Felocity

I've been quiet for quite some time, although for those who know my blogging habits that shouldn't be much of a surprise. I've been head down busy with a few things, specifically preparing for South By SouthWest (I'm speaking along side some very talented people, namely Alan Kasindorf of Six Apart, Blaine Cook of Twitter, and Sandy Jen of Meebo. The topic is on horizontal scalability, labeled "Scalability Boot Camp". Think of it like a firehose of really useful stuff, followed by some discussion about how this all works in practical startup (and larger company) environments. For the non-technical, there will be some grounding in business concepts from Kerry Miller of BusinessWeek as the moderator. For the technical, it'll be a feast of technologies and a yummy side of deployment and technical talk. If you're going to Austin, I'll see you there!

The second of the housekeeping stuff actually manages to eclipse my excitement about the SXSW thing, I can actually cross something off my life-to-do list. (Not that speaking at a conference isn't on there, I just haven't spoken yet.) Instead, I'm talking about the release of an open source project which I've been working on for some time out in the open. SnapTest, a unit testing framework for PHP, version 1.0.0 alpha is finally out. By "out" I mean there are wiki pages, documentation, and even a shiny .tar.gz waiting. While most projects I tend to do are for fun, personal benefit, this one has a certain tangibility (usefulness) to others.…

The concept of fun is so confusing, that the more a person tries to define it, the more confusing the concept becomes. Instead, fun is better described as a summation of things; interestingly, these things in and of themselves are not necessarily fun, but instead are foundations of an online emulation of life. In 1943, Maslow created a Hierarchy of Needs, which described the basic needs of human beings. Later, Nevis revised this theory slightly, adapting it based on his studies of East Asian values.…

Who would have thought that the hardest thing to do on this site was going to be the "Weblog is alive once more" entry. Felocity is back with a new logo, new engine underneath it all (ExpressionEngine), and lots of ante-upping PHP. The process has been a long one, mostly due to having only 15-20 minutes here and there to dedicate to the task. Hopefully, at this point it's bug free, but you never know.

It's also worth a mention that my Gaia Profile also got a style upgrade to match. Between the two, graphically, I've had my hands full. Thankfully, Expression Engine made the transition on the website side much easier with its MT-esque syntax. Add to that the ability to use raw PHP in the templates, and it was very easy to build out the content areas as needed. Perhaps the most interesting thing I found in all of the EE things was the ability to mix my PHP tags with my EE code.…

Okay, I'm tired of explaining it online and on the phone to everyone... it's tiring to type the same thing again and again and answer a lot of the same questions. Last night I was attacked by someone who the San Jose Police Department feel was trying to steal my car. For the record, I'm fine save for a slightly twisted knee and a scratch on my cheekbone. However, everyone's had a lot of questions about what happened, and so here it goes.

At about 4 am, I was walking to my car in what was a very dark parking lot. There was a heavyset man with what looked like a hoodie on the grass strip underneath the trees. After years of college, something didn't feel right. I put my keys in my left hand and grabbed my lock-blade knife I got for christmas in my right. I used to always carry my keys and a knife because I didn't trust the Seaside area, especially where my house used to be. So anyway, he started walking towards my car as I did and something seemed really wrong. I got my key in the door and he was still ten feet off or so. I turned the key and I heard him run at me.…

Many of you may remember that I made an entry proposing a way to redesign AX's web page without any new images. This information was sent via the contact form with a strong professional opinion. Recently, Anime Expo launched a new page and I am happy to say that at least some of the fundamental reccomendations were taken into consideration. The simple addition of section titles without mouseover improved things several times over. If you have a minute, go thank them on their contact form.

!http://photos.felocity.org/albums/maroon5-2005/050605_2111.thumb.jpg!:http://photos.felocity.org/maroon5-2005 I got back late last night from the Maroon 5 concert at the HP Pavilion as part of the Honda Civic Tour. We were sitting side-stage on the 270 degree stage, and in my opinion, our seats were far better than those who were in the lower section at the very back. In order to increase seating for the venue, they used the lengthwise distance as opposed to a wide, open stage. Since we were sitting on the side, we were very close to being right over the stage. We could also see everything going on behind the sceens.

Probably one of the more memorable moments from the night was when they had "finished their set" and the lights went out. Everything about it screamed that it was a planned encore. However, they did do a cover of Oasis and played two new songs for the crowd.…

If you are reading this, there is a good chance I'm in Boston. This site was set to switch over on May 1 as part of the May 1 Reboot and the CSS Reboot I obviously can't reply to comments right away, but I'll make it a priority on Monday. For now though, here are some site "features".

• Mac IE 5 might be dying (I hope) and the comments are messing up slightly. This is due to Mac IE 5 liking to render floats at 100%. Unfortunately, I'm stuck on a workaround for this.
• Comments use the (in)valid _height for min-height CSS hack. couldn't find anything more elegant, and Dave Shea's technique wasn't working with 3 images that all needed the min-height shift.
• sIFR is now in use, but there is a FOUC occuring on those headlines. I need to reapproximate them and find something that is size-wise close, but that will come with time.
• The extras page isn't there yet because I'm still trying to save it from the old old site.

I think that's just about it. I hope.…

I love mail, I really do! This is my second web site done head to toe in XHTML/CSS, and I thank everyone for their feedback, both positive and negative. If you would like to comment directly on an entry, feel free! The comments are left open for about 3 weeks and then closed automatically by Textpattern. Of course, that's not to say the discussion is dead by far; I've found myself referencing previous articles with new insight based on many of the emails I receive.

Even though I get several emails a day, I make a point to respond to every single one of them that arrives via this form. Feel free to ask questions of the site, design, technology used, or just stop in and say hi.…

p. Gaia Online Avatar Dashboard Widget is a small Tiger desktop widget for customizing your avatar quickly. The current design is simply a hook into the Yahoo Mini Browser developed by Gaia, but provides the same customization functionality. Read the associated journal entry …

• User Interface designed for touch screen monitors
• Networked system to allow multiple kiosks
• Simple reporting / tracking proceedures for administration
• Written in Microsoft Access

!/images/portfolio/asapsigninkiosk-thumb.png(Click to Enlarge)!:/images/portfolio/asapsigninkiosk-2.png The Academic Skills Achievement Program (ASAP) needed a replacement for their existing tracking system for student sign in reporting. The old system used a campus swipe card system known as C-BORD. Unfortunately, infrequent updates, network outages and card problems made the system ineffective for large amounts of user tracking. The solution needed to be portable from system to system, be intuitive for students while providing important reporting features for administrators, and use only the existing load set for the university computers at California State University, Monterey Bay.

Microsoft Access was chosen as the platform for development for its likeness to Visual Basic for form level control, and it's ability to link tables over Windows file sharing. The final package uses a client and a server architecture. The server is a set of tables and common administrative functions, while the client contains all the applications front end functionality. In order to accommodate a Kiosk style of data entry, the interface had to be modified for use with a touch screen.…