Monthly Archives: February 2012

Facebook Redesign

Life, , ,

Inside Facebook: “The redesign, the largest for pages since February 2011, creates a more unified look and feel for the site after profiles and groups were updated earlier this year. Page owners will have a 30-day window to redesign their pages and publish when they are ready. On March 31, all pages will automatically switch to the new format.”

Who had the timeline first, Path or Facebook?

I say hats off, regardless of who was first. The new look is brilliant and is something I’d love to have, just not on Facebook.

I wonder if anyone has created a weblog template for WordPress, or any other popular weblogging platform, that gives you this look? It makes complete sense. Everything rolled up into one site.

The center of my universe starts with fahrni.ws. That’s where I need this look. Not on a marketing site.

I really need to learn how to roll web pages. You use tables for layout, right?

11

Life

“The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and…” – Nigel Tufnel, 1984

And so goes the story. This site isn’t yet eleven, but I’ve been weblogging for just over eleven years (post #1). Strange how I forgot to mention that at the beginning of the month. Eleven short years.

I started my weblog in hopes I’d become a better writer. I just don’t have that gene. Maybe someday I’ll write something worth reading. Until then, you’re stuck with movie lines and random, poorly structured posts, with lots of commas.

Movie line of the week

MLOTW

Cut, cut, cut!Good morning movie liners! I picked up today’s line over the weekend. It’s from one of my all time favorite films, let’s see if you recognize it.

Actor #1: That is not water.
Actor #2: Black blood of the earth.
Actor #1: Do you mean oil?
Actor #2: I mean black blood of the earth.

Ok, quick, what movie! Send your guesses here.

iOS and KoamTac Bluetooth Scanners

How To, iOS, ,

I’ve been working on an application that pairs an iPhone, or iPod Touch, with a KoamTac KDC300i Bluetooth Scanner. I’m having a great time on the app and the scanner is awesome, but the website of the company supporting it is difficult to navigate. Every time I need to configure one of these little darlings I have to find the instructions included in the package to do it.

Not any more! I’m going to write it down, here in my web brain, so I can find it the next time I need to use it.

Step #1: Prepare the Bluetooth Scanner

  1. Press both Side Buttons at once to access the KDC Menu.
  2. Press the side Bottom Button until “BT Config” is highlighted.
  3. Press the Scan Button to select.
  4. Make sure “Connect Device” is highlighted, if not, press up or down Side Button and locate it.
  5. Press the Scan Button to select.
  6. Use the Side Buttons to navigate to HID.
  7. Press the Scan Button to move the asterisk.
  8. Highlight “Save & Exit”
  9. Press the Scan Button to select.
  10. Use the Side Buttons to navigate to “Top Menu”
  11. Press the Scan Button to select.
  12. Press the Side Buttons to navigate to “BT Service”
  13. Press the Scan Button to select.
  14. Press the Side Buttons to navigate to “Pairing”
  15. Wait here – Move on to Step #2

Step #2: Prepare the iOS Device

  1. Tap on “Settings”
  2. Tap on “General”
  3. Tap on “Bluetooth”
  4. Set the “Bluetooth” Switch control to “On”

Step #3: Finish Configuring the Bluetooth Scann

  1. The Scanner should be waiting on “Pairing”
  2. Press the Scan Button
  3. “Pairing Started…” should display
  4. Wait
  5. When finished the Scanner will beep and display HID Connected

Done! Now you can scan to your hearts content.

PS: It figures that once I write these down I find the instructions on the website.

PPS: Barcode Guy does an awesome job with these scanners.

Movie line of the week

MLOTW

Roll film!Good morning! Are you ready for a line? Go!

Ned… Ryerson. “Needlenose Ned”? “Ned the Head”? C’mon, buddy. Case Western High. Ned Ryerson: I did the whistling belly-button trick at the high school talent show? Bing! Ned Ryerson: got the shingles real bad senior year, almost didn’t graduate? Bing, again. Ned Ryerson: I dated your sister Mary Pat a couple times until you told me not to anymore? Well?

Ok, quick, what movie! Send your guesses here.

Flavor of the Day

Cloud,

AHHHHHH!Real Free Market: “Clueless people get obsessed with languages and frameworks. No matter what language and framework you use, you have to write your application code. If you use a fancy framework, then you have to write framework-compliant code in addition to your program’s code. With node.js, you’re fiddling around with callback functions and manually managing timing, instead of letting Apache and the OS do it for you.”

It looks like node.js is good, for simple apps. If you want to get serious, find a bigger hammer.

Hey, don’t expect much from JavaScript. It’s an ugly hack. But ugly hacks become standards, if you don’t pay attention.

Webscale, Not Easy

Cloud,

Watch out! It's a blog fly!High Scalability: “Tumblr started as a fairly typical large LAMP application. The direction they are moving in now is towards a distributed services model built around Scala, HBase, Redis, Kafka, Finagle, and an intriguing cell based architecture for powering their Dashboard. Effort is now going into fixing short term problems in their PHP application, pulling things out, and doing it right using services.”

Even the companies you believe are doing it right, start by doing it wrong, and evolve. Twitter, Facebook, and now Tumblr. Webscale is not easy to achieve. Running node.js with a MySQL database isn’t going to cut it. It takes serious planning and thought, and a great operations team to keep the beast running. I know this by experience. I made those same mistakes and learned a lot in the process.

I love this stuff.

Wanted: Lead Chef

Life,

Mukilteo Coffee RoastersMukilteo Coffee Roasters: “A unique opportunity with Mukilteo Coffee’s cafe cabuni’ in the woods as come up. We are looking for an experienced lead chef to join our team in our busy little cafe.”

Mukilteo Coffee is my favorite coffee roaster in the world. This would be a great place for Haileigh, if she was able to move.

Anywho, if you’re a Chef looking for work, this looks like a great opportunity.