Tues 11.30.10 - Photo of the brilliant end of sunset sky and laundry room light early this evening by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N8, no photo editing or color correcting.
Fare the well to November and the annual NaBloPoMo! One more month of 2010 and then on to a new year.
;o)
Mon 11.29.10 - Photos of Family Callis and Seal Beach were taken by Ms. Jen today with her Nokia N8.
Sun 11.28.10 - Today dawned bright, clear, chilly, and windy after last night's drive-by rainstorm. I woke up with a long-ish mental to-do list, as there is so much to do to prepare for this upcoming week. The Thanksgiving break was spent catching up sleep, quiet time, reading the latest on mobile app creation, and working on some programs.
So many plans for today were derailed by the wind and chill as well as helping some friends with their computer, but I was glad to stay in and enjoy one last quiet day of Thanksgiving weekend before tomorrow's work week starts.
Sat 11.27.10 - Photos of the end of the Seal Beach pier and Erika taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N8.
Sat 11.27.10 - Here is a photo of the road construction water pump generator that has been going for all day, all night, for weeks straight in front of the apartment building. Mind you it has been blessedly silent since about 7am yesterday morning when it decided to burn itself out.
Apparently the SBFD think that the contractors had not added any oil to the generator before departing for the long weekend. Nor have the contractors come to visit it since the incident yesterday.
Glad that the Seal Beach Fire Department are on top of things, even if Excel Paving is not.
The blessing of today, the Friday after Thanksgiving, is that Seal Beach has been remarkably quiet. There are people around town, but talking in low voices, moving slowly.
But the real reason it is quiet in my immediate neighborhood, is that the big road construction water pump generator that has been sitting about 30ft from my apartment had an engine fire this morning around 7am. The generator is charred black and blessedly silent.
The Seal Beach Fire Department was even kinder, as when they arrived to put out the fire with the big fire engine, they didn't use the sirens.
As I think what to write here right now about Thanksgiving, I think of the song lyric that goes "Give thanks with a grateful heart...".
Today I am thankful. Thankful for a beautiful autumn day. Thankful for a great meal with fun family members. Thankful for friends and family - near & far. Thankful for art, good books, and the internet. Thankful for all of you.
May you have a delightful rest of the week. And no, I won't go out shopping tomorrow for Black Friday, I plan to enjoy my day working on a mobile app.
Wed 11.24.10 - Photos taken by Ms. Jen today with her Nokia N8.
This afternoon two new & lovely babies arrived on the planet:
At 3:21pm Texas time (aka 1:21 Pacific time), #MyBaby3.0 was delivered to Family Randall. Congrats to Dustin, his lady wife, and the whole family.
And at 1:59pm Pacific time, Baby Boy Hernandez 2.0 arrived in Long Beach, California to Paige and Alex Hernandez!!! Congratulations to Alex, Paige, Diego and all the Hernandez and McCormick families.
Yay! New babies only 38 minutes apart! One girl and one boy! Yay!
Alex sent me a cute MMS photo of Paige and the new baby within the hour. I am very glad that the baby has arrived safely and with a full shock of dark hair.
Happy 22nd of November, 2010!
******
Update on 11.23.10 - Baby Hernandez 2.0 has been named Greyson Archer Hernandez. Yay, Greyson, welcome!
Sun 11.21.10 - Photos taken at Irvine Regional Park by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N8.
Sat 11.20.10 - Photos taken at Bolsa Chica Wetlands by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N8.
I deem today to be UX Friday. For your reading pleasure:
Peter Merholz on The Pernicious Effects of Advertising and Marketing Agencies Trying To Deliver User Experience Design with the blockbuster quote being one of the in article headlines, "Ad agencies are the new music industry". Go read it.
Janet M. Six at UX Matters on "Going Mobile, Part II: When to Go Mobile | Reuse Your Web Design or Start from Scratch?"
Marek Pawlowski in UX Magazine on "Mobile User Experience Trends on the Horizon"
Luke W on "Different Approaches to Mobile App Design"
By HTML5, I don't mean the hyped up Everything But the Kitchen Sink HTML5 that has been peddled the last two years by various internet and technology companies, but I mean the semantic web markup language that is the successor to HTML 4.
I have spent the last few years watching as my early bleeding edge adopter friends have been talking about, blogging about, and writing about HTML5, all the while hearing fantastic claims from various members of the the tech related or marketing crowd. I have been somewhat skeptical, as I am a big fan of the stripped down, rigid framework of XHTML 1.0.
I like minimalism. I like my code separated from my presentation and behavior. HTML5 from the beginning looked like a big ole' pot of jambalya rather than the straight, clean formalism of XHMTL. When the W3C announced that there would be no XHTML 2.0, I knew it was only a matter of time before I caved and joined the HTML5 bandwagon.
While that time has come for this blog to convert to HTLM5, my little XHTML/Python coding soul and typing fingers will most likely be still stripping down the code and working on how to get this blog really lean and mean, even if HTML5 is still in its early days and is not a full spec at this point.
Give me a few weeks to settle in with, tweak, and rummage around the new HTML5 code base, please be patient. I have tested it thoroughly on Mac & Ubuntu, but not on Windows. Right now I have only access to IE8, as my old 2004 Dell with a dual boot of IE6 and IE7 died on Tuesday and has gone off to e-recycling heaven.
If you have access to a PC with IE6 or IE7, please take a screen shot of the front page of the blog and of this page, and email the screenshots to me noting which version of Windows & which version of IE (ex: Win XP/IE6, Vista/IE7, etc). I am using Remy Sharp's HTML5 shiv to make the code work in all versions of Internet Explorer, but if you see quirks, please let me know.
Over time, I am sure I will continue to explore HTML5 in more depth but right now, I am happy how this little experiment in transferring the markup of this blog from XHTML to HTML5 has gone.
Ok, friends, family, colleagues, and drive bys compliments of search engines, please be prepared for MAJOR BLOG CONSTRUCTION.
I am going to completely overhaul this blog in the next two days and switch from my somewhat modified XHTML 1.0 Movable Type templates to HTML5 code and templates of my own creation. As is my want for my own blog, I will be doing this live and not in a test dev/stage server type thing. Be prepared for a bit of a bumpy ride and you might see a peak behind the curtain, hang tight.
Wish me well, I am diving in.
All apologies to my readers, but my server has decided to slow down to a crawl the last few hours/days. It has been on the docket for a few months now to move this blog from shared hosting to a VPS, but the last few days of (bad) server performance is making it very clear to me that it is bad as even pages with very little text and no images are taking longer than 10 seconds to render.
I have run a selection of pages through the validators** to see if there is some dropped code or other reason, of which there is nothing to fix right now, so it is the server. Please bear with us and hopefully we* will return to reasonable server performance fairly soon, or by December we will move.
** Yes, I know that the code of this blog's template needs serious updating. My plan has been to move to a VPS and strip down all the template code to a very simplified html5 + modernizr/googlehtml5shiv.
Mon 11.15.10 - Photo of the Seal Beach Pier seal statue taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N8.
After I wrote last night's post on "DIY Mobile Programming: Get Started with HTML, CSS, and Javascript", I realized that I assumed that all of my readers who want to learn to create | develop their own mobile apps are already familiar with and design | develop in HTML, CSS, and Javascript.
This is after I shut off my computer and was on my way to bed, when I realized that maybe those of us in the web & mobile industries need to give more than lipservice to the idea of web education but is it time for all of us to consider that HTML should be apart of the canon of literacy.
Should HTML, in a basic form, be taught in primary school along with reading, writing, and arithmetic?
Yes, I do think it should. The internet, in all of its permutations, is in every aspect of our lives regardless if one lives in the developed or developing world(s). If we don't teach the basics of the markup language of how to develop | create for the internet, then we are leaving literacy half-baked at best for the 21st Century, because if one does not understand the basic underpinnings of the internet, then one is illiterate to a major facet of 21st Century life.
The drive to increase literacy over the last 200 years has been more than making sure the most folks possible can read and write but it has also been the drive to give everyone the skills to participate on a more level playing field in society, as well as to open the opportunity for all of society to rise to the level of the educated. In every country where literacy has risen above 80%, poverty has decreased, self-sufficiency has increased, and the economy grows in proportion to the increase in literacy.
If you can learn to count to ten in another language, you can learn the 10 most used tags in HTML. If you can string to together a sentence or two in your native language, you can learn the semantics and grammar of HTML. With HTML, you are more than partially capable of creating simple pages and apps for the internet, be it mobile or desktop.
When one can create a page or alter a page in their care, then they are no longer audience, but a participant. No longer just a consumer, but a creator.
*******
Ms. Jen's DIY Programming Series:
DIY Dev: Program or be Programmed
DIY Mobile Programming: Get Started with HTML, CSS, and Javascript
DIY Programming: Should HTML be Required for Literacy in the 21st Century?
"If you can build your app with HTML, CSS & JavaScript, then you probably should." - @jonathanstark #wdx (via @garazi)
Some friends recently asked on Twitter what was the best way to start programming mobile apps with Nokia's Qt, as they found that it was not as easy as the publicity from Nokia had purported Qt to be.
I replied: "When devs say a 'framework' is "easy" it is code for "It won't take 15 months of 10 hour days & make you want to KILL yourself.""
Anyone who has developed an application, be it for the desktop or mobile, can tell you that framework makes it so much easier, but easy is a relative term. What easy may mean is that development time is reduced from 6 months to 6 weeks or less. Still not that easy, but easier and a big relief.
For folks who want to learn to create and develop their own mobile apps, but don't have much programming experience or little at all, I would like to suggest starting with developing a simple app in HTML, CSS, and Javascript to get your feet wet and see if you can get your idea up and running either as a mobile web app or as a native mobile app that is coded in HTML, CSS, and Javascript.
As I wrote in DIY Dev: Program or be Programmed a couple of weeks back, there comes a time when your own natural diy urge or curiosity or frustration with a lack of an app drives one to learn how to program a computer, server, or mobile phone so that the itch has been scratched.
Rather than get bogged down in the debate between mobile web apps and native apps, let me give a few links to resources out there to help get you started on creating your own mobile HTML, CSS, Javascript app be it for the mobile web or a native app:
Cross Platform HTML, CSS, Javascript Mobile Development Frameworks:
PhoneGap - http://www.phonegap.com/
Sencha - http://www.sencha.com/
JQuery Mobile - http://jquerymobile.com/
Qt Quick - http://qt.nokia.com/products/qt-quick/
Tutorials and Presentations:
Building Mobile Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
HOWTO: Create native-looking iPhone/iPad applications from HTML, CSS and JavaScript
Forum Nokia on Developing for the Mobile Web
Tips and Tricks for developing Mobile Widgets
Books:
Programming the Mobile Web
Beginning Smartphone Web Development: Building Javascript, CSS, HTML and Ajax-Based Applications
Building Android Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
Have fun, get coding, and send us/ let's us know what you have created.
*******
Ms. Jen's DIY Programming Series:
DIY Dev: Program or be Programmed
DIY Mobile Programming: Get Started with HTML, CSS, and Javascript
DIY Programming: Should HTML be Required for Literacy in the 21st Century?
More folks out in Internet-land are getting riled up over the TSA's back scatter x-ray scanner (aka the Porn-o-Scan) and a few more are getting riled up enough to call for a boycott/activism stance in the form of National Opt-Out Day and then Mr. Goldberg puts forth the best suggestion yet:
Oh yeah.
In other News, Ask the Pilot, tells America to remember recent history and take a chill pill. And that includes the TSA.
Sat 11.13.10 - Last night I helped out Alex and worked the front door at the bar for the Ill Repute / Fang show that Ron Martinez put on. I used the opportunity of my favorite low light photography challenge to see how the Nokia N8 does at taking photos inside of Alex's, as the walls are all painted a deep red and suck the light out of photos making most photography dashedly difficult even with a flash.
With both the flash turned off and the flash turned on the Nokia N8 did a great job at capturing the scene and not either whiting out with the flash or being completely dark without the flash. Due to being at the door all night, I was not able to see how it performed in taking photos of the bands on stage.
Next time.
Thurs 11.11.10 - Photos of the pier taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N8 this afternoon while walking the dogs.
It is all fine and dandy to drive to San Francisco or Lost Wages or Phoenix from LA, but what happens if you need to go farther afield or even across an ocean? Not even BlkPhbe the trusted Prius can drive across the ocean.
As bizarre as I find the whole flying experience in recent years, particularly the part at the airport before departure, I do like airports. Back when one could walk one's friends or family to their departure gate, before the advent of boarding pass folks beyond security only, I used to offer to take friends to the airport, as I enjoy the hustle, bustle, and air of possibility that pervades a good, large airport.
People are going places! I could be going places! What fun people watching!
The only problem in the post 9/11 world, the hustle and bustle has been replaced with dour faced, tired, stressed out people. And that only covers the employees and TSA folk, as for the passengers there is an air of defeat.
GW Bush's pronouncement of "Mission Accomplished" aside, I think the terrorists have won. Instead of airports being a place of movement, anticipation, and possibilities, they are now a place of banal, mindless bureaucracy that verges on shows of soul-corroding power trips in the name of supposed security.
One wanna-be terrorist failed to blow up his shoe, now millions of people get to have their shoes inspected. One failed terrorist couldn't get his underwear to explode, now many more innocents get to be patted down & felt up in the name of making us all safer.
Before you start thinking, "Well, I am willing to put up with ALL of that AND MORE to be secure!" Are you really that secure? I raise an eyebrow at you. You must not fly that often anymore.
As I detailed out in last night's post, for trips shorter than 6 hours, I now drive rather than deal with the b.s. at the airport.
Flying internationally is one exception to my little no-fly rule, as I do like to get into an aluminum tube with wings and be strapped in for 10-12 hours so that I can emerge on the other side in a new world. This I like so much, I will put up with quite a bit.
I like watching Labrador, Baffin Island, Greenland, and Iceland from 35,000 ft in the air as the metal tube is getting jostled about by the turbulent air in the interstices of the North Atlantic and the North American landmass. It is even more fun to watch Greenland & Bafflin Island go by with a barf bag* in one hand while one is trying to operate a camera in the other while pressing the lens to the window.
One of these days, I will touch down in Iceland and Greenland for a proper visit rather than just fly over. For Greenland, I will even put up with the airport.
*Sometimes, if it smells real bad, no matter how hungry, don't eat the airplane food. Yes, they still feed you on International flights.
Rather than fly to San Francisco this weekend to attend Cindy & Matt's Wedding 2.0, I decided to drive.
Generally, I prefer to drive than to fly. I don't like the expense and hassle of flying. It isn't just the cost of the plane ticket & fees but also do I park my car at a protected pay lot or do I ask a friend or family member to drive me & pick me up from the airport? What about the time it takes to get to the aiport, through security, etc? I own a 2007 Toyota Prius that gets between 46-52 mpg when driving; yes, I can go 460 - 520 miles to a 10 gallon tank of gas. For short trips, there is a definite time savings to driving, as well as money savings.
Las Vegas from SoCal? Drive. If you plan it right, it is 4 hours door to door via the car. I dare you to beat that with driving to the airport, going through security, being at the gate 45 minutes before the flight, plus the 45min to 1 hour flight time & additional taxing to the gate & getting out of the airport & to your destination time. Get a road trip partner & just go.
Phoenix? Also, just drive.
San Francisco? Ooh, that one is hard. It usually is 4-4.5 hours door to door if you fly, plus a minimum of $110 for ticket & fees if you book two weeks ahead. It is 6.5-8 hours door to door from SoCal to SF and less than $60 total in my car, if I drive. But dang if the the drive through the Central Valley on the I-5 is not a mind-numbing haul, even if it is really shorter in the terms of time than one's brain perceives it. In the end, it is time and how much I need my car when I am in SF that determines if I drive or fly.
The last two trips to San Francisco, I have flown, as I was only in the city for a day or two and was only at one location both times. The trip before that in April, I drove up by myself as I did need my car to get around, and I drove back with my brother who needed to visit a series of commercial real estate properties for work in the Silicon Valley. I picked him up in SF, we drove around for a couple of hours, hit Chinese food in Sunnyvale, looked at a few more buildings and then drove home to LA. Easy peasy.
I like flying Virgin America, it is fun. I like flying American, even if others don't. I *actually* like LAX. So, if I was only going to be in San Francisco for a weekend wedding and visiting of friends, having to leave late Friday or early Saturday and then be back by Monday morning, wouldn't flying be easier?
Ah, no.
Zadie Smith reviews 'The Social Network' in Generation Why?: "How long is a generation these days? I must be in Mark Zuckerberg's generation--there are only nine years between us--but somehow it doesn't feel that way. This despite the fact that I can say (like everyone else on Harvard's campus in the fall of 2003) that "I was there" at Facebook's inception, and remember Facemash and the fuss it caused; also that tiny, exquisite movie star trailed by fan-boys through the snow wherever she went, and the awful snow itself, turning your toes gray, destroying your spirit, bringing a bloodless end to a squirrel on my block: frozen, inanimate, perfect--like the Blaschka glass flowers. Doubtless years from now I will misremember my closeness to Zuckerberg, in the same spirit that everyone in '60s Liverpool met John Lennon.
At the time, though, I felt distant from Zuckerberg and all the kids at Harvard. I still feel distant from them now, ever more so, as I increasingly opt out (by choice, by default) of the things they have embraced. We have different ideas about things. Specifically we have different ideas about what a person is, or should be. I often worry that my idea of personhood is nostalgic, irrational, inaccurate. Perhaps Generation Facebook have built their virtual mansions in good faith, in order to house the People 2.0 they genuinely are, and if I feel uncomfortable within them it is because I am stuck at Person 1.0. Then again, the more time I spend with the tail end of Generation Facebook (in the shape of my students) the more convinced I become that some of the software currently shaping their generation is unworthy of them. They are more interesting than it is. They deserve better."
David Neary on The MeeGo Progress Report: A+ or D-?
Laurie on Why I really, really hate Instagram
Photo of Scruffy racing around the Green Belt taken on 11.03.10 by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N8.
Sun 11.07.10 - Happy 7th Birthday to the one of best the dogs ever, Scruffy McDoglet!
Sun 11.07.10 - Sunday: wake up. Brunch with friends. Tea & crepes at Queen Malika in the Castro with Jason. Get in the car and drive back to SoCal via the Central Valley in the rain.
Photos taken by Ms. Jen on with her Nokia N8.
Photos taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N8.
Sat 11.06.10 - 361 days after Wedding 1.0, Cindy Li and Matt Harris got married (Wedding 2.0) at the Aquarium by the Bay. Jeremy Keith made an excellent officiant, the ceremony was lovely, and I loved that Cindy's dad, Mr. Li gave a blessing prayer in Chinese.
After the ceremony, the receiving line was held in the Aquarium proper and we were encouraged to visit the various tanks & displays while the catering staff re-purposed the event room for the reception.
The reception was lovely with all the guests sat at airport code tables. I was at YVR with a lovely set of friends and the reception was delightful. Food, dancing, laughter, catching up.
Congratulations to Cindy and Matt!
Fri 11.05.10 - Lexi is a three month old long haired chihuahua pup that has visited with my neighbor's daughters twice this week. She is just tiny, tiny, tiny* and super cute/sweet. Best yet, she has soft fur and puppy smell.
* Lexi is about 3 pounds and is not even 5 inches tall.
Today's LA Times has a lovely article on the resurgence of Temple Beth Israel in the Highland Park / Eagle Rock section of northeast Los Angeles, of which there is a link to an in-depth essay in LA Magazine from 2008 by Ed Leibowitz about Finding Sanctuary at Beth Israel.
As I read both articles, I was enchanted by the slice of Los Angeles history that Beth Israel represents and by the people who have invested their lives in that congregation from the 1920s to today. As I read the LA Times story and the first two pages of the LA Magazine essay, the back of my brains kept saying to me, "I think this is Lauren's grandpa's synagogue." I emailed her to see if it was this temple or not.
About six years ago when Lauren and I were roommates, and when I was in the throes of my genealogy research phase Lauren told me what she knew of her various family members to see if I could find more. The Isaacson line was the fun one to research as Lauren's dad Joe was the son of a rabbi, who was the son of a rabbi from Selma, Alabama. We did know that Lauren's grandpa was a founding member and rabbi of a synagogue in LA named Beth Israel.
By the time I had read the sixth page of the LA Magazine article, Lauren had emailed me back to let me know that the Temple Beth Israel in both articles was one and the same as her grandpa had been a rabbi at. I am very glad that Temple Beth Israel is currently undergoing a renaissance with young families in the Eagle Rock / Highland Park area, and even more glad that the temple of my Lauren's grandfather is continuing to be a blessing in its community.
Update from Fri 11.05.10 - Lauren emailed me this morning to let me know that her grandpa, Rabbi Isaacson, as a founder at the Temple Beth Israel in Hollywood in the same era.
Thurs 11.4.10 - Temperature yesterday at 3pm or thereabouts: 92F. Temperature today at 1:30pm or thereabouts: 95F. At the beach, people, at the beach.
Welcome to November 4th, 2010. Every autumn Southern California gets at least two good and hot heat waves. Gah.
Wed 11.03.10 - There is a fabulous garden on the front row of the Seal Beach boardwalk/ Seal Way where the owner/gardener is in a lovely little south facing micro-climate that allows him to grow bananas, tomatoes until Christmas, artichokes, and tropical flowers. This flower is one of my favorites in his garden.
Tues 11.02.10 - I don't like horror or scary movies, but I feel like I am living in one. Early this morning I woke up in the 5am hour from a nightmare in which everyone around me turned into a zombie. My first waking thought, of which I tweeted fairly soon after was:
"Is it just me or does it seem wrong that US Election day this year falls on Dia de los Muertos?"
Mon 11.01.10 - Actually, what I really love about the Nokia N8 - the amazing low light photos!
View of Catalina Island, the Seal Beach pier parking lot, a container ship, and Palos Verdes taken this evening sometime after 6pm with my Nokia N8. The sunset and dusk was lovely tonight and the air was crystal clear.
Today, the 1st of November, is the start of annual November National Blog Posting Month, where folks blog daily. It is also the start of NaNoWriMo (write a novel in one month!) and NaVloPoMo (video yourself & friends daily!).
Per usual, I am encouraging you, dear reader, to take up the challenge this month and flex your creativity muscles with daily practice - go blog, vlog, write, photoblog, etc!