Tradition: Superbowl Sushi

SuperBowl, for me, is one of the biggest nights of the year for sushi. For the past 10 years or so I usually buy a tray of sushi for SuperBowl and bring it to whoever is hosting.  I usually educate people about sushi and get people who are normally afraid of sushi to try it when it's free for them.

This year though I made my own sushi.  I made five different types of rolls.  A Crab Salad roll (sometimes called classic California Roll), California Roll, a Italian Roll (Pesto, Spinach, Portabello mushrooms and Salmon [raw]), Philadelphia Roll and my famous SuperBowl Roll (Chicken Wing meat and Blue Cheese).

In total, I made 21 rolls in two and a half hours, that's 168 pieces.  Needless to say it turned out awesome.



Notice how I made the Wasabi to look like a football it even had the rice laces. I even bought a wooden tray that had a football field painted on the bottom.

I really had fun with this, even though it was a lot of work. The reaction I got though was well worth the trouble.

Hope you enjoy!

Observations of MacWorld Blogging

Today was the keynote address at MacWorld 2008.  I observed quite a few things this year that didn't happen in years past.

For instance this year seemed like everyone was live blogging the event. From Fake Steve to Valleywag to the normal web information outlets for MacWorld Keynotes: Engadget, MacRumors and Gizmodo.

But it seemed the first timers didn't have much luck with keeping their servers up.  Fake Steve was using a third party web app to stream the live blogging directly to his blog.  Unfortunately the app crashed almost as soon as the keynote started.

Fake Steve then went to the back up plan of using Twitter. Valleywag had also planned on live blogging via Twitter.  MacRumorsLive had planned on also posting it's updates to twitter as well as on their website and IRC channel.

Ok so with these big names live blogging on Twitter as well as countless others at the keynote and with millions of people trying to refresh to get the latest from twitter on what was happening....well let's just say Twitter buckled.  It went down hard for at least an hour. Even now they are rate limiting the API calls to less then the normal 70 an hour to try to take the pressure off.

With all the live blogging, I found a few who tried to stream video from the Keynote. We watched this stream until someone asked the guy to lower his Camera/phone.  The picture was crappy and the sound quality wasn't the greatest but at least you could sort of make out what was going on and related back to the MacRumorsLive notes.  We observed at the peak the stream had over 9000 concurrent viewers.  The most surprising thing heard in that stream?  A baby crying in the audience, seriously who brings a baby to an event like this?

I heard iJustine tried to Stream as well.  Seems like she suffered the same fate as above.

But that brings me to my next point live video streaming seemed to be big during CES but it was really noticable today.  I caught Scoble recording most of this evening with his Nokia N95.  Here he is with Leo Laporte at MacWorld.  Here Scoble interviews Qik founder when a Video streaming orgy breaks out by four different people one being iJustine.


So who had the best info this year. Engadget had the best write ups but their server were starting to buckle from people constantly reloading.  Their page took forever to come back up.  MacRumorsLive had an awesome AJAX solution that didn't require you to do anything photos and updates "magically" appeared on your screen when updates occured.  In my opinion MacRumorsLive won the bragging rights.

It's fun to see how the new technology made today a much more interesting event to watch from a far.  It was also fun to see how the old technology players struggled as they are the now go to outlets for this event.

Either way with everyone sharing information it makes it easy for everyone to experience the keynote as closely as they do.  Thanks to you all for your hard work.

A look at my most popular posts of 2007

I switched the focus on my blog to be more informational about problems I solved and to help others find that information a little easier because of my high ranking in Google.

Here are the top five posts from 2007:

1. Case sensitivity, SVN and Windows is a recipe for disaster - this was a problem I encountered while working with Subversion and a repository on a linux server and that had created two versions of the same file but with different cases.  My client tools would error because it didn't know which file to grab.
2. Uninstalling Cisco VPN client kills internet access - This was a huge problem I encountered when I uninstalled my VPN client on my laptop.  After trying all weekend and letting the System Admins at work look at it and give up I finally found a solution hidden in a forum buried way low on the page.  This was one of those problems I really wanted to bring the solution to the forefront for other users as fast as possible.  In October something must of happened and I started to get really heavy traffic for this page from search engines.  Every comment I get from someone I helped with this solution brings a smile to my face.
3. Pulling twitter updates with JSON and jQuery - I posted the code to my solution to pulling in Twitter updates via JSON and jQuery.  I use this code on the right to display my last three Twitter updates.  I like using Twitter and have limited the number of posts on my blog in favor of just posting my personal tid bits to twitter and letting them display that way and leaving more of the professional posts to the blog.
4. Sushi Nirvana - This post details my starting out with making sushi.
5. Monroe County to get Wireless Internet - This was a post to shed light on the news about a wireless internet network in the city.  I was able to connect to the network in November on a flight I took to NYC.  Unfortunately you need to be a Frontier telephone customer to connect, which I am not (Vonage) or you need to pay the daily fee to get access.  I opted for the free airport wifi instead.

So there is a look at the most popular story pages from the year.

DamnRalph gets a face lift

I've been working on a new design now for a couple of weeks and I finally got it to where I am really happy with the design.  I wanted to go for a simplified look and get rid of the big boxy feel of my previous design.

I spent alot of time writing some awesome jQuery to get the site to be a little interactive and to output the HTML exactly the way I wanted it.

I am using three plug-ins:

• FX Shadow plugin - I grabbed this right from the respository as they fixed the bug that would of hindered my use of the plugin.. click on Contact or Subscribe or any of the Blog Posts by links to see the shadow plugin in use.
• Rounded Corners - used them for the areas on the right.
• Chili - Chili is a automatic code syntax highlighter.

example:

<html> <head>  <title>test</title> </head> <body>    Hello World! </body> </html>



Anyway, let me know what you think.  I only have one more planned feature and that is to pull in my latest twitter update and display it using AJAX.  Just need to figure that out.

Update on my jQuery bug

Last month I posted about my problems with the jQuery UI shadow plugin where it wasn't working with absolute positioned divs.

I was looking at the Development jQuery UI group on Google groups this morning and came across this post by Brandon Aaron detailing how he cleaned up the shadow plugin.

I politely mentioned my bug I submitted and he politely told me that the latest version in SVN will now solve my problem.

And it does:

Yay, open source!

Interesting fact, when they release the next version there will now be a UI branch and a FX branch. Shadow was moved and will be in the FX branch.

Ze Frank

Not sure if you know who Ze Frank is but he is a pretty big internet celebrity (at least in my eyes) ... recently doing a year of video podcasts called the Show with Ze Frank.

http://www.zefrank.com

http://www.zefrank.com/theshow

Well anyways he was giving a speech at Rochester Institute of Technology tonight and I have been planning on attending since last month.

He's spoken at many TED Talks the one in 2003 is posted on Google Video and he actually gave a similar talk for part of his talk tonight.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1895918195820925057

As I was walking into the building he was walking out to which I introduced myself, shook his hand...really cool.

After the talk I went down and got into a discussion about online communities and how communities take off into the direction of their choosing ... all very interesting.

But I think what struck me the most was how approachable he was and easy to talk to.  I am sure he is quite used to it by now but I found that he was very easy to talk to and to ask questions.

Extra Night Charges

    I opened up my e-mail the same way I do every morning, after opening my web browser, FireFox being my preference, I navigated to GMail. One e-mail in particular caught my attention immediately. It was titled “Redbox receipt for Extra Night Charges.” Huh? I haven't rented a movie from Redbox in over a week and I definitely didn't return one today.

    Redbox is a fairly new DVD rental vending machine. They are usually found at the front of grocery stores or McDonalds and the rentals only cost $1 a night. Our family recently tried it and we were hooked. You can go on line and see what's available before you even go to the store and you can even reserve the movie you want so that it's guaranteed that it'll be there when you arrive.

    Just to demonstrate how awesome they are last month we were in Albany for my cousins wedding. We spent the night and we were over at my grandmothers house in the morning before we left to go home. My parents were also there. They offered to take the boys with them and drop them off at our house on their way home, since they have to drive past it anyways to get home. The benefit to the boys for going with my parents is that they could watch movies on the flip down 5 inch flat screen and DVD player that came with the Chevy Venture.

    My mom before officially offering to take them, expressed the desire for some DVD movies for the boys to watch in the van. I immediately asked, “Is there a Redbox around?” Because we can rent the DVD's in Albany drive to Rochester and take them back to any Redbox location. I had my laptop in the truck of the car, I went and grabbed it, hooked it up to the router in my cousins room and navigated to Redbox.com and did a search for the closest vending location. I found two within five miles and my wife and I were off to go rent them some movies, frankly, we weren't giving up a peaceful ride home for anything.

    I opened the e-mail and was taken aback at the cost. $24.00 plus the $1 on the initial night. I was being charged full price for a movie. But which one? And Why? I quickly scan the e-mail, “Letters From Iwo Jima,” but I haven't seen that movie in almost a month, July 2^nd to be exact. And I know it was returned. Then it hit me. That was the movie that we couldn't find the case for.

    We had rented about three movies that night, couple of the movies were for the boys. Unfortunately, Ralphie the youngest “misplaced” the case for “Letters from Iwo Jima.” Of course I was getting really irritated looking through the house for the case and coming up empty. I mean where could a case just disappear too anyways? Apparently, in the basement is the answer cause we wound up finding it a few days later.

    I hopped back on Redbox's website and went to the FAQ section and found their instructions on how to return a movie if you lost a case. Basically, you need to call Customer Service. I had my wife call, I hate talking to customer service, she does too, but at least she'll do it, I'll just procrastinate. They tell her that we need to send the DVD in a padded envelop to an address that they e-mailed and that they would refund our money based on the postdate on the envelop. No problem we went over to the post office and dropped it in the mail.

    So why the e-mail today? Again, I have my wife call customer service. They tell her that they never received the envelop and that's why we were charged full price. Ugh! So not only did we get charged full price but now we are out the postage fee and the DVD itself as now we “own” it.

    Luckily my wife insured the package with the post office for $25. I wonder what kind of hassle that's going to be to try and get that honored?

Update: I just received an e-mail from Redbox stating a refund of $25.93.  Either they just found the DVD or customer service didn't know where to look for the DVD.  Either way I am glad that this has been resolved on a positive note.

Brakes and Rotors

My brakes started grinding this week so I needed to get that fixed...I bought the parts Brake pads and rotors and went over to my cousins house and he helped my put them on....I swear to god it was so easy...I am going to do it myself next time.

I found instructions online for my type of brakes so I can do it next time.

http://www.2carpros.com/how_to/how_to_replace_brakes.htm

tools I'll need to get the job done:

14 mm socket
18 mm socket
C-Clamp
Mallet or hammer (in case the bolts are tight)
Jack
Brake pads
Rotors (if worn)

Pictures from Lilac Festival 2007

Click here for more.

Monroe County to get Wireless Internet

This is exciting although details are light, it's just exciting that we are talking about it here in our home county.  Maggy Brooks announced last night during her State of the County address that there was a partnership with Frontier to provide a wireless network for the county.

That is why I am pleased to announce that Monroe County is working with Frontier to develop a wireless internet network that will serve significant portions of Greece, Pittsford and the City of Rochester…as well as portions of the surrounding towns by the end of the year.

In addition, Frontier has also agreed to develop free wireless internet zones within this network…a critical step in our County’s efforts to bridge the digital divide.

We anticipate this wireless network will continue to expand throughout other parts of the County...and eventually become a full-scale, wireless network to serve all County residents.

Our new partnership with Frontier is a win for our taxpayers, and a win for our community. The new network will be created at no cost to taxpayers, and will soon allow our community to reap the benefits of wireless access to the information superhighway.

The loss of Jim Gray is Amazon's gain

Last weekend we learned of the disappearance of Jim Gray, a well respected database architect for Microsoft.  The news was taken pretty hard around the blogosphere.  We learned that the Coast Guard called off the search on Thursday.

I am not sure who took the satellite imagery but satellite imagery was uploaded to Amazon's Mechanical Turk for it's member to analyze.  This was/is an absolutely great idea.  Let the community that cares poor over the imagery and help in the search.

My wife and I spent and hour on Saturday going through about a hundred or so images...we flagged about a dozen or so as needs further review.  I spent another half an hour going through another few dozen last night.

But each time I went I also looked at some of the other paying Turks.  Then I got to wondering how much of Amazon's generousity of hosting and using Mechanical Turk was for the moral good and how much of it was a easy way to get some easy viral marketing of their system again.  Cause let's be honest Mechanical Turk hasn't been talked about much since it came out a couple of years ago.  But since they started this Mechanical Turk links are all I see on everyone's blog.

I know I probably sound morbid in bringing this up, but my curiosity got the better of me and I want to know how much of this is marketing and how much of it is pure heart felt generosity.

I don't think any less of Amazon, I actually have more respect for them for stepping up to the plate and helping out.  But I am sure at the end of the day their return for helping out was worth all the trouble.  But in the end maybe, just maybe the real good will be we find Jim alive and well on adrift boat out at sea.

What are your thoughts?

Anyone want Chicken Wing Sushi for Super Bowl?

Allison over at SushiDay took my suggestion for a chicken wing roll, that I made once last month, and ran with it and made her own for a post on her site.   Wow they look good.

I had originally tried this roll one day when my mom had bought pizza and wings for the boys and I was getting tired of the same old crab and salmon rolls I was making that day. 

I took a medium wing and some blue cheese and rolled them together.

I was totally surprised at how good it tasted.

I eventually suggested it to Allison on one of her other fine Sushi posts and she loved the idea and asked me if she could use it in an upcoming post. 

Makes total sense that she posted it today.  Instead of ordering pizza and wings tonight I am making sushi tonight.  Although I am not making the chicken wing roll I am planning on buying some Tuna, Salmon, Crab and Shrimp for a Smorgus borg of sushi nirvana.

St. John's Signage Case study

In my late night Google searching tonight I found a case study from ASI-Modulex the sign makers that we worked with a few years ago when we rebranded St. John's Universities interior and exterior wayfinding signs around campus.

"In partnership with BrandLogic, hundreds of directional decision points were identified across the two campuses then analyzed to create a wayfinding solution that improved the efficiency of the campus navigation."

I can only imagine the organization and planning that was needed to figure out the need, requirements and the plan to replace every single sign on campus.  If you walk onto the campus you'll see what a momentous task this was.

“ASI-Modulex worked successfully with BrandLogic to implement the new logo design and wayfinding analysis for St. John’s University.”
Wynn Medinger
CEO, Creative Director
BrandLogic

In the end I think I only helped out by creating a Word template that was used by the Staff and Faculty to create their name plate for a slide in sign next to their door. Meaning they would use the Word template to print their name and title and the template would control the placement and font treatment. I thought this was it at first but this is a more permanent sign. Next time I go up to St. John's (possibly next month) I'll see if I can spot one of those name plate signs.

You can see BrandLogic's case study of the signs here.  The mention of the signs is on the last slide and is part of the overall rebranding that we provided.

Redesigned BrandLogic.com Launches

We've spent quite sometime recently getting BrandLogic.com ported over to our BrandEnsemble product.  It's pretty exciting to actually have our website using our product.  Before we did it in JSP because it was a great selling feature for some companies that we were multi talented (which we are by the way). 

I think though that we were never really proud of our site before.  But now, I think this is the best version of our website, and we are really proud of going live with it.

It runs on ASP.NET 1.1 and SQL Server 2000.  It runs on our BrandLogic BrandEnsemble Content Management System. 

Here are some screen shots of the site (click to enlarge).

  

And some of our admin tools which our CEO states are "the best admin tools I have ever seen."

     

These shots show how our pages can be edited inline so you get a feel for what the page will look like before you're ready to publish, version control history of a page with the ability to revert a page back to a previous version and how a typical view of a group (our terminology of a directory) looks within the system.

BrandEnsemble has been used in many of our clients sites as well:

• St. John's University (Case study)
• Red Storm Sports (St. John's Athletics Web site)
• Image Manager (Case study)
  
• CareerSpace (Case study)
• Rockwell Collins (Intranet Brand Identity site)
• Bausch & Lomb (Intranet Brand Identity site)
• Texaco (Intranet Brand Identity site)
• Wyeth (Intranet Brand Identity site)

Of course BrandEnsemble is only a piece of the overall branding puzzle that BrandLogic services offer to clients.  BrandEnsemble is what I am close to as I have contributed to it's development over these past eight years.

Here are some of BrandLogics other services we offer:

• Brand Strategy/Research
• Brand Design
• Brand Implementation
• Brand Management

And who we did it for.

Feel free to contact BrandLogic for your branding needs (tell them that Damn Ralph sent you).

I am a FAILURE!!!!

This was overheard at my house:

"Mommy? How do you spell disney for disney.com?", asks the middle child.

"It's in the favorites."

"Your favorites?"

"Yes, click off of that and click the E one, the regular internet."

A little piece inside of me died.

What does the future hold?

Where is the future heading with web programming/technologies?  I have considered myself Microsoft programmer since I graduated college.  I learned Classic ASP on the job, eventually I learned ASP.NET with VB.NET first then realized the power of C#.  I love C# I really do.  It makes programming a complex web site simple and straight forward.

We at BrandLogic would of never been able to program a complete CMS system for St. John's University in 3 weeks if it had not been for the robust framework that .NET offers.  Hell I am still to this day maintaining that code.

We've taken that code base and improved upon it and created the BrandEnsemble suite out of it.  Many clients are enjoying the benefits of the ease of programming C# provided us to be able to make a robust versioned CMS system.

So why do I feel uneasy?  Why do I feel like I am going down the wrong path?

It might be because ASP.NET 2.0 and Visual Studio.NET 2005 doesn't excite me like VS.NET 2003 did.  It doesn't excite me like the promise of what Ruby on Rails can provide.

But I think the most important part is it doesn't wow me in the wallet.  As a freelance web developer paying $1000 for a copy of Visual Studio.NET is a huge chunk of my annual freelance salary.  So upgrading to the next release isn't on the top of my lists of things to do right away.  Plus there is the cost of SQL Server, Windows, etc. etc. Basically I need a MSDN subscription.  What are they up to now?  $3000?  I stopped caring, I guess, the last time I looked at the new MSDN offerings and I thought I needed a lawyer to explain it to me.

So that brings me back to my original question: Where is the future?  Lately, I have been seriously thinking that the future, as is the present, is in open source software and the technologies that support it, programming languages like PHP and Ruby on Rails (there is a reason why they are so popular now).  If you own a PC (and if you don't save a paycheck and go out and get a barebones computer) everything else is free, free as in beer. 

So you got an idea for a cool web site? Get a computer, download a linux distro for your operating system, install the packages you need, get programming IDE's for PHP or Ruby free off of sites like SourceForge.  Get a Enterprise level database like MySql or Postgres free again by downloading it off the internet.  Download TheGimp for image processing.  Bam! You're up and running on the simple cost of the hardware.  And best of all your legal too!  Plus there is a community of starving programmer that are on the web willing to help you out.

But PHP is Old

Yeah, PHP has been around a long long time, but it's robust and again it's free.  And as I've highlighted before, Chris Prillio nailed it on the head once when he was stating the reasons why he was using PHP on his CMS Publishing project: PHP is prevailant on most if not all hosts that are out there right now.  So make a PHP site and chances are the majority of webmasters can install your software on their site.   Try to do that with an ASP.NET site with a SQL Server 2000 backend.

If you look around Silicon Valley now most Web 2.0 companies are using LAMP  (Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP) partly due to the low cost in a market where the revenue stream is still up in the air for most.  But they need the appeal of the masses to get the word out.

Scoble said something tonight that got me to write this post tonight, even though I been thinking it for the past couple of weeks.  He said, "LAMP is sure getting traction — I’ve stopped asking entrepreneurs what infrastructure they are using since the answer was so consistently LAMP."

A couple of days ago I saw a sponsor on TechCrunch post job listings for web developers/designers and it got me thinking if I all of a sudden found myself out in the mix again fighting for a job, I think my resume would fall to the bottom of the pile for most places that I think I would find fun to work at (although I have a family, which means the fun places are too risky for me).  My resume is very impressive I think.  My strengths are meeting the needs of our clients in a productive and efficient manner, providing the best customer service and experience with our clients, maintaining a long lasting and trusting relationship with our clients (in the 8 years I've worked at BrandLogic I can probably count the number of clients I've worked with on my one hand, not because we don't get clients but because I help maintain the longest lasting clients.  Which I think is a testiment of the quality of service I as well as the rest of the team provide.)  And last but not least are my Microsoft skills.  Which in my opinion is a technology that is becoming more and more obsolete.

I guess I'll add a new resolution to the New Year.  Learn Web 2.0 technologies!

Don't be offended now but he plays with himself

This is just pure genius...I laughed the whole way through it.


(RSS Readers: click through to watch video)

My Laptop is now up and running and FULLY charged

The power brick I ordered off eBay came in today and when I plugged it in my laptop started charging. 

Nice!

My Laptop is out of Commision

So Saturday I am on my laptop and it's plugged in and all of a sudden it goes into Hibernate mode.  Turns out the battery died.  But I was plugged in.  I double checked the connections and yes they were all plugged in.  I tried another plug.  Nothing.

I assume (i.e. hope) that the power brick is bad.  I look up online how much it is from HP. $79.99.  I can't get a universal cause my laptop needs 120W where most universals are only 90W.

So I resign to ordering it off HP.com.

Then Larry asks me if I checked eBay.  No!  Sure enough I can get them off eBay for $32.  Larry places the order for me since I don't have money in my paypal account.  Now I just pray that this will fix my problem.

I think it will there is a little green light on the brick usually when it's plugged in and it's not on anymore.

Of course today is MLK day and no postal runs today.  So tack on another day of waiting. :(

I'll keep you updated when it comes in.

By the way I had to get my old clunky desktop up-to-date that my kids use.   Talk about a mess.  242 spyware items found.  Pop-ups flying open all the time.  After running a scan, cleaning everything off and updating my open source software I was back on track. 

That's the beauty of open source software and GMail is that I can basically get set up on another computer pretty easily.

Rush-Henrietta's Sherman Elementary Talks with ISS Crew

On January 8th Rush-Henrietta's Sherman Elementary contacted the ISS at 9:35 am with a HAM radio operated by the Amatuer Radio club at RIT and was able to talk for 9 minutes, the window when the Space Station was directly overhead.

I came into work that morning and tuned into NASATV thinking it would be broadcast live but found they were replaying chat's with other school's from previous days.

Today I found that RIT's University News posted a recorded version on their Podcast.  I found it very interesting.

You can listen to it here

MacWorld Keynote HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT for me

Sorry but I knew going into it that a iPhone no matter how awesome just wouldn't be up my ally.  I was watching for the sole intent of awaiting the news of a new iPod Video that played widescreen.

I feel that we are step closer as the iPhone plays video widescreen.  But the drawbacks are it's integrated with the phone, it only has 8GB tops for storage space and it's $500 starting price with two year contract with Cingular (an AT&T company whom which I'll never do business again).

I'll admit though the phone features are nice...but I am not interested.  In Rochester, NY we are not that dependant on mobile technologies.  I don't depend on a mobile phone 98% of the time.  I live by e-mail and IM and I am always close to it.

For me the thrill of having a Widescreen iPod video was intense.  After getting a Shuffle for Christmas I was getting even more excited to get a full iPod so I can watch my video podcasts and shows.  MacRumorsLive.com totally set me up for a depressing day by literally saying in one line "Widescreen iPod".  I flipped out.  Then I learned later that it was integrated into the phone.  Total let down.

Paul Thurrot bashed Apple for not even mentioning the Macs or Leopard. He said "Why not call it iPodWorld?"

I agree Paul especially with no new iPod announcement, heh. 

But what is with the totally irrelavent Microsoft digs.  One being a three year old quote from Paul Alchine about how he would buy a mac...but failed to stated the context it was in.  It was an e-mail to Steve Balmer and Bill Gates about how they needed to go in a new direction in Vista because they weren't being innovative enough.  They listened and started rebuilding Vista from the ground up.

Also, what was the deal with the graphic of how the sales of Zune were doing?  Just to rub it in.  Then I wonder were Apple fanboys get the pretentious attitudes from.  They have a great role model.

On a final note Apple annouced Apple TV, basically a dumb terminal to your iTunes collection so that you can STREAM it to your TV.  $299. Eh...uninspired...I'll get an Xbox 360 that similarly does all that and is coming out with IPTV.

My Opinions of CES Keynote 2007

Just finished watching the CES keynote...this was what was covered.

• Couple of cool Vista features shown.
• Animated Desktops...so instead of pictures for a desktop you can have movies.
• Version control of files just like Time Machine
• Play XBox Live games on Vista
• IPTV to be integrated into Xbox (Holiday's 2007) - the guy that showed it did a terrible job explaining anything about it.
• They showed Windows Home Server but blackout the broadcast for it for some reason.
• Partnership with Ford to integrate Microsoft Auto to sync with your phone, media device including iPods to seemlessly work in your Ford car (12 models this year)

My overall impressions of the keynote was eh...I was excited to see and hear about IPTV but like I said they did a terrible job explaining anything about it and there are more questions now then before the start of the keynote.

The Vista features were cool but nothing to get me to go out and buy Vista...I'll stick with XP for a while.

The funniest quote was from some guy claiming that Zune was the number 2 portable music player...I almost lost it. I just read an article this weekend that said they weren't in the top 10.

There was a Halo 3 Cinematic that looked awesome and I think that will be the driving force for me to purchase a 360 this summer. But that's only if the Widescreen iPod doesn't cost a second mortgage when announced on Tuesday.

Lastly, they showed off an HP TouchSmart PC which looks awesome.  HP is coming out with some nice looking products.  Which in my opinion look better then Apple's designs.

Related Links

Paul Thurotts Behind the scenes review

End of Week 1: Resolutions Update

Well here we are at the end of week one of my resolutions that I set for myself.  Just wanted to update where I am at, how I am doing to keep me honest.

I have heard from you that you thought that putting my resolutions on my blog was a great idea.  Even though my personal finances might be scary to talk about openly, I agree. But I feel if I don't publish how I am doing I might get lazy and stop doing it.  So blogging about will keep me motivated to push forward.

Lets start with my Personal Finance Goals:

My wife and I sat down today and planned out our bills and budget for the next paycheck.  It's tight but my wife was able to work out a temporary reduced payment to the mortgage company so that will help out.  Again this is a first step and as I kept telling my wife this is just a plan...things might not happen the way we plan but we should be able to adjust easily to things as we move forward and refine out budget for next payday.

We have a couple of issues to work out though. One being figuring out why we don't get paid on the weekends when payday falls on a weekend or holiday.  Our account was majorly screwed up on Christmas because my pay didn't come in until the 27th.  Every other year it's in the account on the 23rd.  We already talked to the bank and they say there must be a problem with our payment processing center.  So I need to follow up on that.

As for the emergency fund goal of $1000, I found I have $140 in an account I haven't been watching very closely so that is becoming our new emergency fund account.  Bonus is that I found it pays off a good interest every month and quarter.  I have this feeling though we might need to touch that money this pay period so not all good news but at least we have a little something to fall back on if needed.

As for figuring out my debt, I feel at this time we should focus on getting our bills paid on time and get a solid and sound budget under us before we start allocating money to debt.  Also I've read that you need to set up an emergency account first before really starting to tackle debt. So that's the plan.

Now let's get updated on my personal goals:

As for my losing weight resolution I've been trying to watch my portions when I eat and I think I've been doing a decent job.  Plus I've limited my eating to just during meals and have cut out the snacks as much as possible.  The hard times for me is late at night when it's been 6-8 hours after dinner and you get the hunger pains.  That's when will power is nonexistent and we make the fourth meal (as Taco Bell calls it).  I know for a fact that that is the meal that does the damage and is the meal that I need to cut.

But this afternoon I took a walk around the blocks (see graphic to the right).  I loaded up the iPod Shuffle with podcasts and waited till the rain squall went by and then took my walk.  I walked 2.53 miles according to Google Earth and I was gone for about 45 minutes so I averaged about 2MPH. 

It's funny when you're listening to the iPod you can walk so much further and longer then if you were just walking cause you have something occupying your mind with something.

Either way I came home all sweaty and jumped in the shower and felt good about my workout I had.  I'll try and do another walk tomorrow but probably not as far.

I'll still need to figure out my starting weight though so I can track it.  I'll try and find a way to do that tonight.

As for getting my family organized we are working on it.  Alot of progress will be made after the personal finance goals are met and we can budget in some organizational tools, like a filing cabinet for me and one for Hope.  Eventually I'd like to get a safe but I think that a long term goal at this point.

And finally, my last goal was to blog more.  And I feel that I have made some great progress this week with some quality posts.  I hope you are enjoying them.

I just got caught up on my RSS feeds

Took me most of the day, quite literally.  I started about midnight last night and spent a good 2 hours just reading items in Google Reader.  Read through some posts during work today and then spent a good portion this evening going through the rest tonight.

I put the interesting to me posts in my Google Shared Feeds.

I gave up on TechMeme...unsubscribed.  They just have to many posts per day to make it worth my while to read.  I found to that most of it was stuff I already read in Scoble's blog or Tech Crunch or some other blog I have.

Some blogs where just so jammed packed by the time I got back to before Christmas in the feed I hit Mark all as read...I think I did that with Scoble, TechCrunch and Lifehacker.

I got caught up on my Podcasts last week as I was sporting the new iPod Shuffle. 

So hopefully I can keep on top of these things everyday because the worst thing to see is in Google Reader...All Items (100+)

Secure your sites while surfing on the public wifi

Lifehacker had an interesting article about how easy it is to packet sniff in open WiFi hotspots with a free Mac application.  One way to secure your surfing is to use https when you are viewing sites, if it's available.  Certain sites like web e-mail should only be viewed with https when using a wireless hotspot.

I found that GMail is accessible via https. Google Reader and Google Calendar are also accessible although none of the web applications that are linked at the top of GMail go to https so you have to actually type the address back in.

I set up my FireFox bookmarks to go to my Google Apps with https so that way I don't have to think about.

But then I tried for giggles what would happen if I typed in https://www.damnralph.com, you get a completely different site.  I think it's because I am on a shared hosting environment and that maybe the only site that has a secure site on our IP.  Anyone have an explaination as to why/how that would happen?

Related Links

What wifi sniffers can find out about you

My New Years Resolutions

I'll make some resolutions,  I am really going to try and stick to them too.  I'll even keep you all posted on how I am doing.

Here they are in no particular order:

Personal Finance Goals

1. Figure out my debt.
2. Work towards reducing my debt.
3. Pay off my car.
4. Start a savings account and put $1000 in there for emerency funds (this is a phased goal but for now $1000 is hard enough to do)
5. Pay all bills on time.
6. Plan a budget and maintain it.

Personal Goals

1. Lose weight (the last I weighed myself I was getting close to 230 lbs) Goal 200lbs.
2. Keep myself and my family organized (this sounds easier then it is, with five people living under the same roof this is extremely difficult)
3. Blog more, I lead an interesting life (sometimes ;) there has to be somethings that others might find interesting.
   

I've been working today on trying to get myself more organized so I can start tackling the above list.

Sushi Nirvana

I started getting excited about making my own sushi as soon as I started reading Sushi Day, a blog specifically written on how to make your own sushi.  I have been a Sushi eating addict for years.  I asked for a sushi making kit for Christmas and was surprised to receive three...each of which was unique and was worth keeping each one.

So over this past week I perfected making sushi...I think we spent about $50 on ingredients for the week...$50 is about a typical price for one meal at the restaurants and to be able to eat a weeks worth of meals for two at that price was great.

It took us a while to get the rice perfect...I tried twice making it in the pot and finally broke down and we hunted for all the parts to the rice cooker we got two years earlier.  The first time we made it in the rice cooker it was rice nirvana.

Also the first couple of times I tried it I tried to do it on my own from what I read and such.  It came out close to perfect, extremely delicious but yet still not right.  In one of my kits from my mom had a DVD Simply Sushi with Steven Pallett.  It was a short video but the things I learned in the video were priceless...simple tricks like dipping your knife into the bowl of water you use for your hands and letting the bead of water run down the blade of your knife before cutting into your roll was really helpful in making the sushi cut without sticking to your knife and falling apart on you.

We've made our first sushi for friends and they loved it.  

When I go to the store for ingredients we usually get a fillet of salmon without the skin, crab sticks, and shrimp that my wife fries up for some tempura styled shrimp rolls.  We also get wasabi mayo, avocado, cucumber and sesame seeds to sprinkle onto the rice.  

I like to make the inside-out maki rolls on a half sheet of nori.  I have found making hand rolls (coned-shaped maki) extremely fun to make and I like to make one of those to add to the visual presentation of my sushi, which I find to be just as fun as making it (although my wife just whips the rolls together as fast as possible as she says the fun part is eating the rolls and nothing else).

I also like Salmon Nigiri and have found that to be an excellant way of using the rest of the rice you have left when you don't have enough rice left for a roll.  Even though it looks so easy to make there is a technique that is needed to make it look perfect.

I find making sushi is like drinking it's fun but it's not as fun unless you are making it with someone else.  I can't wait to have a sushi party sometime soon.  Maybe for the SuperBowl I can make some.

Best of Damn Ralph in 2006

I was looking through what I posted this past year and I wanted to highlight my favorite posts and the posts that seemed to bring in the most traffic.

My Favorite Posts

1. I got the call this morning... - This post was about my grandmother and her tense visit to intensive care and my trip down to visit her.  Afterwards we found out that she had a reaction to the radiation she was getting for cancer.  After she recovered from the ICU visit she spent a month or so recovering at home and then the surgery to remove the cancer.  She is one tough woman as is my parents cause they dealt with it all.  My mom left her job and stayed there for five months and my dad fended for himself during that time.
2. Car Explodes in front of my House - Man every time I mowed the lawn this year I was reminded of the car fire due to the patch of burnt grass.  I am still amazed at how fast the guy got out of the car and only came out of the incident with a couple of burns to his neck and hands.
   
3. Nick Tahous Crew have a little fun with me - this one always makes me laugh every time I see it.  We used to go to Nick Tahous weekly for plates and one of my coworkers wrote Damn Ralph on the slip for my order they just transfered it over to the plate it was funny to see.
   

Most Traffic

1. How to run Ubuntu and Kbuntu in VMware Player - This post on how to make Ubuntu play in the free VMWare Player is always number one in traffic daily.  This brings a ton of traffic into the site daily.
2. Rochester Basketball Player scores 20 points in final 4 minutes...he's also Autistic - The feel good story of 2006.  J-Mac graced us with an outstanding story of dedication and miraculous things happened for the kid sending him into national attention.  He is now in talks for making his story into a movie and the President even visited him on one of his trips to Rochester this year.
3. Who really browses on their cell phone anyways? - I replied to a Robert Scoble post about the future of mobile internet browsing and how I didn't think that was the future as it's very hard to navigate.  Four days into my blog and I got a link from Scoble's blog...I am still getting links through to this day.  He must get some amazing traffic on his site.

Year in review

I still find it difficult to post to my blog.  I want my blog to be more technical and personal then just a link blog of sorts.  I want to be able to add to something then just posting because I found something interesting.  Cause my sources of information is the same common information that everyone else visits.  So unless I can add to the conversation I usually won't post about it.  For the funny posts I usually let MediaGab handle all of that.

I found while going through my posts that my best posting was done in the beginning of the year and I started to get very sparse towards the end of the year.  I think that was due to my schedule and not having any time during that time.

Hopefully I can find some interesting things to write about in 2007.

Feature Request for Google Reader

Google is a great company and has some great online applications that are really well done.

Google Reader is one of them and is my default reader for my rss feeds.

But why does it not have a simple search function for searching through read posts in your feeds?  I hate having to try to find a particular post and have to hunt for it.

Does Google not know how to do search?

Update:  Here's a hack to search your feeds using Google Co-op.

Solution: Podcasts won't play on iPod Shuffle

So my mom got me a iPod Shuffle for Christmas.  It's perfect for me to listen to my podcasts while I am doing work around the house.  So I hook it up and do the AutoFill of music and it takes 5 minutes to load the thing up.. that's cool.  Works perfect.

I hook it back up and try to load a podcast up (TWiT) and take it out and nothing.  The light on the power blinks green and orange for two seconds.  I look on the little light indicator cheat sheet it came with and that means there are no songs loaded onto the iPod Shuffle.  This made absolutely no sense to me...I tried everything re-encoding it.  Loading it onto the shuffle as a data item but it still wouldn't work.

After looking around the internet I found a few people are having a problem with regular iPods playing podcasts in playlists where they had to manually start the podcasts.  They found that each podcast is by default flagged with the do not shuffle flag.  This meant that the podcast file wouldn't come up when you were playing songs in shuffle mode.

Ah, now it makes perfect sense why this isn't working.  The iPod Shuffle works exclusively in shuffle mode so that's why it looks like there is no music on it after updating.

To get around this...select the Podcasts you want to load and right-click (yeah I am on a Windows machine) and check the check box that says shuffle and select yes. If you want to load just one file click on the options tab and click to uncheck the skip when shuffle option.  Now add the Podcasts to your iPod's playlist, right-click and select Add to Playlist and then select the Playlist of your iPod shuffle.  After the shuffle updates and you disconnect you can revert the shuffle option back to no (if not they will play when you have it set to random in iTunes) or just delete the podcast altogether.

I hope this helps someone that might have the same problem I ran into.

Liz Lawley on ScobleShow

Speaking of interesting videos...I stumbled on this one from ScobleShow interviewing my former Professor at RIT, Liz Lawley. 

It's interesting her take on MMORPG and letting your kids play along with you.  Expensive, if your playing WoW but interesting none the less.

I let my kid play ET with me...but I am very protective of him online.   He is getting a lot better but still doesn't have the strategy skills to make good decisions.  In a 1 on 1 gun fight he's excellent.  So having that role model there to help guide him is great.  And my clan helps him out whenever possible too.

EB Game Night

Our gaming clan started a new event last night.  We are calling it EB Game Night.  Basically it is a way to try to kick start some traffic to our Enemy Territory Server.

Basically the idea is to have the server set up for fun.  Last night we had it set up with a christmas theme. 

All the axis players were the Grinch and everyone had santa hats on.  The grenades were snow balls and the landmines were christmas trees. 

Plus I put together a campaign of winter maps.  Thank god I tested them on Tuesday or that would of been embarrassing cause at least 4 of the maps I had picked didn't work and one was just outright terrible.

Overall I was quite pleased with the turn out...we had 18 people on at the same time at the peak of the night, not quite full but the most the server has had in a while.

The next EB Game Night will be next Wednesday December 6th at 7pm and it'll go till the server dies ... sometime around 11pm.

Come join us anytime on the server 69.31.15.31:27960.

Today's Big News: Sun to release Java under the GPLv2

The internet is abuzz today about Sun's announcement to release Java to the open source community.  So what does this mean?  Is it an admission from Sun that Java is a dying technology and this is a ploy to get developers re-enthused about working with Java again?

"Sun is hoping that this step will attract more developers, as well as extend the lifespan of Java." -Slashdot.

It'll be interesting to see how this works out for them as this may force other companies like Microsoft to open up more of their source in an attempt to drive participation from the developer community.  Isn't that why Ruby on Rails is the hot language?  Will we see Java on Rails in the near future? 

Related Links:

Sun Open Sources Java Under GPL (Slashdot)
Sun to Opensource Java and GPL it (Scoble)
Sun to Open-Source Java Under GPL v2 (digg)

Review of Microsoft Office Accounting 2007

Last night I posted about Microsoft Office Accounting 2007 and I gave it a look over last night.

It's Free that's about the only thing I found to be nice about it.

I was a little surprised (although I shouldn't have been) to see that it needed the .NET 2.0 framework.  It also needed SQL Server Express 2005.  The installer installed these automatically and I was a little miffed that it even installed.  This made the installer take forever.  I actually forgot I was installing it till it was done and came back into focus.

OK so I start it up.  This took forever as well.  I imagine that it was setting up the SQL Server database and initializing the application.  After this was done I had an interface that resembled the Office Suit particularly Outlook 2003.  Then the product activation screen came up :(

Of course you can spend a majority of your time setting this up for your business.  I just went with some basics things so I could see what it had to offer.

It's pretty robust to be honest, probably too much as it is in my case.  I was more interested in the Time Sheets, Quotes and Invoices.

I wasn't happy with the Time Entry Form...it was really complicated and it would require way to much work to get to that screen everyday...you would literally need to have that application open all day to be using it.

Thinking that I might be able to work around it if Invoicing was a breeze...then I realized why it's given away...it is TIGHTLY integrated with Microsoft Office and Invoices require Microsoft Word.

And as I looked around the application I found the many of the features required Word or Excel or Outlook.

And since I went Open Source on my Office Suite, Open Office and GMail this became just about useless for me.

Related Links:

Microsoft Office Accounting 2007
My Post about Microsoft Office Accounting 2007
OpenOffice.org
GMail

My costume from Saturday Night's Halloween Party

I dressed up as my wife and my wife dressed up as me.  I thought it was funny as hell although we didn't get one damn vote for  best costume.



Click here to see more of me in a dress.

Firefox 2 Launches Officially

Mozilla, this evening, officially releases Firefox 2.  After some controversy yesterday when the exe was found and a link of the exe that was on a mirror FTP server spread around and many people started downloading before the release not knowing what exactly they were getting. 

Mozilla officials were extremely upset with the early spreading of the bits and spouted off why this was a bad thing to do.

But after a day of waiting it has been finally released and I am downloading now. 

Enjoy!!

Related Links:

The Anti-Release
Mozilla Releases Major Update to Firefox and Raises the Bar for Online Experience
Firefox

NHL: Big shake up this morning in Philly

The Flyers General Manager Bob Clarke resigned this morning stating he was “burned out” and coach Ken Hitchcock was fired.

It's about time.  This is what should of happened after the end of last season.  But now we're eight games into the season and you can argue that the season is shot for the Flyers.  With new coaches and young talent coming in it'll be awhile before they hit their stride.  By that time they may be to far behind to make the playoffs.

Personally, I don't like Hitchcock, of course I am bias he and his Dallas Star defeated the Sabres in '99 for the Stanley Cup.  But like I stated earlier this week he's geared towards the old NHL and hasn't or doesn't want to change for the new NHL that is geared for speed.  His Flyers are too slow and not quick enough.  Opponents are just going right around them and getting scoring chances and the defense isn't quick enough to get down the ice to score a goal.

This is just the start with the three players waived last week and the coach fired see some trades happening to get some speed in Philly.

Not to brag or anything, ok I am bragging, the Sabres are 8-0 after beating the Hurricanes on Friday and the Bruins on Saturday.

Related News:
Flyers GM Clarke resigns; Hitchcock Fired
NHL: The Philadelphia Flyers need to shake things up
Sabres stay unbeaten, match their best start

NHL: Sabres Jerseys Number One Seller

The NHL on Tuesday announced that Buffalo Sabres new jerseys are the number one seller on NHL.com since the Sabres unveiled their new logo in September 16, 2006.  Sales accounted for 10% of NHL.com’s total sales during that period.

Sabres jersey sales are up 900% from the same period last year.

OK I just don’t get it.  Do people really like the slug?  Or are they just supporting the team?  I am sure the look will “grow” on people.  I particularly love the “new” alternate jerseys, which are the old 1970’s blue and gold jerseys.  Of course they aren’t selling those jerseys on NHL.com.

My theory is that it’s just the diehard fans all bombarding the store at the same time to get the new digs and sales will flat line after the initial rush.

I wouldn’t mind though, a Sabres hat ;)

Related Links:
Sabres New Jersey a Hot Item
Buffalo Sabres Jerseys on NHL.com

My IE7 Experience

Microsoft released IE7 on Wednesday.  I went ahead and installed it on my laptop.  Let me tell you that I did not enjoy that installation.  After I download and run the file I a prompted that I need to install security updated for IE before I even install the browser. Well not wanting to get hacked with this security hole I go ahead and install it.  Five minutes later it says it needs to reboot.  Ugh!

Ok so I say yes reboot.  But the installer hangs and needs to be forced to end. That’s intuitive for novice users to do.

Once the system came back up the installer didn’t run and start where I left off. I had to restart the installer and it again asked me if I wanted to install security updates.  I again said yes thinking there might be more, as dumb as that sounds.  It checked for installs and ran the Malicious Software Removal tool again.  Then it went right into installing the browser finally.

It took about another five minutes.  After it completed it required ANOTHER REBOOT!!!  Holy crap two reboots to install a web browser.  Once the system came back I launched IE.  It has some nice UI features to the browser but I found some weird UI choices as well. For instance to set any options in the browser now has to be done in a control panel or something cause there is no more menu items across the top.

No File, Edit, BOOKMARKS.  How can you leave bookmarks off a browser?  

Anyway I went and checked out some of my sites.  Some are just not right at all.  Travis said that IE7 is interpreting display: block; in some cases as display: crazy; he had to do some conditional statements to get a work around working, another crappy work around for IE.

So far as a web developer not to happy that I know have to deal with another crappy browser from Microsoft.  The best part is now I need a virtual machine because I can not have both IE6 and IE7 on the same machine for testing.

Excuse me while I go rip my hair out.

If you’re not using Firefox yet, thugs are going to come to your house and beat up your first born.

Related Links: