So why did I leave Regions? Among other things, I was beginning to feel a restained, like I’d outgrown the job, and frankly, I was getting tired of the super-corporate office environment. It was a good just-out-of-school job, but it was time to move on to bigger and better things.

Well I’ve been at DAXKO for a week now, and life is grand. The work environment is fantastic and is exactly what I was looking for. I’m working with a bunch of really smart folks that are passionate about what they’re doing. I’m actually working on the new product development project team where my role lies in user interaction and design. Very exciting stuff.

I also wanted to mention that I got a little crazy a couple weeks back and decided to buy my first Mac. I purchased the Mac mini Intel Core Duo with a gig of RAM. So far so good - I’m still adjusting though.

I’ve never been one to complain about Windows because I never really have any problems with it. I know a lot of people do and what not, but I guess I’ve just become really good at using it over the years. That being said, the new Mac is definitely a lot more fun to use.

Fortunately, Dave Shea, along with some great commenters, offer some fantastic advice in a recent post entitled Speaking? Tips.

Jeremy and I will be featuring some of the benefits of CSS by showing off some real examples. Besides a few nervous jitters, I’m excited to be presenting on something I generally like talking about, and happen to know a little bit about as well. And I still think it’s pretty cool that Birmingham has an organized platform for web professionals and enthusiasts to meet regularly and share ideas. Not very many cities probably do.

While Thunderbird isn’t nearly as robust as Outlook, it handles IMAP mail much, much better. And since I’ve been using it, I’ve decided that not having all the Outlook features, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The simplicity is quite nice.

I’ve also installed RoundCube and now use it for web-based email access. It’s pretty slick already, and is in heavy development, so check it out if you’re looking for something to replace the likes of SquirrelMail .

For Outlook users, the main thing missing from Thunderbird is integrated calendering. Fortunately, the Mozilla team has a calendar project in development. Unfortunately though, it’s in the very early stages of development and isn’t quite as sophisticated.

Personally, I’ve been using Sunbird, which is the standalone version of the calendar application. What I like the most is being able to store a calendar file on my webhost server, and manage it from within Sunbird in multiple locations. Lightning, a working project name for an extension to tightly integrate calendar functionality (scheduling, tasks, etc.) into Thunderbird, also looks very promising.

1. The Steelers are on fire. They playing near perfect football in every aspect of the game.
2. Two words: Jerome Bettis. It could possibly be his last game ever, and he’s playing in his hometown in front of everyone he knows. Look for him to go off in this one.
3. The NFC is a much weaker conference, and the NFC West, the Seahawks’ division, is by far the worst. I’m not saying they don’t deserve to be in the Super Bowl, but I don’t think they’ve played the same caliber teams as the Steelers.

Four jobs I’ve had

1. Lifeguard
2. Warehouse slave at my Dad’s company
3. Network Administator (co-op position while in school)
4. Software Developer

Four movies I can watch over and over

1. Bottlerocket
2. A River Runs Through It
3. Good Will Hunting
4. Swingers

Four places I’ve lived

1. Huntsville, AL
2. Auburn, AL
3. Brewton, AL
4. Birmingham, AL

Four TV shows I love

1. The Shield
2. 24
3. Lost
4. The Soup

Four places I’ve vacationed

1. Bahamas (twice)
2. Switzerland
3. Vegas Baby, VEGAS!
4. 2 spring breaks at Panama City Beach

Four of my favorite dishes

1. Spaghetti
2. Ribs
3. Order scrambled with hash browns - covered, chunked, & topped
4. Sesame Chicken with white rice

Four sites I visit daily

1. digg.com
2. HalogenAntelope.com
3. My Mint Stats
4. I read most everything via a Feed Reader

Four places I would rather be right now

1. At a bar with my friends
2. Vegas, maybe at Crazy Horse Too
3. Relaxing on a beach with a big margarita
4. Travelling somewhere I haven’t been before

Four bloggers I’m tagging
No thanks. I’ll pass..

Then my sister surprised me last fall when she told me that Wesley Wilson, a neighbor of mine growing up, a guy I used to carpool with, was going to be on the show.

On the eve of his graduation from Georgia Tech (a robotics major), Wes was out at the bars in Atlanta and was approached by a casting director for the show. Appearantly, he’s the only guy contestant that didn’t go to one of the auditions. Now I’ve known Wes and his family for a long time and wouldn’t consider him to be that “geeky” - sure he’s a smart guy, but it’ll be interesting to see how he’s portrayed on the show.

I saw his parents back in November and they told me that Wes had finished filming the show, but couldn’t say anything to them or anyone else, or he’d be fined something like 1.5 million dollars!

Last night, they had a special “casting” episode that showed the process of finding the new contestants. They also showed a quick highlight reel of the upcoming season, with a short clip of what looked like Wes hooking up with one of the beauties! Season 2 premieres tonight at 8pm central on the WB. If you’ve never watched Beauty & The Geek before, you should give it a shot.

Performancing for Firefox is a full featured blog editor that sits right within Firefox. Just hit F8 or click the little pencil icon at the bottom right to bring up the blog editor and easily post to your Wordpress, MovableType or Blogger blogs.

…but I’d also like to wish everyone a Merry Chrismukkah and a happy New Year. I told Santa I wanted a new digital camera (Panasonic DMC-FX9) for Christmas so hopefully he’ll come through for me and I’ll be able to resume taking incriminating photos of me & my friends again. I’m heading to Phoenix after Christmas and will be drinking in the New Year out there so this will more than likely be my last post of the year. Here’s wishing you and yours a great 2006!

Oh yeah, since installing the wonderful del.icio.us Firefox extension, I’ve been using my del.icio.us account much, much more, so I’ve scrapped using the WordPress Link Manager for my “Elsewhere” links and am now using the LinuxBrit WordPress plugin instead.

First of all, the earphones that come with the iPod are a joke. They’re uncomfortable, fall out too easily, and sound like shit. I began looking for a replacement set the day my iPod arrived.

Because of their portability, I like canalphones, which are small headphones that fit inside the ear canal. I’m not really interested in any of the high end phones because I just can’t bring myself to spend over $150 dollars for headphones, although I understand that many people will and do every day.

So I fall into a large market segment of iPod users looking for a relatively inexpensive replacement set of earphones that meet some basic requirements.

1. White, minimalistic look that compliments the iPod.
2. Sound decent enough to make the listening experience enjoyable.
3. Comfortable. Fit well in the ear and won’t fall out when running.

My first choice was the Apple In-Ear Headphones, but they’ve receieved some pretty lousy reviews on both their sound and fit. Browsing through sites like iLounge and headphone forums, I was surprised that a lot of the recommended products where not available in the US. Most people made their purchases from AudioCubes.com, a site based in Japan.

I ended up buying a pair of Sony MDR-EX51LP Headphones, which seemed to meet all of the requirements. The only thing that sucks about them, and pretty much all the other in-ear canalphones, is that instead of the standard “Y” split of the cords, the split is uneven. The left cord is short, only a few inches, while the right cord is much longer and is meant to wrap around the back of your neck.

To me it’s stupid and I hate the cords, but I kept the headphones anyway. After using these phones for over 6 months, I’ve never gotten used to it and have been waiting to try something else. Maybe these things are popular in Japan, but it seems most of the US consumers are like me and prefer the standard “Y” split.

Enter the Griffin EarThumps

A couple of weeks ago, Griffin Technology, creator of the popular EarJams, released the EarThumps. For only $20 bucks, they looked nice and more importantly had the standard “Y” split. There weren’t any reviews, but I went ahead a purchased them anyway.

I’ve had them for a few days now and I’m quite satisfied with them. They sound good enough overall with strong bass, look great, and are very comfortable. I’ve been running with them twice and for that they work well. And while they do not sound quite as good as the Sonys, I’ll forgo a little bit of sound quality for usability.

So why haven’t any of the big companies listened? It’s not like iPods and other mobile devices came out yesterday. Sure there are companies like Shure, Etymotic, & Sennheiser that focus on the high end niche, but not everyone wants to spend $300 on earphones. With active forums like the ones at iLounge and Head-Fi, it should be easy to get a grasp of what people want. Griffin listened and created a product that satisfies a large market segment’s needs. And until the rest catch up, they’ll reap the rewards.

Tags: ipod, headphones, griffin, sony

Last.fm is the flagship product from the team that designed the Audioscrobbler system, a music engine based on a massive collection of Music Profiles. Each music profile belongs to one person, and describes their taste in music. Last.fm uses these music profiles to make personalized recommendations, match you up with people who like similar music, and generate custom radio stations for each person.

Basically, you create an account, download and install a plugin for your favorite music player, then Last.fm will keep track of the songs you play on your computer. But it’s really so much more than that…

The more you listen, the better the spiffy recommendations area becomes. It’ll help you find new artists and preview music using the Last.fm player, which also doubles as a radio station. The site even has the whole social thing going on so you can see if your friends are listening to crappy music.

Go check it out for yourself and add me as a friend if you want to see what awesome people listen to =)

Tags: last.fm, music

The monitor is incredible. The difference in clarity between it and my old CRT is amazing. Yada yada yada - its damn good.

It’s also worth mentioning that my shopping experience with Dell was fantastic. I placed my order on Sunday, it shipped Monday, and was here on Tuesday! To add to my delight, Dell actually included a DVI cable (as well as a standard VGA cable) in the box.

First of all.. WAR DAMN EAGLE!! Auburn completely ripped Alabama a new one on Saturday and finally exposed our overrated cross-state rivals. I was able to go to the game and sit in the student section, and though there was not near as much drama as most expected, I was ecstatic to be up 21-0 at the end of the first quarter. The final score of 28-18 doesn’t even come close to reflecting Auburn’s dominating performance. Awesome, awesome game.

After the game however, an unfortunate surprise was awaiting me at my girlfriend’s apartment complex. We took her car to the game and left mine in the guest parking lot. This wasn’t how I remember leaving it:

There was a note from the po-po on my windshield when I returned saying that they’d been there and started a report, but I needed to call and give them my information. When I called, the cop that had come earlier was off duty or tied up with the game traffic or something, so they sent a different one instead. Of course this guy had no clue what had happened, so I had no idea whether or not whoever hit my car had left the scene. He took my info and I had to wait ’til Monday to get the report.

Luckily, the kid that hit my car was honest, and insured, and reported the accident. Dealing with his insurance company, Nationwide by the way, has been pretty easy, so let’s just say I’m much happier now.

Back to Saturday: We decided to go to the Supper Club earlier than usual that night since it was Iron Bowl weekend. We got there a little after 11 (which trust me is early for Supper Club) only to find that about a thousand other people had the same idea. After standing in line for over an hour, we were close to the entrance when they stopped letting people in all together since they were way over the fire code limitation.

We ended up going to Bourbon Street, then onto a buddy’s house afterwards since we all don’t get to see each other as much after graduating. We were having a good time, thowing ‘em back, when two of my buddies started some playful, drunken wrestling and accidently fell of my friend Virginia while she was sitting on the couch, breaking her wrist. I’ve broken a lot of bones - my wrist twice - and it really, really sucks to not be able to use your arm like you normally would.

Other than Virginia’s broken wrist and my broken 4Runner, ’twas a great weekend. To top it off, I’m off from work all this week too! Have a happy Thanksgiving.

War Damn Eagle.

Today I’m working on one of the side projects I’ve got going: redesigning the website for my dad’s company - Inline Electric. It’s still sporting a design from about 1998 and looks pretty terrible.

Why haven’t I revamped it before now? Well, a little over a year ago I did build another site for Inline based on the Etomite Content Management System. Then I started a new job and the project took a back seat.

When I was thinking about picking it back up again earlier this year, the Etomite project was going through some rough times. The lead (only) deveoper left the project with another designer to start building a commercial content management system. They left the project in some - in my opinion - inexperienced hands. Though it still seems be a pretty active project, nothing too great has come out of it in the last year or so and the new developer(s)? tend to take a while to even come out with bug fixes these days.

To me, this is one of the few downfalls of adopting an open source project to solve a business solution. If the major player(s) of a project leaves, what will happen?

This doesn’t really effect the super huge projects such as Linux because there’s thousands of incredible developers ready to jump at the bit to join a project of that magnitude. But what about a smaller project like Etomite? Unlike commercial projects, the leaders have no obligations and there may not be suitable replacements in the open source community willing to take over the project.

What do you think?

Tags: etomite, open source, veterans day

http://www.devilducky.com/media/26951/

News from Yorskhire
Extract from the Yorkshire Evening Post:

“A drunk who claimed he had been raped by a dog was yesterday jailed for 12 months by a judge. Martin Hoyle, 45, was arrested by police after a passing motorist and his girlfriend found a Staffordshire bull terrier, called Badger, having sex with him at the side of a road in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire.

Prosecutor Ben Crosland said the couple had stopped to help because they thought Hoyle was being attacked by the animal. But when they got closer they saw that he had his trousers round his ankles, was down on all fours and the dog was straddling him from behind.

“The defendant mumbled something about the dog having taken a liking to him,” said Mr Crosland. “The couple were extremely offended and sickened by what they saw.” Another passing motorist contacted the police and Hoyle was arrested as he walked with the dog down the road.

Hoyle, of East view, Marsh, Huddersfield, told police “I can’t help it if the dog took a liking to me. He tried to rape me.”

He repeated the rape allegation at the police station and added “The dog pulled my trousers down.” Hoyle, who has had a long-standing alcohol problem, was jailed for 12 months after he admitted committing an act which outraged public decency.

His barrister said Hoyle had no memory of the incident because of his drunken state, but was now very remorseful and incredibly embarrassed.

Jailing him, Judge Alistair McCallum told Hoyle “Never before in my time at the bar or on the bench have I ever had to deal with somebody who voluntarily allowed himself to be buggered by a dog on the public highway. Frankly it is beyond most of our comprehension. It is an absolutely disgusting thing for members of the public to have to witness.

It’s okay because it’s YOUR dog, get it?

A buddy of mine somehow found this story here by the way.

Update

Thanks to some pointers from Kyle, I've updated the code to use some of the functions built into Prototype (such as '$" (Dollar), addClassName, & removeClassName) and to use Behaviour's addLoadEvent. I also created a more generic example that isn't quite as specific to this site.

As part of the design of this site, I'm using the script.aculo.us library to make the boxes in the sidebar expand and contract when you click them. The important part to me was to make the effect unobtrusive (no extra markup in the HTML) and keep the position of each box persistant from page to page.

This turned into quite a long post that can really be divided into two sections:

1. The Box creation and markup.
2. Makin' the script.aculo.us magic.

The Box

First let's take a look at some example HTML markup.

A div with an id, a header, and an unordered list with an id - that's it for each box!

Now think of the box in 3 sections: the top (the header of each section), the middle (content), and the bottom.

Top:
The header background actually contains 2 box tops for the different positions, one with a minus (-) and one with a plus (+).

Look at the measurements for CSS purposes. The width of each box is 160px and height is 21px.

Notice in the CSS that the height + padding-top should equal 21px and the width + padding-left should equal 160px. Also, set the cursor to a pointer so the user knows it is clickable.

Create a CSS class to use for when the box is contracted and you need to show the other box top (the one with the plus). I use .invisible. Measure how many pixels it is the the beginning of the second box. In my example, it's 165 pixels.

Middle:
The content needs to have a border on each side with a little padding to seperate the text. I threw in a little gradient background for kicks as well. I use unordered lists for all the content in my sidebar, but with a few changes you can make the middle section whatever you like.

Bottom:
I designed the bottom of the box to "fit in" with the top when it's contracted.

Position the bottom of the box at the bottom of the surrounding div. Set the padding-bottom equal to the height of the box bottom image.

Files you'll need

Download the following and extract all the JavaScript files into a folder on your webserver. I like to keep all of my JavaScript files in a folder called "js."

1. Scriptaculous Library
2. Prototype JavaScript Framework
3. Behaviour

Makin' the magic

Look again at the HTML for the "Recent Posts" box:

Think about it logically. We need to listen to each h3 element in the sidebar for the onclick event. Then when one is clicked, see if that h3 element has a class name of "invisible." If it does, then we'll run the scriptaculous effect "BlindDown" to bring it back into view and set the class to empty; if the class is already empty, we'll run the "BlindUp" effect to hide it, then set the class to "invisible." Easy enough right?

You can read the Behaviour instructions, but basically it allows you to create "rules" that specify elements to add JavaScript events to. This means that we don't have any JavaScript code in our HTML markup - totally unobtrusive baby! So whip out your favorite JavaScript editor and let's get to work!

Here's what the JavaScript "rule" looks like:

We're setting the onclick event for #recent h3 unobtusively. If it has the class name invisible, run the BlindDown effect; if it doesn't then run the BlindUp effect. Notice the Element.hasClassName, Element.removeClassName, and Element.addClassName. These are custom Prototype functions that'll work with multiple class names.

Create a new JavaScript file to store the code for your rules. Here's an example with two "boxes":

Simply create all the rules you need based on your HTML markup, then call Behaviour.register(Your Rules Variable) at then end.

Bakin' Cookies

Notice the setCookie function in there? We need to be able to read and set a cookie to store the each box's status (expanded or contracted) from page to page so add the following functions under your rules. Code adopted from here:

Persistance Is Key

Now that we're storing the position in a cookie everytime the user clicks a box, we need to read those values when each page is generated in order to maintain each box's status as the user browses the site.

Create a variable boxIds that uses the $ (dollar) function with the id name of each div (box) that needs to be checked. The hideBoxes() function will check each cookie and "position" the boxes accordingly.

Last but not least, make sure the hideBoxes() function runs when the browser window loads. Behaviour includes a load event already, so you can just use that.

Final Thoughts

A lot of the code in this example is specific to this site, but the idea and framework is universal and easily adaptable to any site. There's a more generic example which you can view the source of to see how it works.

I really just wanted to show that it's pretty easy to add cool JavaScript effects from the script.aculo.us library to your site without mucking up all your HTML code.

Tags: scriptaculous, javascript

AirSet is solid. Why? I can sync everything between Microsoft Outlook and AirSet. That's awesome. I can't say that about the interface though. Compared to others, it's sorely lacking in design.

On the other hand, MyPIMP (Personal Information Management Portal) has a gorgeous interface, but is lacking in some the features AirSet has; namely Outlook synchronization and RSS feeds. They say they'll be adding these features soon. I love the name though.

Both of these applications have a lot of potential, and they're free. I'm loving all the new "online organization" apps, as they can really help bridge the gap between work and personal schedules.

Tags: mypimp, airset

Tags: auburn, john vaughn