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Site Launch: CompassionBloggers.com
May 16th, 2008 | No Comments
The first phase of CompassionBloggers.com has officially launched. This site will be a place for bloggers to get resources and information about how they can partner with Compassion International to help release children from poverty. Compassion Bloggers will also take select groups of bloggers overseas to various countries allowing them to see the work of Compassion first-hand. The site will also document these trips by featuring blog posts, images and videos from each trip.
The site is currently running on a custom, PHP-driven infrastructure but I hope to transition everything over to Django for the next iteration.
Head over to CompassionBloggers.com and check it out. Then come back and let me know what you think.
IE takes the lead
May 15th, 2008 | No Comments
Well, it’s a bit of a sad day here on the blog. Ever since Shaun made encouraged me to start a blog I have become a bit of a stats junkie. By that I mean that every day (whether I post or not) I check all of the numbers of people who have visited my site, how they got here, etc. The numbers are all pretty low, but that doesn’t keep me from checking every day. It’s an addiction.
Well, one of the stats that I track is what browsers people use to view the site. From the beginning Firefox has had the lead over Internet Explorer (and Safari, Opera, etc.). That may not sound like a big deal, but across most of the internet Firefox generally gets up to 20% market share. No more. IE is very dominant. So, I have been kind of proud of the fact that most of the people who roll into my site use Firefox.
Until today. This morning’s stats revealed IE taking the lead by 2%. There is still hope for Firefox to come back, but I fear it’s a slippery slope from here. If only people knew what they were missing. And now, a moment of silence for Firefox’s lead…
Messiah?
May 14th, 2008 | No Comments
A friend of mine called me the other day to ask about an audio clip that I let him hear a long time ago. It’s a clip that I got from the interwebs and thought was hilarious, so I downloaded it and I’m posting it here.
Wait for it… it’s worth it.
IE6 ghost text bug
May 13th, 2008 | No Comments
Warning: geeky web content below! Proceed with caution.
Anybody who builds websites knows that different browsers render websites differently. Most web designers will also agree that Internet Explorer 6 was a horrible at rendering websites correctly. Thankfully Microsoft fixed most of the IE6 bugs in version 7, but not everyone that was using IE6 has moved over to IE7. So, I’m stuck with the task of creating a website the way that it is supposed to be done, and then changing what I have to so IE6 will display it properly (or as close as possible).
This afternoon I was checking a new website in IE6 and everything was moving along nicely until I got to one particular page that had a random character at the end of one line of text. I checked my HTML and PHP and I couldn’t find the character in the code anywhere. It was like it just appeared out of nowhere.
So, I searched the interwebs and found out about the IE6 ghost text bug (ooh, spooky). This seemed like a similar symptom to what I was facing since it appeared as characters from nowhere, but I didn’t have any HTML comments between floats (the most common trigger). So I kept searching but only found more articles about this same bug no matter how I described my problem. I thought, “Maybe this is the right solution after all.” So I started messing with the CSS.
I was using a list (ul) and each list item (li) contained a header (h3) and image (img) and a definition list (dl). So, I had a few tags to mess with to try to find the problem. I floated things, I un-floated things, I made sure everything had layout… nothing worked. And then I read something online that mentioned one cause of the ghost text bug being whitespace. The space between HTML tags.
You see, whitespace isn’t supposed to matter in HTML. Browsers are supposed to only pay attention to the stuff inside the tags (or tag pairs) and not the space in-between them. Keyword: supposed. IE6 apparently does not conform to these “standards” and chooses to do wacky things if it finds space between certain tags like repeating random characters in strange places. Who knew?
The solution: take out the whitespace (in this case a new-line character) between my definition term (dt) and definition definition (dd). And it’s fixed. Lesson learned: burn all copies of Microsoft Internet Explorer 6… or just keep down the whitespace in HTML.
Will the thrill
May 11th, 2008 | No Comments
So one of the perks to living in a dorm (and oh, there are so many) is getting to pick through all the stuff college students leave behind when they move out. It’s amazing what people leave behind. I’m talking things like couches, microwaves, printers, clothing… all because they don’t want to move it home. Amazing the mentality of poor college students.
Aside from end-of-the-year leftovers, we also get to poke around at any lost-and-found items. This stack isn’t usually as big or as interesting. However, the other day Rebekah found a gem! An iPod-shaped gem!
After waiting two weeks for the owner to ask about his lost friend, Rebekah decided to be pro-active. First, she charged it up so we could see the name of the iPod. It’s called “Will the thrill’s iPod.” That didn’t really help so we checked to see if it was engraved. It is, but it didn’t help either. I guess sometimes it is a good idea to put a phone number on your iPod. Looking through the music library wasn’t any help either. Just a typical college student mix. As much as we wanted to just keep it at this point, we knew we should try to do everything we could to track down the owner.
Next, we visited our local Apple store to see if they could look up the owner’s information in their records. I thought, “Surely the owner registered it and the fine folks at Apple can just look them up and ship it home.” I have to be honest here, the next thought that crossed my mind was, “What if the Apple employee just pretends to return it and actually keeps it for themselves… don’t we deserve it more than them?” But we both knew that it was better for us to try to do the “right thing.” Well, it turns out that they couldn’t tell me anything anyway. They suggested we call Apple.
So, we called Apple. After a lovely 10 minutes or so I was informed that the iPod was not registered. Their only suggestion was to call Apple’s security team and give them my contact info in case the owner calls them searching for their lost companion.
Now the only question left is whether I get to use it or Rebekah (because there will be no sharing allowed). Neither of us have owned an iPod that will play videos. In fact, we have never had a real “big boy” iPod at all… only Nanos. And, of course, if the owner asks for it back then we will (gladly) return it. But for now you had better believe we’re gonna put that iPod to use.
The EDGE Conference: Roanoke
May 7th, 2008 | No Comments
This weekend I ran sound for The EDGE Conference in Roanoke, VA.
This was a free version of our regular EDGE winter conferences that was funded entirely from offerings taken up at our winter conferences as a way for those students to give the Roanoke community a chance to attend a high-quality youth worship experience for no charge.
The event included Drew Worsham (illusionist), Ed Newton (speaker), Craig Tackett (speaker) and The Jonathan Project (worship band).
As expected, everyone did a great job and everyone who came out to worship with us seemed to have a great time. Several students made decisions to follow Christ and many others took the opportunity to refocus their lives on serving God. What could be better, right?
I even got to use one of these. Although it was unexpected (we had asked for an analog console) and I had to learn as I went, it was definitely nice and I want one… or two.
Thanks to all of our volunteer staff and especially to the rest of the production crew who came from Missouri, South Carolina, and North Carolina. You all made my life easy.
Two worlds
April 30th, 2008 | No Comments
There are some good posts from Shaun’s recent trip to the Dominican Republic over at Shlog.
I don’t know how he keeps from going crazy living in American culture after these trips. There has to be a period of transition or immersion back into our sense of normal (or maybe the idea is to forget our sense of normal).
Another PRK Recovery Update
April 27th, 2008 | No Comments
It’s been almost a month and a half plus too many eye drops to count since Rebekah’s PRK surgery. She has been feeling fine for quite a while, but her vision is still far from 20/20. Clear vision comes and goes and distance is always blurry. At Panera this afternoon she had to get out of line and walk closer to the counter to read the menu while I could read it with no problem.
We still have hope that this is all just part of a slow recovery process, but Rebekah is honestly a little worried. We have another appointment in a little over a week. We will have to wait and see what the doctors say at that time.
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