Back from hiatus

Yes, so I know it's been a long time since I've posted here and all I can say is that I have some very good reasons for my hiatus. The big one would have to be work. In preparation for our launch this Thursday, our full site release mind you, I've been working 12 hour days. Trying to maintain even the shadow of a social life in light of these long hours has been difficult to say the least.

In addition, I have also been spending time building my character in World of Warcraft. I'll probably dedicate a full post to that sometime later this week. Needless to say, while some will point to this as evidence of WoW's addictive powers, I can assure you that a few hours spent gaming online every now and then does not make one an addict.

Thanks to work pressures I feel like my Ruby/Rails knowledge has increased exponentially in the past few months. From plugins to ActiveRecord, the need for efficient easily-maintainable code has forced me to dive into Rails' inner workings. It's been tough but I feel that I have a much better idea now of what's going on behind the scenes.

So in effect, work is the culprit. I can only hope that in the future I will be able to drag myself away from it to blog on at least a weekly basis.

Is Blogger the right choice for me?

Several weeks ago I attempted to put up a blog about how one could easily make form buttons that look like the buttons standard in Windows XP. That is, they have gentle curves, a pleasing color palette and in general are damned good looking. Windows XP users will get these buttons standard if a web developer doesn't fool around too much with the underlying CSS on their form buttons but everybody else will just get the standard grey squares. Anyways, I spent nearly two hours battling with Blogger's idiot-proof composer before I finally gave up. The raw HTML code that I spent so much time crafting was no match for Blogger's voracious parser which chewed up my work and spit out something barely resembling the original.

I have decided to keep blogging here despite Blogger's limitations, at least for the short-term. Long-term though, I am considering a move to put the blog on my own site where I can control all aspects of it. And considering the amount of work I've been doing lately in Rails, I would probably convert my site to use that instead and run Typo. I'd also have to find some new software for my galleries but that ought not be a problem considering Rails' ever-increasing popularity.

The Joy of Blogging

I've been blogging for nearly six months now, much longer than I had anticipated I would still be doing it. I have found it to be a source of joy that I had previously all but forgotten about, namely writing. I used to do quite a bit of it in high school and in my early college days. But as my studies in computer science took up more and more of time, so my devotion to writing began to wane. The well-formed multi-page essays gave way to quick reactionary comments on Internet message boards. Quality gave way to quantity.

But now that trend has begun to reverse itself. While I still prowl my favorite boards sporting for indepth political discussions, I also make sure to set aside at least a few hours each week to blogging. Some of that time is spent pondering my next piece but a good chunk of it is used on editing what I've written. Spelling errors, grammar mistakes and misused tenses pepper my first drafts. Not only that but simply getting the wording right can take up to five or six drafts. Usually by then though, I feel that it is as polished as it's going to get.

I have also been putting my writing skills to use in the workplace. What should sound like dessicated documentation instead reads like a strange mixture of prose and programming. Though I doubt many will ever read those particular works, if I can manage to bring even a hint of a smile to some future employee who expected something much blander then I will be glad for it.

One other aspect of blogging that I've experienced firsthand recently is notoriety. It seems that some of my former co-workers have discovered the site and while most just lurk, one took the opportunity today to attempt to anonymously post a nasty and rather personal comment. I bolded anonymously because the Internet is anything but. Thanks to some excellent logging utilities I was able to get the physical location of the IP address and from there it was as simple as cross-referencing it with the Yellow Pages to discover the true identity of the culprit. What's funny is that this person had claimed to be my friend yet I knew otherwise. I can only hope that posting meaningless comments to my blog doesn't become a habit for her.

But let's not end this entry on such a down note. As it is, I shared this information with some of my other former co-workers and we all had a good laugh about it. It just goes to show that you can't take the Internet too seriously. The things people say from behind the thin veil of their browser window is rarely anything like what they would say to you in real life. So laugh about it and move on.

Here's to another six months of blogging!

Close Encounters of the Third Post

I remember reading somewhere a few years ago when blogging was all the rage that on average a blogger only posted twice before losing interest and moving onto something else. Twice is precisely the number of posts I made at my previous blog attempt before losing interest. But I am determined that this time will be different. It seems that I'm thinking about this blog all the time. Whether I am at work, driving or at home playing Counter Strike, I am thinking about what I could write about in my blog. Tonight I got some real inspiration so here goes nothing.

First off, I love the DVR. Some might know this technology better as TiVo but for all intents and purposes, DVR is a step ahead. It works interchangeably with your cable provider so that the same box you record shows on is the same one you can order movies from. I've taken advantage of this fact several times and my cable company has proven to be an excellent provider.

So knowing that I use the DVR for everything I'm going to also let you in on the fact that I never watch commercials. If I have to wait an extra 20 minutes to watch a show without interruption then I'll do it. I've come to absolutely despise commericals. Most of them lack any value whatsoever and I figure that I get bombarded with enough commercials as it is surfing the web.

Tonight I saw the two-hour Law and Order: Criminal Intent movie and was absolutely blown away. It had suspense, storyline and more. And just when I thought it couldn't get any better, guess who walks in: Colm Meaney. In case you aren't a huge Star Trek fan like myself, that's Miles O'Brien of TNG/DS9 fame. But my obsession for Star Trek can be saved for another blog entry.

Anyways, so Colm Meaney walks in and his character is a complete 180° from those that I remember him in. He is a salacious and repulsive character, absolutely disgusting. But he played it so well that after the show, it was difficult to imagine him as the mild-mannered Chief Engineer of Deep Space Nine. But without giving too much away, let me just say that it was a great episode and that without DVR I would have a lot more time on my hands to write in my blog.