July 17, 2006

I'm Back

Four months and a lot of lines of code later, I'm back at Adobe. Same company, new job. I'm now working on the Apollo team as an Apollo Application Developer. That means my job is to write Apollo applications as Apollo itself is being developed in order to:

I had a great time while I was off and learned quite a bit about a lot of different technologies which was both refreshing and rejuvenating. When it was time to come back to Adobe, I really wanted to find a job that let me maintain the same level of excitement about what I would be working on day to day. Adobe has a lot of very cool technology in the works right now, but I really think Apollo is especially interesting and has a tremendous amount of potential. I'll be blogging more about Apollo as I learn more myself.

Posted by cantrell at 11:19 AM. Link | Comments (8) | References

March 8, 2006

Taking Some Time Off

I wanted to let everyone know that I'm going to be taking some time off from Adobe starting next week. I've been at Macromedia and then Adobe for over three years, and as far as I can remember, I've never taken a vacation, so it's time. I'm not exactly sure how long I'll be gone, but at least three months.

I won't be relaxing during my time off, though. There are way too many cool things going on right now that I want to be a part of. I'll be focusing on Ruby (on and off Rails), Ajax, mobile, and, of course, Flex 2. I might even start playing around with Flash again, which I haven't done since I got my first Flex Builder 2.0 build.

I won't be checking Adobe email or posting here while I'm gone, so I'm going to turn off comments to keep out the riffraff. I can be reached at my personal email address (qantrell@yahoo.com), and you can keep up with what I'm working on through my personal weblog, Living Digitally. Requests and comments relating to MXNA can go to mxna@adobe.com.

I will be staying in the bay area, so if you're ever in town and want to hang out, drop me a line.

Keep building amazing and inspiring things!

Christian

Posted by cantrell at 9:25 AM. Link | Comments (6) | References

December 14, 2005

I'm dividing my blog into two

In order to keep my Adobe blog more on-topic, I've decided to start a second blog. Living Digitally is a place where I will post about anything and everything technology related, but not necessarily Adobe related. All Adobe and work-related content will continue to be posted here while anything else will go on Living Digitally.

I decided to make this change because every time I posted something off-topic on my Adobe blog, I felt a twinge of guilt since people who follow my blog purely for Adobe-related information really had no way to opt out of my general technology posts (and vice-versa). Dividing my blog up into two gives readers more options, and will help keep the Adobe category on MXNA more focused, as well.

Posted by cantrell at 9:00 AM. Link | Comments (5) | References

December 6, 2005

What do you use for personal information management?

I've used Palm, Outlook/Windows Mobile/GoodLink, Entourage, iCal/Address Book, Sunbird, and the Sidekick 2 for Personal Information Management, and I still haven't found a solution that has everything I want. In general, I'm a big fan of the Sidekick II and its PIM suite, but it's not perfect. First, it locks you into the Sidekick/Danger/T-Mobile platform, and second, their web interface is actually worse and less convenient than the UI on the Sidekick. Outlook is pretty nice, but isn't very cross-platform friendly. Entourage was terrible last time I used it, Apple's PIM suite is incomplete, and Palm, after all these years, is still missing basic functionality. My questions to you all are:

  1. Do you use PIM software at all?
  2. If so, what do you use, and what do you like/dislike about it?
  3. What devices and/or platforms is your data available on?

Thanks!

Posted by cantrell at 12:06 PM. Link | Comments (12) | References

July 22, 2005

My New Mobile Office

I recently moved into a new house in San Francisco which is perfect in all respects except one: it doesn't have an additional room for me to use as an office. This is the first time in my entire life that I haven't had a room completely set aside for working, so I'm being forced to adapt. My solution has been to put together a mobile office, or a collection of everything I need to work wherever in my house I can find a flat surface and a little peace and quiet.

The most important piece of equipment is obviously a laptop. Fortunately, I've been using laptops almost exclusively for many years, but I've also been using them with a 19" IBM ThinkVision monitor which I'm now learning to do without. Rather than having all my applications spread generously over a combined 34 inches of monitor (19 inches + my laptop's 15 inches), I'm trying to adjust to a cycling through full-screen applications and windows. So far, so good, but I do wish OS X were a more keyboard-friendly operating system.

A wireless network is a given for nomadic offices. I've had a wireless network set up in my house since the very first non-commercial wireless routers were available (still using the same hardware, too), but in order to be able to use it from every corner of my house, I had to position it a little more strategically than I normally would. My cable comes in through my garage where I split it, ran it from a modem to a router to a wireless access point which I positioned under the floor right in the center of the house. Even with my ancient equipment, I get a strong signal everywhere I go.

A mobile phone is also a given. No change there. I recently switched from a Treo 650 to a Nokia 6680 which has the two things I need to make it an effective office phone: bluetooth and a speaker phone. (It also has several other features which make it an amazing phone, but that's a post for another time.)

I used to listen to music in my office through iTunes, a 100GB firewire drive, and a set of Altec Lansing speakers. No more. My new setup consists of a 60GB iPod Photo and a pair of Bose QuietComfort II headphones. It's not quite like having music playing in the background, but it's an acceptable substitute.

When I wasn't using my 19" ThinkVision monitor for work, I was using it with my Xbox through a special DVI adapter. Since losing my office, I've had to replace my Xbox with a PSP. Actually, I shouldn't say "replace" because playing Lumines or Tony Hawk on my PSP doesn't even come close to playing Halo 2 online, but it's something, and it is portable. Maybe I'll eventually get a Nintendo DS to help supplement, as well.

I used to have a Sharp atomic clock hanging on my office wall which I used to set my watch, computer, Xbox, etc. Since I no longer have an office wall on which to hang it, I wear an MSN Direct SPOT watch which not only calibrates itself, but also provides a constant stream of other useful data.

I used to have a bookshelf full of references which are now in boxes in the garage. My plan is to replace them all with eBooks and a good eBook reader. I'm hoping to find a Sony Librie from Japan on eBay one of these days, but so far, no luck. I can't believe eBooks haven't taken hold. Maybe I'll get an O'Reilly Safari account in the meantime.

The last piece of my mobile office is a nice, big, compartmentalized and padded backpack to keep everything in. I'm using a Brenthaven that I bought at the Apple Store about 2 years ago, and is the best computer bag I've ever had (and I've had quite a few). Unfortunately, I can't use my rare and beloved blue Macromedia Timbuk2 bag because as cool as it is, it just isn't big enough.

Anyone else in the same boat? Any suggestions or anecdotes about your mobile office?

Posted by cantrell at 4:33 PM. Link | Comments (6) | References

June 13, 2005

MSN Plays the Beta Game

If you want to compete in the search world, you have to be cool and experimental. First, there was Google Labs. Then, Yahoo! Research Labs. And now, there's MSN Sandbox.

The only MSN beta apps I've played with are TerraServer (very cool), and Start.com. Start.com is a portal app, very similar to Google Homepage, but actually, in my opinion, a little better (if you happen to use IE). It gives you very quick and easy access to recent searches and customized RSS feeds with some nice JavaScript magic. If it worked decently in Firefox, I might actually use it, but I guess Microsoft doesn't do a lot of QA outside the Windows world.

Posted by cantrell at 12:21 PM. Link | Comments (2) | References

March 14, 2005

The Move is Almost Over

I haven't been blogging much lately because I am still in the process of moving to San Francisco (two weeks after it started). The good news is that I actually got into my house on Saturday, so now it's primarily a matter of unpacking and getting services turned on. My top priority is an internet connection, and I'm currently investigating both DSL and cable. I've used both in the past, and had great luck with both, so at this point, I'm pretty much just comparing pricing.

So my question for you this morning is DSL or cable in the San Francisco area?

Posted by cantrell at 2:34 PM. Link | Comments (11) | References

March 3, 2005

How To Change The Web

While reading the weekly Community MX newsletter this morning, I came across a Wired article entitled New Browsers, Same Unwanted Ads. The article predicts that more virus writers will begin targeting Firefox as it continues to gain in popularity, but it touches on something else I actually found much more interesting: the evolution of intrusive advertising. As more and more people find ways to block intrusive advertising, advertisers continue to find more and more ways to force people to view clients' ads:

One advertiser site, [sorry, no free advertising here], states on its homepage that "due to the proliferation of pop-up blockers, we have altered our popup code so that if a blocker is detected, a layer ad will be delivered." Other firms, Wilson said, are using a technique in which advertisements load in the background when a person is viewing a web page, then appear immediately when he or she attempts to visit another URL. Others will force another pop-up on the user if the first is closed "too quickly."

It occurred to me while I was reading the article that the game we play with publishers and advertisers is actually pretty ridiculous. All of us have the power to end intrusive advertising without the use of popup blockers, or any other kind of plugin or utility. It's called choice. If you don't like the kinds of ads certain sites use to support themselves, your best defense is to stop visiting those site. Instead, patronize sites that have revenue models that you can live with. I can't think of any sites out there that rely on intrusive advertising that have content I can't find elsewhere. Send those sites a message by denying them your page views. I'm not saying you should disable your popup blocker, but what I am saying is that the best way to change the web is to actively participate in and support revenue models that you believe in. There doesn't always have to be an adversarial relationship between publishers, advertisers, and readers, or between businesses and their customers, for that matter. There are relationships out there that work well for everyone, and that I believe will ultimately prove the most successful. Relationships, communities, and conversations are changing business, but the most powerful agent of change is, always has been, and always will be choice.

Posted by cantrell at 12:22 PM. Link | Comments (5) | References

February 27, 2005

Moving West

This is going to be my last post for several days as I begin the process of moving to San Francisco. I've basically lived in the Washington DC area for my entire life (other than living overseas, which for some reason doesn't really seem to count), so I figured it was time to give the west coast a shot. Besides, Macromedia just moved into a brand new office space, and I was feeling very left out.

I want to thank all my friends and family here in the Washington DC and Northern Virginia area for everything they have done for me over the years, and for the wonderful sendoffs over the weekend. I will come back and visit as often as I can, and hopefully lure you guys out to California to visit frequently, as well. (JavaOne, Flashforward, Macworld, etc!)

I'm really looking forward to starting a new life out in San Francisco. It's much easier moving coast to coast when you're not changing jobs, and you already have a lot of friends waiting for you on the other end. And I'm really looking forward to working with everyone at Macromedia in person on a day to day basis, as well. They are a great bunch of people working on some very cool technology, and I'm lucky to be a part of the team.

If you've sent me anything within the last few days, or if you send me anything in the next few days, it might be a while before you get a response. This move is going to be a long process, and I can't tell how connected I'm going to be over the next couple weeks. I promise I'll get to everything eventually, though.

Signing off for now...

Posted by cantrell at 11:42 PM. Link | Comments (6) | References

January 6, 2005

What Kinds of New Year's Resolutions Do Developers Make?

I know it's the 6th already, but I figured I'd give people a few days to solidify their resolutions, and possibly abandon a few that haven't worked out already. What interesting resolutions have you made for 2005? Are they mostly personal resolutions, or professional?

I've resolved to give Eclipse another chance. I've tried it twice in the past, and haven't liked it either time for various reasons, but people keep raving about it, so I'm determined to keep trying new builds until I find one I like.

I've also resolved to get back into Java to some extent. I used to be a Java developer before working for Macromedia, but for the last two years, I actually haven't done much Java development. This should mesh well with my Eclipse resolution.

As far as personal resolutions go, I'm trying to go to bed earlier, get more sleep, and only drink decaf or half-caf coffee. Oh, and I should probably do something about my watch buying habit, but I'm not sure I'm ready to admit yet that I have a problem.

Posted by cantrell at 1:22 PM. Link | Comments (6) | References

December 23, 2004

What Are You Hoping For This Holiday Season?

Ok, I'll admit that I get just as excited on Christmas morning now as I did when I was a kid. The only difference is that I usually don't have time to get excited until late Christmas Eve whereas when I was a kid, I started getting excited days and even weeks in advance. Still, it's a great time of year of many reasons, but I'm not ashamed to admit that in addition to spending additional time with my family and especially with extended family, I also love getting presents!

The problem is that my tastes have gotten too expensive and specific for most people who give me gifts, so unless I've asked for something by model number, I never know what I'm going to end up with. I'm hoping for a new watch or two. Although my taste in watches is getting a pretty esoteric (and too expensive), there are always some nice Casio, Fossil, Timex, Swiss Army or Swatch models to be had. And I'm hoping for some Sopranos DVDs since I'm determined to own them all some day. I'll probably get a Star Wars DVD box set even though I already have two. And I wouldn't mind getting Start Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, though I think I might have added that to my list too late, so I'll probably have to get it with the Best Buy gift certificate I'm certain to get from someone who didn't know what the heck to get me. I think I'm actually ok on computer equipment this year, and none of my essential devices (digital camera, GPS, MP3 player, etc.) need updating. Too bad the PSP isn't out yet, or that would probably be at the top of my list. Anyway, I hope I'm not coming across as too materialistic, but I love getting new toys now as much as I did as a kid, and I will be giving plenty of toys to others to make sure they are equally surprised and excited.

So what are you hoping for this holiday season, and what kind of clever gifts did you get for others?

Posted by cantrell at 11:55 AM. Link | Comments (11) | References

October 14, 2004

Mobile Aggregator Test

A couple of weeks ago, I launched a new general news aggregator called Newsbrew. A few days later, I created a mobile version. I tested the mobile version on my Sidekick II and a Motorola V600, but those are the only mobile devices I have access to right now. If you have some kind of mobile device with either a WiFi connection or GPRS, and you have some time to help me experiment, it would be a big help if you could give it a try and post your findings here. The mobile URL is:

http://www.newsbrew.org/mobile

Thanks for your help!

Posted by cantrell at 10:36 AM. Link | Comments (7) | References

October 13, 2004

Weblog Comment Changes

FYI, we just made some changes to the way comments are handled by our weblogs. If you see some odd behavior, feel free to email me. In fact, it might not hurt to leave a few comments here just as a test. Thanks!

Posted by cantrell at 5:32 PM. Link | Comments (13) | References

October 7, 2004

Bug Tracking

What kind of bug tracking systems are people using out there? In particular, I'm interested in free, web-based systems. I've used Bugzilla in the past, and GNATS, both of which were decent, though I think I preferred GNATS. What's your favorite, and why?

Posted by cantrell at 6:28 PM. Link | Comments (17) | References

July 16, 2004

Cool Tool Friday: Devices Talking to Each Other. Literally.

Before two devices can "talk" to each other (by "talk", I mean in some way integrate with each other, or exchange data), they have to have some sort of protocol in common. Some examples include:

Anyway, you get the point. As long as two devices have a protocol in common, they can usually "talk" and be integrated in some way, and you can even chain devices together through multiple protocols to achieve something very unusual like a PDA "talking" to a lamp through the Internet.

I bought a digital voice recorder the other day, and I was surprised by how feature rich it was. One of the most interesting features is the ability to set an arbitrary time and date in the future for a recording to be played. Essentially, it's an alarm clock with a custom alarm. Since my Mac has very impressive voice recognition built-in, I figured it would be kind of interesting to use the voice recorder as a kind of cron or scheduled tasks application. All I have to do is record the commands to make my Mac perform an operation, set a date and time, and leave the recorder near my Mac's microphone.

I downloaded a bunch of iTunes speakable items scripts to make iTunes "speakable", and recorded the following:

  1. "Wednesday, switch to iTunes."
  2. "Wednesday, play random music."

("Wednesday" is the name of my computer, which is required before giving it a command.)

I had to make the recordings a couple of different times to get the timing and the clarity right, but now it works perfectly. That night, I configured the recording to play at 7:00 AM the next morning, and I woke up to a random iTunes track playing. The nice thing about the speakable items scripts I downloaded is that there's one entitled "silence" and "shut up" so I was then able to stop the music by yelling at my computer, and then go back to sleep.

Admittedly, the end result wasn't earth-shattering. I'm sure there are several other ways I could have woken up to a random iTunes track that would have been faster and easier to set up. But it's not the end result that interests me. What interests me is that it was the first time I had every integrated two devices using the protocol of human speech, and it worked wonderfully. Using human speech as a protocol between devices allows us to easily eavesdrop, and even participate in the "conversation", or intervene in ways bluetooth and infrared obviously don't allow. Rather than dialing my cell phone with my PDA via bluetooth, maybe some day my PDA can speak instructions (my cell phone already allows for voice dialing) which means I can catch any mistakes that were made (maybe I tapped on a home number rather than cell phone number), and I could also use the exact same mechanism to dial my phone automatically myself. Or any other device capable of talking could use the same "protocol" as well. I can imagine in the future robots talking to each other in plain English so that we can be certain they aren't conspiring behind our backs (just in time for the opening of "I, Robot"!), or at least about to perform some function that we would rather they didn't.

Ok, well, this conversation is getting pretty off-topic, even for a Cool Tool Friday post, so I'll end it here, and let you pick it up in the comments section. Can you think of any other cool scenarios for using the human voice as a machine protocol?

Posted by cantrell at 12:15 PM. Link | Comments (8) | References

July 1, 2004

New Favorite Toy

I've been getting into GPS technology recently. I bought a Garmin Forerunner 201 GPS watch for running, which is excellent (recommended by Mike Chambers and Phillip Torrone), and then I bought what I believe is the ultimate GPS device: the Garmin iQue 3600.

The iQue has all the features of a standard hand-held GPS, and then some. First of all, it's built on top of the Palm 5 platform, so not only do you get all the features of a Palm, but the features of the Palm and the GPS are very well integrated, allowing you automatically look up waypoints from the Address Book, and to associate waypoints with Address Book entries. That means you can basically look up someone's address like you normally would, then tell the unit to show you how to get to the address, either from the exact spot where you are standing, or from any other waypoint. It won't just show you, though. It will draw a scalable map, give you MapQuest-like driving directions, and/or literally tell you in a very nice female voice (actually, the voice is configurable) how to get there as you are walking or driving. And, of course, it will track every aspect of your trip along the way.

But that's not all the iQue can do. Some of the other advantages of combining a GPS with a Palm is that you have much better input than you typically get on a dedicated GPS device. And the screen is much larger with much better resolution than most (if not all) other hand-held GPS units. You also get a much faster processor, and far more memory since you can drop a 256MB SD card into the unit, and load enough detail maps for probably 25% of the entire country (in addition to base maps).

The iQue also has some cool location based features. If you are hungry, you can not only look for restaurants nearby, but you can filter by type of food, get the phone number for making reservations, and, of course, get directions/map/etc. In addition to restaurants, you can quickly look up cities, addresses, intersections, points of interest, and areas associated with lodging, attractions, entertainment, shopping, services, transportation, emergencies, manmade structures, water, land, anchorage, facilities (bathrooms), fishing sites, navigation aids, marine services, restricted areas, wrecks and obstructs, and tides. Whenever you find a place that is noteworthy, simply create a waypoint, give it a custom name and icon, and find your way back with just a few quick taps. This will come in very handy the next time I'm searching for my car at the mall.

The iQue 3600 can track up to 12 satellites at a time, supports WAAS technology, and can accommodate an external antenna. It can show you the positions of all the satellites it can find along with the position of the sun and the moon, and naturally, it has a built-in compas, altimeter, and clock synchronized with the time and date as broadcasted by the GPS satellites. Those are all the major features, I believe, though there are actually several other features I haven't even gotten a chance to play with yet.

I'm in Newton, MA right now with Scott Fegette, and we spent over an hour out on the lawn behind the hotel playing with this thing, completely amazed by it. Does it actually work? So far, absolutely. I've been able to locate every address I've looked up so far, and within minutes, created waypoints to all my friends' and relatives' houses. Wherever I've turned it on, within minutes, I've been able to get a detailed map of exactly where I'm standing, and everything that's around me. Amazing.

Although I believe the iQue is probably one of the very best GPS units available (and is very affordable, by the way), it isn't perfect. As a PDA, it feels much cheaper than my Clie UX50 (plastic versus metal), however I'm guessing the plastic is better suited to sitting in the sun for long periods of time on my dashboard. The UI is also not as intuitive as it could be. It has actually taken me quite a bit of playing around to feel comfortable with the device, and I have even resorted to consulting the documentation a few times! It also assumes that all the routing you want to do is from your current location to someplace else rather than making it easy to create a route between two arbitrary points while not receiving a GPS signal (it's possible to do, but not easy). Tracking multiple satellites and using WAAS at the same time also really uses a lot of battery. Scott and I used a little less than half the battery while playing with the unit for a little over an hour. As long as you have the car adapter for trips, however, that's actually not too bad.

The next GPS device I want to check out: the Suunto x9 GPS watch!

Posted by cantrell at 11:58 AM. Link | Comments (3) | References

June 8, 2004

Time For a New Toy

My absolute favorite device is not the PDA, cell phone, or MP3 player. It's watches. I've always loved them. In fact, if I were a villain in Batman's word, I'd probably be Mr. Time or something. I used to work for Seiko in Japan, and I always hoped I would have the opportunity to work for Casio, as well (though that never materialized). Currently in my watch drawer are eight different specimens, and one on my wrist (I've actually been wondering if I might be able to get away with wearing one on each wrist, but I haven't yet tried). I have no idea how many watches I've discarded over the years either because they have gotten ruined or hopelessly obsolete. My favorite watches are my Timex Messenger (one of the coolest watches ever made, but tragically nearing extinction), my Seiko Chronograph (not technically very fancy, but a great looking timepiece), my Casio Twincept Databank watch I bought in Japan (sort of obsolete at this point, but a classic), and my brand new Casio Solar Waveceptor G-Shock.

I have always considered G-Shocks to be good watches, but not very technically impressive until I came upon this one. It's an atomic watch (Casio calls this feature Waveceptor) which means it synchronizes wirelessly with the atomic clock in Colorado, which, in and of itself, is not all that unusual anymore, however it is also solar powered, which is an interesting combination. Not only do you never have to set it, but you also never have to change the battery. Five minutes in direct sunlight is enough for 6 months of "normal" usage. And since it doesn't have to worry about conserving battery life, it synchronizes four times a day, which is once more than my old stainless steel Waveceptor (a beautiful watch that's been discontinued). It also has nice large numbers for easy reading, an interesting time recording function which allows you to store 30 date/timestamps (something I've never had on a watch before), and will automatically illuminate when held perfectly parallel to the ground and tilted at a specific angle toward your face so you don't have to actually go to all the trouble of pressing a button. Of course it has several standard features: 5 alarms (including a snooze alarm, which will keep bugging you every five minutes until you get out of bed), world time, and a stopwatch. It's water resistant to 200 meters, and is extremely shock resistant, as well, which I've already confirmed after only a few days of ownership. It's conspicuously missing a countdown timer, however, which is its only drawback, so I still need to fall back on my cell phone occasionally, but overall, it's very functional and practical.

Any other watch fanatics out there? What kinds of watches do you like, and why? I'm mostly interested in practical and functional designs as opposed to pure technical wizardry. For instance, I had a Casio camera watch for a short time, but returned it because it was too bulky and the picture quality was too low. And what good is an MP3 watch that isn't expandable?

And finally, what would you consider to be the ultimate watch? Mine? Glad you asked. A Solar Waveceptor Pathfinder Tripple-Sensor G-Shock with a count-down timer, SD slot for expansion, and a GPS receiver. It doesn't exist yet (all in one watch), but when it does, I'll buy one for each wrist.

Posted by cantrell at 10:19 AM. Link | Comments (12) | References

June 2, 2004

Comcast to Offer Video Game Subscriptions

I'm taking a vacation day today, so if you're waiting on any email from me, I probably won't get to it until tomorrow.

While I'm off-topic, according to Reuters, it seems that subscribers to Comsast's high-speed data service will soon be able to access more than 60 PC video game titles for a fee of $14.95 per month. Apparently they intend to add new titles each month from educational software to "mainstream titles" which I'm guessing means your standard FPSs and RPGs. It should be interesting to see if they can get the titles they need to make this work, and whether Microsoft or Sony will soon offer game subscriptions of their own.

Posted by cantrell at 12:11 PM. Link | References

May 27, 2004

Has It Been 17 Years Already?

How many of you are in 17-year Cicada zones? We didn't have many at first, we thought because most of the commercial and residential development around here happened about 15 or 16 years ago, so we figured they needed one more cycle to populate this area, however they have either migrated from other areas, or were just slow digging themselves out of the ground, because now they are everywhere! Wherever there are trees, there are always dozens cicadas in the air, and hundreds perched in each tree. Whenever you drive anywhere, you usually end up with about six or seven of them splattered across your windshield, or mutilated inside your grill. The males make a somewhat eerie hollow buzzing type sound which I think has been used in several B horror films, and can be heard all the time, whether you're inside or out. They are, of course, harmless, and apparently nutritious, too, as the local paper has published some interesting 17-year Cicada recipes. As you can see from the picture below, they are also quite friendly and even loving. I caught these two out on my deck early this morning, holding hands, enjoying the romantic view, gazing into each other's beautiful red eyes. They are apparently making the most of their only summer above ground.

You can learn more than you ever wanted to know about 13-year and 17-year periodical cicada here.

Posted by cantrell at 11:30 AM. Link | Comments (3) | References

May 21, 2004

The Change is All Counted!

In honor of the last day of community week, I will be giving away a free DRK to Steve Nelson. My change jar contained exactly $363.75 worth of change, and Steve's guess was $362.56, making him off by only $1.19. Congratulations, Steve! I'll be contacting you directly.

Now for some other interesting statistics:

Total number of entries: 76 (between comments and personal email)

Highest guess: $764.19 (I wish!)

Lowest guess: $98.00

Most scientific guess: 1 penny weighs 2.5 grams. 1 nickel weighs 5.0 grams. 1 dime weighs 2.268 grams. so 1 penny + 1 nickel + 1 dime weighs 9.768 grams and is worth of $0.16. 1. assume the collection is random, but no Quarter; 2. assume the jar itself weighs 2 pounds (just a wild guess ... if this is not close enough, the guess won't). 35.5 - 2 = 33.5 pounds = 33.5 * 453.6 = 15195.6 grams. 15195.6/9.768 * 0.16 = $ 248.90

Runner up for most scientific guess: Other than myself, 63 guesses placed. Lowest 113.08, highest 764.19...Most guesses are placed between the 300 and 400 (21 of them). Average value is $334.60. Now, if we sample the coin count from the well lit part of the picture we assume that 35% pennies, 26% nickels, 22%dimes and 17% quarters jar contains. Distributing the total weight to coin types and calculating the actual values with per coin type unique wieght gives us $360.00. I will go with the average of these 2 values, so my guess is $347.30.

Least scientific guess: $123.45

Most important lesson learned: Next time, just use Coinstar! (As Sam warned.)

Thanks for playing, all! It was fun (except the counting part)!

Posted by cantrell at 12:46 PM. Link | Comments (8) | References

May 17, 2004

Count Some Change, Win a DRK

I've been collecting loose change in a giant pickle jar for years, but recently it's reached its capacity. I thought about using one of those Coinstar machines at the grocery store to convert it to cash, however I seem to remember they keep something like 8 or 9% of your money, which can go a long way toward a personal coin sorting machine. I picked one up at Staples over the weekend, and one evening this week, I'll turn on some music or sit in front of the TV and see how much my pickle jar actually holds.

How much money do you think is in the jar? I have absolutely no idea myself. Somewhere in the hundreds, I guess. More than one hundred, less than one thousand. The person who can come closest to guessing will win a free DRK of their choice (post guesses here, or send them to me directly). It's ok if you go over the amount -- you just have to be the closest. One guess per person, please.

I included a CD in the picture help give you some perspective on how big the jar is. Another hint: the jar weighs 35.5 pounds, if that's of any use. Good luck!

Posted by cantrell at 12:05 PM. Link | Comments (66) | References

May 7, 2004

Ugly Desktop Icons

One of the first things I noticed when setting up my new ThinkPad was that the labels below icons on my desktop had solid background colors rather than being transparent as they are on OS X, which made them look terrible. Having been a Mac user since OS X was first introduced, I couldn't stand the effect, so I started searching for a way to "fix" the OS. I downloaded the TweakUI Powertoy from Microsoft's website, and although it provided me with some other interesting capabilities, making icon label backgrounds transparent was not one of them. To make a long story short, I ended up going to Control Panel -> System -> Advanced (tab) -> Performance Settings and checking "Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop". I also checked several other options in that menu which has made working with Windows XP a little more aesthetically pleasing. It's still no OS X, but at least it's also no Windows 98.

Posted by cantrell at 1:49 PM. Link | Comments (1) | References

May 6, 2004

Migrating and Propagating Bookmarks

I recently got a second laptop (a ThinkPad) which I will be using on a day-to-day basis in conjunction with my Mac, so naturally I wanted to have it equipped with the hundreds of bookmarks I've accumulated inside of Safari. I also decided that it was time to solve the problem of bookmark synchronization once and for all. Firefox, an extension called "Bookmark Backup," and a handy little program called Safari Bookmark Exporter solved all my problems.

The first thing I did was download Firefox 0.8, then I used the Safari Bookmark Exporter utility to export all my hundreds of bookmarks from Safari to Firefox. I then installed the Bookmark Backup extension which automatically FTPed an XML file containing all my bookmarks to a central server where any number of other Firefox instances could, and soon did, import them. Now all my machines have the exact same bookmark configuration.

I like Safari, and I really liked MyIE2 when I tested it out the other day, but the ability to synchronize bookmarks across machines and platforms has made me a devoted Firefox user.

Posted by cantrell at 1:51 PM. Link | Comments (2) | References

May 3, 2004

PayPal Exposes Web Services

PayPal, following the lead of their parent company, eBay, has decided to expose a set of Web services to allow software developers to retrieve transaction information, refund money, and automatically transfer funds. Has anyone tried this with ColdFusion or Flash yet?

Posted by cantrell at 5:48 PM. Link | Comments (2) | References

Who's Using MyIE2?

How many people out there are using MyIE2 as their primary browser? I'm still mostly a Mac user, but I downloaded MyIE2 today on my secondary Windows machine to have a look at it, and I'm very impressed. What's my #1 favorite feature? The ability to reposition tabs! Although I think Safari is generally a pretty good browser, and I love Firefox, MyIE2 is the first implementation I've seen that lets you reposition document tabs, which I have always wanted (as an aside, I think OS X really needs to start embracing the concept of tabs in general). I also like the "Super Drag & Drop" feature, and although I don't know if could get into them or not, I like the idea of mouse gestures. The build-in search feature is also the most sophisticated I've ever seen, and I think the tiling capability is very cool and useful, as well.

I'd love to see a project like this for OS X. I generally like the rendering capabilities of Safari, but I don't think the browser itself is nearly as functional as Firefox, and it's not even close to MyIE2.

Posted by cantrell at 4:40 PM. Link | Comments (11) | References

April 14, 2004

Offline For a Couple Weeks

Just wanted to let everyone know that I am on paternity leave from now until the first week of May, so I probably won't be doing much posting. The time that I typically allocate for blogging will probably be used for sleeping instead.

Try not to let anything too interesting happen while I'm gone!

Posted by cantrell at 11:39 AM. Link | Comments (6) | References

April 7, 2004

First Impressions of Eclipse

I've been playing with Eclipse a little recently, primarily in order to evaluate it as a tool for ColdFusion development. I actually haven't gotten to the point of installing any ColdFusion plugins yet, however, because of various issues I've run into with Eclipse itself.

Below are my first impressions of Eclipse as a development tool. I'd be interested in hearing what kinds of experiences others have had, and in getting your reaction to my comments.

The first thing I noticed is that it's a little on the slow side. I'm running Eclipse on a 1GHz Powerbook with 1GB of RAM, and I was a little surprised at how long it took to start up (well over 30 seconds!). It's obviously not fair to judge an application's performance solely by its startup time, however, and I did find that it was generally more responsive than its startup time indicated it would be, but there are still plenty of annoying pauses here and there. For instance, creating a new file for some reason took about five seconds, which seemed a little excessive. I'm looking forward to trying Eclipse out on a Windows box, however, where I suspect I will find it to be significantly faster.

I discovered that one of the reasons Eclipse took so long to start up was that it was actually starting an imbedded application server as well as the actual IDE. It seems the entire help system is written in Java and JSP, so Eclipse starts up an embedded server listening on port 57806 in order to generate and serve help content. There may be other reasons for embedding a server that I am not aware of, but I don't think a dynamic help system is worth the overhead. If the Eclipse team decided that HTML was the best format for help files, why not generate them once, and include the static HTML files in the product? I'm also not crazy about arbitrary socket servers being started on my machine.

On a more positive note, I really like the overall metaphors Eclipse uses. Projects and perspectives are sound concepts, and are well implemented. I like the package explorer, and the way Eclipse organizes projects. One of the biggest problems I had with the application, however, was that it seems to want to recursively incorporate all files and directories into a project. For instance, I wanted to make a project that points to a directory where I keep most of my source code in various directories and packages, and Eclipse slurped up all the files, regardless of file type, including CVS directories, text files, etc. If nothing else, I think that behavior should be disabled by default, but I actually didn't see a way to disable it at all. It seems to me it would make much more sense for developers to explicitly add files to projects.

Before I started working with ColdFusion files, I wanted to see how Eclipse worked with it's primary file type -- Java files. Of course, it has some very nice features for Java developers, but I actually didn't see a lot that JBuilder didn't have three or four years ago (although I will admit that had I been collaborating on a large Java project with other developers, I'm confident I would have been more impressed with what it had to offer -- this is not an area I explored extensively). The code hinting didn't work with dual monitors (the hint window would always appear on my main monitor even though the Eclipse window was on my secondary monitor), and I couldn't get code hinting to work at all with any project type other than Java (isn't it reasonable to want Java files in simple projects?). Eventually, I couldn't get code hinting to work even with Java projects because Eclipse thought that my project was referencing another nonexistent project, although nothing was showing up in the project reference configuration panel.

I will give Eclipse a try on Windows to see if it performs and works any better, and I will continue to check up on the project to see how it is evolving. How do other people feel about Eclipse?

Posted by cantrell at 4:25 PM. Link | Comments (6) | References

April 2, 2004

Free Music Friday!

It's Free Music Friday! The code below is good for one free track from the Apple iTunes store (look for the Pepsi promotion). First come, first serve. Whoever gets there first, please post here what you ended up downloading. Good luck!

9SAH4YXYEB

Posted by cantrell at 10:41 AM. Link | Comments (3) | References

March 23, 2004

The Worst User Interfaces Ever

I'm pretty good at figuring out user interfaces and getting the hang of most things pretty quickly without reading documentation or making irreversible mistakes, but that doesn't mean I'm not critical of them. In fact, I'm extremely sensitive to user interfaces, as I suspect most people who read this blog are. What are some of the worst user interfaces you have ever come across? Here are just a few:

What's your least favorite user interface? Any good stories to go along with them?

Posted by cantrell at 12:00 PM. Link | Comments (11) | References

February 26, 2004

Breeze Does it All (including 3-D)

Naturally, I have participated in many Breeze Live events, and I have used Breeze for simple presentation generation, but the other day, I used Breeze and Breeze Live for the first time to conduct full-scale meeting and software demonstration. Man, was I impressed.

I started off with a brief presentation which I shared with about 50 participants. The presentation was generated from a PPT file which I uploaded right through the Breeze interface. Next, I shared my desktop and conducted a software demonstration, and ended by handing the meeting over to someone by making him a presenter. He then had full control of the meeting, and simply handed control back to me when he was done. We switched into discussion mode and spent some time answering questions, and when we ended, I felt like I had been just as effective over Breeze Live as I would have been in person. And we didn't even use any of the streaming audio and video features!

What impressed me most was how simple and fluid the whole process was, and that both Mac and Windows users were able to participate equally (we have a lot of Mac users at Macromedia). I even discovered that Breeze can render funky metaphysical infinite 3-D hallways by sharing and previewing your desktop simultaneously:

Posted by cantrell at 6:44 PM. Link | Comments (5) | References

February 9, 2004

Chatting, Evolved

I finally broke down and bought an iSight over the weekend, and I'm very impressed with it. So far, I'm not getting a huge amount of use out of it, however, since I only know a couple of people with both Macs and iSights, and I don't like the idea of one-way video chat (it just doesn't seem fair). Fortunately, the newest version of AIM (5.5) is supposed to have a video chat feature that is compatible with the public beta of iChat 2.1. I tried to get it working at home with a Windows machine upstairs, but I think you need Windows XP, and I'm still using 2000. If anyone wants to give it a try, my AIM screen name is "qantrell66". (For old-fashioned text chatting, my ICQ number is "57644155").

Posted by cantrell at 12:24 PM. Link | Comments (5) | References

February 3, 2004

New Tools For MXNA

We added a couple of new tools to MXNA today. Specifically, we added OPML feeds, an MXNA webservice API, and an MXNA ActionScript 2 webservice library. (If you use NetNewsWire, it will slurp up OPML feeds, and I'm guessing other aggregators will, as well). Additionally, there will be a Central MXNA webservice API available shortly. Find out details on the new MXNA Tools page.

Posted by cantrell at 5:23 PM. Link | Comments (7) | References

January 29, 2004

MXNA Performance and Uptime

I know some of you have noticed (since you have sent me email) that MXNA and our weblogs have occasionally been going down, and that the server is often pretty slow. As we accumulate more and more feeds, more archived posts, more traffic, and as more people have started using our ping API so that we pick up their posts in realtime, the server has really suffered. After a little investigation, we discovered that PostgreSQL processes were always to blame whenever the server was in a bad state. I tried installing hot fixes, updated drivers, and even experimented with caching, but PostgreSQL has continued to have problems. Finally, Mike Chambers and I decided to try switching my MySQL, instead, since it is known for it's superior performance. After about a day of migration work, MXNA is now running MySQL, and it is many times faster than it was. Even the largest queries return almost instantly, and MySQL processes have very little impact on overall system resources. We had opted for PostgreSQL over MySQL initially because:

  1. The PostgreSQL command line interface is better than MySQL's (out of the box).
  2. PostgreSQL supports more features.
  3. I have always found PostgreSQL's security and user model to be more intuitive and easier to work with.

In the end, however, performance is our #1 priority, so now I am very happy with MySQL, and with the state of MXNA. We have a couple new features which we have been hesitant to launch because of performance issues which now I believe will be receiving the green light very soon. Stay tuned.

Posted by cantrell at 2:09 PM. Link | Comments (10) | References

January 23, 2004

Pretty Impressed With JEdit

I've typically shied away from editors written in Java, however I decided to try out JEdit 4.1 today to see how far it's come. I must say, I'm pretty impressed. It's too early to say whether I'll actually convert, but it's one of the very few editors with Mac support that I would even consider switching to. It's responsive, intuitive, and seems to have most if not all the features I need (including column select). Maybe I'll try it over the weekend and see if I'm still impressed on Monday.

Posted by cantrell at 3:38 PM. Link | Comments (9) | References

January 15, 2004

How Do You Like Your Documentation?

Generally speaking, what format do you like to see documentation in? PDF? FlashPaper? HTML? RTF? Text? Microsoft Word?

Personally, I prefer HTML. I can navigate and find what I need in my browser faster than anywhere else. I almost always have Javadoc in one browser tab and Macromedia LiveDocs open in another. If I need to be able to read documentation offline (on an airplane, for instance, since that's about the only place I ever go anymore where I'm completely offline), I either save the HTML as a PDF, or preferably, download the HTML to browse locally. HTML prints well enough (although I almost never print anything), loads quickly, can be easily kept up to date, and generally fits into my workflow better than anything else.

In what format would you like to see most or all of the documentation you use on a regular basis, and why? (Don't forget to take the poll!)

Posted by cantrell at 1:40 PM. Link | Comments (24) | References

January 9, 2004

Visualizing Mailing Lists

As I was browsing through FlashLounge today, I can across a link to Social Circles, an application written by Marcos Weskamp and Dan Albritton. Social Circles seeks to create a visual representation of the dynamics of mailing lists by charting contributors. Each contributor's size and position on the chart indicates the frequency with which they post, and how "visible" those posts are.

Why was it created? Although I would encourage you to check out the Social Circles about page, here are a few excerpts that I think do a good job of summing the project up:

Social Circles intends to partially reveal the social networks that emerge in mailing lists...When subscribing to a mailing list you never know who the principals are, how many people are listening or what subjects they are talking about. It's like entering a meeting room with plenty of people in the darkness and then having to learn who is who by just listening to their voices... Social Circles ... aims to raise the lights in that room just enough to let you enhance your perception of what’s happening.

This is a very interesting and innovative project, and I think very effective. Check it out and see where you fit in.

Posted by cantrell at 2:40 PM. Link | Comments (1) | References

January 5, 2004

Are Apple Power Adapters Suspicious?

I just flew in from my brother's wedding at Oklahoma University, and I had an interesting experience at the Tulsa airport. It seems my Powerbook's power adapter made one of the screeners very nervous. She X-rayed it three times, poked, prodded and groped it, then eventually seemed to need to get it officially approved. She said it looked like "some kind of tool." I assured her it was no more dangerous than my iPod or my mouse, but she seemed unwilling to take my word for it. Eventually I was allowed to pass, but not before my wife had gotten completely bored and wandered off to get some coffee. I'm glad I remembered to take the Leatherman off my keychain or I might still be standing there.

Anyway, I'm glad to be home. Now if only my luggage would join me.

Posted by cantrell at 7:45 PM. Link | Comments (3) | References

January 2, 2004

I Haven't Abandoned My Weblog

I just wanted to let everyone know that I have not abandoned my weblog. I'm actually on vacation all this week, visiting family for holiday celebrations and to attend my brother's wedding. I'll be back to work on Tuesday, January 6th.

In the meantime, if you haven't already, check out Christophe's latest post on using browser navigation buttons in Flex. I think this is incredibly cool, and a very important step for RIAs.

Posted by cantrell at 11:30 AM. Link | Comments (2) | References

December 1, 2003

How Did You Spend Your Holiday?

Before we get down to business, I'd like to know how people spent their holidays. Did you celebrate? Work? Travel? Sleep? All of the above?

I primarily spent my holiday doing four things:

  1. The obligatory family thing. We hosted Thanksgiving dinner, threw a big party, visited plenty of people, etc. That means I did a lot of shopping and cleaning up, but also a lot of celebrating, which was fun.
  2. Worked on a new Flash app. I got the Community Resource Directory Flash front-end about 80% finished. Man, I love Flash MX 2004. I'll have the app done in a couple of days and post my final thoughts on Flash vs ColdFusion.
  3. Rainbow 6 III for Xbox. Mike Chambers and I spent an undisclosed amount of time playing RB6 online, and Danny Dura even got in on the action. I highly recommend this game.
  4. Played with my new Clie. The Palm Tungsten I've had for about a year started acting up, so I decided I was going to replace it. I had been waiting for the new Handspring Treo 600 to become available for AT&T, however not only has it taken too long, but now that it's "available", they are playing games with upgrades and discounts for new subscribers, etc, which I have no patients for. I decided to go with a Sony Clie UX50 instead, and man was it the right decision. I was hesitant at first because Clie's are notorious for being incompatible with Macs (since Sony makes Windows PC), however after about an hour, I had it synching via Bluetooth with my Powerbook (it can't be done without third-party software via USB, but Bluetooth is a different story). This PDA is nothing less than amazing. Not only can I take pictures and record video, but I can use it's built-in WiFi functionality to email the pictures, as well. It integrates well with my Sony Ericsson T68i cell phone, and can dial it while it's in my pocket via Bluetooth. If you're in the market for a new PDA, the UX50 is definitely one to consider.

Posted by cantrell at 9:52 AM. Link | Comments (7) | References

November 5, 2003

Is Sensationalism Dead?

Was that a catchy enough title to get you to read this, or are you tired of being baited by headlines about the death, demise and killing of things that really don't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon? For instance, can you sense some subtle pattern in the headlines below?

I'm so tired of seeing headlines like these that I have completely stopped reading any article whose title predicts the end or death of anything. In fact, if the end of the world were coming and it was front page news, I probably wouldn't even know it (so please shoot me an email). In my opinion, using this type of sensationalistic journalism is like starting a poem "Roses are red, violets are blue," or a novelist earnestly penning "It was a dark and stormy night..." I proclaim the death of sensational headlines in favor of an era of relevance and creativity! Are you with me?

Posted by cantrell at 2:44 PM. Link | Comments (4) | References

November 4, 2003

Dimensional Warp Generator REALLY Needed

How many of you have gotten spam about a lost time traveler needing a Dimensional Warp Generator? Or asking for your help if you happen to be either a time traveler or an alien disguised as a human? Here's an excerpt from one I got over the summer:

"While it might be hard to find parts in this time to build anything decent, I need easy to follow schematics from the future to build a time machine which is safe and accurate that will not disrupt the time space continuum with both forward and backward capability accounting for temporal location settings (X, Y, Z, n), which can be built out of (readily available) parts here in 2003."

I have another one that starts:

"If you are a time traveler or alien disguised as human and or have the technology to travel physically through time I need your help!"

Well, what I thought was a very bizarre joke has turned out to be real, at least in the mind of Robby Todino. According to this article on Wired.com, Robby really believes he needs to go back in time to repair his childhood (who doesn't?). Apparently people have been playing along, too, setting up fake online stores and eBay auctions.

So if anyone out there really has a AMD Dimensional Warp Generator module containing the GRC79 induction motor, a 3 52 4350A watch unit, or a Acme 5X24 series time transducing capacitor with built-in temporal displacement, Robby really will pay you top dollar.

Posted by cantrell at 12:44 PM. Link | Comments (3) | References

October 16, 2003

Birthday Money

Today is my birthday, and since I'm notoriously difficult to shop for, my family usually just sends me money. I've accumulated a couple hundred dollars so far, but I'm having difficulty deciding on what to pick up. The next big thing I have my eye on is a new Handspring Treo 600, but I have to wait until AT&T supports it, which is likely to be several months. I'm considering:

Of course, what I really want is a new 15" Powerbook, but I'll need a lot more checks and gift certificates before that happens. If you had about $200 or $300 to blow before the end of the week, what would you do? (Hint: I already have an iPod and a GBA SP.)

Posted by cantrell at 2:05 PM. Link | Comments (13) | References

October 15, 2003

New Version of Macromedia Pollster

I have a new version of Macromedia Pollster running just to your right. My favorite new feature is unlimited options. I also like the fact that you can browse old archived polls (though I don't have any yet to browse).

Now let's see what the most popular handheld device is. Did I leave any out?

Posted by cantrell at 3:48 PM. Link | Comments (7) | References

October 2, 2003

The Cult of the NDA

There's an interesting post on Dispatches from the Frozen North entitled "The Cult of the NDA" which starts out like this:

"To all those entrepreneurs with innovative, unique business ideas who want to capitalize on them before someone else does, I have one piece of advice: Get over it."

I found this post to be particularly entertaining because the number of NDAs I used to have to sign at my old job. I guess I still sign my fair share, but nowhere near what it was like in the late 90s. The best part of the article deals with NDA misconceptions. In particular:

Misconception: If others find out about my unique idea, they could bring it to market first, and steal the advantage from me.

Reality: Surprise, surprise, but the rest of the world is not watching your every move waiting to pounce on anything you do. In fact, large incumbents generally don't take much notice of the startups until after a startup begins to have some success in the marketplace.

The article talks about how amazingly difficult (if not impossible) it is to actually come up with a new idea. I guess I shouldn't say it's impossible since occasionally new technology becomes available that enables new processes and ideas, but I think by now, pretty much all ideas are basically a variation on an idea many others have already had.

The article also suggests doing the exact opposite of asking everyone you meet to sign an NDA. Why not publicize your idea? Get some feedback? Try to learn something about what your building from others before you actually start building it? Do you think if Dean Kamen had done this a few years ago, the Segway would have ever been brought to market?

So here's an interesting (but not unique) idea. The next time you want to start something new -- whether it's a project or a company -- rather than trying to come up with a new and unique idea, why not just improve upon an existing product or business model? That way, you can learn from other's mistakes, and be sure you are entering a proven market. I imagine it's easier to gain market share than it is to actually build it where it never existed.

Posted by cantrell at 1:16 PM. Link | Comments (5) | References

September 20, 2003

OT - It's Hard to Blog Without Power

I missed a day of blogging yesterday, primarily because of hurricane Isabel. Being just south of Washington DC, we were directly in the storm's path, and although it was downgraded to a tropical storm while it was moving through Northern Virginia, it was still by far the worst storm I have ever seen. We lost power for about 11 hours, lost some trees, and won't be able to drink tap water without boiling it for at least another week since all four water conditioning plants that serve the area lost power at the same time, allowing untreated water to make its way into the system. Fortunately our house was not damaged although a neighbor's tree was uprooted and fell onto our property, and a huge shutter was blown off her house. Anyway, power is back and we have plenty of bottled water, so all is back to normal. My satellite dish is safe, and as far as I can tell, my TiVo didn't miss anything it was scheduled to record. I consider myself extremely lucky since I have friends in the Annapolis area (where I used to live) who will likely be without power for another week. It's strange to see pictures of people canoeing over areas where I used to walk my dog.

Posted by cantrell at 4:32 PM. Link | Comments (7) | References

August 31, 2003

Sorry for the Silence

I haven't gotten a chance to post anything recently because I've been in the process of moving. There is certainly nothing more disruptive in life than packing everything tangible you own in the entire world, moving it on one of the hottest days of the summer, and then reconstructing your entire home from scratch. The only exception is probably having a baby. At least moving only affects you for a week or so, as opposed to anywhere between 18 and 21 years.

Anyway, I'm somewhat settled at this point. Just waiting for my DSL to be activated. I forgot you could actually use phone lines to dial into a network, however now I remember why I stopped doing it.

Posted by cantrell at 2:54 PM. Link | Comments (3) | References

July 17, 2003

Public Service Announcements From Christian Cantrell

The following are public service announcements from Christian Cantrell:

  1. Feel free to submit tips and tricks to me (email cantrell@macromedia.com), and if they are good, I will post them here. If I don't know you, make sure you include your name so I can give you credit. If you don't give me your name, I will be forced to call you "Anonymous Coward". If you have your own weblog, I can understand keeping all your tips and tricks to yourself, but if you don't, blog vicariously through me! I will post just about anything pertaining to web development.
  2. Do you use a web-based aggregator? If not, check out MXNA (Macromedia XML News Aggregator) for news on Macromedia technologies (ColdFusion, Dreamweaver, Flash and Java), and on web development and technology in general. You can also check out Fullasagoog.com for more Macromedia focused news aggregation.
  3. Do you use a local aggregator? If not, Windows users should check out Newzcrawler, Mac users should check out NetNewsWire, and Linux users should check out NewsMonster.
  4. See that text box down and to the right that is labeled "Email Updates"? Put your email address in there, and you will receive notification whenever I make a new post. I promise not to spam you, or sell your email address to companies peddling any type of generic performance enhancers.

Posted by cantrell at 6:54 PM. Link | Comments (5) | References

June 25, 2003

PHP Support for Pinging MXNA

Robert Hall of Feasible Impossibilities has put together a PHP script for pinging MXNA, the Macromedia XML News Aggregator. If your weblog is implemented in PHP, or if you have PHP installed on a server somewhere and you want to use it to make pinging MXNA easier, you might want to check out Rob's script.

Check out the MXNA FAQ for more information on how to ping MXNA.

You also might want to just check out the Feasible Impossibilities site if you haven't seen it yet. It's pretty wild. The floating hand is cool, if a little eerie with the accompanying sound effects. You can even watch Rob work on a live webcam, however he doesn't appear to be moving too much this morning. He ought to add a "prod" button.

Posted by cantrell at 11:49 AM. Link | Comments (1) | References

June 5, 2003

What's Your IP Address?

I'm just getting ready to leave Las Vegas to head back east. I'll post a summary of the TODCON conference when I get home late tonight. In the meantime, here's a tip on a quick and easy way to find out your IP address, which I find is something I need to do occasionally (which isn't always easy, depending on the OS you are using). Just go to whatsmyipaddress.com.

Posted by cantrell at 1:18 PM. Link | Comments (3) | References

May 30, 2003

New MXNA Features

We just installed a new version of the Macromedia XML News Aggregator today with some cool new features. The most noticeable new feature is the ranking system. Every post made within the last 24 hours now has a ranking indicated by a series of stars which denotes its popularity among other MXNA readers. The ranking is calculated by comparing the number of clicks an entry has gotten to those of other feeds imported within the last 24 hours.

MXNA also now supports the blogger ping API, so you can ping MXNA when you make new blog entries, and MXNA will pick up your changes immediately. For more information on configuring your blogging software to ping MXNA, see the MXNA FAQ.

Posted by cantrell at 10:07 PM. Link | Comments (1) | References

May 13, 2003

Out of Office Notice, New TechNote, and Virgin Music Uses FCS

Just wanted to let folks know that I will be out of town for the rest of the week, so if I don't respond to your emails right away, don't think I'm ignoring you. I will be back to work on Monday.

In the meantime, here's a new TechNote on cfchart:

http://www.macromedia.com/support/coldfusion/ts/documents/cfchart_max_series.htm

And check out Virgin Music's Canadian site. They use Flash all over the place, but they are also using Flash Communication Server to stream their top 5 audio and video picks. Being a Mac user, I love to see sites using Flash to stream media rather than Real or Windows Media Player. You can check it out here:

http://www.virginmusic.ca/home.asp

Posted by cantrell at 10:55 PM. Link | References

April 21, 2003

Mozilla as a Debugging Tool

How do you debug web applications?

Passing requests through a proxy is one of the most convenient and powerful ways to debug an application during development. First you try cfdump, cflog, some debug output in the browser, and maybe some JavaScript alerts. If you are using a Flash front-end, you might use trace() or the NetConnection Debugger. But there is nothing like passing requests and responses through a proxy to give you the entire picture.

I have used a lot of different kinds of proxies to find out exactly what was occurring between the client and the server. I have used command-line proxies that log to a file, Java based proxies that I wrote myself, and graphical tools with all kinds of features. It never occurred to me, however, that one could simply be built right into a browser. Or, more accurately, if your browser could expose entire HTTP requests and responses rather than just HTML source, you don't even need a proxy. If you can view the raw headers of an email message in most email clients, why not be able to watch HTTP headers in your browser? Well, if you use Mozilla, now you can:

http://livehttpheaders.mozdev.org/

Posted by cantrell at 8:09 PM. Link | Comments (3) | References

April 18, 2003

Christian Cantrell's Perspective Has a New Look

I guess it's pretty obvious that I have a new weblog (unless this is your first time here). I decided to switch from my own solution which was combination of ColdFusion, XML, shell scripts and Makefiles to Movable Type and ColdFusion. For anyone thinking about starting a weblog, this is a great combination. Basically I use Movable Type purely for content management, and ColdFusion for things like includes, and other types of dynamic content. We have Movable Type working with Postgresql, so we can even query the database directly using ColdFusion.

So far, I'm very impressed with Movable Type. It's extremely versatile and well written. Importing my posts wasn't as easy as I'd hoped, though. It took me the better part of day to write a ColdFusion script to package up all my old posts and put them into a format that Movable Type could read. It was actually an interesting use of ColdFusion. When I was trying to figure out how to do the conversion, I considered using Perl, a shell script, Java or ColdFusion. My mission was to parse an XML file with all my old titles, summaries, categories and authors, read all my old entries from their individual files on disk, derive dates and times from the last modified dates of each file as reported by the operating system, and combine all this information into a single file formatted for Movable Type's import feature. Odd that a language like ColdFusion was so good for this, but it has everything I needed. As I said, it took the better part of a day to get it exactly right and to edit the entries by hand that didn't import properly, but I think it came out pretty well. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to save comments, so everyone will just have to start leaving new ones.

Posted by cantrell at 1:41 PM. Link | Comments (5) | References

March 23, 2003

Spotlight on techbargains.com

I was shopping for a new laptop online today and I noticed that techbargains.com is written entirely in ColdFusion. If you are not familiar with techbargains.com, it's a site that posts great deals on all kinds of geeky things, and gives exact instructions on how to get the best prices (what links to click on, which coupon codes to enter and in what order, etc.). I also thought it was pretty cool that they publish an RSS feed (also generated with ColdFusion) so I can constantly monitor all the best deals on the net and fail even more miserably at not buying superfluous electronics.

Posted by cantrell at 6:32 PM. Link | Comments (4) | References

March 11, 2003

Interesting Web Prodigy Article on Forbes

There is an interesting article entitled "Flash Kid" on forbes.com about the 17-year-old kid from New Jersey who, along with his partners from the U.K, Croatia, Sweden, California, New York, Texas and Amsterdam, built the seanjohn.com website for $400,000 (seanjohn is the clothing label for P. Diddy). ColdFusion even gets a mention. Although it is not described accurately, at least it is mentioned favorably which, when it comes to the press, is often the best you can hope for.

http://forbes.com/forbes/2003/0317/039.html

Posted by cantrell at 12:57 PM. Link | Comments (1) | References

March 6, 2003

(OT) Dr. Pepper Tries to Cash In On Weblogs

I don't know about you guys, but I can certainly use a break from discussions about ColdFusion, Flash, RIAs and the Macromedia website for a few minutes, so now for something completely off-topic. It seems that Dr. Pepper is trying to cash in on the popularity of weblogs, and in particular, on the creditability of weblog authors. Rather than paying movie stars or sports figures millions to hold up a bottle of carbonated sugar water and smile, they are experimenting with paying a bunch of kids nothing to post about it on their weblogs:

http://www.msnbc.com/news/879490.asp?cp1=1

Maybe I'm just bitter because I wasn't invited to promote "Raging Cow" in exchange for a hat.

Posted by cantrell at 12:57 AM. Link | References

February 19, 2003

Big Blogging News

I guess everyone knows about Google buying Pyra Labs by now. If not, you can read about it here:
http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/000802.shtml

Now Microsoft is getting in on the action, as well. Read about their new product here:
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,4248,894255,00.asp

Not to be left behind, AOL is talking about blogging, as well:
http://www.goodexperience.com/columns/02/1211.aol.html

Posted by cantrell at 7:17 PM. Link | References

February 17, 2003

(OT) Footage of Extreme Weather on Presidents' Day

These are some pictures I took around my neighborhood today. We got about 30 to 32 inches of snow here which kept me pretty busy Sunday and Monday. We shoveled until we ran out places to put the snow. My street has still not been plowed, so nobody is going anywhere for a while.

Posted by cantrell at 11:11 AM. Link | References

January 27, 2003

Download Runes for the Sony Ericsson t68i

If you don't have a Sony Ericsson t68i, this is a good reason to get one. The Macromedia runes make perfect backgrounds, as you can see. Mike Chambers posted them on his weblog today. You can download them from here.

Posted by cantrell at 6:08 PM. Link | References

January 25, 2003

Christian Cantrell Returns from Newton

Sorry for the lack of posts recently. I was in Newton for a couple of days meeting with Phil, Debbie, Jeremy, Spike, Mike Chambers, Amy Brooks and all your favorite Macromedia folks. There has been a lot of talk recently on the lists and forums about the future of ColdFusion, and ColdFusion versus all kinds of other technologies. I have stayed out of the discussions, but one thing I will say is that I came back from Newton very excited and encouraged. As Rob Burgess says here, "ColdFusion Developers Are in a Sweet Spot".

I have also been working with a few other folks on a new weblog framework. Mine is already about a month old, so it's about time to end-of-life it (joking, of course -- this was always intended to be an interim solution). Expect within the next week or two to see something new. Don't worry -- it will still use ColdFusion.

By the way, while waiting to fly out of Logan airport in Boston, I was able to get a little work done by using my Sony Ericsson T68i, a D-Link bluetooth dongle and my Powerbook to get connected right from the gate. Very cool, and pretty decent speeds, too (easily comparable to dial-up). It wasn't easy to get working, and it may have cost me a fortune in data transfer fees, but it was worth it. The only problem was that it attracted the attention of this guy who wouldn't leave Mike and I alone, so I didn't get as much work done as I would have liked.

Posted by cantrell at 3:25 PM. Link | References

January 12, 2003

Unscheduled Downtime

Sorry for the downtime this evening. I had to install some updates.

If you came to my weblog at the right time, you would have seen all my ColdFusion source. Please send me any improvements and/or bug fixes!

Posted by cantrell at 1:45 AM. Link | References

January 1, 2003

Christian Cantrell's Perspective - From the Macromedia Server Community Manager

Welcome to Christian Cantrell's Perspective, the weblog of the Macromedia Server Community Manager. This is where you will find news and information about Macromedia-related topics with an emphasis on ColdFusion and JRun (along with the occasional off-topic post). You can contribute to posts by clicking on the "Comments" tab, access other resources by clicking on the "Resources" tab or pull down my RSS news feed at the following URL:

http://markme.com/cantrell/weblog/rss.xml

I guess you could say my blog is currently in beta. I wrote it in just a few days and I'm constantly making tweaks, so don't be surprised if you stumble across a bug. If you find something of interest, please send me an email (cantrell@macromedia.com) and I'll get it fixed up. I also take feature requests.

Drop me a line if there is anything in particular you would like me to write about. Otherwise I will just wait and see what catches my attention.

Christian Cantrell

Posted by cantrell at 11:25 PM. Link | Comments (2) | References