred to me by Britannica Online. Hey, it was free, I took it. I'll figure out what to do with it later.

So, fast forward to 2005 and there appears to be a resurgence of good things, many in no small part to the competetive prodding by Google, the hosts of this here blog. 2.6gb email boxes, web 2.0 applications, open source versions of practically every type of software you need, from office applications to streaming media players ( kudos to the guys at vlc) and lots and lots more. You just have to look.

And now, the good guys over at OSFlash are making strides in what seems like every type of opensource flash app available, helping in many ways to promote the platform. When you're in the middle of it, you never realize how many people don't use words like Flash, and Flex and FlashCom on a daily basis until you're speaking to a colleage who incidentally also does web development, though in Java and he doesn't know about Flex or that Actionscript 3.0 is coming soon.

So, I'm going to do my part in giving a shout out to the cool guys over at RED5, also part of osflash and say, keep doing good work guys.

Opensource ROCKS!!!

Welcome to Macromedia - Now Adobe Systems

So, I finally ordered Macromedia Studio 8. After all, despite all my ranting, I really do love the company, even if I don't care for the new daddy.Expectations were high. Finally, after all the anticipation, the exercise in patience, I broke down and ordered Studio 8 bright and early on a Monday morning. It was even more exciting to see that there would be free shipping. Now all I had to do was wait. and wait. and wait

[3 days later - Order status:"pending"]

Ring ring. Thank you for calling Macromedia - Now Adobe Systems.

Hi Adobe systems, why is my order still pending?

Three phone calls, a dropped call and about and hour later]. Uh, we ... don't know. It appears to be a result of the merger, things are sort of being moved around. We'll call you.

Uh, Okay. I guess. (I mean, what was I supposed to do?)
If you have any further questions

[Update]
So, they finally call me 8 days after my order. We've shipped your Order! We'll send you a free book to compensate when we eventually get to it.

Make of it what you will

public const CHANGE = inevitable

I guess what must be must be. It is now final. Macromedia is now Adobe.

Mississipi Delta Blues

I love this city. Even more, I love this city in the winter. Something about the cold air typical of this time of the year seems to make everything a little bit clearer. The sun seems brighter, the sky is a beautiful cloudless blue on most days and even the music sounds better as I was reminded today by the Mississipi Delta Blues, one of the many "underground" bands that fill the subways at rush hour.

This band consisted of a feisty old Black man on a guitar singing the blues accompanied by a Chinese guy on bass guitar. I couldn't find a cooler "New York Melting Pot" poster than that if I tried. As it happens occassionally, I went out today without today for a meeting with a client sans camera and I couldn't capture the moment

But that's alright. As I was reminded by the "Alex Lo Dico Jazz Ensemble" one stop later, the good times keep rolling.

On a seperate note, Spark, Europe's premier flash festival begins today.

When it rains..

I get these moments in once in a while where I feel.. empty and lost all at the same time. Its wierd. The best I can relate it too is that feeling of - Well, I've climbed Mt. Everest. Now what? I only wish I had an everest in my affliction to give it some meaning.

it is in one of these times that I end up reverting back to my familiar/favorites places - people watching in Union Square for one. I don't know what it is about Union Sq. that appeals to me so much. I think it's the perfect blend of apparently normal people going by their daily business intermingled with the artists both perfomance and visual, poets and the otherwise misguided wack jobs with some protest or opposition to share all lounging together around the same square in their own wierd little symphony.

So it is there I am sitting tonight, finally taking my mind of whatever it is that's bothering me that as yet I can't seem to figure out. Of course, 5 minutes after I sit down, I start to feel drops on my head. After verifying that it's not my drunken charlie stalking me I realize that it's starting to rain.

I'm a big fan of the movies mind you and in most movies the actors, especially the dramatic ones tend to find inspiration somewhere in the rain.

For my part, I found myself a subway entrance. I figure in November all the good inspirations are probably staying warm in the subway tunnels anyways.

Love thy IT Guy

Aah, yes. In the long list of life's unwritten rules lies a very important one in today's information age. "Love your IT Guy". This opinion may of course be a bit biased, granted. But it has basis in experience.
Case in point, this client that I have - let's call them client NO-IT . Their IT guy, like many across the country had finally had it with the mostly thankless job that we IT people do, and so he decided he was going to leave - in two weeks.

The boss gets upset and decides he doesn't need two weeks. The IT guy can leave. Here-in lies the danger of rash decisions. Unlike the larger part of the workforce, the one guy you do not want to fire in anger is your IT guy. Why? Because as became the case with this company, poor old Dorothy Secretary whose expertise is limited to typing documents in word and clicking "Print" ends up as the new network admin trying to figure out the alphabet soup of networking terms ( DNS, DHCP, IP etc ) while untangling wires and praying to God that she's plugging in the right wires in the right sockets.

"Hmm.. Now would that be the red wire or the grey wire. The guy on T.V usually goes with the red wire. I'm going to go with that one."

Aim thy pee

In an event that can only be described as a New York moment, yesterday, I was coming back from a delightful evening of reading and coffee at my neighborhood Barnes and Noble. I'm coming out of the subway and here I am deciding which exit to take. They say it only takes a second to make a bad decision.

As I'm climbing out of the stairs on the left side which is the exit I chose, I start to feel sprinkles on my head. This is where I ask you the reader to freeze frame and answer. Are the sprinkles I feel

1. The rain that was expected to fall that day
2. A priest throwing out excess holywater after giving up on New York
3. Your friendly neighborhood bum discharging the water portion of the bottle of alcohol he drank a few hours before.

If you picked number 3 - ding ding ding!. You win the prize. I found myself being showered with pee and transitioning swiftly between disbelief and rage and.... eventually acceptance.

As I walk towards the Staten Island ferry station to use the bathroom for some temporary cleanup, it occurred to me how this story would make sense only in New York.

Ode to a client

I wanted to take a few minutes out to thank my client for finally sending their checks in. For restoring my hope and confidence in humanity. For letting me be able to pick up the phone for the next month without screening for bill collectors. For helping me to be able to raise my head up high when I go into a starbucks and order not a tall but a GRANDE cup of mocha or a frappacino ( I'm still deciding between mint chocolate chip and mocha with hazelnut as my favorite). For upgrading my lunches from the Mcdonalds's 99cents menu to a subway 6" sub. For being able to look into the eyes of the cashier when I pay at the supermarket with $5.00 bills instead of $1.00 bills.

All is well with the world for the next month

Maybe I should cut down on my coffee.

Customer Support as in....

sup·port [s? páwrt]
to give assistance or comfort to somebody in difficulty or distress *

It's a nightmare whichever way you look at it. Being the techie supporting the impolite, impatient client or being the knowledgeable client asking for support from an obviously incompetent, ignorant tech support rep.

I endured the popular nightmare of having to take my laptop in for service yesterday at CompUSA as per I bought the Technology Assurance Program Package when I got it from there. To be fair, it is one of their busiest offices, right in downtown Manhattan, but it took me 45 minutes to get my laptop dropped off eventually for technical service and then I was told to come back in two weeks. "TWO WEEKS!" . It could be worse. No really.

As you who may or may not read this blog may know, I am a web developer. I consequently engage the use of shared hosting services commercially available on the web. There is no perfect host, and that is a compromise that you'll have to accept. Also, there are fussy client considerations to deal with But I've been trying to upload a client's website now for the past three weeks. Why would it take so long? I've gone through 3 webhosts in the process. Plus there were DNS issues. Client wanted to keep DNS at Network Solutions and only redirect IP to new webhost.

Well, web host A gave me a nice hosting space, and a nice IP Address to go with it. - Client wanted a cheaper solution without having to pay extra for a secure certificate . It made things easier though, because you got your own IP.

Web host B gave me a nice hosting package, secure certificate included in the package, no ip address. I had to change my client's DNS servers to new host, and then redirect the DNS settings for mail back to Network Solutions. Nightmare.
Incompetent host B initally tells me they'll modify DNS, couple of hours. Nightmare turns into a couple of days at the end of which they tell me the DNS settings I requested which by the way I copied directly from Network Solutions are invalid. Client loses access to e-mail for 24 Hours despite some good old yelling. Clients gets frustrated. We move.

Web Host C - Network Solutions. Web Host C charges client for three years of hosting and another couple hundred dollars for SSL certificate. It takes them 1 week to setup and install the certificate. 1 WEEK. Next, they set it up and they get it wrong. Now they have to go back and re-issue the certificate.

I left out all the delightful conversations I've had with tech support, who kept bouncing me from one department to the other because they didn't know what they were doing.

All I can say is ARRRRGH!!!

*Microsoft® Encarta® Reference Library 2002. © 1993-2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

The heat is gonna get you

And I mean that in more ways than one. Yup, its definitely here. Its about 94degerees outside as I speak, I've had four hours of sleep and I can see that I'm not going to make my deadline, for the second time.

That's okay. Who needs real sunlight when you've got monitor glare. Now if only they could build the monitors to emit tanning rays.