Matt Brundage

Archive for the 'technology' category

Saturday, 7 March 2009

Site-wide refresh

Change comes slowly…if it comes at all.

When I first published a personal website — located somewhere at the ever-venerable geocities.com — my intent was that every section of the site would look completely different from the next. At the time (circa January 2000), I thought it was a pretty good idea. Since then, however, the various sections have been slowly evolving and merging into a unified design. The latest site refresh allows for even less “individuality”, so to speak, as I’ve set up a modest custom-built template system.

It was never my intention for this site refresh to involve major style changes, so good luck if you’re looking for something substantial. One notable exception is page width. With widescreen and full high-definition monitors becoming more and more mainstream, the last thing I wanted was a line of text that spanned the entire width of the browser window at 1920×1080. (Or higher!) While I can never completely control exactly how a user views my site, this refresh attempts to regain some control of the viewing experience.

Wednesday, 4 February 2009

Snobbery

I’m becoming more and more of a snob every day. (Well, at least according to Annie.) I’d rather call it “discriminating taste” — or in its simplest form, just a preference for one thing over another.

  • I try to avoid high fructose corn syrup and other artificial sweeteners, monosodium glutamate, partially hydrogenated oils (margarine), other “unnatural” fats, and needlessly processed food products with unpronounceable ingredients. Instead, I purchase “real”, “natural”, or “organic” whenever possible. I don’t mind paying a bit more for quality. For that, I am a food snob.
  • I won’t drink Merlot, Rosé (White Zinfandel), or wine that has been “embellished”. For that, I am a wine snob.
  • I am through with North American lagers. Instead, my gaze is fixed upon Ireland (Guinness) and Belgium (Chimay). For that, I am a beer snob.
  • I consume an enormous quantity of music, much of it esoteric. I typically get blank stares or polite nods when I try to describe my tastes to people. I value my vinyl records just as much as my CDs. I’m not the kind of music snob who categorizes his collection as classical, jazz, and “other”, but I am a snob nonetheless.
  • While my video collection is comparatively more mainstream than my music collection, certain “guidelines” still apply: Since the beginning of 2008, I have completely stopped purchasing DVDs and have moved on (without any hiccups) to Blu-ray. I’ve even been replacing my old DVDs with their Blu-ray versions. I will never stretch or crop the picture. I prefer to watch a film in its original, theatrical aspect ratio, whether that be 1.33:1, 1.85:1, 2.35:1, or any other variation. I cannot be happier that “Full-screen” DVDs are finally being phased out. I am frustrated with people who just don’t get it, especially those with capable widescreen televisions. For that, I am a film and video snob. In this regard, the label of snob may be warranted.
  • My requirements for church are becoming more and more specialized. While I’ve always been Catholic, my adherence to the “weekly requirement” hasn’t always been strict. And by that, I mean that, a few times a year, I would attend a non-Catholic church service and count that as my “weekly”. Never again. It’s even gotten to the point where I’m hesitant to attend a Novus Ordo Mass — especially if it’s in the vernacular; I need to hear the old Mass in Latin. For that, I am a church snob.
  • I’m a stickler for proper grammar usage — a great deal of my Wikipedia edits involve grammar corrections or diction in some form or another. I’ve corrected people in everyday conversation: I remember telling someone once that they had “split the infinitive.” Lately, I’ve been surprised at the frequency at which people use the word “less” when they really mean “fewer.” It boggles the mind. I have strong preferences toward the increased usage of both the serial comma and the subjunctive mood. For that, I am a grammar snob.

In addition, Annie says that I’m a snob in the following categories: cars, clothes, computers, paper shredders, razors, lamps, light bulbs, and books. That’s right. I’m officially a paper-shredder snob.

Wednesday, 21 January 2009

Happy Birthday to Lotus Notes 6.5.1

Lotus Notes 6.5.1 Seriously, though. The email environment here at work is anything but ideal. Our email client has now gone over five years without even as much as an incremental update. The overwhelming consensus here is that Notes 6.x is powerful, but clunky and illogical. The UI appears as if it were designed by developers — for exclusive use by developers. This is not a back-handed complement by any stretch of the imagination.

Notes v. 8 appears to be coming around in terms of usability and UI, so all is not lost.

Apparently, our organization will be deploying Lotus Notes v.8 to our desktops “any month now”; I will embrace it with open arms — in a good cop/bad cop sort of way.

Thursday, 1 January 2009

A good year for the Moz

Mozilla Firefox made steady market share gains in 2008, mostly at the expense of Internet Explorer. IE6, especially. The browser is losing about 1% market share per month; projecting forward, it will be viable for only the next 18 months. IE6, the bell tolls for thee.

Asa Dotzler weighs in with his year-end browser roundup. Good stuff.

Saturday, 18 October 2008

Mid-month roundup

…This is how I know that I’m a bad blogger: Last week, Annie, her two eldest sisters, and I spent a week out west, conquering the Grand Canyon, Sedona, and the open road, yet I have no blog post to show for it! During our stay, we averaged about 100 photos per day. An unwieldy photo gallery is forthcoming, I promise. And, perhaps, some quality commentary.

…Warren Buffett has given us the green light to start investing again; I’m hopeful that next week will be another solid rebuilding week for the Dow. I’ve sufficiently rationalized my “losses” thus far; I’m truly no longer affected by them. It’s all play money until you have to use it. As I focus the bulk of my investments in retirement accounts, a decreasing percentage of my portfolio hinges on the day-to-day rise and fall of stocks.

…Lately, I’ve been enamored by the work of one J.D. Roth, owner and writer of both Get Rich Slowly and Get Fit Slowly. Every day, I’m in awe at the consistent quality of his work. He’s introduced me to a number of related financial sites. With the wealth of good, free financial information available, it’s a wonder why anyone would choose to hire a financial advisor — unless, of course, one dislikes dealing with his financial situation. As for me, I revel in it. At times, I worry that I worry too much about money. I seriously wouldn’t mind getting randomly audited by the IRS. It would be a pleasant experience for me.

On a related note, sometimes I wish that I had significant consumer debt, only because it would be personally gratifying to pay it off. I’m intrigued by stories of people in debt, and the methods they use to overcome their debt and their bad habits. It would be an incredible feeling of accomplishment to eliminate, say, massive credit card debt. The source of your problems is literally subtracted out of existence.

…I was recently bestowed with a couple of quality “seasoned” laptops that my company had long since abandoned: a four-year-old IBM ThinkPad and a slightly older Dell Inspiron 8100. Both are steps up from my current notebook, a Windows 2000-era Dell that makes a grating grinding sound whenever it’s turned on. Oh, and the touchpad frustratingly registers false clicks at random.

…Some of my coworkers and I have just moved into a swing space, as our office area is being renovated. The problem is that it’s four floors below street level, in a secluded, bomb-proof room with no air flow — conditioned or otherwise. I keep telling myself that at least I’m not working in a uranium mine in Novosibirsk, Russia. I’m entertaining the idea of not shaving or otherwise grooming myself for the duration of our stay in the dungeon, as a quiet protest.

…I’m off to the Maryland Renaissance Festival later today, so I suppose that I will take in a couple of turkey legs and a significant amount of jerky. (Annie cannot resist the jerky vendor.) It will be good to be a part of such a large gathering of geeks. No swords allowed. :-(

Friday, 13 June 2008

This post best viewed…

  • …in a browser. Ideal specimens, in descending order, are Firefox 3, Opera 9.5, Safari 3.1, Firefox 2, IE7. Browser chrome should be optimized to increase viewable page area. Application(s) should — naturally — be maximized.
  • …with an operating system released this decade on a PC manufactured after 2003. An Internet connection speed of at least 200kbps. Memory of at least 512mb. A system not infected with viruses or spyware.
  • …with a minimum screen resolution of 1024×768, although 800×600 is still unofficially supported.
  • …on a computer monitor with a contrast ratio of at least 600×1, at least 80 candelas per square meter (nits), and an ambient correlated color temperature of approximately 5000K. Ideal monitor connections are, in descending order, HDMI, Display Port, DVI, and VGA. Additionally, other factors will affect viewing, including proper visual perception and adequate room lighting (indirect natural sunlight and/or shielded halogens are recommended).

Additionally, readers should possess a strong command of the English language and should have the ability to detect such subtleties as irony, parody, and attempts at wry humor. Reading this post while under extreme mental anguish or substantial physical pain is not recommended.

Monday, 4 February 2008

CSS, cookies

CSS file size I’ve been meaning to publish this for a while, but was never really motivated. Image: a graph of the changing weight of the main CSS file of this site. I’m not sure how much one could glean from this information — it doesn’t tell you the efficiency of the CSS declarations, only the size of the file. This file is important to the site, as every page accesses it and is styled by it. For that reason, it pays to keep the file small and compact.

There’s not really that much I can tell you about the graph. Summer 2004 saw my discovery of the Firefox browser — the CSS file promptly increased fourfold as I started to rely on CSS for layout purposes. It’s hard to believe now, but before summer 2004, I was coding solely in IE. The peak file size came in April 2006, as the CSS file was bloated after I had recently installed the WordPress blogging software. I’ve since been moving declarations into the WordPress template CSS file. Nothing to write home about, I know…

Next, I’d like to give mad props to Ray and Jade for bringing those wonderful chocolate chip cookies to the party on Saturday. Wow. It’s a wonder that Jade isn’t pushing 200 lbs with the mastery that Ray displays in the kitchen.

Friday, 11 January 2008

Blu-ray on top

I couldn’t be happier that Warner studios decided last week to release it’s high-definition discs exclusively in the blu-ray format beginning in June. While blu-ray had been slowly gaining an edge in the format war between rival HD DVD, the Warner decision will no doubt speed up HD DVD’s demise. There are talks that Universal and Paramount studios — the only two studios not currently pledged to blu-ray — may soon break ranks and support blu. That would definitely be the last nail in the fat lady’s coffin, so to speak.

All this good news couldn’t have come at a better time for me. Just two days before Warner’s announcement, I went hog-wild at an Amazon buy-one-get-one-free sale, ultimately purchasing 19 discs in a stunning display of consumer gluttony. I have a feeling that I’ll be upgrading most of my current DVD collection this year.

Wednesday, 5 September 2007

Favorites vs. Bookmarks

No doubt this topic has been covered before, but I’d like to delve into the semantics of Microsoft’s “Favorites” versus Netscape’s, Opera’s, Mozilla’s, and Apple’s “Bookmarks”. Despite Microsoft having used the name “Favorites” since 1995 — practically the fledgling days of the web — it never really caught on with the masses. The word just sounded clunky as a verb; people continued to use the verb “bookmark” long after they had dumped Mosaic and Netscape and embraced Internet Explorer en masse.

“Bookmarks” is elegant and descriptive in its specificity. The feature is implicitly defined by our prior knowledge of what an actual bookmark does. “Favorites” is bland and doesn’t really define the feature or what it does. “…a favorite what?”

I find it mildly disconcerting that the sites I happen to save within Microsoft Internet Explorer aren’t necessarily my favorite sites, yet the browser deems them as such. The nerve!

Wednesday, 20 June 2007

Taking flight

In late May I was given the opportunity to join the web management team at the FAA. I enthusiastically accepted a position and started earlier this month.

FAA happens to be right next door to my previous location at the Department of Energy, but while my commute has barely changed, my job description has been given a huge shot in the arm, so to speak. However, I must point to serendipity rather than pure ambition as the reason for the “career” change — all the pieces came together at exactly the right moment. If you were to ask me what my ideal job would be, my answer wouldn’t differ much from what I’m doing now at the FAA: web management for the FAA’s various websites, coding, design, upkeep, testing, etc.

This is quite possibly my first truly fulfilling position.