Ramblings

Recently I moved every digital photo I own to the trash and then emptied the trash. Not a very smart move given that my backup HD had stopped working a few months prior. Yay, I just blew away EVERY DIGITAL PICTURE I OWNED. I’m blonde, we all know it … let’s move on.

On to disaster recovery…

Without pause I looked into file recovery applications, which should be run immediately as deleted files are subject to being overwritten. It appeared that there were a few big players that ran around $100. While prepping to swallow the cost I ran across PhotoRec, a free, command-line type application that seemed to fit the bill. After some initial stumbling with the options and then many many hours of processing, PhotoRec recovered pretty much every image that had ever been on my machine … 250,000 or so of them. These were recovered onto my shiny new 500GB, 2.5″, USB powered backup drive.

Next step, processing 250,000 images, which called for a little automation. I put together a script that routed through all the images and then considered means to match them properly. Fortunately it was not that difficult:

• If (file is a jpeg) AND (dimensions either 1600×1200 or 1200×1600) AND (created between 20090101 and 20090509) got me 350 photos which appear to be every single picture I took w/ my iPhone during the gap.
• If (file is jpeg) AND (filesize over 750k) AND (created between 20090101 and 20090509) got me 500 photos which appear to be almost entirely comprised of my digital camera action for that time period.

Yay, two passes and 250,000 images were narrowed down to 800ish. On to iPhoto to sort/manage.

I just ran across the Design bookmarklet, gave it a quick test-drive, and hoo-wee is it slick. Design provides well done grid, ruler, unit, and crosshair elements for use in checking alignment, measurement, and layout on web pages. A great asset if you happen to care about such things.

Seriously Guitar Praise? Can you at least pretend on with at least ONE feature that you are not blatantly ripping off Guitar Hero? Can you sleep at night knowing that you simply slapped a Bible on their work and are hoping to cash in?

I have always yearned for a simple group chat option that can be used to make real-time communication possible and simple across groups. Recently I stumbled across Openfire and my yearning seems to be over.

OpenFire is an open source, real time collaboration server that uses the XMPP (Jabber) protocol. It has a very simple install under OS X (available for other platforms as well) as well as a System Preference pane and browser-based administration console. There are optional plugins available for additional functionality.

I have been test-driving it with a small group for about a week now and so far it seems to be going over extremely well. There has been good discussion, fun banter, and many questions have been resolved quickly by the power of the collective knowledge.

For this to work it requires buy-in from enough people to make it worthwhile. Getting buy-in may require a bit of evangelism (perhaps harassment) up front and perhaps ongoing pinging to keep people in group chats. In the end everyone will most likely thank you.

My remain yearn is for an automated pinging service that provides notification to offline group members when chatter is happening. So far no luck on that one.

If you decide to give this a shot and are an Adium user, let me know. I have a batch of notes for getting started.

Recently I have been developing a lot more Javascript-enabled features and, to provide the best non-JS experience, have been careful to hide JS functionality in the non-JS cases. Doing so was a bit of a pain point until recently, when a genius implemented the simple solution of having JS class the body tag (ie: ) Providing an appropriate experience via CSS is now a snap.

Gotta love the simple solutions.

I have been working for the past few months on a new people search experience at LinkedIn.com. Over the weekend it went live, in an opt-in fashion. I am very proud of the final product and am pleased to have had the opportunity to be involved in making it happen.
Not only am I proud of my work on this, I have, as a beta user, enjoyed using it for people searches. Some of the new features came in very handy.

In taking a position at LinkedIn I anticipated being pushed to do greater things and also having the opportunity to learn from great minds. Both sum up this project. My HTML/CSS action was put to the test and I came out the better for it. My Javascript went from 0 to 60 (with a good bit of swerving, honking, and freaked out passengers) and when it came to a stop I had a nice collection of sensible YUI-based Javascripts that I am very happy with. My brain hurts from the learnin’, but it’s a good hurt.

Check it out:

• Not a LinkedIn user, sign up first.
• Get introduced the to finer points of the new search.
• Visit the LinkedIn people search and opt-in to the new experience.

Here’s a little riddle for you.

Who was introduced in 2008, is especially popular, fits snugly in one arm, is large and stout, and without a doubt is going to have a huge impact on my life?

Guess now and then scroll down to see the answer.

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If you guessed Maximus you were correct, only I don’t try to keep this guy warm.

Maximus is a tasty and very hoppy IPA made up in Sonoma Valley. It seems to be quite popular and mostly out of stock. It has the added bonus of solving the “oh (sigh) what beer should I get” issue. And at 8.4% … that’s my boy!

Today is September 4, the one-year anniversary of my first day on the job here in CA, and the one-month anniversary of being cig free.

It has been a busy year

• I quit a job that I had for thirteen years.
• We sold our house that we had for nine years. We still miss it, but we also still remember well the todo list we sold with it.
• We sold, packed, or gave away everything we owned, including a vast amount of baby gear.
• I drove my life from Grand Rapids to San Francisco, aided by Nick and my two co-pilot-cats (thanks).
• I started a new job. (scary)
• Gail got pregnant.
• Gail got unpregnant.
• Gail got pregnant.
• Gail fought her way through the immensely difficult CA dental-hygiene board process, having to take expensive classes over in Sacramento, dig up a board patient with bad teeth without the advantage of knowing hardly anybody here, and then suffer through the unforgiving board review. Nice work Gail … I’m impressed.
• I started a second job. (less scary … I’m getting better at this)
• Gail lost her father. :( Super sad … we’ll miss you Godfather.
• We got a nice new(ish) car, after dreaming of doing so for a decade.
• There was lots of traveling …. Yosemite, Tahoe, Grand Rapids (3x), San Antonio (Gail), Los Angeles (Gail), Napa, Muir Woods, Carmel. All were fun, but GR still wins.
• What am I forgetting?

Next year promises to be less dramatic, or at least have a better good/bad drama ratio:

• New family member …
• … followed by lots and lots of visitors, yay!
• The investment in moving here will likely start paying off more and more.
• I will be able to once again feel settled into a job.
• My career skills will continue to improve steadily as I continue to work alongside of exceptional talent.
• LinkedIn will deliver big things.
• I will do more skiing, for sure.
• What am I forgetting?

Talk to you again next nine four

We were planning to wait a while on this, but the current car has been costing almost a full down payment each month in repair. Combined with the fact that current car’s brakes were suspect (and we once again live somewhere with ups and downs), we bit the bullet and bought something that starts, stops, and has the bonus of being able to handle ample baby stuff.

My dad is representin’ in style on Google’s street views of Beloit, WI.

Dad makes Google Maps …

… and manages to do so in style.