But I digress, you didn’t come here to learn about sIFR - there are better places to do such things. You came to take part in the heated debate about the correct pronunciation of the acronym.  Some of my coworkers and I have nearly come to fisticuffs over the proper pronunciation, so why not join in on the fun?

Here’s the deal: I believe it is pronounced with a short “i”, a la “sift”.  Some of my coworkers believe it is pronounced with a long “i”, a la “site”.  Phonetically, they’re saying “cypher”. Obviously, I am correct.  My reasoning: the “I” in sIFR stands for Inman (soft “i”), as in scalable Inman Flash Replacement, because Shaun Inman initially developed the technology. Also, I believe the pronunciation of the first letter of each word in an acronym should be maintained, if it results in an easily spoken acronym.  For example - NASA arguably rolls off the tongue a little more easily than nay-say.  You can see my point.  Their sole reason: “cypher” sounds cooler.  Shenanigans, I say.

So now it’s time to hopefully get a collective opinion on the matter.  What say you, fellow geeks?

The site itself, which was obviously designed by the same folks responsible for his campaign site, is quite captivating as well.  It admirably meets all the goals one would expect from such a site: visual unity, a sense of regality, tasteful typography, and readability.  Quite a bit of information is presented on the home page, yet spacing and color are used judiciously to lead the eye through the visual hierarchy.

The way our next President is handling every aspect of his upcoming office already is a sign of what we have to look forward to in the next four years: responsibility, intelligence, thoughtfulness, and dedication. It’s about time.

In related news, I’m finally getting to the point where I’m actually redesigning my other blog, so stay tuned for posts on the entire process of re-creating that site.

Cheers.

This doesn’t mean I’m leaving PHP in the dust - I still use it extensively at work, with no plans of stopping anytime soon - but I just have a feeling this is a language I would like to work in. Python’s syntax is similar to Ruby’s (at least at first glance), and from what I’ve read it outperforms Rails by quite a bit.

The project that I’m going to cut my Django teeth on is my wife and I’s blog: www.rustyandben.com. I talked briefly about overhauling the site a few months ago, but some other higher priority projects came up. I’m getting to the point now, however, where I can start working on it again. I’ll be re-designing and developing from scratch (obviously maintaining all data), so it makes the perfect opportunity to try out Django. I’ll be upgrading my Media Temple hosting to a virtual dedicated server so that I can have root-level access in order to install whatever software I want. This, in turn, will allow me to try out a couple other technologies I’ve been wanting to check out: SQLite (a lightweight flat-file database system) and Lighttpd (a lightweight and fast HTTP server). More on those as I assess their feasibility.

I’ll be posting about all this again soon, as I’m planning on writing a series of posts about the creation of the site.

Some other things that were of concern to me were my various web development extensions - Firebug, Web Dev. toolbar, FireFTP, Dummy Lipsum, etc.  This problem was solved by installing Oxymoronical’s Nightly Tester Tools. The extension allows you to disable compatibility checking. Then you can enable your extensions one by one and make sure they don’t break anything. Luckily, all of my must-have-extensions work perfectly with compatibility checking turned off. Yay!

Finally, I recommend using the Firefox Nightly Builds, as opposed to the betas, so you can get the latest updates (and maybe a bug or two). Not a big deal though, and it’ll update itself to stay current.

There you go, fully functioning bleeding-edge install of Firefox 3, with (hopefully) most of your extensions working! By the way, it installs itself as “Minefield”, rather than Firefox, because, well, you’re taking a chance by installing the nightly builds ;).

Enjoy.

Ubuntu Linux is, in my opinion, the most accessible and usable version of Linux out there. I’ve been dual-booting with Ubuntu for about a year now, and I started out by trying the previous version of Wubi. I had so much fun with Ubuntu that I decided to go ahead and get another hard drive and install the OS the proper way. Not that Wubi is a lesser version of the OS - it isn’t - but since it installs to your Windows hard disk, it’s not a “real” install. There have been some minor bugs with Wubi (it is a beta product), but I’ve encountered none of them personally.

Moral of the story, if you’ve wanted to try Linux but were afraid to, there’s no longer a reason to be afraid. A nice bonus to using Linux: It’s uber-secure, and worrying about viruses and spyware is a thing of the past. I don’t even have any anti-virus or anti-spyware installed on my installation of Linux.

Enjoy.

Update: I should’ve mentioned that Wubi is a Windows only app. Not sure if there are any alternatives for OS X or not.

On a side note, I’m also interested in learning Ruby on Rails a little more in-depth, so if you’re willing to let me do some on-the-job training, I’m willing to learn!

Cheers,
Ben

Ryan Carson wrote a post recently about PR people, and he quoted Robert Stephens (founder of Geek Squad):

“Marketing is the price you pay for being unremarkable.”

I love sayings like that. Simple, true, and inspirational. I had never really thought about it, but it’s true. You only need to market yourself if you don’t otherwise stand out in the crowd. He references another small team, 37signals, who are also uniquely remarkable. They create simple, useful apps for small businesses. They’re not for everybody, but for the people that use them they’re a godsend (most of them anyway).

I think we need more companies like Carsonified and 37signals. We need to move away from larger market-dominating companies that try to please everybody with overly complex software, and move towards smaller companies that meet the needs of smaller groups. If there are enough of these small companies going after certain market segments, people will end up being happier in the long run. At least I think so.

I know it’s just a pipe-dream, but I think we’d truly be better off with fewer big companies, and more smaller companies.

That is all.