Mar

20

A client at Barefoot wanted to preserve their old Typepad blog posts in the new site we were building for them in Rails. I figured this might be a common task that others go through, so I wrote a Rake task and it’s hosted at Github. It uses the TP RSS2 feed and does some massaging of the content. Typepad does some odd things with content, specifically around images embedded in posts. I’m sure not every content situation is handled, so feed free to fork it and make changes.

Feb

25

More of a note to self, but others may benefit.
Keep in mind when doing a delete_all on your model to empty the table, that you may want to reset the auto_increment value if you are using mySQL. Reason being, if you are completely reloading data into a table, you may have legacy bookmarked links that rely on your id(s).

Let’s say you are loading some job postings from an RSS feed. You may want to delete all records each time you reload the data just to make sure you are getting any edits to any records. But, your auto_increment will increase with each reload which will break links people may have referenced prior to your reload. In order to reset the auto_increment, simply issue the raw SQL command like so:

Career.delete_all
Career.connection.execute(’ALTER TABLE careers AUTO_INCREMENT = 0′)


I’ll have to look into the delete_all method in ActiveRecord and see if I can apply a patch that accepts a conditional to auto reset the auto_increment value.

Dec

16

Little things like this fascinate me. So, I must be confusing having a hot head for being bored. Odd.

The Yawn Explained: It Cools Your Brain : Discovery News.

Dec

26

Founders at Work

December 26, 2007 | 1 Comment

I finally finished reading “Founders at Work.” Good book. The book contains interviews with prominent startup founders. Some were very unique, like Woz from Apple. Some weren’t real exciting. Others were very interesting. I think my favorite founder was Max Levchin from PayPal. The different roles he had to play were really telling of what the startup life was like for PayPal. His flexibility and way to identify problems was a very interesting read for me. Having been in startups, and considering future startups, this book helped me think about the different angles and how business mindfulness is very important. I could see a version 2 of this book with some of the newer startups of today (aka, Facebook, a Google product, etc…). Great book, fairly fast read. I recommend it.

Oct

8

Vista is a POS

October 8, 2007 | 11 Comments

So my mother-in-law was due for a new machine. She found one that did everything she wanted, including the media center so she could do some video projects. She is not a power user. Mostly surfing, email, and Quicken.

First issue was her version of Office 2002 not being supported. Outlook simply wouldn’t remember passwords. Lame. Next was Quicken just stopped working after a week. She was getting the dreaded “Quicken Launcher has stopped working.” It worked just fine for a week, not sure why it suddenly stopped. So the machine came back to my office for fixing. I hate being the family IT guy, but that is another post.

So I fixed Office, by upgrading to 2003. Next was Quicken. Seemed like maybe the install got corrupted etc… Backed up the data files and reinstalled. No dice. Got the “Launcher stopped working” error message instantly. Upgrade Quicken manually. Again, same error. Uninstall everything, do a system cleanup. Reinstall everything as administrator. Again same error. FU Microsoft! Try opening straight from data file. Same error. Argh.

So now I’ll call Intuit, as if I have time for this sh*t. I’ve scoured the message boards, there is not a clear fix.

From my short time looking for fixes, it looks like I am not alone. Many people feel that Vista is a big paperweight. Many people are having software issues. Things simply won’t install at all, or will install and work partially. Or will install and work for a week before stopping. Very frustrating. I, for one, wish she would have found a machine with XP MCE, but no retailers are selling XP machines any more. If I had a copy, I would reformat the machine with it. Vista is simply not worth the upgrade, in fact it seems to be a step backwards, other than the “elegant” solution of doing an administrator rights popup for every single process that tries to run/install/modify the registry. Give me a break. Malware sucks, spyware sucks, both exist because Windows sucks.

Happy Monday!

Update: this issue is not isolated to just Quicken, doing a Google search for “has stopped working error in Vista” returns a sh*t-ton of results for every application imaginable.

Jul

13

This (http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/motorsport/formula_one/6760617.stm) is disappointing. The city of Indianapolis has to be concerned about this. It brought a lot of money in. The environment downtown during the race weekend was amazing with all of the cultures from Europe, South America, etc… But this is sad for F1 and the US. It’s strange to hear that Bernie doesn’t care about the US market. He is correct in thinking that it is not the most popular racing in the US, but there is a large market here. I hope this is not a political statement against the US government. As a US fan, I’ll just have to settle with watching it on TV only.

Jun

5

I’ll be heading to Mountainview at the end of the week to talk to some of the folks at Tumri. Then moving up to San Francisco over the weekend. Then onto Napa. Haven’t been out to California in some time. Can’t wait to get back and enjoy the food and see old friends. I was hoping to pick up an iPhone while there, but I’ll be back home way before the expected launch on the 29th. Glad to see the new MacBooks announced though, I might have to pick one of those up while there. My PowerBook is still going strong, but doesn’t have Dual Link DVI and so it can’t push the max resolution on my 30″ Cinema Display.

Looking forward to Napa, haven’t spent a whole lot of time there yet, but have been doing a lot of reading on the Wine industry lately. I’m picking the vineyards to visit now, and plotting a course on Google Maps. If anyone has suggestions, I’m all ears.

Feb

20

Human Skateboards

February 20, 2007 | Leave a Comment

Amazing user-generated content: Human Skateboard.

Found on lessrain blog.

Dec

18

About

December 18, 2006 | Leave a Comment

For close to a decade, Mike has been building Web based applications for Fortune 500 clients including Kodak, Miller Brewing Company, and Macromedia–now Adobe.

Mike is also heavily involved in the wireless industry and has played major roles in putting on the first 3G trials in the United States.

Mike is a respected industry pioneer for Flash development on the mobile devices, having built cutting-edge entertainment and 3G wireless solutions for well-known media giants and technology industry titans. Mike was chosen as a featured expert to author an article for the Macromedia’s Developer Center called “Creating Online Applications for Sometimes-Connected Devices.”

Nov

16

Flash Lite has been recognized by Developer.com as a note worthy mobile development tool that has come into it’s own during 2006. Users are asked to vote for their favorite tools of 2006 here. I found many of the chosen tools kind of unusual picks, but the mobile category seemed pretty straight forward. Flash Lite really does have the best workflow and development tools available in the area of mobile content creation. If you’ve used Flash Lite, go vote.

keep looking »

Linkroll

Recent Projects