Category Archives: Everything Else

Time to take a break

For this weekend I am going to take a break. But here are a few articles I have viewed and read today:

Google and the new Wallet and Offers – does anything really need to be said?

AltLy – Now this one I find really funny. This is a supposed alternative to Facebook, yet is using Facebook for Likes and Pages. I signed up anyway, figure why not, give it a try when it comes out.

Urban Outfitters steals yet another artists design and work – Is it just me or does this place really wreak. And I have to say, every time I walk by one of their sister stores in the mall, it stinks to high heaven of pretentiousness and poser-ness.

iPad 3 News about the screens – Yes, that is right, already the iPad 3. Apple’s motto? Never miss an opportunity to market products via rumour that do not exist. I honestly think they really have a whole department that does nothing but start rumours and help perpetuate them.

Crisis Communications from An Unlikely Source – Really great article for how Twitter helped in the storm ravaged area.

Microsoft’s Ballmer must go, says hedge fund tycoon – Alot of what this covers I agree with. And as full disclosure, I was a Microsoft person, heavily. And they seemed to lose sight and touch with actual reality. Remember when Ballmer said the iPhone would do nothing. Yeah because Apple’s other previous product the iPod was such a disaster right Ballmer? And how about that Zune, where is that now?

Thoughts

Today I am going to break from the schedule and post about something different, jobs.

In this country (and I am sure around the world), jobs are hard to come by. What is even more difficult is finding the right kind of job where one is happy and challenged. Not every job is glamorous, and not every job will make you a millionaire. There has to be something out there that will make one happy, challenge them and make it not seem like a job. Too many people are out there working 80 hours a week out of fear of losing the job. Do more, cost less, and be more productive seems the be the sense in businesses today. Salaries are going lower for the regular every day worker, while the hours have gone up. Fear of being out of a job for months can drive that person to work a ton and kill themselves in the job.

Yes, I speak from firsthand experience. Getting downsized, or re-structured, from a business you put your life into really sucks. And when you do get a job after that, sometimes there is a fear that drives the person to work harder (not always more efficient mind you), work longer hours, not cost as much, and more like this. In the past, businesses were more loyal to the worker. Today, they are not. As much as we build strong relationships with the people at the job, when it comes down to the bottom line, everyone is a number, figure against the balance, and can always be expendable. Which is sad.

I think more people would be dedicated, and take ownership of their work if they knew that they were not expendable, and at any downturn in the economy, they would be safe. And I know this does not apply to everyone, but I feel that it would be a lot better. We all want to do something cool with our lives, and have a legacy. Too many times we misplace that legacy as a product of our work, instead of family and service. We put all our effort, time and energy into the job, one that many of us dread going to every morning, and then spend maybe 1 hour a day with family.

Sure, I am writing this from the perspective of a father and husband. And I know many out there are either single or have no intention of having children. And that is fine, there is no problem with that as well. But there are other legacies out there. Service and helping others out. Taking time to help others is huge, and touches more lives than we will ever know. It provides a sense of self worth and confidence. And if nothing else, it helps one maintain perspective.

Yes we all need to pay bills and provide for ourselves or our family. I am not saying go quit your job and live like a hippy. In fact, I am saying just the opposite of that. Find something that makes you happy, and does not suck your soul. Make it so that you can be excited about the day, instead of watching the clock for the end of the shift.

400 Words to Madness

So ends the week, on Friday the 13th no less. I have less than 400 words to sum up the week:
Monday: work
Tuesday: work
Wednesday: work
Thursday: work
Friday: work

Not really a big change or variety. However some very interesting things happened this week in other news. And relating a story that came to me at work this week. Life is full of randomly boring events happening independently. But put all those items together, and it becomes a really interesting and fun experience. And that is what life should be, fun and entertaining. So while I finish this post off for this week, I am just going to remind everyone that life is worth living and experiencing.

Items to possibly watch this weekend:
The Office episode this week (DVR’d)
Hot Tub Time Machine
Easy A
Harvey (you can never ignore the classics)
The Seventh Seal (one of the best art house movies)
L’Avventura

I also need to get outside and get some sun, clean my motorcycle, etc. But what movies would you watch if you could?

Riddle Me This

Ok, for Friday I thought I would post a few riddles to help me wind down from the week.

After a very long day of work, a man goes to bed. Before he went to bed he wound his clock and set the alarm for noon the next day. If he went to sleep at 10 pm, and fell asleep immediately, how many hours of sleep did he get?

What occurs once in every minute, twice in every moment, yet never in a thousand years?

A man without eyes saw plums on a tree. He neither took plums, nor left plums, how can this be?

A man pushes his car to a hotel and loses his fortune. What happened?

A woman and her husband are together. The woman shoots him, then drowns him, then hangs him. Five minutes later they walk out the front door to grab dinner and catch a play. Can you explain this?

An island is in the middle of a lake. The lake is old and in a remote part of the country. Bridges to the island, there have been none. There is a tractor on this island. This tractor provides hay rides around the island. The tractor was not transported to the lake by plane or boat, so how did it get there?

And if you have a good riddle to add, please share.

Social Media and Crisis

With the recent events of the 8.9 earthquake in Japan, news traveled fast, and it was just not second or third hand accounts. it was live, it was real, and it brought you into the middle crisis. I do not post this to take away from the real horror and tragedy of the people who are personally in the middle of this, because this is not the intent. I was up doing some work and then on my Twitter stream I get notification of an earthquake happening. Soon, images came of the event, then the video. Then the tsunami images and video. I thought about what was actually happening, and the fear and shock of the people. I did not have to think too hard on this either. I saw it in their faces. The cameras caught all the action, all the emotion. And social media is bringing this out to the world. As the people in North America started to wake, it spread. Some people on the West Coast were already preparing to head for higher ground before the alerts sounded and the authorities started to evacuate the seaside towns.

Google snapped into action using their Person Finder again:
http://www.google.com/crisisresponse/japanquake2011.html
This can help people locate each other, or provide information of people they do know. On this page, they even have a YouTube video of how the quake affected a couple of local residents.

Wikipedia already has a page on the disaster. This includes information about the quake, the resulting tsunami and the international response.

With Twitter, you can see the timeline for the hashtag #japan, #Sendai and others. Providing images like this, news, information and location of others. Facebook is another area to get more information from the various pages and people.

This does not include the cell phone images and video people are taking, posting to YouTube, TwitPic, and others. Social Media is connecting the world right now. People can see the horrific devastation up front.

There are many ways to help, and if you know of any, please let em know. The Red Cross address is below:
http://newsroom.redcross.org/2011/03/11/disaster-alert-earthquake-in-japan-tsunami-warnings/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RedCrossOnlineNewsroom+%28American+Red+Cross+Online+Newsroom%29

For all my friends and colleagues and readers in Japan, know that out thoughts and prayers are with you.

Design and Focus for Connecting on Social Media

OK, after the long break I took, I want to refocus on the Resume/personal web application I am building, and how to integrate with Facebook using the Graph API. But before we get into the nuts and bolts of the application, I just want to go over some of the design and focus for this application.

This application is mainly a learning tool, and way to get familiar with the Graph API and keep going with CakePHP. The main user for the administration sections are going to be me. So certain aspects can be adjusted, while others should not. One thing that I can be a little more relaxed on is the input fields. I will allow certain content, but not all. Sanitation of the input data does not need to be paranoid, and I can allow other things to slip through. However, I still want to have security in the back end and allow for checking of proper field id’s and other items that will allow the form to be secure, but give me the flexibility to enter different items in the backend.

Then there is the front end. This will be the forward facing end of the application and will also be the Facebook front. We have added in comments to the application. The next focus is the resume portion. And here is where we can look at the design and focus. By design I mean the design of the application. The UI can be really anything, and I will focus on a simple UI that utilizes HTML5 and CSS3. However, some people I talk to seem to question the aspect of resume portion, as in “why do that when there are countless other sites out there that already allow for this”? That is a good question. And I am not taking anything away from Monster, CareerBuilder, or any other site. LinkedIn provides a way to post your resume as well, and provides a social aspect for it. All of which are great. Remember, firstly, this is a way to experiment and learn more, grow in Graph API and CakePHP. But look at how the world is trending right now in technology.
Continue reading Design and Focus for Connecting on Social Media

Back in the Swing of Things

For the past year or so, I have been tremendously busy and unable to keep up with the blog. However, now more free time is available to me. So starting next week, I will be posting more about PHP frameworks, including Cake and Symfony, security issues I see come up, and different ideas about databases, searches and other items. I will also be posting more about C# and ASP items. As I get through more development for the Apple platform, I will also post those as well. Hopefully this will be a good resource for others, as I use this to post when I learn something, so that I can go back and find what I used in order to keep things going.
And if there is anything that needs to be discussed, please let me know. We can always start up a discussion on anything.

First Note of May

Today is the first of May. There is a ton of things that can be done for May. I am working on a few special projects, and hopefully will have some good stuff out there for the local small businesses around here. I am hoping to get back to work on the project for my calendar application, and incorporate that into the iPhone app.

Lots of things to do, and will blog about some code stuff a little later on down the line.