MCVBC
Who:
Messiah College Men’s Volleyball Team
Tech Stack:
Apache Web server, PHP, MySQL, CSS, XHTML, Javascript, XML
Open Source:
Theme:
Re-colored (blue) Gravel by Noonnoo which can also be found at http://www.noonnoo.com/things/gravel_1-4/
Features:
Link:
I absolutely hate Java and Javascript, for a variety of indefensible and poor reasons as most people would see it, but nonetheless I am annoyed by and scared of, Java and Javascript.
Therefore… I am about to disembark on my most ambitious project yet to date. To make a fully functional app from bottom to top using:
MySQL database -> Java servlets -> AJAX front-end (Using GWT)
This will not be simple, this will not be fast, this will not be fun.
Ready…set…go!
Edit: Crap I jumped the gun, need to learn more about GWT RPC and servlets and how to implement them, hooray!
I’m totally blown away by the stupidity of IE.
A huge percentage of stupid IE “bugs” can be fixed by adding:
zoom:1;
to whatever element isn’t functioning properly.
See previous blog post for a link that explains IE’s “hasLayout” functionality.
Absolutely brilliant Microsoft, just inexplicably the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen.
Makes things relatively easy to fix though (not that I should have to fix them in the first place).
From Wikipedia:
“The JPEG compression algorithm is at its best on photographs and paintings of realistic scenes with smooth variations of tone and color. For web usage, where the bandwidth used by an image is important, JPEG is very popular. JPEG/Exif is also the most common format saved by digital cameras.
On the other hand, JPEG is not as well suited for line drawings and other textual or iconic graphics, where the sharp contrasts between adjacent pixels cause noticeable artifacts. Such images are better saved in a lossless graphics format such as TIFF, GIF, PNG, or a raw image format.”
Not a big fan of IE bugs but I found a good article explaining at a higher level how to make IE perform more standards friendly without applying gross hacks everywhere.
Sometimes I feel a little bit like a hamster running on one of those damned wheels.
I keep running and running but I’m never, really, getting that far.
Just within computers itself… the different stacks of technologies… the vast number of options for a … career.
Microsoft’s .Net -> Windows server, MS SQL, ASP.net, ADO.net, C#/Visual Basic/C++
Open Source -> Linux servers running Apache/Tomcat, My SQL, JSP, PHP, Java, Ruby, Python
Adobe -> Flex, Flash, Actionscript
Different data types -> JSON, XML, CSV
Parsing, traversing, and writing to each
Design layer -> XHTML, CSS, Javascript/AJAX fits in there somewhere but it seems to be used differently depending on who you are and what your main goal is.
Frameworks and IDE’s at every turn:
PHP – Zend, Symfony, Yii and others
Visual Studio Express
Adobe Flex
Microsoft Silverlight I’m sure has it’s own setup
Javascript libraries – DOJO, jquery, several others I can’t remember
Eclipse can encompass anything from Java to GWT (Google Web Toolkit, aka GoogleAjax)
Ruby on Rails ? I haven’t gotten to this one yet
To be honest it’s quite overwhelming… where the hell do you start?
And that’s just computers… what about life :grimace:
This is the best I can come up with, anyone got any other ideas? Aside from the $1.5k-$2k hard case enclosures…
Update:
This may be a better option – http://tinyurl.com/mxpjck
How long do Tiny URL’s last? If I come back here in 3 months will that url work or should I just include the ridiculously long Amazon url…hmm…
Update:
New AES
I keep forgetting the URL’s to the three places I have to pay loans so here they are.
For awhile there I had completely given up hope on Microsoft. When they released Vista I was fairly convinced that was the end, the beginning of the decline for the titan. Perhaps part of that was wishful thinking given just how large and diverse they are.
But now, I think they’re turning things around! Roughly a decade late to the game, they’ve finally brought something worth bothering with, to the plate, and no I wasn’t referring to Windows 7, although if half the hype is true they may have got something right there too.
Microsoft’s re-skinned, re-designed, re-named search engine! Bing!
As many are keen to point out, not better than Google, but at least getting close to par.
From Webmonkey:
“Bing actually isn’t that bad of a search engine.
The problem is that Bing doesn’t really offer any compelling advantage over Google.
Bing is fast, offers a minimalist results page (which looks just like Google’s results, but with a bit more filtering/subsearch options in the left-hand sidebar), and acceptable, though not stellar, results. There’s not much more to it.”
I’d like to argue, that’s precisely what we like about Google. Minimalist. Many other search engines early on tried to stack on more and more functionality and in the end, people just wanted something simple and straight-forward.
Take the minimalist approach and combine it with something aesthetically pleasing like an excellent photo or two, and you’ve pleased both sides of the spectrum (those who want functionality and those who like to stare at pretty objects).
Will I stop using Google and start using Bing, maybe, probably not (I’ll probably just go to Bing for the sweet photography if it changes daily), but I’m not nearly as disappointed in Microsoft anymore.
Update: Study Released – See Lifehacker
Lifehacker