Articles

I'm Engaged!

2010-08-05T14:35:39Z

Quite a bit has happened since I've moved from South Carolina to the dying metropolis of Fond du Lac, WI. So much in fact, that I haven't even bothered to write anything. Alright, maybe not really, but still... Here's a quick update on the projects I've been working on and the things I've been up to.

]]>

Moved from SC to WI

Barely found a place to live that wasn't a college studio apartment.
Traveled for 3 days with a Penske Truck with stops in Indianapolis, Peoria, and Madison.
Didn't touch the gas or brake pedal for 45 miles while coasting downhill out of the mountains on I-40
Fit everything I owned in a 16 foot truck and my trailered car with just enough room to pick up a couch from my sister and a table/chairs set from my brother.
Got to my new house only to find out the renovations weren't complete.
Moved in anyway started work the following week at Moraine Park Technical College as "Webmaster" (I really, really hate that title.)

Got to go skiing in December.

Hit up Pine Mountain in Marquette, MI
Broke my bindings the week before, so I had to use my ski blades and my snow board instead of skiing while trying to teach someone to ski.
Drove through a pretty huge snow storm on the way back down US-141 where the snow was so deep it was reading the underside of my car.

Started development of text-board.

Took over development of what's now one of the best text messaging marketing campaign management tools available on the web with OIR Interactive, LLC.
Launched the new site and application to a good audience.
Learned a ton about SMS messaging and aggregators and more about how terrible AT&T is as a carrrier.

Purchased a new bike.

I wanted a single speed, so with the help from the guys at The Bike Shop in Houghton, MI, I found the perfect one for me. The 2010 Jamis Beatnik.

Moved my girlfriend back to WI from MN.

Started out with a uhaul truck way too small.
Penske came to the rescue with a 16 footer that we filled way too full of stuff for only having a 1 bedroom apartment.

Bought an engagement ring from the fine peope at Kessler's Diamonds.

Proposed on a glorious Friday in June while in the twin cities.

Started planning a wedding.

This is turning out to be a little more work than anticipated with a 450+ guest list at the moment.

Can't really believe I've been that busy in this past year. Oh, how the time flies...

Farewell, South Carolina

2009-08-23T01:51:03Z

It's with a partially sad demeanor that I'll be leaving South Carolina in just 15 days. It's been a long — very long — three and a half years here. Had some experiences, did a lot of lazing around, but now I'm off back to the frozen north and couldn't be more excited.

There's been a lot of "Top Lists" around the internet lately. And their completely random like "Top 53 new websites for designers", or "Top 18 reasons to dance on your head". Keeping with that, I've composed not one, but two top lists.

]]> Top 3 Things I Will Miss About Myrtle Beach

The Myrtle Beach Volleyball Club - a great group of volleyball players
Grand Strand Bicycles - the best bike shop on the grand strand. They sell Specialized and give the best advice on riding style, garmets, and equipment.
The friends I've made.

Top 5 Things I Will Not Miss About Myrtle Beach

Dripping Humidity
Blatant disregard for bicycles on the road
People riding their bikes on the wrong side of the road.
Palmetto Bugs (HUGE cock roaches)
Over air conditioned stores and offices.

Myrtle Beach Volleyball

2009-07-08T02:00:50Z

Recently I got involved with a volleyball group in Myrtle Beach, SC. It's a bunch of B-level people of all ages getting together 2-3 times a week playing some semi-competitive ball. We play in the sand, on the beach, on the grass, and in the gym. There are even times when we have some tournaments.

A few of us decided that we need a website to communicate when and where to play, links to volleyball equipment, and all around camaraderie. We tossed a quick site up using Weebly and actually got some traffic to it!

]]> Some of the people that found us through the website were from Virginia and just down for the 4th of July extended weekend. Turns out they took a little video of us playing and emailed it back to us. I'm the guy in the blue, and I swear this was probably my only semi-decent hit I had all evening.

If you're in the Myrtle Beach area and would like to play some volleyball, check us out at www.MyrtleBeachVolleyball.com for times and places. We'll have a much more robust site soon. There's even a home page design for your pleasure below the video.

Is the customer still always right?

2009-01-13T14:45:00Z

I was told not too long ago by someone that the year 2007 brought about a rather large change to the working masses. That change was that the number of service-based jobs out numbered that of production jobs. Now whether this is due to robots from the Robotic Uprising of the Late 90's, or that the majority of the population is too busy or too rich to worry about learning how to do things themselves isn't quite known. But no matter how you answer that question, an even larger one comes up, "Is the customer always right?" I'm sure everyone's heard that expression before — probably from working in retail or for some older gentleman when they were young — "The customer is always right, even when he's not." But in today's society of extreme specialization, can we still opperate productively by that same principle? Can we trust that the consumer (or client) isn't out to just get a superior service for an inferior price? And once we do believe the consumer/client isn't out to just get a deal, do we push for their education through our experience and expertise or simply give them that for which they are asking?

]]> I work for a busy web developement and interactive marketing provider in South Carolina. Often we're confronted with clients who know what they want and only want it the way that they want it.
. o O ( was that too many wants in one sentence? ) Often I'm reminded of a quote a fellow colleague has on his desk and an article written by unknown author that tries to compare web developers to architects (which we really are, in some aspects). The only problem is that the typical website consumer treats webdesign as something they could do if they weren't so busy whereas they treat architure as if it is art and only a few people can successfully do it. I wish sometimes these people would try to develop a simple form to capture 4 fields from a user and have it display correctly across the major browsers (IE6, IE7, Firefox 2, Safari) in a fullly CSS, valid site layout and them come tell us that our jobs are easy and any one can do them.

But I digress, back to the problem at hand: Is the customer always right? Let's take for instance a client I've dealt with on just this exact type of thing. They have a store system they use to sell products and services. During the checkout process, you're giving the option to add discount codes and serial numbers. The form isn't the most intuitive, so we had two buttons to update the cart subtotals; one button on the left and another on the right. From past dealings with this client, I thought it would be a good idea to track the number of times each button was used so we could later compare it to page views to see which one was used more often. The client disliked having two buttons and so decided they wanted to remove one. I quickly pulled up the stats and noticed that out of the 60-ish pageviews in the 14 overnight hours this had been up, 25 people used the button on the left and 26 used the button on the right. Now with a bit of stretching, we can assume that each pageview is a new potential customer and that each button click was only done by one potential customer. That means that 85% of the potential customers used one of those two buttons, and of that 85% pretty much one button was used 50% of the time and the other one 50% of the time. Throughout our dealings with what people on the web are like, we've noticed that no two users navigate a page exactly the same. So in order to catch personality A and personality D, we need both those buttons there. But the client decided to remove one while stating, "I don't really care what your numbers say. It's confusing for me to have two buttons there, so remove the one on the left."

Sure, the client was solely in the wrong here, but we ended up taking that button off. Was this a fight we should have given up on as easily as we did? Can we really allow a client to dictate to us what they want on their sites when our expertise throws the penatly flag at them? Can we really even afford to do so, especially on ecommerce sites, when we can only continue to get paid if the product does well and sells? Was this customer/client right? I really think they weren't and believe that their sales are suffering from it.

Jelyco, llc is born

2008-12-20T20:29:36Z

It's been a long haul, but my latest and greatest project is ready to go live. I've joined up with a great friend from college (follow her twitter feed @lynndro) to start a full-service interactive business that focuses on young company branding.

We both decided that the typical 8am-5pm lifestyle was not in our best interest and we could make a better impact on the world by being our own bosses. Sure, that's easier said than done, but we've taken that first step and have become a recognized business in Houghton County, Michigan

]]> So in an effort to get the word out, we'll be hitting up twitter and our own personal blogs. We have excellent background in design, programming, server management, brand design, and writing. From a web stance, we work mostly in PHP, XHTML, CSS, and jQuery, but also have knowledge of ColdFusion and Perl. I can't really say much about the design as I don't get to touch that much.

If you or someone you know is looking to make a grande web entrance, shoot over to the Jelyco Contact page and tell us what's up.

CakePHP form display

2008-12-18T04:10:48Z

I'm pretty new still when it comes to cakePHP, but there's a few things that I've noticed in my limited exposure that screams a developer created this. Throughout my job I learned that my foremost expectations of "web developers" is completely not true. I was under the impression that everyone in web development (whether they focused on design or development) could build a fully dynamic website. Sure, people focusing in development may make some odd design and layout issues, but he/she would still get the job done.

]]> Much to my surprise, my colleagues aren't all like that. We have some amazing developers who just barely know CSS, and we have designers that don't understand how to loop over a query result. But we do make an excellent team.

The first thing that jumped out at me about cakePHP was how it treats forms using it's form helper. I know of and have read lots of "the correct way to semantically mark up a form" articles. So that means I've come across ones that say you should wrap every label/input combination inside either a fieldset or a div, but I don't agree with that mentality. You can accomplish the same thing by grouping related fields inside fieldsets and using CSS to position your labels and inputs accordingly.

I first used the form helper to output a simple login form:

echo $form->create('User', array('action' => 'login'));
echo $form->input('username');
echo $form->input('password');
?>

The designer I was working with at the time let me know that there was a

class="input text"

surrounding both the inputs. To him, this was unacceptable. He blamed me, I said I didn't do add them, he still blamed me. And after I shared the code with him through the greatest code editor ever, coda, we set off to find out where those blasted divs were coming from.

This was the first time I really jumped into the underlying code of cake. It was quite intense. After much searching and even more throwing of stress balls around the office, we found it. One little line in the form helper.

Now keep in mind that this is on cakePHP version 1.2RC2 and the form helper was last modified @lastmodified $Date: 2008-01-02 00:33:52 -0600 (Wed, 02 Jan 2008), take a look at line 554 and you'll notice the following.

$out = '';
$div = true;

See that line that sets div equal to true? I simply switched that to false and had an application-wide setting that wouldn't wrap my label/input duals with unneeded divs.

BlogCFC to MovableType anyone?

2008-07-12T20:26:58Z

Ever had the need to move blog data from one platform to another? If you've ever worked with clients or more than one blog before, you're sure to have your own favorite blogging platform. Maybe it's MovableType, Blogger, Wordpress, or maybe even BlogCFC. If you're lucky enough, maybe you'll be moving from one platform to another that's made by the same company. Six Apart at least at sometime owned or operated MovableType, Blogger, Vox, and LiveJournal, and typically have a really easy way of porting data from one to the other. Wordpress has a couple of nice tools to importing from other platforms as well. But what I have noticed is that many of these platforms lack one major import tool. And that's the one from what was the only ColdFusion Markup Language blog, BlogCFC.

]]> I set out to correct that problem, at least for exporting from BlogCFC and importing into MovableType. Luckily there's a basic import from plain text file available in MovableType. However, I didn't find a real good example of what that text file would look like provided the blog article had all the information possible in it. Luckily, I had used a plugin that populated a blog with all kinds of data so I could export it easily into the plain text file and make sure all the data stored in BlogCFCs databases could be written to that file.

Eventually I came out with a CFML file that did the trick when connecting to a MS SQL database. Looking quickly at the SQL, it should also work for MySQL databases, but I make no guarantees. Feel free to download it here and take a peek.

This is a version 1 and with that statement comes the call for feature requests and ways to make your life easier. Here's what I want to add so far:

Selectable Datasource
Input for column prefix
Checkbox for including pings/trackbacks
Input for blog to export

Mostly, those would all be accomplished with a GUI. I'm not a fan of having to always change code while using a tool, so why should I make other people do that?

Download it now!

Are websites software?

2008-05-20T00:53:00Z

Over on Jesus is my Sword this weekend was a post wondering if websites should be thought of as software and free updates should be expected. It felt to me like he was saying that they should be expected. I don't think that same way. I'm much more under the opinion that a website servers a specific purpose now and that anything other than potential security issues should not be "given" as a free upgrade.

]]> Now there are definitely some exceptions to this. The main is the Software as a Service model (or in the web's case, Site as a Service model.) This model gives developers and designers time to focus on pretty much one product that the client has to accept for what it is with the notion that in subsequent versions more features will be added.

Most clients want a solution for the here and now. They're not considering what might help them in 3-5 years. Maybe that's a good thing based on how liquid the current web development market is. So why would a firm give away code when more than likely the client will want a whole new website in 3 years anyway? And why not give them code that's 3 years better with their new site rather than smaller, more incremental changes over those 3 years that will increase the WOW factor 10-fold. After all, in order to make money, you want to not give away free WOW, right?

Model-Glue 3 Alpha

2008-05-07T02:26:00Z

This last weekend at cf.objective(), Joe Reinhart gave a presentation about what's new and upcoming in Model-Glue 3 (gesture) and then announced its alpha release. That night I downloaded it and got it running with the 6 4-bit Coldfusion 8.0.1 with Apache 2.2 on OS X leopard in no time at all. However, on my test machine running Fedora Core 9 I had a few problems.

]]> I had Model-Glue 2 (unity) up and running with no problems so I thought I'd just extract MG3 over the top of it. I updated the mapping and tried to load the modelglueapplicationtemplate in my browser only to get the infamous "Could not find the included template /ModelGlue/gesture/ModelGlue.cfm." error. I checked and rechecked the path only to see that it was right each time. As usual I jumped into the terminal and started traversing through the directories.

For some reason unknown to me, I tossed a [jameaghe@shindaiwa]# ls -la into the folder that holds all my "coldfusion frameworks" and noticed that the newly extracted ModelGlue folder had drwx------ permissions meaning only the owner had any access. I switched it quickly to drwxr-xr-x and refreshed the browser. BAM! the template was up and running.

I did wonder why the default permissions were 700 on that directory, but I'm hoping that will be remedied in later releases. Or, quite possibly, I'm only supposed to give my webserver user access to those files. Still, though, giving write access to the webserver user to framework files scares me a bit. Until the next release, I'll just wait in wonder.

Is a CMS the Kiss of Death for a Programmer's Marketability?

2008-04-13T18:45:00Z

Recently the company I work for made a decision to make a decision to choose a content management system (CMS) to use for most of our clients. In all, it sounds like a great idea for us programmers as the workload from designer to programmer would hopefully move from 30%-70% to closer to 50%-50%. But by being able to lessen our work load, do we essentially loose our marketability for the future?

]]>

According to the OECD's Economic Survey of the European Union (which for some reason included the US), the average lifespan of a job in the US is 4 years. By that measure, I have only 3 years left at my current position. So by taking a decent year to really learn a CMS and get an excellent handle on creating plugins and continuing to do so for the next two years, do I essentially loose my marketability for web development?

There's so many languages available today and each has its own plethora of CMSes and frameworks, does sitting down and picking just one or two trap a programmer into that life for the rest of his career? Hypothetically, we end up picking MODx Content Management System. It ends up being amazing easy to use (I have no idea if this is true yet.) Our turn-around time on a site goes from being about 6 weeks to 2 weeks. It has definitely been a good decision based on the "bottom-line" that the higher-ups are always talking about. Three years from now after putting most of my energy into this particular CMS, I decide that Myrtle Beach is no longer the place for me for whatever reason (I'm sick of the ocean, sick of the heat, sick of the humidity, annoyed at all the tourists, etc), and start looking for a different employer. This is when the real test comes.

Do employers look at your experience and decide for or against you based on what you've spent your last 2 years doing? I don't think I would if I was ever put in the hiring position. Employees are supposed to be investments, right? So shouldn't employers be looking for potential employees that have a great personality and thirst for knowledge and a great potential without focusing too much on past experiences? Personally I think a good programmer is a good programmer, regardless of the language they "know". You could be programming with Adobe Coldfusion for the last eight years and suddenly be looking for a job in PHP. Should that candidate simply be dismissed because he/she has no prior PHP experience? I don't believe so. If he/she programs well in Coldfusion, with a little investment into mentoring him/her, he/she can be just as good, if not better, at programming in PHP.

Now, can we expect the same sort of attitude for those of us that may end up being stuck using a single CMS for a single language? Will potential employers consider theses CMSes simply another language and put the investment in employees if they fit the team well, or will they simply be tossed into "temporary storage" until the office cleaning team comes to move them to "long-time storage" at the city dump?

With the wider, mainstream adoption of CMS and custom websites becoming more scarce, now is the time to really think about if a web firm's adoption of a CMS really is the kiss of death for a programmer's marketability.

Biking Casualties at Michigan Tech

2008-02-20T03:26:00Z

Five years at Michigan Tech means I spent a lot of time mountain biking. From the single track to the technical rides, urban assault to road rides, I've tried to ride it all. Lucky I found some great guys that were just as crazy about biking as I am to go along with me. Unluckily for them, 50% were injured. Here's a few pictures of their injuries and even one of an injuring in the making!

]]> The first injury I can remember hearing about I wasn't even biking with the group. Turns out I had some sort of exam — probably some sort of calculus — that took up my time instead. For this one, the guys were flying down a single track that had a sharp right-hand turn through sand. The last guy was catching up real fast and didn't make the turn through the sand and went over about a 3 foot cliff. Below is the aftermath of his bike. Notice it's a Trek 800 which is a steel-frame bike.

Next, we have a guy that came up for a long weekend while on co-op. We hit up the dirt jumps after a nice technical ride. My buddy and I waited half way through the jumps to regroup, but the third guy never came. We took off slowly back up the trail. Slowly since we didn't want him to just come flying over a jump with some mad air and land on us. We started hearing, "Um, hey guys!?" Turns out he got some unexpected, yet mad air off a jump and rammed the front wheel into the take off of the next jump. His bike wasn't hurt as bad as the first guys, but he did end up breaking some bones by his shoulder. What a way to spend a vacation, huh?

The final casualty ends up with a guy bending the crap of out his front rim. Somehow one of the guys caught him in mid-action before messing up that rim. Lucky for him, has wasn't hurt any more than being slightly sore the next day. By far, I think this is my favorite biking picture from my days at Michigan Tech.

There's something in the Air...

2008-01-30T03:15:00Z

That's right folks -- and it's going to be legendary!

Check it out!

Myrtle Beach: Thanks for Visiting

2007-10-21T22:49:51Z

Just driving to work the other day, I got behind a Myrtle Beach police car that was heading to its headquarters -- which just so happens to be only a few short blocks from my office. The thing that caught my eye this time was not how old the police car was (most of the county and state have gone to 2006+ Chevy Impalas, and this was still an older-style Ford Crown Victory) but what it said on the car. It had the normal, "we're here to protect, but call us if you're in trouble" stuff. So I got to thinking about what the city slogan of Myrtle Beach because I didn't know if there was one. The only other phrase on the police cruiser was "Thanks for visiting."

]]> There's not much more to say except I have been living the last 18 months in a city that promotes not wanting anyone to stay here. I'm starting to get more and more surprised they aren't trying to kick all the transplants out after reading that slogan. Nothing like dropping the proverbial "we don't like you so get out of our town after your visit" bomb.

Myrtle Beach, SC -- Thanks for Visiting!

Welcome to the Tobacco Belt

2007-07-28T19:25:34Z

Soy milk, cottage cheese, bread, and mozzarella cheese. Sure, they have nothing to do with the tobacco belt, but they're where this story begins. Just yesterday after a joyous stop to blockbuster, I ran into the neighboring FoodLion and ran into a not-so-joyous time. Seems the person in charge of scheduling thought it'd be a great idea to only schedule two cashiers on a Friday night at 7.00pm. As I was standing in line, it all happened.

I'd heard around the office that a neighboring city had a bill to ban smoking in public restaurants. Even though it's not news that smoking bans are being passed in many cities, i thought it was interesting that there was one being passed in a city with such a high population so smokers. Moving here from the Midwest and then going back to visit after a year down here, I was astounded by how few people smoke there (or how many smoke here.)

]]> The previous day in the office, those who pay attention to the local governments had a very interesting story to tell. Turns out that one of the higher-ranking city officials pushed in an addendum as he didn't want to see the bill passed that not only made smoking illegal in public restaurants, but all public places -- including the beach! Figuring that would stop people from passing the bill, it was slightly over-looked and the bill still passed, now making people realize that they had actually banned smoking everywhere -- the first city to do so in the Grand Strand. Pretty stellar stuff.

So back to the story at hand, as I was waiting in line to checkout my 5 items this group of stereotypical southern rednecks lined up behind me. They started talking about what they were going to do that evening before suddenly remembering they forgot to pick up sour cream for the evening's dinner. When the lady who ran across the store to get it came back -- the line still hadn't moved -- the lady whipped around and started this conversation:

"Did you hear what Surfside is doing?" the lady said.
"No, what?" one of the men responded.
"They've just passed a law saying that starting October first," she continued.
"Oh, right! They've decided to ban smoking," the guy said, cutting her off.
"Yeah, they've banned it everywhere, even on the Beach! And I just got that job back at [insert some restaurant], there goes all my tips," she said. "I can't believe it," the other guy said shaking his head. "I can see banning it in the restaurants for those people who don't smoke. But on the beach and within 30 yards of buildings? What are these people on?"
"Yeah," the lady says jumping on the bandwagon, "the only reason I can see for banning it on the beach is because of litter."

It was after that that I laughed a loud. I just couldn't believe it. These people thought the main reason for a city-wide smoking ban was to just clean up the beach of cigarette butts. Seriously, how can you be so ignorant. Maybe it's just part of the culture of the "tobacco belt". Maybe it's the result of the 49th ranked public school system in the united states. Or maybe it's just the mentality of a small group of smokers. One may never know.

But regardless of these possibly crazy people in the grocery store, I sure am glad I'll have a beach to go to now that is smoke-free!

MovableType 4 Beta 2

2007-06-18T02:07:43Z

Tonight I “upgaded” to MT4 beta 2 from MT 3.35. So far, the administration/backend is lovely. I can’t quite yet figure out how to change my picture, but I’m pretty sure I came across something that said that’s not yet implemented. But as I, like a lot of others, don’t simply use the basic MT templates, I ran into a rather huge issue. Ever since I started using MT back in version 2.661, I’ve been a fan of the the tag as I hate the never-ending blogroll pages. However, when I went to rebuild my templates with MT4b2 tongiht, I was told that no longer exists!

]]> So I tried to run over to http://www.movabletype.org (MTs development site) to see if they said anything about this tag becoming obsolete as I figured a bunch of people use that tag and it’d be on their blog. To my disappointment, it was not. So I googled it - to no avail. For all the hype on MT’s dev blog about the community rising up with the beta release, I was surprised not to find more blogs about this. So until I find a way around this, I’ve taken out the check to see if I’ve used the Extended Entry and simply add a read more link to every entry! Not the best way, but at least it works for the time being.
So if anyone has an answer to my issue or running into the same problems, let me know!