weekends are for leisure

Trying to do a brain-dump of things I’ve encountered at my new job, since I’ve been doing work in several new areas.

My employer’s website was crashing on IE7. When I tried to re-create the issue on my IE8 machine, it crashed for me as well. Also crashed when I put IE8 in IE7 mode (the Developer Tools are quite nice).

Took me a while to get used to the IE Developer Tools, and eventually I found the JavaScript debugger. Problem was, I couldn’t figure out how to debug a site that crashes the browser once it loads. I thought maybe I could load the page and start the debugger before it crashed. But that didn’t work because what I really needed to do was start the debugger and also tell it to break immediately. If I remember correctly, it defaults to breaking on errors. You have to de-select that button and then click the one next to it so it breaks immediately. Needless to say I didn’t have enough time to do both.

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Won’t fire: $(‘section’).live(‘click’, function(){ … });

But if the element you’re binding to is an anchor tag, it WILL fire.

The workaround: add onclick=“” to the element you’re binding to.

This applies to iOS 4.0.

Update (Oct 7, 2010): I should add that this is a known bug. And that I’ve discovered a workaround.

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In January 2010 I decided to break from common database convention and design a new style of ORM. It was also an excuse to dive deeper into Python 3. The result is my Data Type Tables project, which currently only supports sqlite3.

Features:

• You don’t have to write any SQL to use it, not even create table statements. Right, you’re not impressed, given that you can do the same with Ruby on Rails. BUT, whatever.
• If you add fields to a class you still don’t have to write any SQL, or perform any migrations. The ORM handles it for you (read on to find out how).
• You can do simple relations, like Products in Categories.
• You can do trees, like Categories and Sub-Categories (to infinity).
• You get field-level revisions without having to do a thing. So when you update a Product’s name, all previous values are preserved. You can fetch the history if you need to.

However:

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A month ago I got excited about node.js. Watched two presentations, installed it, ran a few tests, and then ran out of steam for lack of a real project idea. Hate when that happens.

At the same time I also got excited about learning advanced Javascript concepts since it would no doubt help me with node.js, so I decided to investigate jQuery and see what makes it tick. And what better way to really investigate jQuery than to try to build something similar on my own? Actually, that’s only part of the story: I wanted to use jQuery on an XML document, but discovered that the namespaces render it useless. I saw no reason why it shouldn’t work. If I couldn’t fix jQuery, I’d have to build something similar myself.

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This continues my coverage of our trip out west … the move to Portland. This leg is from Cheyenne, WY to Salt Lake, UT.

We were happy to leave Cheyenne but it seems we pressed on a bit too quickly. Kristen started out driving, but we reached barren desert terrain quite soon, and the sun was beating in on her side pretty heavily. The bad La Quinta breakfast, horrible coffee, no fruit, and forgetting to drink sufficient water all contributed to her getting a bit dehydrated. No fun. I took over so she could recuperate.

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Techies and startup dreamers, how about another Friday distraction?

Please enlighten me if any of these exist. This is just a brain-dump of half-thoughs I’ve had over the past year.

Pluggable, Context-aware Help System (Updated again, 02/21)

Many web apps don’t have an integrated help system, or help docs at all. The system I’m imagining would make use of AJAX and JavaScript to add context-sensitive help to a web app that would otherwise not offer much assistance to its users.

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Think I listened to 8 Charlie Rose episodes yesterday while working. All of Michael Arrington’s (because I was curious), a few with Bill Gates and the newest with Jeff Bezos.

I think if I could trade places with any successful tech CEO/entrepreneur, it would be Jeff Bezos. He’s 100% likable, with tons of energy.

Charlie asked Jeff which qualities most helped him be successful and Jeff responded, “The willingness to be misunderstood. The willingness to fail. The willingness to be long-term oriented.”

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Wherein I discuss my elementary ideas and woes regarding radio control circuit design, air conditioners, building materials, and a few other things. It’s a portrait of what it’s like to be irked by things that should have been designed better, or could be.

Not sure when I started thinking about improving upon the design of things, but I think it was early on in my childhood. Probably as soon as I started taking things apart to investigate the internals and repurpose the parts. Mainly I’d take apart electronic toys, since they held the most mystery. Occasionally I’d take apart things, like my sister’s stereo, just to see what was inside. She wasn’t happy, but it still worked after I put it back together.

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They’re marshes, and they’re in Iraq. What the? Seriously. And the people that inhabit them staged a minor uprising against Saddam in the 90s. Saddam got pissed, and made a conscious effort to divert water away from the marshes, thus draining them. The people were displaced; the land turned to desert.

But seeds are robust. After the fall of Saddam, some of the diversion banks were breached in order to send water back into the area and restore the marshes. It’s working. Reeds are growing once-again.

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On Nov 11, I updated the survey system on Flam Swiss, my drumline cadence composition venture. In the process I also thought, I’ll dedicate the right side of the site to surveys, that way they won’t be missed, and visitors will know what to expect.

Well, this also means I removed my photo from the right-side of the site. It was on every page and sat just above the survey questions. It was a personal touch and was an instant clue as to who’s behind the site and the cadences. During the two days that the photo was removed I received no survey responses. There were 10-13 visitors during that time period so I expected to get at least 1 submission.

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