Today I went on the ghost tour at the Stanley here in town, and it was pretty amazing. The history side of the tour alone made it worth far more than the $13 bucks they charge, but the experience I had on the 4th floor set me back quite a bit. For those who don’t know, Stephen King was inspired by his visit here t write the Shinning in the 70’s, and the Hotel has been amazing people for 100 years this Saturday. Built in 1909 by Freelan (F.O.) Stanley, the hotel is an amazing structure, built to make his wife happy during the 5months a year they would spend here in Estes Park every year.

I think the bit that struck me most was the fact that Stanley invented the modern process for creating film, and glass plate emulsions. Before this time, Wet Plate Collodion dominated the photographic world. The collodion plates are very difficult to work with, and are very slow, so Stanley inventing a gelatin based plate, that could be automated was a huge boon, and ultimately made him a multi-millionaire before he sold the business to George Eastman. The Stanley Steamer was also invented and produced by F.O. and his twin brother Francis, and some 10,000 steam powered cars were produced between 1902 and 1924.

Okay, so back to the hotel tour. We walked through the ballroom, and learned about the stage that was setup for the Shinning mini-series, and how Stephen King stayed in the Presidential Suite #217 when he was inspired for the book. Eventually making our way up to the 4th floor where the nannies and children were quartered, which also happens to be the most active floor with paranormal experiences. This is where I had mine.

We walked to the middle hall of one wing to a small square niche in the hall which used to be the play area. We were all then handed a piece of Taffy to hold out in our hand, to see if we could persuade a spirit to interact with it. When I extended my hand with the candy, it almost immediately became chilled in the middle directly around the Taffy. Maybe a 3-4 inch circle just around the candy; not my finger tips, and not my wrist. If I moved my hand, the chill would go away then come back, and after about a minute the sensation became quite a bit stronger and the best way I can describe it is that it was as if someone was sitting in front of my hand blowing on it with a straw, but with cold air. Very strange, and exciting at the same time.

This is he first time that I can say without a doubt that I have had a paranormal experience of any kind, and I would really like to go back to the hotel and stay a couple night to see if I could expand upon it; alas not this trip – but I will come back.

So IE now supports web standards eh? Does that mean it passes the Acid 3 test? Surely it must, I mean it has a checkmark next to the Web Standards bit. Ummm. No. Not so much.

I think the guys on the marketing team for IE 8 need to stop drinking the bujiboo juice and figure out that they still suck in this department. Check out the results for the Acid 3 test. Not even close.

Now, to be fair Opera only hit an 85/100, and Firefox came in at 72/100 but both Safari (4 beta) and Chrome nailed it with 100/100. I’ve read that Opera should be at 100/100, but even the latest 9.6 download doesn’t get any higher for me.

Developers don’t really need another test to tell them that IE is not all that and a bag of chips, but the average web user doesn’t know any better. That’s the real problem; 67% of all of my visitors still use some version of IE, and that means I still have to code for 3 versions of it now. For all my work, I could care less, if you want to use IE 6 you deserve to get crappy web display – but from a business sense, IE 6 really can’t be ignored. Now there’s IE 7, IE 8, and even IE 7 compatibility mode (which differs from the real IE 7) in IE 8. Great one there Billy.

At least they’re on board with a new browser test application for Expression Web called SuperPreview, which, while still in beta, makes cross-version testing in IE moderately tolerable.  There’s an excellent write-up on the Expression Web team Blog, where there is also a download link.

Now if only we could get the IE team to follow along and play nice….

JavaScript

If you go the JavaScript route, I found this little gem some time ago, that covers both the client and server side detection using JavaScript and PHP. Here is an example page of what the output looks like if your detection should fail. If you are on a mobile device, the page redirects you to the root of FloggingEnglish.com. I know some older and low-end devices may not support JavaScript, but since it’s pretty freakin’ ubiquitous these days, so I think it’s pretty safe. There are other JavaScript solutions out there, but this is one is clean, simple and easy to update.

This would be a good solution to incorporate into a Flash site as well, especially since the iPhone doesn’t support Flash yet. I know the iPhone is not the most widely used device, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t consider that too. With the output from the example you could place special tags or content based on the type of device, offer alternative viewing solutions for your visitors, or simply redirect to a CSS based solution for faster viewing.

CSS

Working a well written CSS style layout into your site is always an excellent option whether you’re primarily concerned about mobile devices or not, but with CSS 3 it’s becoming easier for developers to target mobile devices accurately and reliably. Media Queries are relative newcomers to the CSS scene and they are becoming more supported and in the case of Apple, the way they recommend you target the iPhone. They are currently Supported by all main stream browsers that are standards compliant, and supposedly IE is even on board with this one, but Opera, Safari and Firefox all support media queries.

So what is it then?

<link rel=”stylesheet” href=”/includes/css/mobile/screen_320.css” type=”text/css” media=”screen and (min-device-width: 320px)”>

Yup. That’s it. The above code would target any mobile device where the viewport measures 320px or wider, like the iPhone for example. Granted that’s a simplistic example, but you get the idea. Dean over at Bushido Designs posted a great article Bulletproof Mobile device detection. In fact that example doesn’t really convey the strengths of media queries and how flexible this method really is. If you take a look at the W3C recommendation, you will see the following features:

• width
• height
• device-width
• device-height
• orientation
• aspect ratio
• device-aspect-ratio
• color
• color-index
• monchrome
• resolution
• scan
• grid

So you can begin to see the strengths of this method and how it could be the key to blissful mobile CSS support. Using the color feature for example would allow you target a specific stylesheet for devices capable of rendering in color, while using aspect-ration you could target 16:9 devices as well, like the PSP (480 x 272).

Of course none of this would be an issue if Apple and Opera hadn’t decided to ignore the handheld media type with their mobile browsers. With the two biggest mobile browsers off the tabel, that pretty much renders the use of handheld useless. A move that is decidedly Microsoft-esque.

On top of my WTF list is the process involved in retrieving images sent to my phone from other mobile devices. I would really like to meet the brain child who thought it was super user friendly to have to make me go to a website, and enter in, not one… but TWO alphanumeric strings to view the image that was sent to me. All from a device that is incapable (for now) of copy and paste. This has to be one of the most retarded things i have ever come across, and the rocket scientist who dreamt that nightmare should go back school and learn about usability. Given the fact that the images are not stored permanently there, why they just wouldn’t create a linking system like twitpic is beyond me. Just tack a freakin’ GUID on the end of the URL for Pete’s sake! Gah.

Another thing that plagued me this afternoon was setting multiple devices to enable my iPhone to accept my almost completed app. I went through the setup process of adding the device only to get a code signing error. The same error that hundreds of other developers have gotten. Luckily for me all I had to do was go under Project > edit project settings and then change the Code Signing Identity to the right profile, and viola! I was in business. This seems really clunky to me, and left me wondering if there was abetter way Apple could handle this. If this happens to you, and the Xcode UI options doesn’t fix it, there is a manual process described here, and other places.

Today has been quite frustrating as far as my Apple Developer stuff goes. In general I have accomplished very little. I was unable to open a business checking account because the po-dunk chuckleheads in town decided to make up their own rules in regards to what I need to open an account. Rules contrary to what other banks say, and what the legals dudes who set up my LLC say. The gal on the phone actually said to me, “well, here at bumf$%#! bank, we have our own set of rules…”, well you can guess who she was talking to after that morsel of knowledge. That’s not to say there aren’t any folks in town who know what’s what – but this old biddy was playing with a box of rocks as far I could tell.

It seems like this is the longest, most arduous process available to get this all taken care of, and it looks like it will probably another 3 weeks before I will have my app in the App Store. I hope it goes faster, but I’m not holding my breath…..

Given the relative ease at which I can fubar the connection of my Wii-motes, the idea of this working really well in a brightly sunlit room seems very far fetched. Since not all gamers (just the serious ones) live in their Mom’s basement, normal folk don’t always have the ideal setup for their consoles, so it would seem to me that this is an idea that is destined to be problematic at best.

Just the same, it looks super cool in fake-o-vision setup on the Natal project site, and is exciting to think that I could roundhouse my own way through Street Fighter 87. Take a look though, it would be super freakin’ awesome. You can also file this under “man I really want to go to E3!”

Seriously, this is one of the best things I have evr received for a birthday gift. One of the other being a Swiss Army belt watch that my wife bought me 10 years ago that has been on my belt daily ever since. It also still keeps perfect time.

Now that I have my LLC, and should be very close to being a full-fledged Apple Developer, I can finally get my App submitted and in the App Store to try and start making some money, and hopefully turn this app development thing into some kind of a business. I would like to get into some Mac development too. I’m working on about 2.5 apps right now, and once I get the first into the submission process I will talk a bit more about the process of building my first app more in-depth. What’s super cool now though is that I can test my own stuff on the iPhone too, and not have to sponge off my techie friends (who I will still likely do) to give it some beta testing.

I have to say that I am in love with my new phone. the only bit I am not so sure on right now is the camera, the 2 mp camera and the quality is kinda lame, but I didn’t want it for its stellar photographic abilities. Okay, off to play more with the phone!

Thank you to all of the conspirators again on the gang-gift, I had no idea and I am still a little flabbergasted – you all rock!

Now I hear about it being slow, and I just went back to play and see WTF. Sure enough too, the UI was slow, and not very responsive. The rollover effects on the menu bar icons take about 2.5 seconds to go from down to over states, and the load time of the OS is considerably slower than before.

First thing I did was throw more RAM at it, 1gb in fact. No diff. So then I added the second virtual process and kicked the RAM to 1.3gb. Still nothing. I tired installing the VMware Tools, but they don’t see to go, and I haven’t gotten any further than that. There are visual issue too. The menu bar doesn’t span the width of the screen, so icons overlap – even if I up the resolution.

It’s still in beta, so I’m not really hashing on it – but it is buggy and the latest updates to the UI seem to have affected the function of it. At least on a VM, and that may be an issue all unto itself. Still, I have to hesitate to put it on my netbook for fear of these issues being present there as well.

Moblin 2 is now sporting a kickin’ new interface, and just as fast if not faster load times than before – at least it seems that way. I am very hopeful for this latest build too. I tried to get it running on my Acer Aspire One and had a lot of trouble getting apps installed, and my account wasn’t even in the sudoers group – so I had to switch back to Ubuntu. Which is fine, but I like the idea of Moblin for my netbook more. It’s lighter, faster and designed for that platform. As long as I can get Flash and couple other things running on it – I’m all over it like a fat kid on a doughnut.

I fully intend to get back to the other links to, from the blogroll, but I won’t get to it tonight. It’s bad enough that the import left all of the CDATA tags in place around all of the posts and I had to go in a manually remove them all. Thanks Wordpress.

Not only are the photographs quite nice, but when added up into a grid utilizing the functionality of the site to aide in the presentation of the images as a whole – it really hits the mark. This is the kind of stuff I really enjoy when I find it. Creative uses of the whole space, including the more mechanical aspects of how things are displayed.

The idea of breaking images up into a grid, or collectively grouping images in a grid to form a visual whole isn’t a new one. I have done with some success in the past, and others like Stu Levy (an absolutely phenomenal photographer by the way) have done with great success. This I find interesting simply because the delivery system is the grid, which is being built into the images, to become transparent.

Where most folks (including myself) would have normally viewed their photostream as a simple vehicle, or even a constraint of the system (Flickr) in how our images are conveyed, norby found visual mechanics that could be built to work with the system, not just being displayed by it. This is the sort of thing that really makes the web worth while for me, and why I so intensely enjoy what I do.

The rest of his photostream is worth a look or two as well.