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.
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.
So it’s that day of the week that no one really loves. It’s going alright for me so far, I start work later than usual due to an after hours meeting scheduled with a client.
This weekend was relaxing, thanks to finally collecting a pay cheque after a couple of months of being unemployed in my primary career. I took Jen to a local pub we frequent that has good burgers & fries, and a nice selection of beer on tap. On Saturday we did a little clothes shopping and I scored a great wool winter jacket that’s more office friendly compared to my (very awesome) Ripzone Trilogy snowboard jacket.
On Sunday I laid out the wedding album for Johnny & Michelle. It took longer than I had originally expected, but it is the first book I’ve done via page spreads. Setting up my template/guides was essential to getting the look I wanted with easy to deploy asset placement. Tonight I might setup a Photoshop action to batch export low resolution .jpg files for them to review, but I might wait until Tuesday when I’m doing a normal 9-5hr work day.
I’m looking forward to getting out with my camera a bit more once it warms up. I’d like to pick up another light stand/strobe for my kit; but my camera gear purchases have been delegated to lowest priority for now. Mid to late summer I should be able to get a bunch of stuff I need / want so I can do more advanced work.
I’m glad I’ve been focusing on improving my JavaScript apps and corresponding Server Side Objects; everything released and in development runs excellent on this awesome little OS.
Jen and I were supposed to meet some friends at a club near our place last night for what was probably a good DJ show; but like the old man I am, I was ready to pass out around 10:30pm. Earlier in the night we had gone to a bar to play some pool and have a couple of pints (a warm up). Near the end of our stay at this bar, a drunk guy in his 40s approached asking if he could play us for the table. I said sure, because we were about done with it anyways.
At some point this guy decided it was okay to beg me for money while Jen wasn’t in hearing range; and that kinda pissed me off. Who begs for money in a bar? There’s etiquette! He also sunk the 8 ball 2 shots into the pool game, so the guy was pretty useless/annoying/drunk.
Anyways, after that we came home to pass the time until the DJ show, and I guess the lack of food with the beer was enough to slow me right down. I feel bad we didn’t go out; there’s a show coming up we’re planning on attending so I’ll have to make sure we get there.
It’s the first time in a decade that I haven’t been working. I’m between contracts at the moment and have been putting time toward a major rewrite of aw:Browser (my AJAX file browser). The rewrite has 1 major change left which is a bit of a paradigm shift for how it operates; but it seems I can’t avoid it.
So, other than keeping myself busy during 9-5 with lots of JavaScript OOP programming I haven’t been doing too much. The weather’s not really cooperating for photography and I haven’t booked anything so; I’m kinda bored.
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.
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.
Or is it a truck? It’s max load was 3000kg, it had tiny wheels and somehow I found it charming. Maybe because it looks like it should be in a Pixar movie?