March 31, 2005
Another example of what can be done with FlickR tags
Check out this FlickR tag Browser
March 30, 2005
Smirnoff Ice Sorbet
Today in Westlake was a gorgeous day with temps around 70. With the first nice day of the year what should you do? BBQ of course. Well this time my friends visiting from Norway came over and prepared a feast. Besides the normal BBQ cuisine prepared there will was an especially nice treat
Smirnoff Ice Sorbet
Fill a bunch of wine glasses up with Smirnoff Ice
Place in freezer, stiring occasionally.
In about 4 hours you will have an icey treat perfect for warm summer days.
MySQL 5.0 Enters Beta
In what is being described as the 'fixing 10 years of criticism in one release', MySQL has moved the 5.0 Version of it's database into beta. New features include, triggers, views, and stored procedures. A beta from MySQL means the software is pretty rock solid already, they are one of the few products I would consider putting into production as a Beta.
When I first started programming I used MySQL for everything. Other programmers would tout the advantages that MS SQL Server and Oracle offering more functionality. I would simply counter who needs them. Views, who cares if my SQL statements in my code are a bit messier. Triggers, just run a chron job that executes a code script. Stored Procedures, why not just have functions that do it in the script. Well I have to say after I moved to a job where MS SQL server was the perferred db platform I used these new features and eventually I became a fan of their use. I learned views improve performace, triggers are more responsive and make more sense from an archtectual standpoint, and stored procedures take the load off of the web server's proccessing and also make more sense from an architectual standpoint.
ZDNet has a story on the release of MySQL 5.0. The article misses one huge point, the advanced clustering capabilities available in this version. While clustering has been supported before in a limited fashion in previous versions and helped along by 3rd party modifications, full support is finally here. MySQL uses a completely new file storage system that really makes my mouth drool.
Want more info. At the Orielly conference I had the fortune of getting an in depth overview of the new functionality of MySQL 5.0
Internet Explorer 6 Size Distotion Bug
Ok, My Internet Explorer 6 SP2 browser has been causing images, text, etc. to be scaled about 20% larger then they actually are for some time now. It's a very fustrating bug I have tried to fix for some time now with no luck. Googling on the subject seems to mention an image distortion bug in IE6 SP1 that is suppossed to be fixed in IE SP2. I have tried enabling and disabling the automatically resize image setting with no luck. If anyone has a solution to this bug please let me know. Below is a screenshot of my problem.
Update: I have figured out the problem on my own. I was looking around my display adapter settings and noticed that my DPI setting was 120 DPI not 90 DPI, having changed it I now get IE behaving properly. Personally I think this is a bug in IE, especially seeing Firefox seem to handle the higher DPI setting properly. If this helped anyone else drop me a comment below.
March 29, 2005
AJAX
Ever wondered how Google maps, Google suggest, or similar applications accomplish their magic? The answer is AJAX, as defined in this article on AJAX a combination of
- Standards-based presentation using XHTML and CSS
- Dynamic display and interaction using the Document Object Model
- Data interchange and manipulation using XML and XSLT
- Asynchronous data retrieval using XMLHttpRequest
- JavaScript binding everything together
AJAX works by having an AJAX "engine" run on the client machine that communicates constantly to the server. You can find links to people think AJAX is more hype then anything and others who think AJAX is the next best thing. Whoever you listen to one things seems to be sure. AJAX is difficult to implement. On the other hand I look at apps like Google maps and go wow, this is the future of the web. Time will tell to see if the power functionality you can achieve outweighs the hassle of implementation. I for one hope to get an opportunity to try out this technology.
Schiavo parents sell list of supporters
As scene on Daily Kos
and originally mentioned in the NYT Article
The parents of Terri Schiavo have authorized a conservative direct-mailing firm to sell a list of their financial supporters, making it likely that thousands of strangers moved by her plight will receive a steady stream of solicitations from anti-abortion and conservative groups. "These compassionate pro-lifers donated toward Bob Schindler's legal battle to keep Terri's estranged husband from removing the feeding tube from Terri," says a description of the list on the Web site of the firm, Response Unlimited, which is asking $150 a month for 6,000 names and $500 a month for 4,000 e-mail addresses of people who responded last month to an e-mail plea from Ms. Schiavo's father. "These individuals are passionate about the way they value human life, adamantly oppose euthanasia and are pro-life in every sense of the word!"
Great CSS Tricks Website
March 28, 2005
Interesting way to explore Art
Check out 12 different artist's illustrations in a very unique way
BB King
Last Night I had the pleasure of seeing a living lengend of Blues, BB King along with his band the Bobby "Blue" Bland Band at the Palace Theatre. The king is old, 80 to be exact, and his age showed. Being able to see his was an experience, and at $10 for a balcony seat I would do it again. I was a little disapointed he only sang vocals and couldn't play his guitar, Lucille. I presume because of this age and arthritis. If there is one type of music that is good to hear from an old man, it's the blues. BB King not only sang many great tunes but interacted allot with the crowd. I can tell in his prime he must have been one of those performers that reallly played to his audience. If he comes to your town I recomend seeing im while you still can.
NASA Podcast
Science at NASA has provided recordings of science news storied for years but has decided to make the recordings available in a Podcast. I think I have found my first good Podcast to listen to on my Ipod.
March 27, 2005
Happy Easter
March 26, 2005
CSS Layout - Making the transition from tables
So I used to consider myself a man who knew layout. Graphic Designers, don't ask me what you should do, be creative and I'll make the layout happen. Well you get confortable....and then....technology changes, tables are supposed to now be bad. Time to adjust....long overdue adjustment.
HELLO CSS
So with that said let me share with you some of the stuff I've learned in my ongoing adventure with CSS Layout.
1) Why can't my div that centers fine in IE center in firefox with text-align:center?
The solution: Margin:auto on the div - appently a text-align:center on the parent container isn't enough for firefox. Margin: auto works but this wasn't obvious to me. Firefox fans I'm sure this is more correct to the spec but I don't care. Googling on a variety of topics for five minutes didn't give me the results I wanted quick enough. I founded what I needed checking out the resource links at CSS Zen Garden.
2) Why does the value bottom 0px; or right: 0px; not seem to stretch an empty div to the bottom or right in ie?
A2: Well it seems like IE does not recognize the right and bottom attributes when using an absolute layout because you need to give a height to the div.
The first things I came accross is the star hack to solve this one. Before talking about the solution there's one big problem, XP SP2 has warning active x code is trying to execute. I'm only trying to do layout, do I really need to do a hack that causes a warning? Well with that said here is how it works.
In IE only use javascipt to assign a height: Make sure it's parent container has a height, in the case of body give it a 100% height
Now The hack part which renders in IE only
* html .theleftbar {
height:expression(document.body.clientHeight - 142 + "px");
}
*Note you could substitute document.body for the name of a parent div if you wanted to do that, just make sure the parent div has a height set.
I was lucky enough to attend a talk by Eric Meyer, CSS Guru, and got the opprotunitty to ask him the right way to do this avoiding css. His answer, CSS can't handle this in IE, the only solution is to use a table for the layout. He says currently there is no way to handle a grid layout with CSS that works in IE. Wow I think I thought tables were wrong. I guess there's still room for them.
3) The box model issue came up, this is where height is misinterpretted in IE because of padding and margins get included in the height calculation when according to the spec this shouldn't happen. This problem is all over the web so I'm just going to link to the solution of the box model problem.
As I run across more headaches in making the transition I will pass them on.
March 25, 2005
Spell with Flickr
March 24, 2005
NASA RTF Cigars
Ebay is featuring someone selling Return to Flight Cigars
March 22, 2005
Mystery Bus Tour
Bar Hopping, a fun time and a great way to visit some new bars. But what do you do if you live in Cleveland and it's winter? The answer
Cleveland Barhopper's Mystery Bus Tour
The concept is simple. You go to the starting bar and a bus takes you from bar to bar. The cool part is you have no idea where you are going next. I've done a mystery bar hopping tour twice now and have been introduced to allot of new cool bars.
The one I went we most recently went on rocked!. The bus we
went on was pimped out. It was a school bus with all the seats
ripped out and replaced with seats along the two walls so everyone
faced each other. The sound system was big and there was a cooler
in the back of the bus. We all got hand stamps and I think at almost
every bar there was a bus rider specific special(s). At some bars we got some free food. There were also contests like who
could chug a pint of Guinness the fastest(I won three concert tickets
with that one).
Check out these pictures...I think they tell the story better then I can.
March 21, 2005
Free DMTA Tools
One of my favorite free tools dealing with visualization is Treemap
If you were to put together a data portal to constantly evaluate the trends of data in the agency this would be the type of thing that gives a nice overall snapshot of the data and the direction it is going. It also serves as a nice starting point for performing a specific analysis on a set of data. Here is a great example of what Treemaps can do.
The one thing to know about this example is they have taken the free concept and initial source code of Treemap and extended it beyond it's capability to be specifically geared to financial analysis. They charge a license fee if you want to use their extended version.
Traditional statistical/analytic techniques are provided for free by the R project. The R project is modeled after the S project and contains most of the same functionality. R can perform linear and nonlinear modeling, classical statistical tests, time-series analysis, classification, clustering, and present the results graphically.
The next few free tools are as much source code APIs as they are tools. They are powerful but difficult to use tools that require text and data mining theory to effectively use.
The first tool is Kea. It performs text key phrase extraction. Think of it as a way to figure out key concepts in unstructured text.
The next tool is Weka. Weka is by far the best free (open sourced) software package I have scene for data mining. It contains the majority of methods of data mining discussed in the workshop (data pre-processing, classification, regression, clustering, association rules, and visualization).
Here is an interesting article about an example of someone using Weka and Kea to mine, organize and analyze an internet mailing list's archives.
**Note its been translated from German so the wording is a bit off.
The first chapter of their results is available on line.
One more worth mentioning in the Free Tool Category is JFreeChart - free java class library for graphing
As you can see not all DMTA has to be expensive.
March 20, 2005
My Personal Chef
Well the food gods have spoken to me. Chris, you and your friends have honored us with your tastey meals, We shall bestow upon you a personsal chef to preapre some meals for you in appreciation....and not only that but all you need to do is cover the cost of groceries. What chef can I get I say to the gods? Your favorite Westlake restuarant, Affamatos, the one that closed many months ago. Thanks you food gods, thankyou!
Well to make a long story short a friend of a friend of a friend is Jason Molonari, former chef of Affamatos. He is now starting a personal chef business and wanted some test subjects before starting. The way it works is he comes to your house, finds out how many meals your looking for, and what you like and don't like. He then goes shopping and comes and preapres a certain amount of meals (2 weeks in our case). Some stuff gets frozen, some stuff gets refridgerated, some stuff is fresh. With minimal preparation (typically heat in sauce pan, bake in oven, or put in microwave) you have a gourmet meal prepared.
Interested in this service for youself? Here's his contact information.
Jason Molinari
14512 Harley Ave.
Cleveland, OH 44111
cell: 216.534.3304
land: 216.252.5469
email: jason@molinariscullinary.com
website: www.molinarisculinary.com
Statistical Data Mining Tutorials
March 18, 2005
IPodder
When I first learned about blogs I was like, oh these are kinda cool, they let people more easily create their own websites but I didn't think they affected me that much because I didn't have the time to go to all these websites and constantly read them. Then I was introduced to Bloglines, then everything changed. Suddenly the internet was working for me. I could go to one site and find out only the new content from all the sites that interested me. My daily intake of info took a quantum leap.
Well it has happened again with iPodder.
I always thought the idea of podcasts are cool but I doubt I'll be able to listen to any very often just because when I'm at my computer I'm working. I'll never have the time. Well along comes iPodder and now I have a software program that allows me to subscribe to podcasts and save them automatically saved on my computer. Then I can store them on my ipod for later listening. In the car, at the gym, on a plane, I get fed more info.
Now I just gotta find some good podcasts to subscribe to. Any suggestions?
March 11, 2005
Eric Meyer Comes to NASA
Date: Thursday, March 24th, 2005
Time: 2:00 P.M.
Topic: "LOOKING AT CURRENT AND EMERGING STANDARDS-ORIENTED DESIGN TECHNIQUES".
Where: NASA Glenn Research Center Bldg. 142/Room 185 (TDC)
Eric A. Meyer has been working with the Web since late 1993 and is an internationally recognized expert on the subjects of HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). He is the principal consultant for Complex Spiral Consulting and lives in Cleveland, Ohio.
I'm a subscriber to Eric Meyer's Blog. For some reason entering in that domain into bloglines doesn't yield any feeds, to subscribe you can find the feeds at http://www.meyerweb.com/feeds/
Ruby on Rails
As someone who has never used Ruby before or even scene what the source code looks like I'm really interested now in trying it out after reading this Ruby on Rails article
Winter Camping in Lake Placid
In January a group of my friends went on our annual winter camping trip.
Lake Placid Camping Photos
The trip was to the Adirondack Loj on Heart Lake. We've been to this site before and it never disapoints. Finally after 4 previous visits of just camping I decided to make the hike up to Wright Peak. While challenging it was well worth it.
March 10, 2005
Starlight Information Visualization System
From Battelle Corportation (the people who created the CD) comes a software product that as they say in their website
couples advanced information modeling and management functionality with a visualization-oriented user interface
I've had the opprotunity to evaluate Starlight for the NASA Assurance Technology Center and so far I have to say overall I'm impressed. Starlight combines features that work on structured fields and unstructured text. It has features including text clustering, catagorical breakdowns, relationship mapping, hierarchical breakdowns, and spatial mapping. Now I know what your saying, "none of these graphical views are anything new." Well your right but these features aren't what makes Starlight stand out from the crowd, its the software's user interface and integration among these different models.
Let me use an example use of the software to best illustrate why this software is so cool. Lets take a set of safety incicent reports and their corrective actions and want to determine what I should focus my resources on next year to reduce safety incidents. I am given a dirty data set that has some structured fields, some large unstructured fields, and some documents (word, pdfs, etc.) associated with individual records. Once I get the data into Starlight (more on this later) I proceed to see a set of spaced out dots on a three dimensional grid. First I decide to change the color of these dots(records) based on a structure field of severity(determined by injury and cost). I then change the shape of dots based on another structured field of in (vehicle incident, workplace violence, etc.) I then text cluster the records to point out areas where words and phrases commonly appear together. I notice a cluster of words with terms like ladder, scafolding and climbing. I then select and look at these records. Quickly I switch to a view where I view how the subset of the data's structured fields distribute. I can setup a timeline and watch as time moves on how this distribution changes. I notice that there has been an increasing amount of incidents in this subset in the last three months at buildings 6 and 8 at the green river facility. I proceed to further filter my data down to these facilities and switch back to my text clustering view. I perform another clustering. I then can look into these individual records and gain some information on the nature of these incidents. I now have an area of focus for my funding next year.
Starlight has some cons however. The data needs to be in XML format which means some preproccessing. Starlight gives you tools to help facilitate this but it still takes time. Another neggative is the limit of data records it can handle at one time. I seem to remember it being 100,000. They mentioned their next version would be able to support more.
Overall the best tool I have scene for combining together these preexisting visualization methods in a three dimensional very efficient user interface.
I got an Ipod
I would like to send out a very big thankyou to a co-worker of mine, Gary, who was kind enough to sell me his 20GB ipod for $100. He had won it as a result of filling out a workshop survey drawing. He had it for months without using it so he offered to sell it to me. I have had it only 4 hours now and am loving it more and more every minute.
I have loaded my humble work laptop music collection (2GB) onto it so far. I can't wait to get 20GB's from my master 100GB collection I have at home.
After getting on the music collection I decided to see if I could compensate for my missing palm by using ipod's calendar and todo list functionality. First task was to find a way to get all my data that I currently keep in palm desktop, into my ipod. I found pal2ipod that is up to the task but it seems as if a few calendar entries appear too many times.
March 07, 2005
I'm in awe
echo "hello world";
so begins my blog
subjects covered not yet known
media devised
look out world