Quality Reads

Monday, May 21, 2007

RE: Tips on Life


I've been posting recently about other's superb writing and honestly when you can't out perform someone else in the short-run, acknowledge their efforts and learn what you can from them. It'll make you a more insightful individual in the long-run.

Keeping with that philosophy, here's a great read from lifehack.org (not to be confused with Lifehacker): http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/10-simple-ways-to-save-yourself-from-messing-up-your-life.html

Very solid read.

Cheers,

Todd

Sunday, May 20, 2007

High Performance MySQL

Quick post.

Two former/current Google Yahoo! Engineers, Derek J. Balling & Jeremy D. Zawodny respectively, released some great tips for performance enhancing your MySQL database. This was actually published back in 2004 but I just got around to reading it over the weekend. It breaks down the basics of Enterprise/Scalable MySQL development, below are some of the topics:
  • replication
  • load balancing
  • data backup
  • security
FYI, you can check out a preview here.

Web Development in Iraqi?



I ran across this job posting and HAD to make a comment. Remote web development is common place due to great applications like Basecamp, Vyew, AIM/GTalk, etc. With that in mind, why would you possibly need to send some to Iraqi for web development?!? I understand that certain circumstances require a physical presence but I'm sorry I don't think the risks equal the rewards for this one.

Hmmm... I wonder what the hazard pay is like. I'll update this post if I find out.

No, I'm not going to Iraqi. Well... not unless the pay is insane. jk.

Review: Advanced Actionscript 3 with Design Patterns by Joey Lott and Danny Patterson



Just finished up the aforementioned book. Great stuff! They cover topics such as OOP in Actionscript, RIA MVC implementations, and a myriad of design patterns (such as Iterator, Command, Decorator, State, etc etc etc). Most of the first half of the book acts as a refresher course but the design patterns from page 103 on are an absolute must use!

The only thing I found strange was after all the "advanced" design patterns were over, they cover Regular Expressions!?! I didn't realize my RegEx chops made me so l33t. Anyway, if you want to make your code more extensible/reusable give it a look.

Cheers,
Todd

Thursday, May 10, 2007

RE: Mmm! I love raisins made with SELECT * FROM [Equipment Table]! (pic)

Awesome error. Could someone sue for false advertising!?!
I re-posted the picture from here.
Not trying to steal the credit but their server is really slow (front page of digg).

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

AS3 MySQL Driver


I'm posting at work so I don't have much time to expound on why this is awesome. If you don't "get it", think Apollo Flex apps (Yes it works in Apollo).
Time to beef up on Embedded Systems

Sunday, May 06, 2007

Make Your Own Browser w/ Apollo

I had a couple minutes on Sunday to play around with Flex/Apollo. In less than an hour, I had this mini-browser working nicely. Check out the source code below for an example of databinding and the Apollo mx:HTML tag.



My blogger application is shaping up nicely. Expect to see the source code for that within a week or so. Yay, yay, I keep pushing it back but it'll be really sweet once its finished.


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<mx:ApolloApplication xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" layout="absolute">

<mx:Style>

.main{

top:0;

left:0;

bottom:0;

right:0;

}

.address{

top:0;

left:0;

}

.content{

top:50;

left: 30;

right: 30;

bottom: 10;

}

</mx:Style>



<mx:Model id="browserObj">

<root>

<location></location>

</root>

</mx:Model>



<mx:Script>

<![CDATA[

private function updateLocation(_loc:String):void{

trace('Address: ' + _loc);

browserObj.location = _loc;

trace('HTML Page Location: ' + htmlPage.location);

}

]]>

</mx:Script>

<mx:Panel styleName="main" label="Apollo Browser">



<mx:HBox>

<mx:ComboBox id="protocol">

<mx:dataProvider>

<mx:Array>

<mx:String>http:// </mx:String>

<mx:String>https:// </mx:String>

<mx:String>ftp:// &lt;/mx:String>

&lt;/mx:Array>

&lt;/mx:dataProvider>

&lt;/mx:ComboBox>

&lt;mx:TextInput id="address" styleName="address" text="http://www.google.com/" />

&lt;mx:Button label="Go!" click="updateLocation(protocol.selectedItem + address.text)" />

&lt;/mx:HBox>



&lt;mx:HTML height="{this.height - 100}" id="htmlPage" styleName="content" location="{browserObj.location}" />



&lt;/mx:Panel>

&lt;/mx:ApolloApplication>



**disclaimer
This is not my concept of a well-coded/designed application, it is simply a test app. Take it for what it is.

Cheers.

Friday, May 04, 2007

Can We Say Irony?


I was evaluating Railo for a new application I'm developing at work when I saw this. Evaluation Complete :(

Thursday, May 03, 2007

Blogger API Updated!

Google just updated their Blogger API docs. Very exciting news for me since I'm working on an Apollo application that can manage a blogger account from the desktop.

Eventually, it will be able to post, update, and delete posts. Plus, with the API additions, you'll be able to review & approve comments. Pretty sweet.

I guess I'll have the jump on my competition!

Check it out.

Yahoo! Messenger built using Flex



Yahoo! Messenger was released today. All in all, its a great Flex 2 application but my computer definitely hung for ~ a minute the first time it loaded. It might have something to do with the fact that I'm rocking IE7 today. Vista and Firefox haven't been playing nice.

If you use Yahoo! Messenger, in any form, this is worth checking out.

Ted (Flex Evangelist) has further coverage.

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Fun with Javascript & Images



If you've got a couple free minutes to play around, check out this amazing javascript library: Loupe.js .

**Warning
all you IE people out there will feel excluded/dejected after clicking link.

Monday, April 30, 2007

Update: First Apollo App

So I decided this past weekend to switch my first Apollo application from a desktop version of Google Notebook to an application to manage my Blogger account (posts and all!). Ever since the Mac Blogger widget stopped working ~6 months ago, I've been hoping some other application would pop up and fill the void. No such luck. So I just have to take matters into my own hands. Wish me luck.

Friday, April 27, 2007

Mouse Mouse?!?

After I read this post, all I was left with were questions.

Who has time to make something like this?

Is this how someone spends their weekend?

What do these people do for work that would allow them to use a mouse mouse (totally wouldn't fly in my office)?

Bizarre. Awesome but bizarre.

Quick Questions About the Weather..

Does anyone actually tune into the news at 11 because of the weatherman's ad teaser? "Will you be able to hit the beach this weekend....I'll let you know at 11."
You'd think they'd try to sell me on something I can't get from Weather.com in less than 30 seconds.

Thursday, April 26, 2007

A Quick Look At Silverlight

If you haven't heard yet, Microsoft is jumping into the RIA scene with Silverlight (previously known as Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere). Silverlight uses XAML, an XML markup language similar to MXML, and a subset of WPF codebase to provide rich interactive user interfaces. This puts Microsoft in direct competition with Adobe's Flex. So the question for anyone just jumping into the RIA revolution is which should I choose, Flex or Silverlight? Here's my quick analysis:

Flex
  • Flex runs on Flash 9.0 available in about ~50% of browsers currently.
  • Adobe makes a concerted effort to release their latest Flash player for those other operating systems, Mac and Linux.
  • Flex 3 is in beta. The third iteration of a game changing development platform.
  • Flex is a compiled language making dynamic application generation difficult. Although there are ways to get around that.
  • If you are a ColdFusion/Java developer, server-side integration is a nominal task.
  • Easily convert your Flex applications into desktop apps with Apollo.

Silverlight

  • Tight .NET integration. Utilize the same tools to develop a desktop app, web app, or Silverlight app.
  • Silverlight is an interpreted language. You can easily generate dynamic applications on the server-side since XAML is just a text file.
  • Comparable RIA platform to Flex.
  • All Vista users have Silverlight pre-installed. Requires the .NET framework version 3 so XP users have a number of extra steps to get things running.
  • Applications are a smaller download size, approximately 50-60% smaller.
  • The Silverlight plugin is only a 1.9MB download compared to 2.2MB...Ok, when I started writing this line I thought difference would be more significant.

In the end, the deciding factor for most developers will be the server-side language of their choice. But one things for sure, there will be an interesting battle ahead.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Apollo Test App

As my Apollo test application, I've decided to create a desktop version of Google Notebook. By itself, Google Notebook never really impressed me. It lets you save a snippet of HTML in its original format. The problem is you need an internet connection and an open browser to view it. May as well just bookmark the page.

So my Apollo test application is going to use the Google Notebook API to save a copy of your clippings to your computer's file system. That way you'll have access to your Notebook online or off, with or w/o a browser open.

It'll be my weekend project so expect an update next Monday. A whole desktop app. in one weekend. Craziness.

A couple Apollo links:

Monday, March 19, 2007

Apollo Alpha Released At Adobe Labs!

Real quick post with one intent, to direct you to Adobe labs. Apollo was just released and how sweet it is. Develop desktop applications for Mac and Windows machines using "web" technologies (Flash, Javascript, and HTML). I guess HTML is not just for the web anymore.

If you are a Web Developer, you need to check this out.

Cheers

Sunday, March 18, 2007

ColdRails Now Hosted On Google

I've released the first version of my ColdFusion MVC framework. You can find it on Google Code at http://code.google.com/p/coldrails/
ColdRails features integration with two other well-known ColdFusion projects:
In addition, I've embedded a system into the view component to seamlessly manage your javascript and css files. Of course, what contemporary framework would be complete without some nifty ajax integration. I'll have more details in the next couple weeks.
Cheers.

Sunday, March 04, 2007

Quick Website Concept

A blogging system based on skiing experiences. Every post must be tagged as a particular mountain. It should probably include a mobile API so people could post pictures and text to the blog while still on the mountain. The main website would have hooks into bestskiweather.com, perhaps displaying pictures from the mountains with best recent snow totals.
From there I'd probably approach a couple of the large ski corporations for advertising. Even though we provide information on a wide range of ski mountains, the website provides a ski buzz. There's always powder somewhere to get you pumped up.
What's good for all is good for one.

Plus, due to the user tagged content, providing companies with targeted advertisment space would be relatively easy.

Don't forget about equipment reviews.

Saturday, March 03, 2007

Sunrise at Alta

Its snowed 5 times in the past 7 days. Can you sense my excitement?
Snapshot of Alta at 7:15AM.