That’s right – Plaid, the folks behind Brandflakes for Breakfast, are starting Plaid Nation in a mere ten days!

What is Plaid Nation?

Why, an excellent question to ask – Plaid Nation is a “rolling celebration of creativity and a demonstration of social media in action.”

Or – social media in motion. We’re talking live streaming video, interviews with some of the Internet 1337 –

In their venture, they managed to interview Robert Scoble, Cathy Brooks from Seesmic and Biz Stone (of his many involvements – Twitter being the one you probably know).

Awesome People, Awesome Concept, Awesome Execution.

Cool schwag for Plaid Nation!

As last year I caught wind after the fact, this year they won’t be too far from home base – they’re hitting Chicago on July 22, and Indianapolis on July 23 – I’m debating making the road trip to catch the ride from Columbus (why aren’t they coming here?)

If you haven’t gotten your fill of Plaid yet – they’ve got some new digital freebies up for this year, complete with theme song :) and a twitter stream to help the normals check in on the fun. So Darryl, you may be getting an email from me if I can pry myself away from work for a day or two and make my own road trip (without a live stream of the trip, but I can tweet away) to see how much of the Plaid fever I can catch.

I use twitter quite prolifically – mostly to vent, sometimes to ask questions. I don’t use auto-follow, I don’t use any “tips or tricks” to gather “hundreds of followers in a day.” I simply use the service, blog, and tweet. Somehow, I keep getting followers – possibly because of my associations of people I talk to (tweet with) or my hash tag usage (possibly again, through people’s auto-follow based on the hash tag usage from people). I’ve played with the twitter API on an as-yet-unreleased twitter project (I’m trying to make sure I “follow the rules” and get OAUTH working). Has that got me followers? Possibly.

Twitter – It’s Your NICHE, Not Your Numbers.

The very simple key to twitter – it’s not popularity, it’s not mass following, it’s not having the most followers.

The inherent problem with twitter, is, as since the myspace days everyone felt that the more people you had “friended” the cooler you had to be. I guess this herald’s to people’s high-school days where higher numbers of friends translated into something that mattered – perhaps the inherent psychological need is filled (yes, wikipedia link, deal with it).

The problem is that people still associate greater numbers with some sort of correlation to their skill level, reputation, or validation of “social media mastering.”

Again – It’s Your NICHE

If you have 50,000 people following you, and you’re following 50,000, and twitter is averaging 221 tweets per second, how are you really reading all your beloved followers? By automated scripts, or because you aren’t a master of anything except collecting followers. This is not a reflection of “social media savvy” nor a reflection of how effective they are at whatever it is they claim they do – be it real estate, loan sharking, web development, or ESPECIALLY SEO, SEM, or Social Media in general – if you compare some of the “top ten” or “top 25″ “experts” in various blogs you’ll see one of two things – they’re either the same list with the “obvious” experts (like my list) or full of self-claimed experts that tend to have a lot of seminars/webinars to show *you* how you can have google paying you fat checks for a measly $150!

Quality is What Counts – NOT Quantity

I’m really reinforcing that quantity issue – it’s the quality of who you follow that benefits you the most, as well as the quality of your tweets. Tweeting is the new blogging – and just as people blog about their cats, their daily lives, their secrets, people twitter the same things, so you WILL see mundane tweets, from even those that tweet about subject matter you’re interested in. People you find/follow on twitter that either speak of the subject you’re interested in, answer your questions, will post links to their blogs as well as remarkable links worthy of reading. What people post is important – after all, if they share every mundane article/image/digg/Retweet it waters down their quality as well.

The First Rule of Tweet Club

You have to tweet to play (okay, not really). By no means do I consider myself a twitter master, as I still tweet fairly mundanely – it’s my way of letting off steam, 140 characters at a time. But I also follow some pretty cool people, and have found some articles worth saving, some tips worth knowing, and some people worth finding. Won’t you be my twitter neighbor?

In that time, I’ve added a ton of followers, and constantly sorting through the requests I’ve received. I don’t follow everyone. Particularly “Gurus” with thousands of following/followers. I don’t follow people who primarily use Twitterfeed so it’s just a stream of RSS posts. I don’t follow spammers (naturally) or people that do nothing except hock their site, their product(s) or their friend(s) similar products, and I especially do not follow self-claimed gurus, be it social media, seo, sem, etc.

The people I follow on twitter fall into a few categories:

• I know them personally.
• I know them professionally.
• They are an understood expert in their field(s) like:
  • Web Development (Particularly Javascript Framework Developers)
  • SEO
  • SEM
  • Analytics
  • Social Media

Particular niches I subscribe to, and I have developed a small list of experts that I’d trust what they say (and occasionally toss questions to them). I consider this list to be “obvious” experts – they’ve proven themselves professionally, or have written at length in blogs about the topic.

My Obvious SEO Experts on Twitter

1. Matt Cuts (from Google)
2. Rand Fishkin (from SEO Moz)
3. Aaron Wall (from SEOBook)
4. SearchEngineLand (from itself)
5. Jennifer Laycock (from Search Engine Guide)
6. Mark Scholl (from EnginePoint Marketing)

I’ve limited the list to six – because I feel they cover a breadth of knowledge that you could gain, mainly from their blog postings – sometimes, 140 characters isn’t enough (some times it is).

I’ll work out additional “Obvious Twitter People to follow” in the future.

What Domain Name Defines Me, as a Person?

I Am Jack

A Doubel Edged Sword – SEO Domain, Generic Notability

The “cool” factor comes with the right domain. For example, ILoveJackDaniels.com was a cheat sheet repository for web developers (ignoring the fact that it’s changed domains since Jack Daniels doesn’t like nerds). No one in their right mind would associate “web development cheat sheets” with “I love Jack Daniels” (or ilovejackdaniels, if we want to go into semantics of how search engines see domains). What if it was simply, web-cheat-sheets.com (or webcheatsheets.com)? Certainly, we may stumble on it, and it makes sense – but it’s not notable as ILoveJackDaniels.com or something equally creative.

Balance the “Cool Factor” with “Smart Business Move”

If you feel your business depends on your domain, you’ve all ready failed. Your domain does not define you – ever. No one finds my site by researching me – they turn up searching on terms for jquery, mootools, seo, and various other topics I’ve written about. They’ve come here by clicking on my (hopefully) insightful comments on another person’s blog post. Will they remember to come back? Maybe. Maybe they’ll remember the simplicity that is ikeif.net or maybe they’ll think:

What was it? Some site with mootools, jquery, social media, seo… I’ll just throw a few terms in and see what comes up

Hey, maybe I’m not in the first page of results, but then again, until my digital life needs to be on the front page, I don’t need to be.

Suggested Dojo Reading

Sitepen has provided a nice primer on the basic functionality most people start off with in their library investigations, but where to go from here?

Is like a more detailed view into the Dojo API. I’d start here if I wanted to peruse the API in a more logical way then in their API docs.

I suggest reading the Dojo Basics from Dojo Campus to get in deep with querying elements and Dojo Quickstart Events to figure out attaching events.

Understanding Dojo Toolkit

The more I use Dojo, the more I see correlations with Java – and that’s not a good thing. In Java, you have JavaDocs telling you about the thousands of Java functions, parameters, returns you can have. VERY powerful. VERY difficult to learn. Most of the JavaScript frameworks took a different approach – they made what they did powerful, but kept it simple. Easy to read, easy to peruse – like the PHP docs (in my opinion). the function names and organization make total sense.

In Dojo, it doesn’t feel as quite intuitive – for me – and that’s it’s biggest downfall. It has a high barrier of entry, and a large, robust, sophisticated toolkit that you aren’t really expected to know every inch of (like Java), but understand the basics and have an API to refer to when you want to do the more powerful functionality.

Unfortunately, Dojo still feels like it’s in the infancy of this aspect, as navigating to the more complex aspects is a pain. Should my Dojo work increase in the near future, I may invest in a book to try and become more acquainted with the more difficult aspects.

Accessibility in the Framework

I’m seeing inklings in their code with reference to WAI, but I haven’t even *attempted* to fool with that in any accessibility sense. As my current projects haven’t adequately been in need of WAI guidelines, I’d love to see a more thorough analysis.

After having used JavaScript libraries (originally prototype/scriptaculous, some Moo.FX, then jQuery, then MooTools, and currently a project using Dojo) you come to expect a certain amount of consistency in general concepts, and in that expectation, the libraries have delivered.

$, $$, dojo.query, dojo.byId, document.getElementById – give me my element nodes!

So, basic JavaScript, people have developed a few different ways to get the elements they want, including custom functions – like Robert Nyman’s getElementsByClassname – which take advantage of local browser support, but you’re still forced to account for those without it. *cough*IE*cough*

MooTools uses the $ or $$:

var idEx = $('someId'); //get element by ID
var arrayEx1 = $(document.body).getElement('someElement'); // return first matching 'someElement
 inside of 'someContainer', or document.body in this example
var arrayEx1 = $(document.body).getElements('someElement'); // return array of 'someElement' (or class name, if you have the right components downloaded) that are contained inside of 'some container', or in our example, document.body.
var arrayEx2 = $$('someElement'); // return array of all found 'someElement'

Pretty powerful stuff, for so basic an idea.

jQuery is kind of similar:

var someArray = $('someElement'); // return an array of those elements/that ID/etc.

Very powerful for a single selector – but it has the added bonus that they’ve allowed it to be overwritten, so you can use jQuery with another library (say, MooTools) that also uses the $ selector. It took me a little bit to get used to the return of an array outside of a single element.

Dojo does things a little differently

var someArray = dojo.query('someElement'); // return an array of elements

The get(’selector’).get(’selector’) (like mootools $(some).getElements(’someElse’)) can be pulled off in dojo/jQuery, but perhaps not as intuitive, in my opinion (again, I’m biased as a long-time MooTools fan/developer).

Which is better?

I can’t say which JavaScript library is better. Perhaps more-so, I don’t want to. It’s moot. You pick the library you’re most comfortable with, and most importantly, for your Clients – you pick the one that they’re development team can run with for the long-term.

How to choose a JavaScript Library – the condensed version

I’m a life-long student, and a professional developer – I’ve coded many languages, and I’m learning others, so it’s easy to see certain correlations that have started popping up.

MooTools… is definitely for the JavaScript Developer, and if you’re Object-Oriented as well, it’s even better.

jQuery… is for the designers out there who know some xhtml and want to get some JavaScript without dealing with the headaches it can bring. It’s go ta low barrier of entry, but I’ve thought of this Thomas Jefferson quote:

That which is Popular is not always Right, what is Right is not always popular

Don’t read too much into that. I just infer that people that say it’s “the way” have some additional education to do in general.

Dojo… is for the Java Developer crowd. As I’m delving more into Java, I see the strong similarities, and see why it’s involved in a lot of Java-based enterprise solutions – you could jump back and forth between Dojo and Java and feel pretty comfortable.

Coding Syntax, Preference, What’s Left? DOCUMENTATION!

This is the area most things suffer in – either too much or too little documentation. I’ve grown fond of MooTools docs structure. It’s easy to find what I need with it’s break down of how the functions are applied – string, array, elements… Easy!

jQuery docs are along the same lines, but I have difficultly in navigating them. I blame myself because of my long-term familiarity with MooTools, it’s become second nature, so jQuery is still slightly foreign.

Dojo docs, in my opinion, are the WORST of the docs. They’re broken down into their three main components (dojo, dijit, dojox), but beyond that it’s a guessing game to get to the API reference you want/need. I was finding myself hitting the wrong sections because the search led me there, but it was not representing what I was searching for.

I really feel their Dojo Campus is a much better doc representation than their dojo book, or their API docs. Their book is incomplete, and if you search and find references to the book, you’ll find items incomplete, moved, referencing different version of the book, to the point you’re better off not even reading it. Along with the occasional example randomly not loading, then working, then not. It was a nightmare!

The problem – perhaps the only problem – with Dojo Campus, is the search functionality. It defaults to “title search” which failed for me 99% of the time (because I needed something in the content, and was searching for the wrong titles). Even worse, the search isn’t even featured on the home page! I had to go four clicks in until I stumbled upon it for this post. (It’s accessible in two: Click on Tutorials and one of the options)

To my understanding, the Dojo Campus is going to become the “new” face of Dojo. And with their continued improvements in coding it’s becoming a stronger contender, and more importantly, more user friendly.

Examples from the frameworks

Every framework suffers from this. Outdated examples, drastic version differences that break code, or multiple version examples. MooTools and jQuery, for the most part, are pretty solid. Dojo, I hate to pick on you, but this is where you hurt the most. I googled – a lot – and the demos – official, sitepoint, others – are all over the place. Version 0.4, 0.9, 1.2.3, 1.3… and what’s worse, no one indicates what version the demo is in, so when I started looking at Sortable Tables, I find out it was made obsolete in another version. Links to non-existent pages in the dojo book… a mess!

In my own projects, it lead me to re-write a lot of items that existed in Dojo, but for a beginner with their library I ran into way too many issues to make it feasible to spend any more time playing with the code.

Overall, my impressions have not changed

MooTools is my favorite, jQuery is a recommended secondary, and Dojo is reserved as a “use it if you have to.” They pretty much throw the W3C to the wind with their coding structures – those dijits generate a mess of divs and classes as a default, to the point that I see the benefit in their examples, but in most of my scenarios, it was overkill (and my fellow devs would kill me if I ever coded something in that spaghetti menner).

It really showcases a difference between people that code for the front-end, and those that work with the front-end but primary experience is the back-end. the code makes sense to the extent in relation to Java code – but in comparing it to the majority of front-end applications, it’s a nightmare.

What is Sweetcron?

To quote Wikipedia:

Sweetcron is an open source lifestreaming blog software created by Jon “Yongfook” Cockle based on the CodeIgniter framework. It was originally released on 3 September 2008 and the latest version following on 22 September. Sweetcron is similar to other web applications such as Tumblr and Friendfeed, but users are able to host their own lifestream on their own server and customize it in any way they want with the Sweetcron API.

Users can add RSS feeds from multiple social networks and sites, such as Twitter, LastFM, Flickr and many more.

Basically, if it has an RSS feed, you can utilize it to create your own personal lifestream.

How can I make those @Usernames clickable?

Sometimes, the code can get lost in translation. Maybe it’s your RSS feed, maybe it’s the provider, hell, mabe it’s Sweetcron. But Sweetcron gives you two handy methods to manipulate your data in two handy “plug-in functions“:

• function pre_db: before you store the information in the database.
• function pre_display: after it’s been saved to the database, but before it’s rendered.

Thanks to regular expressions, we can loop through information before we save it to our database, or afterwards, depending on your preference. All you need is:

// change @names into clickable links
$item->item_title = preg_replace('/(^|[^\w])(@[\d\w\-]+)/', '<a href="http://twitter.com/$2">$2</a>' ,$item->item_title);

$item represents your sweetcron’d “post” which consists of the object – code, text, images, links, etc. We’re basically saying “in this object, there is an item_title, if it has @something, make it a link that points to user @something” – simple enough, eh?

The PHP Function to Update Your Twitter Status

<?php
/**
 * A simple function using Curl to post (GET) to Twitter
 * Kosso : March 14 2007
 *
 * Feel free to do what you like with this.
 * It's pretty easy. But I thought I'd just put it out there.
 * Curl is your friend.
 *
 * usage :  postToTwitter("myusername","mypassword","hello twitterati! I'm posting this from a PHP script! woo!");
 */
function postToTwitter($username,$password,$message)
{
	// GET the API url via web authentication
	// add 'status' param to send a message to Twitter

	$host = "http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml?status=".urlencode(stripslashes(urldecode($message)));

	$ch = curl_init();
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $host);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_VERBOSE, 1);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Expect:'));

	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, "$username:$password");
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION, CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_1);
	curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);

	// Go for it!!!
	$result = curl_exec($ch);
	// Look at the returned header
	$resultArray = curl_getinfo($ch);

	// close curl
	curl_close($ch);

	//echo "http code: ".$resultArray['http_code']."<br />";

	if($resultArray['http_code'] == "200")
	{
		echo "<br />OK! posted to http://twitter.com/".$username."/<br />";
	} else
	{
		echo "eek! yegads! error posting to Twitter";
	}

	// debug the result
	// echo "<pre>";
	// print_r($resultArray);
	// echo "</pre><hr>";
	// $sResult = htmlentities($result);
	// $sResult = str_replace("&gt;&lt;","&gt;<br />&lt;",$sResult);
	// echo "<pre>";
	// print $sResult;
	// echo "</pre>";
}?>

I credit Kosso with the PHP function – it’s basically a slightly more blown out version of the code flaoting around.

$unix_time = time();
echo $unix_time;

We don’t have an easy-as-pie solution for JavaScript however – instead, we have this function we can use:

function unix_time()
{
	// tada!
	return parseInt(new Date().getTime().toString().substring(0, 10));
}

I had come to the same conclusion (from by conversation with Toby) that random querystrings being appended didn’t make much sense – that prevents caching, but why stop caching – unless the file gets updated?

I wrote a little php function that works with filemtime, albeit it requires the absolute path of the file.

function autoVer($url){
$path = pathinfo($url);
$ver = '.'.filemtime($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].$url);
echo $path['dirname'].'/'.$path['basename'].'?'.$ver;
}

What this means, is when we call our files like so:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="<?php autoVer('/mootools/css/reset.css') ?>" />

It renders like so:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/mootools/css/reset.css?1224038981" />

So only when your file gets updated, does the query update, forcing the cache invalid!

It’s a simple function – and by no means perfect. Would you refactor it, or do you have a better way?

The general point (in terms of Web Development) is that this is an insanely simple thing to accomplish – 15 minutes and Shawn had a working iframe demo.

I wanted to grab some of the effects and colors of the original, just to see if I could do it and “make it fancy” – I mean, there’s still a half-dozen effects that can be applied to it – fades, transitions, all those whizz-bang-pow stuff people love, but I had to pull myself back a test was important.

Skittles.com Initial Test

I decided to focus on Firefox 3 so I could use rounded corners in CSS (there’s a JS library for everyone else, sans Webkit, but hell, remember, this is a test. No one’s paying, so I’m not worried about IE.

It took me a couple hours, but here’s skittles.com, reproduced without flash.

I’m too tired to write more, so – here ya go.

You Flashed My Google

So Mark Scholl pulled up this nugget of a gem from an October post from Brian Ussery announcing their intent to start indexing flash.

I recall reading this in October, and quite a few people were excited about this – it means the old argument that “Flash isn’t SEO friendly” would boil down to “if you’re a good Flash developer, your stuff will get indexed because you wrote it properly.”

What’s interesting, is the article dives into the fact that the SWF/Flash files will carry their own rage rank – and as such, if you reuse the same SWF on more than one page, keyword thinning can occur (you’re using duplicate content).

So – it’s been a few months, I was curious just *what* was being pulled in by google in terms of flash content, and what was being shown. I used a simple google query that it seems most people have forgotten about.

Custom Google Search – FileType

search: filetype:swf site:ikeif.net

It’s that easy. Run this with some search terms and see if your site’s flash is being indexed like you hoped it would.

Of course, I felt like playing around and seeing what’s happening in the wide world of flash…

How’s my Flash being indexed?

I ran a couple searches against some sites to see how they were being indexed:

Query: filetype:swf site:nationwide.com – What’s interesting is their flash is being indexed (I’m assuming) properly. The descriptions make sense, until you hit number 8 that says “PLAY AGAIN. PLAY AGAIN. 0%”

Query: filetype:swf loading – I did this out of curiousity – much like how it’s been stated that “click here” is the worst possible wording for a link – over three million results for swf’s that say “loading!” Semi-interesting: The number one link is a flash USA Map Test.

Query: filetype:swf site:remhq.com and filetype:swf site:kanyeuniversecity.com – I figured I would have to do a couple band sites, as bands and labels were usually the number one commiters of flash atrocities. These two were high ranking when I searched for “band sites flash” (simple, yet effective). Kanye? Three links. REM? Four pages, all with some pretty good descriptions.

Query: filetype:swf site:roushhonda.com – As I recently moaned about the fact that so many car sites rely too heavilly on flash (mainly because I couldn’t hit their sites on my iPhone). All those listings in flash, none of it being indexed. I settled on Rousch from a search for “used cars columbus“.

We’ve come a long way, baby.

So – we see some areas of needed improvement. SEO for Flash is something that I feel needs to be addressed more often (by designers and developers!) and it’s something our SEO people need to keep in mind and discuss (I’m looking at you, Mark Scholl and Jennifer Laycock!). As this is slowly moving from the “I wish flash was indexed” to “Oh shit, it’s indexed, but not how I want it!” the discussions need to ramp up and we need to start thinking about it.

Find anything interesting in your own google queries? Let us know!

So I’m a fan of unobtrusive javascript – that means I like avoiding “onclick”, “onblur”, “onfocus” etc. etc. I don’t like doing “href=’javascript:dostuff();return false;’”. It makes me cringe – in this day and age, everyone has their favorite javascript library, and they make event delegation damned easy to the point that I have to ask – if you load a javascript library on your site, why not use it?

Print this window!

Generally, those “print this window” links tend to be something along the line of:

<a href="#" onclick="window.print();return false;">Print this window</a>

or even:

// ewwww javascript in an href?

<a href="javascript:window.print();return false;">Print this window</a>

Why do it this way? Why create a link that may not work?

The MooTools way:

MooTools is my rifle – I tend to focus on it first and foremost when it comes to thinking about UI.

Let’s take a “Print this Window” link and add a CLASS.

<a href="#" class="print-window">Print this Window</a>

Why CLASS over ID?

This is a valid question – some people like having things spelled out down to the letter, and they like their specificity. MY concern here is (recently) a client had a “print” link at the top and bottom of an overlay – IDs become invalid! So I prefer to keep that in mind at all times and code accordingly to the “what-if” scenario:

$$('.print-window').addEvent('click',function(e){

new Event(e).stop(); // if you code your print link as a link, this basically does the same as "return false;"

window.print();

});

ZOMG! So easy! And it’ll hit EVERY class with “.print-window”! This method will hit ALL elements, so you may want to tighten it up a little bit:

$('container').getElements('.print-window').each(function(el){

el.addEvent('click',function(e){

new Event(e).stop(); // if you code your print link as a link, this basically does the same as "return false;"

window.print();

});

});

Now, why not search for “a.window-print”? Why use an “anchor” if it’s not going to be used?

To be honest – you don’t have to use an anchor. The class name is what’s important – you can make it a <span> if you don’t like using <a> or simply attach it to an image.

jQuery “Print this Window”

$('.print-window')
.click(function(){window.print();});

Simply delicious! You may need to double check me on that – jQuery is my backup, the dillinger to my glock.

What if javascript is not enabled?

Gasp! The horror!

No doubt this is something that may need to be accounted for – and I’m all about accounting for it all. This also brings up the question – do we care if search engines see it? Are google searches for “print window” a maker or breaker? Really, for our purposes, they’re a “nice to have” function that adds no real added value to our page, and if you don’t care if a search engine sees it, there’s more than one way to jam this tune out.

For this, I like to use javascript to inject the elements in the page – javascript is needed to USE the link, so why not use it to make it available?

For this, it could be as simple as using CSS to HIDE the links, and javascript to SHOW the element, or you could go a step further and generate the images via javascript to begin with!

It’s kind of a pandora’s box – use with care!

I’m not a Ma.gnolia user. I don’t know why I never joined – I was always a del.icio.us user and never felt the need to change to another service – I just needed something that let me access my bookmarks wherever, and I used it even moreso when the firefox plugin came out. I tag, I comment, I move on. I used to publish a collection of my recent links, but they were out numbering my posts.

Needless to say, Ma.gnolia’s issues made we wonder about the safety of my own bookmarks – I don’t back them up. Now sounds like a great time to find out!

Delicious Backups

The easiest, most obvious method is going to “Settings -> Export” – you can include your tags and comments, should you want, and it’ll spit out one humongous HTML file.

After a little googling, I found out from eConsultant that you can use this file a few sites:

• Blogmarks.net
• Feed Me Links
• Furl.NET
• Ma.gnolia
• Simpy
• Yahoo! My Web 2.0

It’s possible to output your bookmarks in XML using their API – but they ask that you use it sparingly.

Now, the additional “very cool thing” – they have a collection of third party plug-ins you can use – we’re talking plugin importers, API calls to PHP, Java, Ruby, Python, Perl, Lisp, C# and MySQLicious – that last one I’m interested in, possibly as making it a permanent addition to my main server!

I wrecked my 1997 Honda Civic last December on the “freak night of ice” we had before Christmas. Sucky, sucky end to a great day.

Since then, I’ve test drove a number of cars – Accords, Civics, Civic SI, Fit, Prius, Civic Hybrids… I hit up Honda Marysville (where I got my CRV) and I still favor them (because they’ve never let me down) but this time I opted for John Hinderer Honda in Heath, Ohio. Needless to say, they bear Honda Marysville in price, they beat CarMax in many ways (I was not real happy with my service there) and they beat Rousch Honda (I felt like I was “inconveniencing” the sales rep when I was there).

The Honda Fit wins on many levels.

My new car. Lovelovelove.

I decided on the Fit over the Prius – and many people may whine about how the Prius is “saving the world” and all, or at the very least argue that a Prius would get much better gas mileage.

My problem is that even a used Prius was damned expensive. I’d love to own one, I really would. But seeing how ever place I hit wouldn’t talk about any kind of warrantee or guarantee on the hybrid battery (and most sales people tried to bullshit me about the battery – c’mon people, we’ve got the internet, ou just make yourself look bad when a sales guy lies!)

I researched – a lot – about cars, and what I *really needed* versus what I really wanted. It took a lot of consideration and debate between the misses and I about which was a better vehicle – she was ready to concede to me about getting a civic or a prius, but I felt I needed to research it further.

Needs versus Wants

I wanted a car with excellent fuel economy. I wanted a sporty car. I wanted something a car seat would fit in (just in case, mind you – I have a CRV that transports my son 99% of the time. I didn’t need to haul anything large, I didn’t care about cargo. I wanted fuel economy, I wanted a comfortable drive, and I wanted the ability for fast acceleration if I needed it.

From what I was finding about the Prius, a lot of people felt it was over priced – the savings in fuel were lost in the price of the car. In terms of “saving the world” I felt that was moot – we should want a greener car period. Savings be damned! I tried to keep this in mind.

Unfortunately, I am not made of money. The cost was more than its worth and the whole “perception” of me as I drive. (I don’t need a car that defines who I am, I need a car that gets me where I need to be!)

Enter The Fit

The Fit Sport – looks small. Then we started messing with the seats.

It’s damn roomy.

I was comfortable, my wife was, and we had my son and the salesman (Jack) in the back. Roomy, comfortable. The back seats fold up in two ways for either more cargo space or more storage for taller items (a small tree, perhaps? Maybe a bike?).

It’s economical! It’s estimated at around 38MPG – a far cry from the Prius’ 50MPG plus, but at the huge price cut in cost? I could live with that. It’s more economical than my CRV, less than a Prius. Not bad.

On the drive home, I got to play with the “paddle shifters” – it lets you drop/increase gears on the fly without a clutch. It was fun on the highway – instead of slamming on the gas to accelerate, I dropped a gear and smoothly accelerated. Very cool.

The bonuses:

Nice sound system, it can “fake” being a manual, and it’s roomy when it needs to be. It brings back memories of my CRX (in terms of sportiness and exterior size, not in interior roominess).

All in all, day one, I’m loving this car :)