Charlie Griefer

Day 2 with Chrome, and I'm still liking it quite a bit.

No, it doesn't necessarily "rule" (as stated by T. Fleming in the comments on yesterday's post), but it's off to a very decent start.

It doesn't "rule" yet, because it's been available to the public for all of a day. It's in its infancy. It won't compete with Firefox until such time that plugins are available (but I understand that's on the roadmap). There are some options that are lacking, or not at all available (or so hard to find that I'm under the impression that they're not at all available). How can i tell chrome to check for newer versions of the page with each page request? Don't think I can. I'd also like a more robust means of organizing my bookmarks. Oh, and I did manage to crash it earlier today. Not even sure what happened... it just... crashed.

In spite of these "issues", I still like the browser. Just like the Google Talk client when it was first introduced (anyone remember... no file transfer options, no voice chat options...), it seems to be laser focused on doing what it's meant to do. Browse web sites. I'm fairly confident that the additional "bells and whistles" will follow.

The blogosphere and Twitter are both ablaze today with talk of Google's foray into the browser market with Chrome. My first impressions, and some accompanying screenshots...

Up until it was actually available, I'd not been following the story too much, so I hadn't seen screenshots or read about any specific features. My first impression upon loading it up was, "wow... there's... no chrome". I haven't messed around yet with configuration options, but there's no status bar. No toolbar. It's literally just an address bar (which seems to also serve as an integrated search bar), and tabs. It's minimalistic in its look, as is standard with most things Google, but I like it. It's uncluttered, but I'm not sure the general public will see it as such. The plain design that I see as a plus could easily be seen as... well, plain.

Which raises an interesting point. I'm not sure what market Google is after. Are they trying to be a mainstream browser and compete directly with IE and Firefox? I don't know that I see that happening. But given some of the features that they've implemented, I definitely see them competing for the affections of techie geeks.

Yeah, that was a stretch. Serves me right for trying to come up with a witty title before I've had my full morning dose of caffeine.

This made the rounds a while back, but since then things have been relatively quiet and I'm afraid it may have fallen off of most folks' radars. Joshua Cyr is organizing a "non-conference" cruise. What's that mean? It means the best part of the average conference... you know, after the sessions, alcohol in hand, hanging out at the bar with your fellow developers sharing war stories and talking shop... without the pesky sessions getting in the way.

And the best part? It's on a boat. A big boat that sails from Miami to the Bahamas (and back). Food? Check. Drink? Check (um... gotta pay for those tho). White sandy beaches and inviting blue waters? Check. People you talk to online but have yet to meet in person (or don't meet often enough)? Yup.

I think it's a great idea and I applaud josh's efforts for putting it together and coordinating the effort. I'd love to attend, but living on the left coast means paying for cross-country airfare for a family of 5... and that alone would run me about 4x the cost of the cruise itself. But I'd like to see this succeed. I'd like to think that it'll be so successful that it'll be an annual event, and that maybe I can make it in 2010.

What about you? What are you doing feb 9-13th of 2009? Check out http://www.riadventure.com/ for all the details.

Many moons ago, I signed up for a Twitter account. All the cool kids were doing it and damn if I'm not a lemming. I didn't quite "get it" tho. It's enough pressure to try and come up with a blog entry once in a blue moon that I think would hold a passing interest to one or two people. Twitter is all about posting something "interesting" (assuming "what are you doing now?" is interesting) on a constant and ongoing basis.

Wasn't totally unexpected, but I failed at Twitter. At any given time, I just didn't think I was doing anything worthwhile enough to hit the web site and update my status.

Luke Kilpatrick to the rescue. Luke admonished me for being a bad Twitterer, and I explained that updating my status on the website was just too much of a PITA. He then told me about twhirl, an AIR-based Twitter desktop client, saying that he wouldn't be active on Twitter at all without it. I downloaded it yesterday and took it for a drive.

*Now* I see why people like Twitter. Aside from being a very cool app (I gotta start writing some AIR stuff), it makes it ridiculously simple to not only update your own status, but also to keep up with the statuses of those people that you're following. Think IM client on steroids.

If you're twittering without it, download it and give it a shot. If you're not twittering, sign up and then download it and give it a shot. Feel free to follow me @charliegriefer.

...Well, it's my blog naked.

Yes, it's CSS Naked Day. Neat concept. I didn't play last year because I was on a hosted blog over at cfblog and didn't have enough granular control to remove all styling (not that i was aware of, anyway).

Obviously, this is something that can be done at any time. Certainly, in your dev environment if nowhere else, just to see what the results are. I guess it took an "official" holiday for me to actually make that effort tho.

I think things look mostly good (which is nice, since I think I suck at CSS). Seems I've got some inline styles down there in the footer. Maybe I'll take care of that at some point.

Did you go naked today? How'd it go?

I recently made the switch from my cheap inexpensive shared host to a VPS at AHP Hosting. It was a little daunting at first, never having been on anything but shared hosting, and never having had to manage a CF server (other than my own dev box). But the feeling of having complete control over the server has been a very welcome relief over the headaches that frequently accompany shared hosting.

While I was on the inexpensive host, I wasn't quite confident about the uptime. Hey, it was a good deal for the price, but realistically... it wasn't something that I felt that I could count on. So I chose to use cfblog.com, an external solution for my blog. Again, given the circumstances, that was a great option for me at the time. But now that I've got a server that I've got a bit more faith in, I figured it was time to run my own blog. As of now, my old blog has been effectively end-of-life'd. *sniffle* There are still a number of old entries (and comments) that I need to port over. Hopefully that will be done in the near future. I do want to take this opportunity to say thanks to Jon Clausen for all of his hard work on cfblog and all of his assistance while i was there.

Moving forward, this is the new improved blog (running Ray's BlogCFC). I've got a few entries planned about learning Model-Glue, building my first Flex app, and continuing to grasp various OO concepts. Stick around.

Oh, and i haven't done any extensive browser testing on the new design. If it's breaking in your browser of choice, please leave a comment below and let me know what's up (and what browser/OS you're on).

Oh... and sorry for the clogging up coldfusionbloggers with the new rss.

view it's a wonderful life (2007 remake)

seems that jeff coughlin has way too much time on his hands these days. he's put together a remake of the holiday classic it's a wonderful life that remains somewhat true to the original story... i just question some of his casting choices.

• charlie griefer (yay, me!) - george bailey (originally played by jimmy stewart)
• scott stroz - uncle bill bailey (he um... drinks. a lot.)
• mark mandel - mary hatch bailey (originally played by donna reed)
• andy allan - clarence the guardian angel
• simeon bateman - zuzu bailey

jeff himself makes a cameo playing ernie bishop, the cab driver.

if nothing else it gets you thinking... would the offspring of charlie griefer and mark mandel really look like simeon bateman? the mind boggles.

just wanted to take a quick break from the fun of learning model-glue, jquery, OO in general, and extra special fun stuff like continuing to unpack to wish everybody safe and happy holidays.

k. that's all i got for now. back to model-glue and trying to figure out what to do with this here bean
(friggin' bean i'll tell you what i'd like to do with this bean merry friggin xmas my ass...grumble grumble bah stupid bean)

a couple of weeks ago, the folks behind the re-imaged battlestar galactica announced that they were going to hold advance pre-screenings of their upcoming made-for-tv battlestar galactica: razor movie in select cities. as luck would have it, the san francisco area was in the mix, and i registered my wife and myself for a showing in walnut creek (about 20 minutes north of us here in the east bay).

last night was the showing, and it was pretty frickin' amazing.

i got into BSG relatively late. caught some of the early eps when they first aired, but i wasn't able to get into it. might have been expectations... i was expecting more of the old show... "traditional" sci-fi. but this new show leaned towards being more drama than sci-fi. while there were action sequences, they were few and far between, and i thought the pacing of the show was a bit slow. so i didn't stick with it.

after a few seasons, the show was still around, and had garnered a lot of acclaim (both from critics and fans), so my curiosity was piqued. i picked up the old episodes from the first miniseries thru the end of season 3. this time, i was watching with a different set of expectations. i knew it wasn't going to be a fast paced action show.  and this time i got sucked in. we'd watch episodes back-to-back (to-back-to-back). sleep was for the weak. we burned thru all of the episodes in a couple of weeks.

then the well went dry.

well, that didn't last long.

got to redlands in september of last year (after having moved from AZ to FL in jan of 2005). this coming september we'll be hitching up the wagons once again to head north.

i recently accepted a new position at amcom computer services in sunny san ramon, california working with tariq ahmed. it sounds like it's going to be an exciting opportunity, and i expect to learn a few new things along the way (flex!). they've already bought a flex book for me (thanks, tariq!) and i'm working my way through the chapters (the book is the essential guide to flex 2 with actionscript 3.0 by charles e. brown... i'll be posting a review shortly).

not really looking forward to making another move... but the good news is that we still haven't fully unpacked from the last one (procrastination for the win!). but everything about the move seems right. everyone i've met at amcom seem nice and genuinely interested in not only the success of the company, but the successes of each other. i think the bay area (ok... east bay area) is going to be a bit easier to tolerate than the heat of the southern california desert (this same type of heat was the reason we originally left AZ). we'll also be closer to places like tahoe and yosemite... both of which are high on my wife's list of favorite vacation spots.

should we start a pool on where i'll be moving to next september?