I’m looking forward to taking my Norco Launch (‘03) to the office tomorrow & Friday. I need to give it a quick tune up tonight so there’s no surprises tomorrow.
So I’ve been super busy with work, and side projects. I just recoded my company website to use a series of patterns for easy extensibility and a performance boost. It’s just a case of putting theory into practice, and it worked out well.
Work has been interesting. I’ve been getting very familiar with the various objects and blur of layers in the project I’m on. It’s interesting, I guess. I’m not sure how else to explain that large amount of code that doesn’t do much.
I’ve taken on a small side project of building Jenz a new computer, reusing my workstation from 2 years ago with a new optical drive, hdd, ram and video card. The hardware went together nicely, and it’s in a mini ATX case, so it’s pretty small compared to the beast of a P4 she’s working on right now.
I’ve almost wrapped up awFlickr development. Last night I realized there might be an issue with my plan of sending data back to Flickr from un-authorized users, which I’ll have to look into. Oh wells.
Things are progressing well.
To recap, my reef was in fine shape; then I moved to Ottawa and things died, then I got algae and ever since then I’ve been going through battles with the thing. A few months back I got a Tunze 9005 skimmer and the break in period didn’t seem that stellar, but I knew it was an improvement.
When we came back from Jamaica (January) the skimmer hadn’t collected much skimmate; not a good sign. I didn’t really have time to investigate the issue, so I made sure I wasn’t over feeding and have been doing the husbandry tasks.
Then I decided to reset the skimmer, and voila! It’s working fantastically! I had been making the mistake of getting my hands inside the reactor, which would deposit natural oil, which had a negative effect on the skimming. User error has been fixed, I think.
I’m so impressed, I don’t believe I’ll get a tank with overflows when we move into a larger place. My skimmer and hang on back refugium is perfect as a large scale “nano” setup.
Starting late on Monday carried over to a late night on Tuesday at work. It was an unexpected, but overall beneficial long day. I’ve managed to squeeze in a little time for refactoring the JavaScript portion of awFlickr app, which I plan to release into a private beta this weekend.
I’ll think of a better name once I get it out for testing. I’m planning on using this as a base for Spiral’s PHP version, and my tentatively named aw:Mail.
I picked up two books the other night to read for work & my personal projects. While looking for Design Patterns Explained I found PHP Design Patterns, which is a WROX book (I favor this publisher) and seemed to be the same core content in a shorter package. The other is the O’Reilly JavaScript Pocket Reference, which is going to be a bit of a refresher.
This past weekend I started working on a Flickr app that’s REST/JSON/JavaScript based (with a PHP back end generating the JSON). It’s a very old project I never really got started on, but was pretty easy to (almost) complete in under 2 days.
I discovered… a Flickr ID is too large for any web browser JavaScript engine to handle; they rounded up randomly. HTML comments on photos are very annoying from a programmatic point of view. I really like JavaScript.
I used the code base from my portfolio and hacked it up, by taking out the # operations and using events on all the dynamic objects/elements. I also corrected the JSON transportation. Now I’m left with a few visual effects to create, and some misc behavioral changes.
I’m hoping to have v1.0 released this week under the MIT license.
I’ve integrated my Flickr account with my website (finally!). It’s still in beta, more eye candy will be rolling out this week.
It’s my birthday, and I’m thirty! Glad I got my career in order over the last year; I’m feeling really happy about where I’m at.
Saturday morning was pretty chilly at -20c with windchill, but that didn’t stop me from taking a walk around Confederation Park with my fiance; cameras in hand! I opted to use my nifty fifty (50mm f1.4), at a pretty wide aperture of f2.0 for almost all of the photos. ISO100 was required, and there was no filter on the front element.
The full series is available at http://gallery.jasonmulligan.com/winterlude-2010 and will be continually updated while the festival is under way.
I shot the fireworks display from my home last night, mostly due of the cold but also because I got home late from the office and that left little time to get myself weather proofed and outside. Regardless, the show was awesome! I dragged the shutter too long it seems at 4 seconds, so a little “live ‘n’ learn” lesson occurred; usually I get it right.
I’m also doing the final content edit for Optis wedding album. Client feedback has been great, and we both decided to change 2 spreads slightly so there’s better flow in the story telling. I can’t wait to finish the book, it’s going to look amazing once it’s printed by KISS Wedding Books.
Later today I’m hoping to have enough time to walk through the ice carving that’s going on in Confederation Park, not too far from my home. It’s always fun to see the creative ice sculptures.