I actually was all pumped to use this technology when it first came out.  Years later, I’m still a sucky novice at CSS, although I manage to solve a problem with it every now and then.  I think what prevents me from learning easily is that it’s not really like programming at all.  There are a myriad of browser inconsistencies and bugs that designers commonly work around to do their jobs.

If you look at the source code of a random sampling of pages out there, chancees are high you’ll see comments about “IE compatibility” or “Firefox only.”  That’s really too bad, considering CSS is a W3C standardized spec and this kind of crap only limits adoption!

Anyway, the reason I suck at CSS is because once I see this kind of incompatibility bullshit, my brain turns off.  I automatically become too lazy to learn.  I begin searching Google for my specific problem to retrieve a particular incantation of hacks to solve my issue.  It’s like modern day alchemy to me.  I don’t completely understand the solution or how the authors came up with the given hacks, but it seems to work out okay, which is good enough for me.

What I’d really like is to take a given page, render it, and see HOW the browser made its decision to render things in a certain way.  I would like have before and after pictures that demonstrate how a change to the CSS will affect the layout of the site.  I’m not content to simply make a CSS change and then reload random pages across all possible browsers of interest.  I want to know enough CSS to get my job done and not have to become an expert.  Anybody know of testing tools that would make CSS authoring more like actual structured programming?

I’ve spent many years debugging PC issues of all sorts, but Mac debugging is still a bit new to me.  Some Google search revealed the following debugging options:

1. Safe boot - Boot with minimal drivers and kernel extensions.  (Didn’t work)
2. Reset the PRAM - This process appeared to work, but did nothing to resolve the bootup failure. (Didn’t work)
3. Choose a startup volume - Hold the Option key on startup.  (Didn’t work)
4. Re-install Leopard - Restart the computer and hold the ‘C’ key to boot off the installation disc.  (Didn’t work)

Basically, none of the startup debugging options is doing much at all for me.  I’m going to have to drag the machine to the genius bar where I suspect they’ll tell me the hard drive is broken.  The machine is not covered under Applecare, so I am unsure at this point what the cost to fix it will be and whether it’s worth it.
Anyway, if anyone knows of any other esoteric boot options, let me know!

It was quite an adventure, starting with the careful maneuvering required to get all our stuff up 15 floors, including the dog’s crate while the puppy proceeded to wiggle everywhere.  She was pretty shaky in the elevator.  I guess from a dog’s perspective it’s pretty freaking scary when the floor begins to move under you.  You do also get some really interesting looks from people who don’t expect a 55 pound dog in a somewhat-fancy hotel lobby.  (No, that sure isn’t a chihuahua.)

The second bit of adventure was figuring out where the heck the dog should go to the bathroom.  There was absolutely zero grass outside, but with a few minutes reconnaissance we did managed to find a little round park.  The only problem?  Well, the park was literally crawling with rabbits.  I don’t know if they were some kind of mutant strain that survives in a downtown area, but they sure made it hard for the dog to do anything but want to hunt.

Apart from these small challenges, the dog appeared to really like hanging out in the city.  There were many strange things to smell and an over-abundance of people to lick.  She seemed to have a good built-in detector to recognize the whackos and generally seemed to think it was a blast.

On Saturday, I put on my tuxedo and proceeded to take the dog out to pee right before the wedding service.  Nothing like a guy walking a weimaraner in a tuxedo through a downtown area!  Of course, it got even weirder when I got back at the hotel with the dog….The entire Detroit Lions football team was waiting to use the hotel elevators.  Yeah, the Lions were staying in the same hotel as us at the same time we needed to get up to the wedding service.

At this point, I said “excuse me” to a dozen very large people and shimmied through what looked like a defensive line through the elevator.  The puppy followed closely in my wake with her tail thumping as fast as possible.  We decided to run up the 15 floors in the stairs because the wait for the elevator looked to be about 20 minutes long.  The puppy wasn’t crazy about the idea of going into the stairwell but a couple of the football players made encouraging noises like, “It’s OKAY puppy, you can do it.”  Good stuff.

Through the weekend, the puppy did indeed get used to the elevator and peeing on concrete, but it was a bit more stressful than we had anticipated.  Of course, I’ll never forget the puppy getting attention from the NFL players.  That’s a story that makes the whole thing worthwhile.

Anyway, the silly hacker kid got let into court in both handcuffs and leg shackles, as if he had demonstrated some skill in tae-kwon-do.  For f**k sake, the kid is a computer hacker.  He is hardly a physical danger to anyone, except perhaps himself.  He might be a dumbass for getting caught, but the Republicans really should waive the charges and hire the little bastard!

The Sony E-Reader is an unfortunate example of a company really not doing enough to make something easy.  The company releases a new revision of their e-book reader every year or two.  From a hardware perspective, it’s a very attractive device.  It has a nice screen, good battery life, and it uses that fancy electronic paper that is easy on the reader’s eyes.  It also supports many file formats, which is a mixed blessing.

Of course, what’s missing here is any mention of how one actually gets content onto the device.  Readers want to be able to turn the device and basically begin reading right away.  Consumers do not have patience for connecting a device to a computer and synchronizing content through some laborious process.  Also, there is no obvious place to buy the content from!  In other words, it is basically a product without any books!

I find it hard to believe that almost a year after the release of the Amazon Kindle, with its integrated wireless book distribution, that Sony is still updating the same old disconnected device.  I love the Kindle, and the freedom for readers that it represents, but I would also like to see viable competition in the marketplace.  Sony, please wake up and get a clue.  Nobody cares what formats your device supports.  We only want to know if we can get a copy of our favorite book inside of 2 minutes.

There are two main types of lighting:

1. Continuous lighting -  This is what you’d expect.  An unbroken, always-on light source like a household lamp.
2. Strobe lighting - This is flash photography.  A high amount of light output is delivered in a very short period of time.

Continuous lighting

Continuous lighting comes in several flavors, which are:

• halogen - hot, bright, short bulb lifetimes
• fluorescent - cooler, less bright, cheaper
• incandescent - cheap, standard light bulb
• HMI - best, super expensive

In a studio set, a photographer using continuous lighting often has a key lamp and a fill lamp.  The key lamp is responsible for the main lighting, whereas the fill lamp is used to cover lighting gaps.  The positioning of the lamps is important from a composition standpoint because it determine how any shadows will appear on the subject.

Strobe lighting

I understand how a flash bulb that snaps into a camera works, but I was curious to figure out how a photographer times a separate strobe lamp to coincide with the actual taking of a picture.  Well, it turns out that there are serveral methods by which this is commonly done:

1. The strobe may have a built-in optical sensor that detects the flash on a camera firing and subsequently fires itself.
2. The strobe may be connected to the camera via a cable.
3. The strobe may communicate with the camera via infrared.

Arguments

Photographers appear to endlessly debate the merits of continuous lighting versus strobe lighting.  Many people prefer strobe lighting for human subjects, but others also make arguments in favor of using continuous lighting.  It is worth noting that some amount of continuous lighting is present in any location, whether it is natural light or ambient artificial light in the area.

Commonality

Whether one choose to go with a continuous or strobe setup, there are some common factors that are worth noting when choosing a kit:

1. Color temperature - sunlight is about 5500K (kelvins)
2. Intensity - the amount of watts a lamp can deliver
3. Portability - can the kit be moved easily?
4. Accessories - umbrellas, softboxes, and similar accessories are useful for modifying the light.

Conclusion

I haven’t decided which kit to go with yet, but at least I have some basis by which to judge them now!  As with most purchases, my goal is to figure out what kit will give us the most bang for our buck.  If you have any specific recommendations, please send them along.  Thanks!

First off, the cooler temperatures seem to translate into higher weimaraner energy and a bounding curiosity.  Maybe smells rotate by season, but everytime we go out now it seems that she is enthustically following the treasure map to a pirate’s treasure.  (This is probably why I have the urge to dress her up as a pirate for Halloween.)  It always seems like more of an adventure when the puppy is along.

We’ve been working a lot on her walking skills outside.  She’s getting better at not pulling, at least when she’s not 100% full of weimaraner stink.  She’s also practicing some obedience-oriented walking commands like heeling, side, front, and finish.  I’m not sure what all that is really for, but my wife assures me Zelda needs to know all that stuff in order to annihilate other puppies at obedience competitions.  (or something)  Anyway, I have been enjoying practicing all that stuff with young puppers when all the sudden she loses her brain and pounces on a blowing leaf.  Her little puppy brain, at 8 months old, still can’t fathom the idea that one could NOT attack that leaf!  It’s fun to get that kind of reminder that one should enjoy being outside and taking part in the season.  Humans please take note.  Do not pass up this opportunity!

In a broad sense, economies are built on the same logic.  A tax break crediting $100 to the taxpayer is intended to create a ripple effect of spending that adds a much large amount of wealth to the economy at large.  Spending is a chain reaction that brings economic prosperity and higher standards of living to all involved.

This is what I have in mind when I consider the present economic problems caused in large part by risky mortgage investments.  Mortgage lenders underwrite mortgages to people and then sell their mortgages upstream to bigger investment banks.  These mortgages often pass through the government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae as part of building a healthy secondary market in mortgages.  In other words, the same chain of spending exists as when folks repeatedly spend that same dollar, except it’s on a grander scale.

The mortgage fallout is bad enough that it has hamstrung a lot of large banks, investment and otherwise.  Their so-called diversified positions were in fact full of risky toxic waste.  Yes, their balance sheets are being crippled by the fallout from being over-leveraged in stinky mortgages.

So, what now?  Well, the financial problems of large companies and GSEs will effectively reduce the amount of money in the economy available for borrowing.  This will trigger the opposite of the chain reaction described above.  For every dollar no longer available for borrowing, the overall pool of money in the economy shrinks to a larger degree.  In this sense, the troubles of the larger investment entities can trickle down to smaller companies and individuals.

So what’s the fallout?  Well, it’s not a great time to sell a house.  Market values are tough to ascertain and buyers are having a harder time getting mortgages at favorable rates.  It’s also probably not a great time to look for a job.  On the other hand, if you’re an investor with money in his pockets, this is a great time to buy up stocks that have been beaten up badly in the last few weeks.  Beyond that, it’s hard to predict the future, especially with the government looking at spend close to a trillion dollar in handouts to keep some of these beaten investment entities afloat.

The prevailing wisdom is that one must perform trial and error feedings with the puppy.  You pick a brand, feed it to her, and see if she will eat.  Then you wait a few weeks as the dog’s stomach adjusts to the food to determine if she can digest it properly.  In other words, you become deeply invested in studying the amount and composition of the dog’s poop.  Seriously.  Squishy?  Oh, my poor doggy’s belly is upset.  It would be easier if she spoke English and could tell me how she is feeling, but alas, she has proven stubborn so far in my attempts to teach it to her.

Anyway, what we need is a piece of software that will automate the process of narrowing down what ingredient makes my dog’s poop nasty.  One could put together a database of popular dog foods that contained a list of all the ingredients by weight in each food.  Then the user could check off which of the foods their dog has tried and whether or not each made them sick.  The software could use a  very simple machine learning construct, a decision tree, and determine which ingredient is most likely making the doggy sick.  The system would simply look at the common ingredients among all the food that make the dog sick, and determine the commonality between them.  This will allow the user to strategically choose new foods to try that avoid the ingredient that the program thinks is the culprit.

Of course, the potential for humor in this program is there.  One could be asked to rank the “disgustiness” of the poop when poor puppy can’t digest a given food.  As the user base grew, one could implement a top ten list of the dog food brands most likely to cause disgusting poop.  I’m not sure how that would help the software attract advertisers, but it would at least be entertaining

Yeah, I’m half kidding with this whole idea, although if such a thing had existed when I started trying to figure out what was upsetting my puppy’s tummy, I sure would have used it.  There apparently is no scientific method for finding a food that your dog will both enjoy eating and be able to digest well.  Everything I’ve read says that high quality food will increase a dog’s energy and lengthen its lifespan.  All puppies should have a chance at a high quality life!

Not really, but the show is certainly a winner.  I hit 30 last year and entered a period of confusion about my career path.  The challenge of programming was waning and as such, I was having a more difficult time remaining focused on it.  For months I thought the problem was simple burnout and blamed my employer.  Later on I took another gig  and the same feelings resurfaced, so I realized my initial conclusion was incorrect.

The truth, more likely, is that I’m not burned out.  I’m just less interested in the actual act of programming than before, but I remain passionately interested in software and technology.  To this end, I’d like to find a balanced, challenging outlet that allows me to pursue my interests in software and technology without getting bogged down in doing all of the implementation.

I used to look around and scoff at the lack of older programmers, assuming that older people can’t hack the ever-evolving technology landscape.  I no longer really think this is the case, but rather that as programmers gain experience, they obtain more perspective about the industry.  From the dawn of the computer science age in the 1960s to the present, most problems have been simply recycled with new implementations of the same solutions.  True innovation is more rare and the more experienced programmer gets weary of the same problem solving.

If I can find a career operating at a higher level in the software production process, I think I’ll be a lot happier.  It’s the repetitious problem solving in everyday programming that makes me bored.  In the past I’ve enjoyed architecture and design work as well as mentoring new hires out of college.  I don’t know what my exact niche in the ecosystem should be yet, but I certainly would like to stay within the software industry.  I’ll be re-examining career opportunities with a more open mind.