A few planned upgrades to aw:Browser and aw:Calendar are scheduled for release. These changes will extend the usability of the apps and make them more flexible for reusing in your own web apps.
After that, the exciting stuff begins. We’re in the prototype phase of our first iPhone app. I wish I could say more.
In preparation for the next project, the contact page has been updated with an AJAX form, and the JavaScript asset file had a few functions added to it to facilitate everything.
Today I got the news that the DND contract would not be getting renewed due to funding cuts. It was a sweet job while it lasted, but I’m looking forward to the next contract!
The most recent Government contract has been a fantastic experience. Fingers crossed for a callup/extension with this small & dynamic team.
Jen and I hosted a cocktail party for some friends on the weekend. Jen organized it through Facebook because it was easier than trying to get everyone’s email address into an ecard invite web app.
Almost everyone that was invited was able to attend, so it was a pretty fun night. I nerded out a bit and showed off the recent changes to my htpc/network to one friend; and talked about my reef for hours to generally everyone while they were in front of it at various points in the night.
I hope we make this an annual party.
Last night Jen and I went on a “Halloween edition” of the 90 minute gallows walk through the old Carlton County jail which now operates as a “haunted” hostel. If you’re in the city, it’s worth attending. While we were on the walk a few interesting things happened; a jail cell door on the eighth floor slammed shut in the dimly lit hall where the group was standing while the guide was telling a story of a famous ghost, and near the end of the walk the trap door for the gallows opened and the rope dropped while we were under it.
If the events were planned, they were well executed because there was no tell tale signs of persons present.
I thoroughly enjoyed the stories, setting and frightfulness of the guide.
A lot of random stuff happened since my last entry, but I’m distracted setting up my new work machine so I’m not sure where to start.
My ‘old’ HP laptop has been retired permanently. I replaced it yesterday with a mid-range Gateway NV44, which seems to be pretty great. I find the new textures to be a little confusing, I keep sliding my thumb on the touchpad when I’m trying to hit a lower key; user error’s a pain sometime.
I have a few work items to get sorted out and I need to rewrite my resume/cv to cover my last 3 projects since I’m going to be job hunting shortly. I’m going to start putting in longer hours next week to drain my contract to the last paid hour. I’m positive the extra time will be appreciated, so it’s win/win.
I’ve transitioned all of my computers to a Windows 2008 r2 domain tree and Windows 7. It’s been a bit of a pain, but overall it seems that I made the right decision with the software. However, this new Gateway machine has an Intel chipset that suffers from the classic Vista LUT bug. This means my calibrated color profile is unloaded any time a ‘fade to black’ is initiated by the operating system. I’m not sure if it’s entirely Microsoft’s fault, but at this point it shouldn’t exist. The ‘bug’ was introduced with Vista, a few years ago. Why is it back?
Jen’s friend Mana came to Ottawa for a visit on the weekend. She arrived pretty early on Saturday morning, so we went for breakfast at a pseudo diner near by. Mana’s a pretty fun house guest; she brought her Wii and Mario Kart! The game’s a little harder than I thought it’d be with the motion controls, but knowing a few of the courses from the GameCube edition helped make up for my poor cornering.
I also put together a new HTPC (home theatre pc) based off of a Zotac ION mobo. I ended up getting new ram because the re-used desktop dimms escalated an ambient heat issue to the point of blue screens (running Windows). Once I swapped a pair of tiny Cosair dimms and spread out the cables as much as possible inside the tiny ITX case the system stability improved greatly (no more blue screens). I ended up running Windows 7 x86, which I didn’t like at first. The stability problems due to heat didn’t help my initial learning curve of the new menus (which I don’t like, at all); so a couple of reinstalls later I have a clean OS with everything functioning. I’m using Media Browser to launch Media Player Classic Home Cinema for EVR/DXVA playback of everything I download (this is GPU offloading); Total Media Threate 3 Platinum for DVD/HD-DVD/Bluray playback (also with GPU offloading) and I’ve executed the ATSC hack so I can get a few OTA HDTV channels. The changes to the TV handling is very nice. I need to finish off the setup with my Sirius integration (via uSirius on my lan), and then I’m generally done.
The software setup is a little different than how I ran my old HTPC with Vista, but overall I think this is much more efficient. The total power usage is under 24 watts, so that’s pretty awesome.