align=center
Sometimes it's the simple things that escape our attention. I actually spent my day today converting someone else's PHP templates into Rails views. Everything was going pretty smooth except that there was the occasional element in the new template that didn't line up with the others and just looked odd.
I didn't think too much of it at first because the CSS styles that came with the template were using Float's like they were candy pouring out of a freshly crushed pinata. However as the day progressed and I removed (read fixed) more and more of the CSS styles without seeing those elements pop into place - I began to be a little perplexed.
Ten minutes later I realize that dingle-dorfs have also been shoving inline styles randomly into the some of the areas of the template I wasn't paying attention to in my haste to convert all 35 of them. One project wide find and replace all "align=center" with "" and suddenly my pages snapped back into place.
I swear somedays looking at other peoples code makes me want to rip my own eyeballs out.
Blatant Stealing
So most people know that I'm a big fan of the Peepcode screencasts for Ruby and Ruby on Rails related subjects. I think Geoffrey has done a great job of building and marketing a solution that meets the needs of quite a lot of people.
Perhaps it's that admiration that makes someone stealing his ideas so offensive to me.
Here's a screenshot of the current Peepcode screencasts website
Now compare that to this new Oracle Screencasts website
It's actually worse than the images even highlight because the Oracle Tube layout is an exact copy (minus a few color changes). Even all the text on the page is stolen almost verbatim.
Compare
With:
Hell even look at their quotes:
What a bunch of tools!!!!
Code Quality
Process Chart
Blog Re-write Survey
Truth be told - I've never been 100% happy with this blog. It does the job but there are quite a few areas that it could be improved and expanded upon.
I've got a few ideas - such as switching the domain name to something else. Back when I bought the geekward.com domain name, "geek" was still sort of a cool word to use to describe yourself. But thanks to a million and one lame ass technical assistance companies such as Best Buys GeekSquad - the coolness factor has definitely disappeared. I've got a few other domain names that might work such as one I bought named simplif.es that could also be used to bring a little more focus to what I'm writing about. Just not sure if I should use it for a blog or save that for something a little more special.
But of course since I don't currently allow comments on the blog - I'm at a small loss for obtaining feedback on what others think about my ideas.
As a result - I'm trying out some web service named polldaddy to do a quick survey of any faithful readers I still have after my long hiatus from posting here for you to give your thoughts and opinions to me before I begin any work on re-writing and potentially relaunching my blog.
So if you don't mind taking a few seconds out of your day - please click the link below and share your thoughts with me
Investing in Yourself - part 1
It's probably little late to be talking about New Years resolutions but one of the ones that I decided to do this year was to make a series of investments in myself this year.
It's too easy to get stuck in the monotony of merely making a living and miss out on the opportunities that make a life. If I recall correctly - i think the book "7 habits of highly effective people" people referred to it as focusing on the urgent and not the important. So I've looked over my life and found some areas that I felt needed improvement and am spending money to improve those areas:
To improve my inner person - I'm working through these two books:
Taming Your Gremlin (Revised Edition): A Surprisingly Simple Method for Getting Out of Your Own Way
To improve my outer person:
Joined a gym (as most americans do every January) but to help seal the deal I've recently purchased a large block of sessions with a personal trainer over the next few months. While this may be expensive in the short term, I believe that the long term benefits of improving my health will be well worth it.
I've also added a little accountability by posting my weekly weight loss results in an online community that I participate in with others.
To improve myself as a Web Developer:
One area that I've always felt a bit weak in was in coding Javascript. Sure I can use many of the existing tools and frameworks out there to hide my weakness, and never felt shy about hacking away on some existing javascript code. But writing an advanced animation or interface feature from scratch has always felt just outside of my comfort level. Fortunately there's been a glut of new Javascript books hitting the market that seem pretty damn good - so I've purchased them and have been working my way through them a little each night. Here's the books I'm working through (for anyone interested):
The Art & Science of JavaScript
Head First JavaScript (Head First)
Well that's enough for this post. I have more to write but it's best if I wait to give those when I have more time and also I can give regular updates on my progress along the way. Besides - another one of my goals is to get back in the habit of regular posting, and I think avoiding the need to do huge monolithic posts will help with that.
Interviewed
Last week I got to do something new by being interviewed about the new book on the Dr. Dobbs Journal podcast. I was fairly nervous and so was worried about how it came out.
Well that interview was posted on their website today and you can check it out yourself at http://ddj.com/linux-open-source/204600757
We talked about the book, how I came to be a Rails developer and the near imminent Rails 2.0.
