Always

Themed Fonts

2008-06-26T01:30:00Z

For all of the closet 80's hairballs out there you can get that classic Bon Jovi font you always wanted here, along with a number of other music, movie and game themed fonts.

Rick Astley

2008-04-25T18:30:00Z

While surfing YouTube the other day I saw a Rick Astley video in the Most Viewed section for the week. Rick Astley? WTF?

Turns out it was an excellent ISP error page hack. And once again, everything on the net makes sense.

Happy 9th Birthday

2008-03-20T00:00:00Z

Happy 9th Birthday Justin! They just grow too fast. He wanted steak and noodles for his birthday dinner, but Mom convinced him that he really wanted steamed crabs. Even though the crabs were from Texas they were pretty good....still not as good as middle of the summer crabs.

The interesting part of dinner was the PRS Guitars contigent taking up all the tables around us. They were a colorful group. And Mr. Paul Reed himself was right next to Justin. Being 9 he had no clue. Maybe it was a sign.....maybe I have a guitar hero in the making.

PEBKAC

2008-03-13T16:00:00Z

PEBKAC is happening too often in these parts. Who knew there were so many similar acronyms?

MovableType 4.1

2008-03-13T00:00:00Z

Just upgraded the blog software from 3.35 to 4.1....wow, what a change! This is going to take some getting used to. I do have to thank Six Apart for making the upgrade process about as easy as can be (copy over the installation directory and go to your blog admin url....that is it).

WTFs/minute

2008-03-12T21:00:00Z

This one has been in my to-post queue for awhile.....classic.

Maryland Wine

2008-03-12T02:00:00Z

If you are wine lover (or if you are against unnecessary government regulation) and live in Maryland now is the time to help out your fellow citizens and write your state congressman about Senate Bill 616 and House Bill 1260. If these measures are passed wine junkies like myself will have access to some of the best wines the world has to offer. Right now Marylanders have access to the best wines the state run distributors have to offer. Maryland is one of the many states that still do not allow direct shipment of wine to the consumer.

Free the Grapes will do all the work for you. Just click on the Maryland link, scroll down, punch in your name & address, click Send Message and "Free the Grapes" will send an e-mail to your state senator and representatives on your behalf.

Web Development Shootout

2008-03-08T01:00:00Z

Dave pointed me to this interesting movie comparing J2EE against some high powered web frameworks, specifically Ruby on Rails, Zope, Turbo Gears, and django. I think it is well known that J2EE will lose against just about any web framework. Try teaching simple jsp/servlets to community college students and you'll quickly understnd why. I spent more time on the nuances of the framework than actually building web apps.

I'm not sure when the video was created but I think if you threw the other Java based web development frameworks into the mix (e.g. Grails and Lift) ruby and zope would still win but I can guarantee the results would have been closer.

The author interestingly enough selects Zope as the winner. Try a few Google searches on Sean Kelly and you'll probably see why. A see a little bias....hmmmmm.

Dilbert Meeting?

2008-02-12T18:30:00Z

It's been a long time since I've had a Dilbert moment at work, but this meeting invite sure did seem like one of those moments:

Luckily the meeting was a useful session, but take note, if you send out a meeting invite like this somebody is going to blog about it.

Sticky Notes

2008-02-12T18:04:29Z

This guy has too much time on his hands, but it is an interesting technique that I plan to implement myself.

Extreme Configurability

2008-02-02T12:00:00Z

I'm trying to catch up on reading this weekend and ran across this James Govenor gem:

"Big SOA with reg/rep and so on- who needs it? Who is using it? Remember UDDI? It was designed to handle WSDL complexity. But very few organisations needed it. UDDI was designed to offer extreme configurability. Who most likes extreme configurability? Consultants."

Being a consultant I couldn't agree with him more. As long as the standards world keeps on publishing inch-thick standards there will be plenty of money to be made.

Party Foul

2007-11-26T17:30:00Z

Even though the score was 37-0 in the 4th quarter (Yeah Terps!) there still was plenty of business going on down on the field. Check this penalty out:

I don't know about you but whatever it was I'm pretty sure it isn't the kind of business you want.

Soccer Ends

2007-11-26T17:00:00Z

It was back in August when I posted about Soccer Beginning and I haven't made a single post since then. Well last week soccer officially ended (there actually are 3 more practices left but they aren't my practices to run...woo hoo). Coaching 3 teams took a lot out of my evenings and weekends but we had a blast. The two youngest boys had great years. They played well and scored a lot of goals. The oldest is just starting to learn how hard soccer really can be when the boys on the other team are all just as fast and just as tough as his team.

It will be nice to step it down a notch from super-dad to regular-dad. For basketball and lacrosse I'm just a helper and a spectator and that is fine by me.

Soccer Begins

2007-08-30T17:00:00Z

Soccer is in full swing for the Levay family. All three boys have started practicing and even I had my first real outdoor game in years last night. We played well but lost mainly because the other team had a ringer. He had 3 goals in the first-half and put in 2 more in the second-half. It is hard to stop a guy that is twice as fast as anyone else on the field.

The team gave me the opportunity to try and stop him in the middle of the second half and I got my first red card ever trying. He had me beat and as I was going down I was pulling him down with me (didn't work...he stayed on his feet and kept on going). Add to that a referee that doesn't know what "advantage" means and I get a red card.

I really think most of these refs are doing it for the money and don't even have a passion for the game. Most won't run up and down the field. Most can't make an "advantage" or "offsides" call. And most don't know how to control a game when things get ugly. I guess you get what you get in county rec ball and have to match your game up with the way it is being called. For any of you refs out there that read this blog there are plenty of places for you to train up: here, here and here.

Software Security Certification

2007-08-28T17:30:00Z

The Software Security Institute (SANS) has recently launched a security certification for Software Developers. The Global Information Assurance Certification Security Software Programmer Certification verifies that a developer knows the common security flows in either Java or C.

This exam looks to be challenging and worthwhile. The Java Handbook covers the details and includes sample test questions. There is a link to their portal (requires login) to take a free 10 question practice test but it was the same questions contained in the handbook. The questions cover standard java (thread synchronization, inner classes, prepared statements) as well as the web-tier (session ids, parameter scrubbing, filters).

If you are looking for a Java certification that isn't your standard programmer/api type exam, then this one appears to answer the mail. I'd be interested in feedback if anyone attempts it.