Of Nerdful Things

I’ve deployed at least 3 different versions of WordPress with zero problems.  Then came WordPress 2.5. Ouch.  I was up until 3am last night trying to get it working and finally did.  But I wasn’t able to get my past posts back online…so I guess I have a project for tonight.  Since I can’t entertainment you with witty blog posts, check out this site for something infinitely more addictive.

Tags:   Games · WordPressNo Comments.

Here is a cute little video of my daughter Jillian.

Tags:   Jillian · ShamboNo Comments.

1955, the Staple Singers record the gospel song “Stand By Me”

In 1961 Ben E. King released his version of the song “Stand By Me”. It becomes a huge hit.

In 1975, John Lennon released a cover of “Stand By Me”. It too becomes a hit.

And today, as I sit here in Munich, this abomination of a video (NSFW) comes on German MTV by the “artist” Lemon Ice…

Do Germans really listen to this crap? And perhaps a more important question…is nothing sacred? Here is the NSFW version that aired on German MTV.

Tags:   Hellspawn · Lemon Ice · TravestyNo Comments.

In case you missed it, Microsoft announced a new phone at MIX07 and it’s way more innOvative than the iPhone.

Video: Microsoft's oPhone

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I recently discovered a solution to an annoyance/bug/weakness in Virtual Earth. I passed along my findings to the VE team, but I’m not sure they agreed with my assessment.

I’ve been suffering from another VE annoyance for some time now and tonight I finally decided to investigate the issue. The problem is that when you double-click on my map Virtual Earth zooms in to the highest zoom level (19), no matter what zoom level you’re currently on. If it was acting correctly, it would reset the map center and zoom in one step closer. My previous solution got me thinking down the right path and I was able to solve this problem with the same solution…forcing my zoom level variable to be a float. It turns out, Virtual Earth requires floats for lots of variables. I’d even hazzard to guess Virtual Earth requires floats for all methods. In my code I was calling the SetCenterAndZoom method and passing a string as the zoom level. Just as before, VE accepted the string and then causes strange results down the road (making it difficult to troubleshoot later on).

So if you are running into bugs or strangeness in your VE code try wrapping your parameters with Javascripts parseFloat() function. It could save you a lot of headaches.

I asked the VE guys to update the VE documentation to at least mention what variable types are require for each of our methods, but I don’t work in that division so I’m not sure if they’ll make the changes or not. Google and Yahoo’s documentation already describe the variable types they require.

Tags:   Javascript · Virtual-EarthNo Comments.

I’ve been a Colts fan since Bert Jones was quarterback and Lydell Mitchell was in the backfield. It’s been a lot of years of heartache, and finally they pulled out the victory last night to win Super Bowl 41. Now I hate to kick a guy when he’s down, but I got to admit that Will Leitch’s glog on the game and the coverage over at deadspin.com is hilarious. Non-stop mercilous hammering of poor “sex cannon” Rex Grossman. This is the graphic they’ll use whenever discussing Rex

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I ran into a strange clipping anomaly with IE that I thought I’d report here on my blog. I was attempting to do some CSS layout and ran into a clipping problem. On IE it looked like this:

and on Firefox the same HTML looked like this:

A good example of this is the title on my own blog (which is clipped and looks like crap on IE)

Here is the code:

    <style type="text/css">
 
    BODY {	
        PADDING-LEFT: 1.5em;	
        LINE-HEIGHT: 1em;	
        FONT-FAMILY: "Trebuchet MS", "Luxi Sans", "Helvetica", sans-serif
    }
 
    #Header {
        position:relative;
        padding: .5em;
        background:lime;
        height: 2em;
        width: 200px;
    }
 
    .Name 
    {	
        FONT-SIZE: x-large;	
        LEFT: 0px;	
        COLOR: #857448;	
        BOTTOM: 0px;	
        FONT-FAMILY: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;	
        POSITION: absolute;
    }
    </style>
</head>
<body>
    <form id="form1" runat="server">
        <div>
            <div id="Header">
                <div class="Name">
                    <asp:Label ID="lblName" runat="server">Seward Park loop</asp:Label>
                </div>
            </div>
        </div>
    </form>
</body>

The problem lies with the CSS attribute LINE-HEIGHT in combination with the ABSOLUTE positioning. Inheriting the LINE-HEIGHT from the BODY seems to assume a different font size and causes the clipping. You may be tempted to mess with the OVERFLOW attribute, but that will not fix this problem. You can correct the problem by declaring a LINE-HEIGHT in your tag. Isn’t CSS fun!

Tags: 2 Comments

I haven’t done it in a long while, but I’m writing a lot of Javascript recently. Javascript is a super powerful language but can also be a super frustrating language to develop with because of two factors:

1. A history of very weak developer tool support.
2. Tons of cross-browser inconsistencies.

I’d love to see Microsoft/Visual Studio do a better job as a Javascript IDE and debugger. I’m hoping Orcas brings along some Javascript goodness. Visual Studio 2005 does have a hidden ability to debug Javascript…but you really got to look hard to find it. There is also a really nice Javascript debugging tool for FireFox called FireBug. It’s very cool and I’d recommend it to anyone doing web development.

Tags:   FireBugNo Comments.

Yesterday I ran the Long Beach Half Marathon and today my legs can certainly feel it. It was a great run. Not too hot, level course, running along the beach. I wore my new Garmin GPS forerunner watch, so you can check out the full route here.

I learned a few things about Long Beach, California. One, it’s got a great tiny little airport, and if you’re flying into LA consider flying into Long Beach instead of LAX. You’ll save yourself a lot of headaches. Secondly, I was suprised at the 2-faced nature of Long Beach. Perhaps this is showing my isolated upbringing, but Long Beach seems to be suffering from this unfortunate trend I’ve noticed in some larger cities recently (including Seattle). They seem to spend all of their money in one area while whole sections of the city become a no mans land.

After finishing the race, we drove back through town and through neighborhoods covered with bars on every window and pawn shops and liquor stores on every block. Quite a contrast from the multi-million dollar condos along the waterfront area. I don’t claim to have any answers here, but here are a few links to get you thinking:

• What is gentrification?
• Wikipedia - Urban Renewal

UPDATE: Okay, this whole post sounds extremely naive, I admit it. But if a hard-core Democrat like me is suprised by the contrasting lifestyles 5 blocks apart, it makes me wonder how many Republicans might alter their opinions on urban renewal if they just had a clue this was going on. “Out of site, out of mind.” Could the solution be as simple as getting people out of their own neighborhoods?

Tags: 4 Comments