Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

Trains and Subways
August 28, 2007

I’ve taken the train only a on a few occasions. I realize that this is strange to some more urban denizens, but out the suburbs the train only really seems to go into the city or away into the hinterlands. Even at that, this week holds some landmarks for me in riding the train.

My prior trips included a jaunt to New York City. This trip consisted of getting on an Amtrak train in Downingtown, and riding it the entire way to Penn Station in New York. I didn’t have to transfer, and there was only one stop. No mess at all; hardly a train experience.

Ohio LinuxFest and BlogOrlando
August 27, 2007

The end of September is going to be an interesting time. I had been planning to go to Ohio again this year for Ohio LinuxFest since I went last year. It was at this event that Habari was born, when I first met Chris and Rich in person, and got to tour Columbus with veteran tour guide, Skippy. It’s exciting to get together with these guys again after a year has passed to support Linux, Open Source, and Habari.

So I was looking online, remembering BlogPhiladelphia and the experience there. I remembered that BlogOrlando was happening very soon, and noticed that it’s the day before LinuxFest. On a lark I created a trip itinerary in Expedia to fly out of Philly for Orlando, then go directly, from Orlando to Columbus, then come home. The price of the ticket (all legs of the journey with only one layover in DC on the way to Ohio) was a mere $243!! Considering that it would take me 9 hours to drive from here to Columbus, and then I’d do it again on the way back, I’d be spending a good percentage of that in gas alone. If I flew, I’d ditch the driving and get to spend that day in Florida with friends and bloggers. No brainer?

Debugging Javascript in Firefox with Firebug and Breakpoints
August 22, 2007

I have mentioned Firebug before, which is an extension to Firefox that allows you to do some incredible things with Javascript, HTML, and CSS.

One of the more powerful things it does is let you set breakpoints in your javascript. A breakpoint is a debugging tool that causes the script execution to stop at a specific line in your code so that you can examine the state of the script at that point, and potentially change values. I think that if you’ve never used breakpoints in your development before, then you’re really crippling yourself in terms of how you debug. The problem seems to be that nobody really teaches this skill.

Hard Client Hosting
August 20, 2007

I’ve been hosting my own content on the web since, oh, 1995. I’ve been on many hosts over that time, moving sites from host to host. During that time, I’ve been on some good hosts and some really awful hosts, and I have really yet to find the ultimate host that I can recommend unreservedly.

Perhaps you have been having sites hosted long enough to have acquired some horror stories. A while back, I had my sites hosted with a company called A World Wide Mall. AWWM was pretty reasonably priced, but as with most hosts, the customer service was pretty lousy. And one day, the guy who ran the service decided to fold up the company and move on without notifying any customers. He just took his datacenter and left. With all of my data. Lovely.

Working at Indy Hall
August 16, 2007

On Tuesday, work had scheduled an after-work happy hour, so I decided to take this opportunity to venture down into Philly for the day and check out the new digs at Independents Hall. Independents Hall, to describe it in my own words, is a group of independent workers who, rather than working alone individually, have decided to work together in the same space (“coworking”) to achieve that camaraderie that you usually get at a workplace with others but wouldn’t get by yourself at home. It’s a neat idea, and works for people like me who, although I work with other people, I don’t work in the same physical space with them.

After fighting with traffic for far too long (several accidents on the “expressway” led to a two-hour commute in - I don’t know how people do this on a regular basis) I did finally arrive downtown. I parked in a lot for the day near the space, which cost $17, but there was on-street parking to be found for people who wouldn’t be ticketed for their inspired inspection stickers. The walk from the lot to the Indy Hall space was short.