• Cliff along Eagle Creek

    Fear

    I’m afraid of heights.  No, that’s not quite right.  I’m really afraid of heights.  More so than any other thing or situation I’ve ever come across, being up high terrifies me in a way few can ever understand. The thing about this kind of fear is that it’s irrational.  I have no reason to be…
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  • code

    Object-Oriented JavaScript

    First a caveat: JavaScript is a prototype-based language, not an object-oriented language.  Now that we have an understanding of that very important fact, let’s learn how to use JavaScript as if it were object-oriented. A few weeks ago, I was asked to teach a couple of my colleagues how to code with JavaScript.  We’re building…
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  • Credit Cards

    What Bought You to Slavery?

    Word of advice: Never borrow money to purchase a consumable item. Debt can essentially be lumped into two categories – rented debt and slave debt.  Rented debt is what you incur when you borrow money to purchase a lasting good.  When you borrow money for a house or a car.  What you’re really doing is convincing someone…
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    Mar
    09

    Re-Evaluation

    For those of you who’ve noticed, I’ve been fairly silent for the past few days.  Part of that was a result of being swamped with work.  Part of it was a nasty bug I picked up last week (though I can finally breathe without rattling again!).  As much as I’ve wanted to put content out, I just really haven’t had the time and worrying about a consistent update schedule has pushed me to the brink of “blogging burnout.”

    So I’m taking some time to re-evaluate and repurpose my sites.  I still want a presence online in the form of a blog.  I still want to talk about my faith, the struggles and achievements of my everyday life, and all things code or marketing related.  I’m just not sure I want to do that every day, and I’m not sure I should be doing it all in the same place. [Read more...]

    Feb
    23

    WordPress 3.1 is out!

    I’ve actually been using version 3.1 since before the first beta release several months ago.  The first release candidate dropped on Christmas, and it’s just gotten better from there (several bug fixes and minor improvements).  But today, it’s official.  The rest of the world can now benefit from the coolness that is WordPress 3.1!  Oh, and yes, I had a couple of patches in this version, too :-)

    The long-awaited fourteenth release of WordPress is now available. WordPress 3.1 “Django” is named in honor of the jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. Version 3.1 is available for download, or you can update from within your dashboard.

    This release features a lightning fast redesigned linking workflow which makes it easy to link to your existing posts and pages, an admin bar so you’re never more than a click away from your most-used dashboard pages, a streamlined writing interface that hides many of the seldom-used panels by default to create a simpler and less intimidating writing experience for new bloggers (visit Screen Options in the top right to get old panels back), and a refreshed blue admin scheme available for selection under your personal options.

    There’s a bucket of candy for developers as well, including our new Post Formats support which makes it easy for themes to create portable tumblelogs with different styling for different types of posts, new CMS capabilities like archive pages for custom content types, a new Network Admin, an overhaul of the import and export system, and the ability to perform advanced taxonomy and custom fields queries.

    With the 3.1 release, WordPress is more of a CMS than ever before. The only limit to what you can build is your imagination.

    Read the rest of the announcement on the official WordPress blog …

    Flash Visualization of Core Contributors

    Feb
    16

    A Presidential Killswitch

    Driving home tonight, I heard a radio DJ mention a bill pending in Congress that would give the president the power to “turn off” the Internet in the event of a “national cyber emergency.”

    This bill was originally introduced in the 111th Congress by Senator Joe Lieberman.  It didn’t go very far, but recent events in the middle East and Africa have brought it back to the surface.

    After I heard the radio pitch, I immediately wanted to look up some arguments both in favor and against the bill so I could weight my own personal beliefs.

    In Favor

    On the one hand, people want to feel safe and secure in their dealings online.  Your Facebook profile lists your contact information.  Foursquare tells people when you’re away from home.  Your financial life resides online.  Your safety and security in retirement, times of damaged health, etc.  Just about everything is digital.

    So what happens when a coordinated attack targeted at the nation’s information infrastructure occurs?  We run in to a real-world Live Free or Die Hard scenario.  It might sound outrageous and impossible … but 15 years ago we were still able to meet our loved ones at the airport gate …

    Against

    The most resounding argument I’ve heard against the bill is in terms of cost.  The proposed bill (which will likely be used to frame the new edition in the 112th Congress) creates a new Federal agency – the Office of Cyberspace Policy.  The bill revises the Homeland Security Act, adds new offices, a new director position, and creates a new level of bureaucracy.

    It would be costly, and while we’re still overcoming a down economy and struggling to dig our way out of a deep hole of national debt, creating more overhead is not the way to go for the immediate future.

    My Concerns

    I’m not as concerned with the safety of my information or the cost to the taxpayer.  They are valid issues, but what bothers me is what this kind of law would mean for online publishing.

    Open social networks like Twitter have been largely credited with fueling and enabling conversations and protests across Egypt.  Without the freedom and power that the Internet gives to the average man, this kind of massive, rapid communication would likely have never happened.

    America was founded on a set of simple freedoms, one of which being the freedom of the press.

    My blog is a publication.  It might not be printed on a traditional “press,” but it is a distributed publication nonetheless.  As such, I have the inalienable right to produce content, be it supportive of the government, critical of the government, or arguing a different issue all together.

    The idea of giving anyone, let alone the president, a killswitch for the Internet gives me pause.  That someone could one day, for any arbitrary reason, decide to limit my right to communicate with the world at large out of a purported interest for my safety is, to me at least, preposterous.

    At the same time, I invite you to disagree and argue the point.  I’d love to hear further discussion on the issue, on both sides of the issue.  Would you or would you not support a presidential killswitch for the Internet?  Under what circumstances would it be permitted?  Why or why not?

    Feb
    16

    Guy Kawasaki – Enchantment

    Enchantment - The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions

    Last week, I received an advance copy of Guy Kawasaki’s new book, Enchantment.  I’ve actually been waiting for this book for a while now, so I put down my Tom Clancy novel and immediately dug in.  For a business book, it was amazingly easy to read, and I was proud to finish it in just 3 days despite a heavy work schedule.

    Easy to read, but powerful.  Kawasaki’s book is filled with practical advice on how to not just know your customers, but to enchant them.

    If you’ve read this blog for very long, you know about my fascination with developing relationships with your “perfect customer.”  Enchantment is very much the same idea, albeit with a far more refined tone and the weight of a former Chief Evangelist for our favorite consumer brand behind it. [Read more...]

    Feb
    14

    The Death of the Idea

    What value is there in an idea that never sees the light of day?  Many times, we come up with fantastic ideas.  The next great American novel.  The next great web project.  The next multi-billion dollar disruptive innovation.  But 99 times out of 100, the idea dies in its infancy.

    We create a great plan, bounce it around inside our head, then let the spark of imagination and brilliance fizzle out without explaining it to anyone else.  The idea dies, and we trudge on through life towards the next disappointment.

    This is not the way things should be. [Read more...]

    Feb
    11

    A Rookie Attempt at Cron in CentOS

    For years, I used shared hosting systems exclusively for all my websites.  They were affordable, easy to manage, and required zero effort on my part to set up and maintain.  Unfortunately, I have a habit of rapidly outgrowing hosts and usually have to migrate to bigger and better servers about once a year.  I finally decided to bite the bullet and purchased a VPS hosting system with a great company called Atum last month.

    The advantage of this is that I have complete control over the VPS.  Whereas before I could only host websites, I can now host my own development repositories (currently rocking Subersion, Mercurial, and Git all on my server).  It protects me from the inevitable crashes of my aging computer systems, and makes life a lot easier for me.

    While reveling in my newfound power, though, I ran into a serious issue: I had no idea how to set things up!

    I’d read this or that tutorial and get things off the ground.  Setting up Apache took a few tries.  I’m still working on configuring email.  But the biggest challenge I’ve faced thus far is setting up an automated Subversion-to-Git mirror that would run on a cron job. [Read more...]