4haks

The Waiting Room

2008-08-15T23:30:00.001-04:00

Just an ordinary day in the doctor's office waiting room?

Moved

2007-08-08T11:03:00.000-04:00

Moved the site to here.

Moving Day

2006-02-15T06:41:00.000-05:00

I decided to go ahead and make the move to iWeb. This is the last post that will be found at this location. 4Haks will now be found here. Everything here will remain here, but there will be nothing new at this location.

Dick Cheney Shooting Jokes

2006-02-14T09:40:00.000-05:00

Regardless of your poitics, I think you'll find these to be quite humorous. My favorite:

He is a lawyer and he got shot in the face. But he's a lawyer, he can use his other face. He'll be all right.

Photo of the Day, Touch-Up

2006-02-08T23:58:00.000-05:00

Applying some tips from MShane, I re-submit to you yesterday's photo. MShane, is this what you were going for? I think you were right on this one... It really does pop now! Thanks for the tip!

Who Owns the Zebra?

2006-02-08T11:13:00.000-05:00

I found this online today, and thought I would share. Post your guesses in the comments section.

Who owns the Zebra ?

1. There are five houses.
2. The Englishman lives in the red house.
3. The Spaniard owns the dog.
4. Coffee is drunk in the green house.
5. The Ukranian drinks tea.
6. The green house is immediately to the right of the ivory house.
7. The Old Gold smoker owns snails.
8. Kools are smoked in the yellow house.
9. Milk is drunk in the middle house.
10. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
11. The man who smokes Chesterfields lives in the house next to the man with the fox.
12. Kools are smoked in the house next to the house where the horse is kept.
13. The Lucky Strike smoker drinks orange juice.
14. The Japanese smokes Parliament.
15. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.

Now who drinks water and who owns the zebra ?

Photo of the Day

2006-02-07T23:59:00.000-05:00

I was perusing through my iPhoto library this evening, and came across this shot that I took quite some time ago. I had completely forgotten that I had taken this, but I really liked it when I stumbled across it this evening. So, I thought I would share it. I am going to try and start taking more photos again.

Superbowl Roundup

2006-02-06T08:35:00.000-05:00

Superbowl XL has come and gone, as have the new batch of commercials. I have to say that the game was lackluster at best, and was terribly officiated. No, I am not a SeaHawks fan, and not a Steelers fan either. I really don't care much for football. To have a game that was so close in score, it was definitely not exciting.

The half-time show was (in the words of Simon Cowell) appalling! I now have a much better understanding for why so many who audition on American Idol actually think they can sing. Compared to that "performance" last night by the Rolling Stones, these atrocious auditions on American Idol actually sound somewhat pleasing to the ears.

And the commercials last night weren't all that great. Overall, I liked the two Ameriquest commercials the best. The Hummer commercial was just plain gross. I don't think I want a Hummer anymore.... Everytime I see one I am going to think of the ugly monster giving birth to it.

Usually, the Superbowl games are a bust, but you can at least count on the commercials. This year, we got neither. It was a wasted 4 hours, in my opinion.

iComment

2006-02-02T23:57:00.000-05:00

My troubles with wanting to add comments to my iWeb blog have been solved by a very cool application I found, iComment. All you do is publish your blog, then run the app pointing it to the published folder of your blog, and it generates the links for the haloscan comments where you told it by using special text in the blog entry page. A great idea! My blog will be moving to iWeb very soon.

Daydreamin' Birthday Boy

2006-01-31T08:22:00.000-05:00

Our little boy turned three a couple of weeks ago. I finally made some time, and created a video of the fun. Have a look!

God Complex

2006-01-30T20:47:00.000-05:00

I have heard of the God-Complex, but I believe that this fellow really does have it.

Photo of the Day

2006-01-30T06:40:00.000-05:00

Inspired by this post, I decided to post a photo I took of the same subject some time back. I also posted another shot of this same subject some time ago.

More on My iWeb Blog

2006-01-27T00:20:00.000-05:00

I am slowly moving toward using iWeb for my blogging needs. I have posted a write-up on iMovie '06 over there, so go check it out. I like some of the editing features in iWeb, particularly the live spell-checker. It's much easier to use than what Blogger has. I am sure there are other blogging tools that do the same thing. It's a nice feature, in my opinion, and I think that those who don't have a similar feature are really missing out.

I also posted a new video, and I updated the previous one. I am now using a higher quality setting for the videos. The size is a little larger now, but the quality is drastically better.

More iWeb Blogging

2006-01-25T22:16:00.000-05:00

Per some comments on my last iWeb blog entry, I posted a couple more entries each showing the results of different things. One entry shows that not all text is rendered as an image in iWeb. If the font is a web-friendly font like Arial, it renders as ordinary styled text. If you use an odd-ball font, then it becomes an image. I think that makes sense. Again, the resulting HTML is ugly. And you purists can whine all you want. You'd never use a WYSIWYG HTML editor anyways, so quit griping. To me, I think the fact that I get a page that looks the same on multiple browsers is quite a feat.

There are those out there who hate divs, and preach that they should use paragraph tags. Maybe... Paragraph tags add spaces where they may not be wanted. A div gives you a content area that does not have any baggage as far as rendering goes. It simply gives you a rectangle within to put content. Maybe they are overdone... so are tables in many other sites. Tables were never meant for formatting, and yet they are used time and again to accomplish just that. I'm just trying to show that iWeb can be used by folks and can get some nice results. It's true you don't have complete control, but that is not the intended audience.

All of that aside, iWeb does have a few things other than the resulting HTML that could be improved for normal Joe and Sally users. For one, there is no easy way to republish only the things that change, at least not if you are publishing to a folder. This would be a big help. It doesn't have an easy way to add comments to blogs. Notice, I didn't say it was impossible. It can be done, as you can see from my blog, but it requires you to modify the resulting HTML, adding some script code. The templates are in XML, so it should be possible to add this script automatically. I am working on this for myself, and if I figure it out, instructions will be posted for everyone.

That's it for now. Check out the two new posts, and the resulting source so you can see some cases where it renders text as images, and some cases where text is rendered as text. Comment on them all you like. I am doing this as a way for some new ideas to be brought out. If anyone would like to help me in my endeavour to add commenting to the iWeb Templates, e-mail me.

Comments on iWeb Generated Blogs

2006-01-24T22:22:00.000-05:00

I have read several places where folks will blatantly claim that you can't create a blog with comments using iWeb. I hate to bust their bubble, but it can be done. Right now, it has to be done manually, but you can add comments to a blog entry created in iWeb. Here's proof. Comment all you like!

I have been working on a way to modify the templates in iWeb to generate this automatically, and I believe it can be done, but it may take me some time to reverse engineer it. The templates in iWeb are all XML based, so provided I can determine what each tag means, my theory is that I can tweak it to work. If I do figure it out, I'll post instructions on how you too can do the same thing.

More Shine

2006-01-23T00:22:00.000-05:00

I added a Home Movies section to my website. I am slowing progressing toward the migration of this blog over there.

Couple More WV Bloggers

2006-01-22T01:34:00.000-05:00

Found a couple more WV bloggers in the Charleston/Huntington area.

The Latest...

Dreamer

Entropy

Maybe, they'll show up at our blogger gathering on Feb. 1.

4haks.net

2006-01-20T00:35:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am in the process of moving this blog over to iWeb for content management. I have another domain where I host photo albums, and this will become the eventual home for this blog. I used to maintain it strictly with a text editor, and I used iPhoto to create photo album pages for me. It worked well, but it wasn't what I really wanted for the look, and I was growing tired of hand-coding the markup. Well, since getting iWeb, I decided to revamp that site, removing all the content that I used to host there, and start fresh. You can see the end result by visiting 4haks.net.

Cypress Gardens

2006-01-15T20:54:00.000-05:00

I have been going through some of my photos from a few years ago, and importing them into iPhoto. I've been doing this partly to see how well iPhoto handles large amounts of photos, and also, so I can create new backups of my photos on DVD. I came across this shot that I took in Cypress Gardens while riding the Sunshine Sky Adventure (it had a different name then I think, though). It was late in the evening, and the sky was gorgeous. I thought it was a nice shot, and decided I would share it. This was taken with my first digital camera, a Kodak DC3200.

Must Be At Least 18

2006-01-15T12:28:00.000-05:00

While checking out at Wal-Mart today, I had to purchase some Robitussin for our little boy who is sick. Well, the cashier scans it, and it pops-up the question "Is customer at least 18?" I just looked at the guy. Most (that means every other cashier I have ever had at Wal-mart) simply respond yes, and don't even bother asking. Well, not this guy. He said, "You kinda don't look 18." Of course, I don't "kinda look 18". I'm 32, you idiot! So, I pull out my driver's license, and show it to him. "I'll take that as a compliment", I told him. Then headed out of the store. I guess I look a lot younger than I am. Too bad I'm not a woman. Might mean more in that case.

iWeb - Hands on Review

2006-01-13T23:40:00.000-05:00

I received my copy of iLife '06 today. I installed it after I got home. It took about 25 minutes to install, and required an additional 3gb or so of space. I had it upgrade my old iLife. I know some of have hesitated to do so, but I figure if you going in, go all in.

So, having played around with iMovie for a few, and iDVD, I thought I would try iWeb out. I didn't buy iLife for iWeb. Really had no plans on using it, especially after reading all the negativity from everyone. But I like to keep an open mind, and I judge things for myself. Good thing too! This software is great!

Now, I write software for a living, particularly web based software, so I have a good grasp on best practices, etc when it comes to developing for the web. I have also had to deal with my fair share of web-standards-compliance-pitfalls. I always try to develop in a manner that suits the majority of browsers out there, and that doesn't mean only IE. I usually do all of my testing in a non-IE browser, in particular Flock, or Firefox, as they seem to follow the standards more closely. Once it works there, I work on getting IE compliant.

But enough about that. I have been toying with iWeb now for an hour or so, just trying out the various layout functions. Every so often, I would take a peek at the generated source. And let me say, it ain't pretty! But I am not complaining. Why? Well, for one reason. This editor works. I don't need to view the source. See, that is where so many of the complaints seem to stem from. These folks think they need to look at the generated source. You don't. It works, and it renders properly. I don't have to sit and tweak until the layout is right. I just drag it around, and it works. I love it!

It's got this great feature for showing alignment markers so you can align items with other items on the page. You can rotate text. You can use any font you like. Any font! It generates images from them. Now, I am not a big fan of images for text, but I won't to clarify this. I don't like them because they are a maintenance nightmare. Normally, but not so with iWeb. While you are editing, it is just like text, but when you publish, you get images. Brilliant!

You can define opacity for images. You can add drop-shadows. You can change the angle of images, and text, and drop-shadows. You can add reflections to images. You can change the colors of everything, including shadows. You can adjust the z-index of everything. It's very simple point-n-click that works, and works the first time.

I could go on and on and continue to praise this software. It is really wonderful. If you haven't tried it, I suggest you do. This software will change the way you approach website design. In the not so distant future I am going to move this blog and begin maintaining it using iWeb. No, I am not getting a .Mac account. I don't need that. I have a domain, and I have web space, and now that I have a nice piece of software to manage my content, I am going to change.

Blogger has been great. But I think I want to move in a new direction for my blog, and iWeb is going to provide me a means to do so. When I make the switch, I hope that I can simply point this web address directly to it. I am pretty sure I can, but if not, I'll at least post an entry on where to find me. Until that time, I will continue to use Blogger.

Cloud Nine

2006-01-11T01:05:00.000-05:00

Man oh Man! I haven't been this happy since... well, since I don't remember when! I just got done watching the SteveNote, and all I can say is "Wow!" Yeah, there are new mac's with intel processors. Those are cool, and they are fast, but what really has me all stirred up is iLife, in particular iMovie and iDVD, and GarageBand coming in a close third.

iMovie has always been a great product to use. I have created some great stuff with it. Just ask any of my family. None of them, have a clue how I create the movies I do, but they all are amazed. And now, with the new features, they are simply going to be awestruck. Not that I am a great videographer. Not even close. It's just all the fun flashy stuff they have added to iMovie. The animated themes put this product over the top. You really have to see the demo in the SteveNote to appreciate them to the fullest, but basically they give you nicely done animated graphic animations in which you can insert your movies, and they become a part of the animation. It really has to be seen to be fully appreciated. If you have ever seen the animated menus in iDVD 5, it takes that to a whole new level.

In addition to the animated themes, iMovie adds some great audio control features for noise reduction, and sound equalization. These two features are a great addition. So many times with video you don't get quite the audio quality you want. With these two additions, that problem is significantly reduced. I can not wait to try it out.

iDVD is another phenomenal tool. I really love the animated menus. They really bring your home-made movies to life. Well, they have added 10 new themes to iDVD, each with a main menu, a submenu, and a slideshow theme. They have added some great features for improving the looping of menu animations. This was one area I thought they needed to improve, and it looks like my wishes have been granted. They have also improved the menu navigation in iDVD. It's now much easier to rearrange the scenes, and how you navigate through the menus. One item I hope they have added, but I have not seen it mentioned anywhere is a way to play a menu transition animation between menus. You see this quite often in the commercial DVD's you buy. I think this would be a great feature!

GarageBand has some nice new features as well for podcasters out there. This isn't my thing, but I know a few who are really into creating these things. The feature of GarageBand that catches my attention is the scoring of movies. Now, it's even easier to add sound effects and music to your movies. I can't wait to try this out.

I ordered my version of iLife '06 just a while ago, so when it comes in, and I have had a chance to play, I'll give a more thorough review. If it's anything like the SteveNote, it's going to be great!

.NET Development Tips

2006-01-10T12:22:00.000-05:00

I have not posted any development items in quite some time, so I thought that I would post a couple of items that I have found over the past few days.

SmartNavigation Causes Erratic Behavior in Web Applications

First off, if you value your sanity, disable SmartNavigation in your application. This can be done by making a change to a setting within the Web.config file for your web application. Pages can override this setting, though, so take care to ensure that you are not doing that. To disable SmartNavigation, make sure you have the following in your Web.config:

<system.web>
<pages smartNavigation="false" />
</system.web><

SmartNavigation is supposed to be this nice feature (only available to IE users though) that helps to speed up web applications, as well as helps to remember the location on a page during PostBack. ASP.NET Web applications do a lot of posting back to the server. Of course in doing that, the page has to be reloaded. SmartNavigation is supposed to help in this respect, and it does. However, a nasty side-effect of this is that you often get erratic behavior in your web applications, particularly those that use a lot of JavaScript. As an example, I created this nifty web control that makes the file input control in html look nice. You are no longer stuck with the ugly browse button, and can instead replace it with a nice image for the browse button. With SmartNavigation enabled though, sometimes after a postback, the control would not be visible in IE. The kicker, the HTML for the control was rendered and is viewable in the source for the page. So, why oh why does it not show up? SmartNavigation. Didn't do it every time, but it did on occasion.

So, I simply disable it from now on. If you want the feature that remembers where you were at on a page before postback, there are numerous solutions on the web. A particularly nice one can be found here.

DHTML Effect Filters Can be Disabled in IE Security Settings

Another item that I have found recently also surfaced during the creation of me file input control. And it has to do with DHTML effect filters. I had code in the style attribute:

filter:alpha(opacity: 0);

When I loaded the page on my local machine, everything was fine. When I uploaded the page to the remote server, and attempted to load the page using the same browser, the effect did not render.

Turns out, there is a setting in IE that must be enabled for this to work. Open IE, select the Tools menu, and the Options item from that menu. Select the Security tab, and choose Custom level. Scroll down until you find "Binary & Script Behaviours". Make sure that this is enabled. Apparently DHTML filters could be a security risk. Could someone explain to me how these could be exploited? It is beyond me!

Photo of the Day

2006-01-09T18:54:00.000-05:00

The sky this morning was quite nice. I took this shot when I arrived at work. It is shot from the Park Place Cinemas parking garage.

Photo of the Day

2006-01-07T00:48:00.000-05:00

We went to see Disney on Ice tonight. It was a great show, and was all about the princesses. Each and every princess was there, but the main focus (half of the show) was on Cinderella. That would be alright if your little girl's favorite wasn't Princess Aurora (Sleeping Beauty, or Briar Rose for the informed). But each princess got a good bit of stage time, so it was alright.

This is my favorite shot from the night. I got this near the end of the show. I finally got my camera set up well by then, and the lighting was better as well. Next year, I am getting front row so I won't have to worry so much about the lighting.

One thing I thought was funny was that the event staff came around, and told me I couldn't film or use zoom. Little does she know I have zoom, and used it the whole night. It ain't much, only 3X, but without that the shots are near worthless from where we were sitting. What she doesn't know won't hurt her. I just think it is so silly for them to prohibit video and zoom lens. I know they are just trying to sell their videos, but its ridiculous. I mean, I can film all I want at all of the official Disney shows at Walt Disney World.

Overall, it was a great show, though. I think it was a little longer than the past few years. This year, counting the fifteen minute intermission, the show was 2 hours. I think most of the shows in the past were about fifteen to thirty minutes shorter. If you get the chance, I definitely recommend going to see this one, particularly if you have a little girl who likes the princesses, and even more so if she likes Cinderella.