My Geek Notes

A coworker’s brother did this at their company competition.
I may just have to hit McDonald’s for lunch now.

I learned a few new things about the Javascript Date object today:

1. When using this constructor: new Date(year, month, day);, month is 0 based. So, if you want to create a date object for September 30, 2007, it would look like this: new Date(2007, 8, 30);
2. It’s far better to use a completely different constructor - one that takes a date string, parses it, and returns a valid date object. So like this: new Date('9/30/2007'); will generate September 30, 2007.

So, you know me, I’m always conducting experiments to find ways to drive traffic to Web sites.

Recently, I decided to try my hand at a little video blogging - working to get a single site of user-generated content to $500/month. While the site’s not at that point yet, it’s starting to do well, and one of my baby video posts is currently getting dugg pretty well. As I write this, the post is less than 24 hours old and it’s gotten 21 diggs (which destroys the myth that stories submitted by new accounts don’t do well.

I created this particular Digg account yesterday for the express purpose of promoting videos I post to this video blog. The account was created yesterday and the story submitted yesterday as well.

In less than 24 hours, the single post has brought over 200 unique visitors to my site, resulting in 21 Diggs and 4 subscriptions. I’ll post updated numbers later once it settles down, but I wanted to get some of the data out here now.

Here are some pictures of some amazing balloon art (32 pics). My favorite ones are the full suit of armor and the life size couch. I got them forwarded to me in an email with no reference of their origin so if you know anything, please let me know and I’ll update this post with the proper credits.

So… it’s been a while since I have posted anything and I’m starting to have withdraws. But I just haven’t been inspired enough about anything lately to write a post.

That all changed today. I just discovered a designer’s web site that has really inspired me to create better work. The site is New Ezra. It features the personal work of Jonathan Moore. He is the Art Director for 2Advanced Studios. If you want to see some really sleek web designs featuring great Flash, 3-D, and great visuals… check out his site and view some of the work that he has done.

I don’t know how many times I’ve wanted to install a self-generated certificate on a development web server so I could test stuff with SSL. It has always been such a pain to do with IIS 6 and Server 2003 that I usually just hoped that it would work when the code I wrote got to the production environment.

Well, with IIS7 (the version that comes with Vista and Server 2008) it’s super easy. Scott Guthrie’s got a blog that details the whole process. It’s pretty idiot proof:

Well, I’ve had a little free time here in “NorCal” – and I’ve spent some of that free time messing around with Art Rage 2. I’m continually being impressed by the programs ease of use and it’s robustness. When you first sit down with Art Rage 2 - I’d suggest you take the time to read the keyboard shortcuts and even edit them if you’re so inclined.

After you’re comfortable with where things are – practice with the different tools and adjust the controls of each tool to get a feeling for what can be accomplished. Personally I like to use the paint brush with 50% pressure, 65% thinners & 80% loading. Those settings simulate gauche or a thick watercolor.

I still can’t believe this program is only $20 bucks!? I’ve found it to be most enjoyable!

Anyway, below is an image entitled “A Northern California Summer” that I painted in 30 - 45 minutes with Art Rage 2.

Take care,
Ikeman

Well I’m finally starting to settle-in here in the greater Sacramento area. It’s been a crazy ride but well worth it! I’m really enjoying my new employment at Sibling Systems.

As many of you know I was asked to re-locate to Northern California to help take Sibling Systems to the next level by introducing sophisticated design to their arsenal of professional services. I’ve already made a significant impact here by bringing in new opportunities and most noticeably by launching a new website. Check it out here. I’d be interested to hear what you all think?!

While I miss all of you there in Utah I am excited to be here and hope to share many interesting and worth while things via the My Geek Notes blog.

Ikeman!

I can’t help but get really excited about XMBC getting a Linux port. I’ve got a modded XBox that I use to play a variety of media formats: XVID, DVD, MP3, MP4, etc. It’ll even act as a karaoke machine if you have CDG files to go along with MP3 files. The fact that it’s getting ported to Linux means that without a serious amount of effort (unlike most things with Linux) I can get a simple media PC setup that’ll run just about anything I want - at least, that’s the dream, right?

Recently, I’ve been using Microsoft’s Team Foundation Server (TFS) for source control. Both my last job and my current job use it and as a Microsoft developer, and so, whether I like it or not, I expect to see a lot more of it in the future; but that’s really beside the point. Microsoft’s diff / merge tool simply isn’t adequate. It highlights the differing line just fine, but it’s not smart enough to tell me what’s different.

Years ago, I started looking around for a good solution and found KDiff. It’s an open source project hosted on Source Forge. It’s a wonderful piece of software that does exactly what you’d expect it to do. It even tells you if the only difference on a given line is just spacing (which typically has zero impact on code execution).

I wanted it to integrate with TFS nicely without having to work around it and found the necessary command-line paramters to feed to TFS:

Compare:
%1 %2

Merge:
%1 %2 -o %4

So to make them work with TFS, open Visual Studio, go to Tools -> Options and under the Source Control -> Visual Studio Team Foundation Server tree, click “Configure User Tools. . .”. That’s where the magic happens.

That’s pretty much it. It makes dealing with different files, concurrent checkouts, and other issues related to development and source control so much better.