Paper Pigeons

Obamapalooza

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 12:17:00 -0600

Like most Chicagoans, I have been following Obama since we elected him to the United States Senate. On my birthday in 2005 I participated in a town hall meeting he held at my school, Loyola University Chicago. One of the questions he was asked, was if he was planning on running for President in 2008. While the crowed cheered, Barack said that was not something he was interested in, at least not for 2008. “Yeah right” I said to my friend.

Three years later I was obsessed with the election (which I started calling a reality tv show). Like 1,582,973 other individuals in Chicago I had Obamafever. Chicago is insanely friendly for a big city, throw Obamafever into the mix and literally anyone with an Obama pin, sticker, shirt or sign is your friend. The unity I felt walking down any street in any part of Chicago was amazing.

I was fortunate enough to be one of the lucky ‘few’ to procure a Obamapalooza ticket. I couldn’t have planned a better end to an election that like most, I thought would never end. Imagine, 250,000 of your closest friends happy, jubilant, yet holding it all in. Anticipating quite possibly the most memorable moment of our lives in the best city in the world on a perfect fall night. I cannot even describe the atmosphere, but it was truly amazing. 250,000 individuals sharing the same values as Obama, his campaign, and what the majority of this country has hope for. Every imaginable race, religion and life style together as one.

I was there. I was a part of it. And within moments of Senator Obama becoming President-elect Obama the pride I once had in my country as a child was re-kindled. I believe Obama will redefine campaigns, the office of the President, and America in historic ways and bring us back to the road our founding fathers paved 232 years ago.

I'm Horrible

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 12:20:00 -0500

It’s hard to believe that fall is here, leaving another summer of aguishly slow progress on the Shack. While I have spent one too many summer weekends holed up on my couch programing away many updates and features have put on hold. Most of what I’ve been working on wasn’t implemented very well, and put a huge damper on 100% RSpeced deployments because well, it wasn’t setup in a way to test. There has also been plenty of battles with plugins here and there, at times throwing me into a fit of rage. Fortunately I’ve increased my Rails knowledge profusely in the process, found better plugins, and refactored my object model throughout the processes. Sans any major issues in development, version 0.4 should be up and running soon, paving the way to all of the features I’ve been planning over the past couple years.

If your one for excuses, the primary reason I’ve been slacking is because my mind and body have been getting their asses kicked. Getting into the swing of a real job with deadlines and clients has been a slow processes. In just the past week or so has my body finally adjusted to normal working hours, and once I tear myself away from the reality tv show also known as the 2008 presidential election I should be on a roll.

Another excuse for the books has been a little bug that was preventing me from posting, but as you can see that has been fixed. Now I just have to get myself into the habit of writing.

Weeks Humor In Review

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 12:07:00 -0500

There have been a couple witty lines scattered throughout my feed reader this week, and I felt it my responsibility to share them with you.

The first is from the great Michael Heilemann, my second favorite Dane (sorry Michael, my Aunts Au Pair wins because I’ve actually met her).

“But I didn’t cap any cyclists, bump into any cars or accidentally run over any pedestrians (whom I then subsequently sped away from, paying the instructor generously to overlook this minor accident, stopping at a gas station to wipe the blood off the hood, all the while grinning nervously and explaining to passerby’s how the ketchup truck had spilled its load on my hood).”

I don’t think anyone could have described the same scenario in a more humorous manner. Not even Belushi.

And last but not least, not exactly “funny” from the also wonderfully named Boing Boing.

“Of course they won’t do that because that’d obviate the need for those wonderfully-named ‘penalty processing centres.’”

Meet Arata

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 08:37:52 -0500

It has been too long since my last post but to make up for it, meet Arata. This is my first design that I have not grown to despise before I finished, and I owe that to Clint and Michael. Clint for introducing me to Blueprint, and Michael for his fantastic sense of style that makes up for me not having any. iPhone users, there is even a mini version for you too! All of the fuctionality of version 0.1 is not plugged in yet, but I just could not hold back on Arata any longer!

Logic 101

Sat, 22 Dec 2007 11:59:00 -0600

I saw this at work today, I was rather appalled.

 
if (x == true) {
   if (x == false) {
      x = true;
   }
}

Status Update

Sat, 22 Dec 2007 01:52:58 -0600

Tiny and hidden updates have slowly been trickling in, with many more on their way. Recently I plugged in a meta tag framework allowing me to link next and previous posts. Shortly posts will receive the gift of tags, which will also start appearing in the meta tags.

While comments have been implemented for some time now, the whole processes has been cleaned up and locked down a bit. A pain free, fresh and clean implementations of ‘captcha’ will be making an appearing relatively soon as well.

In addition to tags and captchas, feeds are also in the works as are trackbacks and search. Once basic usability has been established, updates on the front end will be on hold for a bit while I brew up an interface for myself. While I love the command line and all, it’s not optimal for adding posts and checking for new comments.

Wow, could a post be any less interesting?

Moving Day

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 08:35:56 -0600

I’m transfering my domain, I don’t think there will be any issues for y’all; but DNS internets stuff always makes my head spin.

I <3 Infinity

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 10:24:00 -0600

I am always a big fan of infinite loops, this is one of the best ones that I have seen yet.

 
Visitor#visitGroup(Group g) {
   g.accept(this);
}

Group#accept(Visitor v) {
   v.visitGroup(this);
}

svn ignore

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 06:42:07 -0600

It took me a good four days to fully understand how svn:ignore and thusly propset works in subversion. Sometimes skimming in books saves me a lot of time, but in cases like this it does not. If you are a skimmer, a ‘n00b’, or myself; here is a reminder how the damn thing works.

propset is a key/value for a directory, each set overwrites the value, it does not concatenate. To ignore multiple files in a directory, separate them by new line in a text file. propset takes a value, a file (or file pattern) to apply it to followed by a directory. Patterns in parent directories do not recurse down. i.e. another/directory/file.rb will not be ignored from the root directory, it needs to be ignored from ‘directory’.

Ignore a file: svn propset svn:ignore Shack.tmproj .
Ignore many: svn propset svn:ignore -F ignore.txt .

Oh So Pretty

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 01:59:00 -0600

After countless hours tweeking, hacking and snearing I have finally put together a layout that I do not despise. Many ideas are brewing in my noggin and should see the light of day once this hellish semester is over!