I don’t know how I missed this one, but a link from ESPN.com’s Page 2 took me to this video clip of Denis Leary and Lenny Clarke doing a guest spot with Jerry Remy and Don Orsillo during a Red Sox game where they absolutely rip on Mel Gibson. Its absolutely hilarious!
I read in another blog post the other day (I don’t recall where) that most people don’t realize when the bookmark Google applications, they aren’t secure by default. Even is you go to http://www.gmail.com/, GMail won’t redirect to the secure version. It will just serve your mail over the unsecure connection. The article went on to mention if you’re in GMail for instance, and open Google Docs, the Google Docs link won’t be secure either. This allows the information to be unencrypted as it goes over the wire. Thinking of this again this morning, I realized my bookmark for GMail was indeed insecure. So I changed the link from http:// to https://. The article also said that if you open other apps from GMail even on a secure connection they new window/tab won’t be secure, so you should have secure bookmarks for each app. I found this to not be the case. If your Gmail connection is secure via HTTPS and you open Google Docs or Google Calendar, that link will be secure as well. Just a little tip for all you Google app users out there!
A while back I finally had it with Google apps in Firefox on my Windows box at work, so I switched to viewing my Gmail and other Google applications on my MacBook with Firefox. It didn’t take long to get fed up with the speed of Firefox even on my MacBook. So I decided to give Camino a try. It’s powered by the Mozilla engine, but its only made for the Mac. The first thing I noticed was how fast it loaded and how fast it loaded the web pages that I visited the most. The one thing that’s been tough is some of the keyboard shortcuts that are different between Firefox and Camino. But all in all, its been a great experience and I honestly don’t see myself going back to Firefox unless I’m doing development.
The other day I was inadvertently referred to as a webmaster. It was via an email from one of the affiliates we use for our web sites, so it wasn’t on purpose or meant to offend. However, I can’t stand that name and honestly, I don’t know what it means. It really sounds to me like somebody that just baby sits web sites and makes some content changes from time to time. My degree is in Computer Science. By trade, I’m a Software Engineer. I just happen to work on web applications now and manage a couple of e-commerce web sites (not to mention all the other IT tasks in the office). Does that make me a so called webmaster (or like I coined the other day, web site weenie)? I don’t think so. It’s high time we deprecate this title and use something that fits the new “Web 2.0” days we live in, i.e. Web Developer, Web Applications Developer, etc. etc.
For the longest time I was frustrated with the lack of an Windows Remote Desktop client for OS X. It was actually easier to fire up Parallels to use the build it RDP Client in Windows XP than it was the mess around with what Microsoft had released for OS X (read, lack of multiple sessions, even with the new Beta which claims to support them). So I did some hunting around and found CoRD. Its really easy to use and offers multiple sessions, which is key. It even lets you tab them in a sense giving you a left toolbar with your saved and connected sessions. Cool! Exactly what you expect from a useful OS X application. It’s pretty responsive too, a bit better than I’d say the Microsoft RDP client is.
A couple of complaints though. The drawing of icons and windows is a bit fuzzy. I’m not sure if this is a setting I can tweak. I haven’t dug into it enough to find out. Also, it seems a little bit unstable. Using it tonight, it crashed on me twice. Once out of nowhere and the second when I was logging off of one of my servers. All in all though, I’d say its a great improvement over what I’ve been using.
Update: I saw in CoRD’s bug fix log that there was a bug supposedly fixed in the 0.4.1 release where CoRD would crash when logging off of a server. I updated to a development release, 0.5.0, and it seems to have subsided. If you experience the same issue, I suggest trying a development version.
Apple unveiled the new iMac the other day. Its definitely thiner than the older model and with its new glass screen and black matte border, it looks really sexy. My first impression is that Apple hit another home run, packaging a useful tool in a slick package. The price points, for what you get anyway, are pretty good too. The low end is $1,199 for the 20″ model and the high end 24″ model is $2,299.
I’m not sure I’d actually buy one though. I agree with this article that its frustrating to have the monitor tied to the computer itself (though you have the same issue with a laptop, but I think the mobility of the device makes that a little easier to swallow). Also, you can’t hook up multiple monitors to an iMac either. That’s something as a developer that I find to be a huge productivity increaser (I have 4 monitors on my desk at work). If I was to buy a Mac that isn’t a laptop, I’m not sure what’d I’d buy. The mini doesn’t have enough connections (see multiple monitors again) and the Mac Pro is just overkill. I agree with Don, where’s the Mac?
A while back I posted a little C# console application I wrote to convert EDI files to CSV and Ecometry Ship Confirm Batch files. I’ve since updated it, with some usability fixes and also writing out the Item Number and Product Name to the file. You can get it here. Feel free to download it and contact me with any issues or feature requests.
My buddie Joe has had a link to an article by Jeff Atwood on Coding Horror about how in programming, one is the loneliest number. I read the article a while back, but I started thinking about it again tonight when I was putting up a new version of Fright Catalog that contained a few bug fixes.
The frustration I was having was on several levels. One, I don’t have another set of eyes to help test the site and make sure my code is what it should be. I have to update the database myself (luckily I have some nice tools to help with this), but it starts to take longer to do the update. If there are issues with any code changes, there aren’t enough resources to debug the problem quickly.
What adds to the frustration is that that’s only when we’re launching new versions of our platform. Not only am I the application developer (writing C# code predominantly), I’m also the database guy, the IT guy, and help with some of the day to day business decisions. What worries me is that we depend so much on our web applications, if something goes wrong, we’ll lose money, money that could one day be used to help alleviate the situation.
I don’t like being the only developer. I’m a social guy by nature (not an introvert like some programmers are). I have a great group of colleagues that I can tap into (Kyle, Joe, Dan etc.) that I can bounce ideas off of. But that doesn’t compare to being able to turn around and have a discussion. So, you could say I flourish when there’s a great team of people around me that I can depend on and that can depend on me. The situation isn’t by choice either. Its really just a lack of resources. I hope that one day, we can have the resources again to bring back or rebuild the great team we once had.
Dress By Design was featured in a USA Today article yesterday. This is great news for an up and coming site with huge potential. Of course I’m biased since I help to develop the site. Congrats to the Dress By Design ladies and Conor. Keep up the good work!
As I posted in a reply here I’m kind of annoyed that there is a lack of an affiliate data feed standard. I’d like to come up with a standard based on XML that could be adopted by the affiliate community (unless there’s one buried somewhere out there). Due to the lack of time, I haven’t done it yet but would be very interested in working with others to come up with some ideas. Drop me a line if this is of any interest to you so we can maybe start a discussion on it.