Well . . . as much as I have enjoyed WordPress, I felt like I am not doing a good enough job updating! I am not a blogger, and WordPress makes me feel like I have to produce good, long content on a fairly regular basis.

I have decided to move off of this domain, go to something more unique. In the process I have dropped WordPress and built my own solution in the Python Framework Django. So check it out at : http://zach.holmquist.me – I will be moving the content from here to there and will begin redirecting everything!

Let the good times roll!

I have spent months finding the perfect Mail client, I tried: Apple Mail, Thunderbird, Postbox, MailPlane, etc. Yet I always would come back to the web based interface for Gmail. My biggest issue though – as with any web app – is the fact I have to keep it contained within my browser of choice. I am the type of person who needs visual cues of what is going on – icon badges, Growl notification, and the ability to “tab” through my applications and see their respective icons.

Then I came across one of those “Must Have Apps for OSX“. It had the usual : QuickSilver, Cyberduck, VLC, etc. . . but what got me was #2 : Fluid Browser. Now this wasn’t the first time I had heard of Fluid Browser, I have seen it posted on random site before, but this time this mention had a little screenshot along with it – Gmail as a Dock Icon with an Unread Message Badge.

I was in Web App Nirvana.

I quickly downloaded Fluid Browser, and the setup was incredibly easy: put in URL, name for the App, and an Icon. For the icon, I wouldn’t use the favicon – instead I would recommend a nice set of Google Icons – I used the 256px PNGs. This makes them scale nicely in the Dock and in Finder.

So it was in a matter of minutes all my Email App woes were put to rest. For a free solution you cannot beat Fluid Browser, it does its job perfectly with out complicating the whole situation. I now happily read my email from an interface I quite like, all the while Safari does what it is meant to do – surf the Internet.

I have mentioned it on my Twitter Stream – I am a Disney Geek. Without shame I spent a few hours watching some POV’s of different rides in preparation for our Disney World trip in August. While in the midst of awful cam footage, I came across a little gem on YouTube that shows incredible video of Disneyland being built. It is stunning and an absolute thrill to watch! So if you are even the slightest bit a Disney Fan, do yourself a favor and watch : “Building Walt’s Dream“.

Note : This is in 5 Parts on YouTube, below is just Part One.

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It has been a long week at Neutron Interactive. We ran into quite a few issues on some of our site paths that reaffirmed my hatred for Internet Explorer ( any version ) and all things Microsoft. The CSS errors were mildly quick fixes – except for some nasty PNG link disabling – but all in all the errors have been fixed . . . almost.

So, we have been working on figuring out the best method of testing at Neutron. I personally have been researching into Selenium, it has a nice little Firefox extension and on top of that I can export the test into Python and run tests from the command line. But this still runs the issue of having to open my VM and test each individual browser – exactly what I am trying to avoid.

Fortunately Selenium has a solution : Selenium Grid. The Grid allows you to run tests on multiple machines in parallel. This means I can distribute my test across X number of boxes in X number of browsers all at once. Pretty fancy eh? I soon began dreaming of our backroom filled with various computer oddities running everything from Gopher to Chrome each simultaneously checking our sites for deficiencies and alerting us of failure.

Alas, this test farm would be a bit more to manage and the power consumption would be out of control. The planned solution is to setup multiple Virtual Machines running a single browser version and having the Grid ship the tests to each VM. So far, I have had success running parallel tests in Firefox on Leopard OS X 10.5.7 and Firefox on Windows XP.

There is still quite a bit to go to get the Selenium Grid running, but I think this is the perfect solution for testing in multiple browsers in the quickest time possible.

As mentioned in my last post, Augmented Reality is going to be a game changer in the mobile space. The ability to tie reality and online data based on location and direction is simply amazing – we are just at the tip of the iceberg of what is possible in this realm.

I was flipping through some blogs this morning when I ran across an article on The Next Web about a new Augmented Reality app for the iPhone. It is developed by acrossair and the concept is simple: show where the nearest subway is in realtime based on your location. It looks like an excellent app, and if/when Apple approves the app, hopefully we will see more innovation in this space.

A couple of Sundays ago, I made a small appearance in an article in the Deseret News ( page 2 ). Jason Izatt, of local iPhone notoriety, had referred the writer to me since I help run the iPhone Salt Lake User Group. It was interesting to see what was gleaned from our interview when I finally was told by a friend that they read about me.

As for the app mentioned . . . be it me who develops it – or someone else. A bright star in a world of portable – always connected devices is the future of Augmented Reality.

I attended a training for iPhone App Development, where I was introduced to the kinda complex world of CoreData – which was recently added to iPhone OS 3.0. I was hooked the moment the incredibly smart and local Cocoa Genius Dave Delong mentioned that CoreData is a better way to store data – heck – even Evernote was using it in their next app update!

So I found myself late last night tinkering with writing basic data to CoreData, and for the life of me couldn’t figure out where it was hiding or how to get to it from XCode. Finally I tracked it down hiding inside of a SQLite Database :

/Users//Library/Application Support/iPhone Simulator/User/Applications//Documents

Now before Dave Delong has a fit – finding this data comes with a disclaimer: CoreData *is* not SQLite! SQLite is merely the underpinnings of it all . . . but it is *not* SQLite. Phew, all the CocoaHeads can sleep peacefully tonight!

With the proper tools you too can see where the hell your data is going! Personally, I like the Adobe Air App Lita, but I know there are literally dozens of other apps that do this.

I must note . . . sadly . . . that I am not yet a CoreData Expert – it is a trial by fire kinda thing. But I figure I’d leave my notes along the way. Maybe someone will correct my mistakes or drop a tip in the comments *wink* *wink* . . . that way we all win.

The most annoying part about being a web developer is having to cater to the needs of outdated browsers and their awful quirks – I am looking at you IE ( specifically IE6 ).  The whole situation becomes woeful when you install IE7 and it wipes IE6 out, and then if you install IE8 it wipes out IE7.

Fortunately there are people who realized this was a problem, and have made easy solutions for us poor web developers.

My method is as follows:

IE7 and IE8 can be found here : http://finalbuilds.edskes.net/iecollection.htm

I installed those first, I don’t think order of install will effect everything – I just figured if I got those two in first, they wouldn’t overwrite IE6. Sweet logic.

IE6 can be found here : http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE

There is nothing complex about those installs – they are very straight forward and shouldn’t cause any problems. Lucky for us we can now all blissfully test layouts and javascript in the incredible well built browser called IE . . . *sigh*.

When I catch a few extra minutes at work ( Web Developer at Neutron Interactive ) I have been designing and playing with the Neutron Interactive Web Site. I don’t like the old site at all – it does not capture the vibe you get when you are at Neutron. So in this new design I really wanted to get the feel of the office and the people that work there.

I drew out the general idea I wanted – took only one sketch to get there, but I had been thinking about the site for while.

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Threw it into photoshop, and kinda worked a little bit of stuff in there. The background if my favorite, it has some brick, the neutron logo, cracked cement and the bulk of it is a mushroom cloud. After a lot of tweaking, I finally came out with something I liked, except for the right column – which I still am not sure what I will use it for. But here is the gist of it . . .

The new site is currently running on a development server – but I recorded 30 minutes of coding out the CSS and HTML for it – for any of you that can make it past 1 minute of it without ripping your eyes out.

The site will launch soon . . . but for now – enjoy.

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UPDATE

As requested in the comments, the 2nd Inaugural Speech of George W. Bush:

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