LONG, BUSY SUMMER

I feel like the alma mater scene at the end of Dirty Dancing, when staff and guests of Kellerman's sing the hotel's farewell song. Summer's over folks, it's been great. Ready or not. Here comes the chagim, school, jackets and real life. Where to begin:

1. We MOVED! My sister and brother in law and family decided to live in Israel on a trial basis, so we're housesitting the manse until they decide where to live. This could take awhile.
2. My back went out and suddenly I felt every inch my thirty-five years. Thankfully, it seems to be recovering rapidly and with some preemptive stretching exercises should be fine.
3. My oldest had her first day of school. Playgroup, really, but it was a momentous occasion for Mother and Father. Said daughter took it all in stride and enjoyed every minute of her first day. (Sniff, how soon they grow!)
4. I assisted in launching my synagogue's online lecture and study website. Users can click in to listen or download lectures on various Torah topics. I'm hoping for some major heavenly brownie points for this one.
5. I (re)wrote the bulk of a major bank's retail money wire application.  When it goes live, it will be the most highly trafficked application I've written in at least ten years.
6. My good friend Kat got engaged!
7. THIS JUST IN TO THE WTF DEPARTMENT: German terror plotters were collecting unemployment benefits while their main occupation was the (terror) plot.

GO GO CODE MONKEY!

Work safe music video. Hat tip: Roumen

IMPORTANT SAFETY NOTICE

This article in BusinessWeek about unsafe tires made in China is sobering. In the wake of storiesW about unsafe foodstuffs and chemicals sourced from the Chinese mainland, this tire story indicates a trend. So my advice is: Know the country of origin of consumables you buy that may impact the safety or well being of you and yours. It appears that the basics of quality control and civic responsibility are severely lacking in China and you should factor this into account when shopping on price for your purchases.

TWOFOR

If you're a programming nerd, this essay on abject-oriented programming is hilarious. (Hat tip: Ned.) Joel's review of some management tomes, has me seriously considering going out and buying some.

MY AUTO-AERO FEED

I just noticed that you can make your tagged categories available as a feed from Google Reader. I'm so happy I switched to Reader from Sage awhile back as my primary RSS experience. Google constantly adds interesting new features that enhance the recombinant nature of feed consumption in ways that are useful to me. I just discovered a new aerospace related blog that I added to the feed this morning: Jetwhine. Oh yeah, here's the link to my auto--aero tagged feeds.

PLASTIC FANTASTIC

I love airplanes. This scoop on the soon-to-be-revealed very first Boeing 787 Dreamliner -mark the calendar, July 8, 2007 (7-8-7, get it?)- has me pretty excited. The 787 is the first commercial jet who's primary structure is composite (read: plastic) which, due to its of its being stronger and lighter than the alloys mostly used until now, will result in increased cabin pressure and comfort and larger windows. Yay!

IT"S A CULT

In the course of my current work, I stumbled upon Drupal. I've heard of Drupal in the past -it's the open source content management system (CMS, for short) that powers thousands of web sites. Some of the biggies use it, like slashdot. The beauty of a CMS is that it takes the drudgery of building a website out of your hands. Content creation, categorization and relationships are baked into the product. Additionally, and most importantly Drupal has a large and vibrant ecosystem of users and developers that contribute to the project and user community. Drupal is written on top of the so-called AMP stack (Apache webserver, MySQL relational database, PHP programming language) -commonly referred to as LAMP (Add Linux at the front.) Its architecture is one of the reasons that historically I've not paid much attention to it. I've only recently caved and started to develop in PHP in response to some new clients' needs. While my gripes about the encapsulation and interoperability of this development toolset remain, I can't help but be impressed by the massive amount of "plain 'ole it just works" products out there that have been developed with this stuff. It's not an exaggeration to say that possibly the largest single chunk of web faff out there is deployed using LAMP.

But I digress. Drupal is what has me jizzed at the moment. All three new clients I've taken on have unique requirements that can be relatively easily met with Drupal and some additional modules. My favorite module  so far has been the Audio module, which snapped in to a Drupal installation like a dream and provided instant podcasting support for my local synagogue. The most powerful and far-reaching modules I've encountered so far are the view module, which provides custom and themeable views and the CCK module, which is a powerful extension for adding custom fields to Drupal content types, or nodes, in Drupal parlance. Yes, they have a parlance. The user community is rabid in its devotion to this. I've been immersed in Drupal for almost two weeks now and have learned a lot from two podcasts in particular. The Geeks & God podcast on Podcasting with Drupal pointed me to the solution I'm using at one site. The Lullabot podcast is pretty much the bees knees on Drupal podcasting, AFAIK. It seems that the Lullabot crew are also quite definitive in all their Drupal work. I've been having trouble setting up a proper Drupal development including remote debugging, but this tutorial on the IBM website (of all places!) may address that problem. To paraphrase the Sony exec interviewed in Lullabot podcast 39: "It seemed like the Drupal community was a cult. My experience has been that with technology cults are a good thing." So there you have it, I've joined a cult! Feel the Love. Peace Out.

IT'S GENETIC

Apparently my early childhood penchant for trudging out the door with a suitcase or briefcase and "going to Florida" has been inherited by my oldest. Yesterday morning, she insisted on taking her suitcase with her on our walk. So cute. So genetic memory isn't just a plot point on Stargate SG-1 (geek alert.)

NOTES KILLER? Is Google Gears a potential competitor to Lotus Notes in the offline space? Probably not, at least in the near term, although it could be if used properly by savvy developers. I'm reminded of DOLS, a Lotus offering that provides a similar functionality. DOLS has more industrial-grade support for security and application development than Gears probably has -at least at this point in time. DOLS is a huge, hairy download, though. Gears seems to be elegantly simple and lightweight, like most Google ideas. 

STIIL TRUCKIN' I'm writing this post using Windows Live Writer. WLW is he first rich client app I've been comfortable using tor blogging since the late, great Sauce Reader. Blogger's Blogger for Word add-in is unacceptable to me as it keeps Word's proprietary style information in the uploaded HTML, which I hate strongly dislike.

CORRECTION. My sister Bena says I would go to California, not Florida. I was too young to remember the details myself.

BUT WHY?

Apple announced today that their Safari web browser is now available for Windows. I downloaded and played with it and it is shiny, new, cool and slick. I like the font rendering better than Firefox and by enjoyed using it -which is more than I could ever say from similar five minute test drives of several versions of the Opera web browser. The overriding question I have though, is why? Unless there's a content play in the future that's tied to Safari -which would arouse the ire of the standards-loving web development community that adores Apple- I don't quite see the point. Verdict: stick to Firefox for Windows unless and until a compelling reason for Safari emerges.

CREATURE COMFORTS. If you're not familiar with Nick Park's classic claymation series that ran in England in the '80's called Creature Comforts, today's your lucky day. An updated version of the series, which interviews people all across America on slice of life issues and sets the sesions to claymation animals is now running on CBS. Watch the episode for free online from CBS.com or look up classic sketches (set in the London Zoo) on Youtube or AtomFilms for a truly hilarious diversion.

APPLE'S SECRET SAUCE

It occurred to me over this weekend that all Apple needs to do to assure the continued success of its MacOS operating system is to stay one step ahead of Linux. That's all. This strategy assures Apple the undying affection of the geek crowd while making its own roadmap amazingly simple: Just build and improve upon the current system and keep the *NIX core (in Apple's case, open-source BSD) current. This keeps a lid on the core OS investment Apple needs to make as opposed to, say, Microsoft, which needs a veritable army of developers to maintain the monolithic Windows code-base. The added advantage of Apple's strategy is that the core OS decisions have already been vetted by the community keepers of the *NIX/BSD flame. Simple!

I have another post in the works on the shadow that Steve Jobs casts over any industry tangentially connected to high technology and how much of his aura may actually be riding on the upcoming Apple iPhone release. This ties in to my old ideas regarding Religion 2.0 that were dredged up during a conversation Friday night with Mennu. Stay tuned.

THE WILDLIFE ARE COMING

Squirrels with Lightsabers! (hat tip: Jeremy)

DICK AND JANE

Lorraine & I watched Fun with Dick and Jane last night. The recent Jim Carrey Tea Leoni one. At first I found Tea annoying, but -as she often does- she gets under your skin as the movie progresses and it soon became apparent how good of a pairing Ms. Leoni is with Jim Carrey. I remember when I first came across Tea Leoni as Alicia on Flying Blind, an early, short lived, Fox Sitcom that I liked. Incidentally, Clea Lewis, who just resurfaced on my radar on Andy Barker, PI, was a hilarious player in that show as well. There is a funny scene in the DVD's gag reel of Jim Carrey putting some flour on his moustache area and pretending to ask partygoers in his (empty) kitchen if he can get anything for them. Also, Tea Leoni makes up a name of Mrs. Vegetabooth while engaging in a heist at the end of the movie that struck me as the best made-up-on-the-spot name I can recall ever hearing.

WRITTEN WITH Windows Live Writer. A blog posting tool compatible with most poupar blogging services. This is my first post with WLV, it seems promising, but a bit sluggish. The plugin possibilities seem intriguing, though.

LEGACY

All right, we get it already! Star Wars blends a lot of mythological elements into its narrative tapestry. How many times does the Flanneled One need to bang this over our heads?

THE OLD (JEWISH) MAN AND THE SEA

This morning I brought my big brother to the in-laws to get some casting in on the lake near their house. So big bro finally landed the big one. After many years of casting about in the Catskills trying to land a Bass he finally got one. A whopper. Hemingway-esque. Click here and bask in the glory.

BUNNY UPDATE

At the recommendation of a local Petco employee who claimed to have worked at a shelter, I gave the bunny I took in (see prev. post) some Pedialyte to get hydrated (he was quite moribund when I first took him) and puppy formula (instead of the recommended KMR.) I fed him through an eyedropper and he perked up and became more animated throughout the day. Friday evening, though, I noticed what was presumably the mother hanging around the remains of the burrow, so I put the little guy back. It's been two days and still no sign of him -which I'm taking to be a good thing. The mother was back again in the area last evening as well, so I'm assuming that the little guy is hiding somewhere in the tall grass around my house. I have a slight dilemma as I'm debating whether to ask my landlord to get the overdue gardener to mow the lawn for Memorial Day or to just let what very well may be my erstwhile charge's hideout continue to provide him shelter.

TOPIC CHANGE: This NYTimes magazine article on Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen is amusing. I'm always fascinated by comedians (or comedic writers) and their art. I wonder what Seth's career arc will look like ten years from know. It seems to me that he's pretty much Judd's alter-ego at the moment -much the way George Costanza was Larry David's. Seth is much younger that Jason Alexander was when he took on that famous persona, though. Will he morph into a screen presence in his own right? Will he transition more towards a writing/behind the scenes career? (much the way Harold Ramis -Ghostbusters' Spangler- developed? Only time will tell.

BUNNY

A wild rabbit had a litter on my neighbor's lawn sometime in the past week. I checked up on the little fuzzballs this morning and only one little guy is alive, the rest seemed to have passed in the night. So now I have a teeny tiny little rabbit snuggling in an old towel in my office waiting for me to get some Kitten Milk Replacement from the local Petco as soon as it opens. He probably won't live through the day, though. If he had a Hebrew name to pray for I guess it would be "Chayim Bugs ben/ (bas?) Plonis."

CROSS YOUR FINGERS

I finally got the baby Panda Oranda I've been searching for all those years. He's from a local Petco, and he looks a little beat-up, but he swims fine. I've got the little guy in quarantine for the next week or two. You can't be too safe with new fishies -especially ones from chains stores like Petco. I've bought Typhoid Marys before that have killed of entire tanks and I'm not getting burned again. So here's to hoping that the new dude sticks around for awhile!

NEW SPACE

I‘ve always been interested in Aerospace. The X-Prize -a contest for being the first private entity to get into space repeatedly has been won awhile back and has spawned -among others- Virgin Galactic, a spacefaring airline, scheduled to start service soon. The real player to watch these days, though, is Elon Musk and his SpaceX. Elon made his fortune on the internetby cofounding eBay, among other things. SpaceX is set to achieve real orbital space service for man and machine within the next two years at a fraction of the cost of what Uncle Sam pays. According to Elon, the revolution needed for affordable space transport isn't technological, rather it's in the management and cost control of the spacefaring entity. (NASA's chasing the myth of the next great technological leap into low-cost access for the last quarter-century or so having been a collossal wast of money, read: Space Shuttle and the aborted VentureStar spaceplane.) NASA is -finally- starting to understand this, and awarded some contractors funds for its COTS (Commercial Orbital Transportational Services) initiative -SpaceX among them. NASA is , however, hedging its bets by developing the Ares family of low(er) cost vehicles to take over for the Space Shuttle when it’s retired in 2010. My money is on the development process for the Ares to be so drawn out by budget issues, however, that COTS-like services supplied by companies such as SpaceX, Armadillo, and Blue Origin should be the operating norm by the time the first Ares vehicles begin service sometime in the middle of the next decade. I keep updated on the new field of low cost commercial aerospace through (in no particular order):

• The Space Show (Podcast)
• Chair Force Engineer
• Cosmic Log
• Selenian Boondocks
• Curmudgeons Corner
• Space Liberates Us!
• NASA Watch
• RLV and Space Transport News

BUT I JUST BOUGHT MY COMPUTER A YEAR AGO! DEPT

If you're a developer, this performance benchmark is sobering. I know I'm way behind on the curve, what with my 1.6 GhZ Pentium M and 2 Gigs of RAM.

NEW LOOK

I used to switch templates quite frequently but abandoned the practice awhile back. I figure those in the know "get me" through RSS anyways. Anyways, I switched to "Tequila" by Bright Creative (a standard offering on Blogger.com.) I figure it's appropriate for the season. Waddya think?