Chomer Speaks

I got one of my books on iPhone programming from Amazon.com. The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook by Erica Sadun. It’s been about two days now. I’ve been pouring over it at home and riding the train to and from work. I am finding it helpful. Will I realize my dream of getting an app in the iPhone App Store?

Obama has won the presidency. I think it is cool that an African American has done this. Been checking out CNN’s web site for the latest info. A note about their web site: they need to do something since with every page-load it seems everything locks up for 10-15 seconds. Not a good user experience! I’m not guilt free since my blog regularily generates a couple of javascript errors for each page load (though most people probably don’t notice cuz they don’t have debugging turned on in their browser)!

Well, it’s been a long time since I’ve posted to my blog here. There have been a few storms in my life I’ve had to work through. Things have relatively settled down now and there are various projects that I am working on, some having to do with this site!

One thing of note is that due to certain changes in my life now, I am free to move out of the area I’m in (if I so choose). If I wanted to interview for a new job would I be prepared? I’ve had a little site:  http://orville.chomer.com/ which contained information about me and included my resume to download. When I checked, the site was down! I had been messing around months ago with it and forgot all about it!

Time to get serious here. So, lately, I have been working to get this simple little site operational and accurate. My resume needed updating/correcting. This little site is coming but its not all there yet. I’m planning on making this my main focus in my personal project list until its really professionally done. Wait till you see the final version of the header/banner for the site — its not like anything I think you have ever seen!

I’ve also been working on a re-design of chomer.com. Instead of being static like the previous version, it is fully dynamic. If you are looking at my site now to see those changes, sorry, its not there yet (its on my local box). The site allows for both articles and blog posts and will use a back-end MySQL database to handle all the content. Once this is up and running, this Wordpress blog will go away. Before that happens, I will be copying all the contents of all my blogs to this new blog system.

The new system also uses heavy AJAX control using my Renegade Ajax framework. I am using this period to help shake out any issues that are in this framework. The application server I am using to write my new site software in is my favorite: ColdFusion MX (of course). I do have plans, once the site is finished and been in operation awhile… getting all the kinks out… of writing a new version in PHP and providing it for free to the community. If it comes out the way I see it in my head, it will be better than anything I’ve ever seen. Definitely better than anything I’ve seen for free for sure!

Furnace Room
Our furnace room has been a mess for a long time now. I’ve dreamed of having some sort of workbench down there. Well, after going to a cool show put on by MAKE magazine at the Chicago Science and Industry museum, getting a subscription and a best projects book, I got inspired. In the front of the book was a section on setting up a workbench! I’ve got enough room to set up an L-shaped work area made up of 3 benches which I bought at Menards. The instructions were a little shakey that came in the box with the first one I assembled but I learned a few things along the way. I am thinking about filming a video tutorial on assembling the workbench and eventually placing it out on YouTube. We will see. One project in my new MAKE book is building a Stirling Engine. I’d like to try that out on my new workbench(s)!

There’s so many things rattling around in my brain right now (as usual) and its hard to know what to pick out to talk about. And I want to write. Many times during these brain log-jams, I just throw in the towel and I don’t write a thing.

I think the best thing to do is start typing. Just start typing into the blog.

My attempts at programming the iPhone are kinda so so. I have fits of programming attempts. My main road-block seems to be learning how to use XCode properly.

I’ve talked to people who work in the Oakbrook Apple store and the big Michigan Avenue Apple store in downtown Chicago. Not suprisingly, beyond knowing how to use the iPhone, they don’t have any info/help on how to program the thing. Gosh, I wish I had gone to the developer conference Apple just had in San Fran!

I didfind out about a programmer’s group in the Chicagoland area that meets once a month at the Michigan Avenue Apple Store. The Cocoaheads. I saw some stuff out there about iPhone programming. I am planning on going to their July meeting. Wish me luck!

I finally took my first 1to1 course at the Apple store on Finalcut Express. Pretty good! Sadly, I’ve had the membership for a while now and have wasted several weeks. I am all signed up for another 1to1 though.

Are you an iPhone developer? Do you know XCode pretty well? Do you mind if I bother you with questions? Let me know.

“Cree cree creee creee…”   sound of crickets…

I got to come up with a written list of my current iPhone questions to:

• Bring to that meeting in July.
• To give via email addresses shown at the end of the Apple “how-to” videos.

Am I babbling? Probably.

My health (panic attack and anxiety issues) has been gradually improving as I have been:

• Staying away from caffiene
• Taking GABA (An amino acid)
• Taking 5-HTP.
• Taking B Vitamins & Magnesium.
• Trying to eat right.
• Taking a multiple vitamin.
• Trying to recollect what I did right for the day not what I did wrong.
• Trying to recollect what I completed, as opposed to what I didn’t complete.
• Not only let my body rest, but my thoughts rest too.

One thing that has been therapeutic, has been gardening.  I’ve created this whole new garden bed in my back yard. It’s got this nice edging, cedar mulch, and I’ve planted 3 new bushes! I hope that they survive.

The bushes have some new holes in allot of the leaves. I looked on the underside of the leaves… no bugs were found. I’ve now added flowers and garden lights to my garden bed (some flowers have not been planted yet). Oh, and I have one tomato plant.

I still have dreams of living in Hawaii some day (on the beach). Okay, I don’t want much do I?

Visited my dad at the nursing home. He was quite lucid. Haven’t seen him that lucid in quite some time. I know its not something I can expect regularly. If I had my druthers, I would live by the ocean in Hawaii and my dad would live with us and we would have in-home healthcare for him. I don’t know if my dad would live long enough for this to happen. I can dream.

I have noticed something recently (it may be a Wordpress problem, it may be a Mac Safari problem):

When publishing/saving a post on my blog using Safari on my Mac, it removes the paragraph separations. Everything looks fine while I’m editing the post, but when I look at the post in the blog all the text just runs together.

When returning to edit the post, the paragraphs continue to be missing.

If I go into edit the posts, or creat a new post on my Windows XP box using IE7, the paragraphs work properly.

I made some change to a setting in the Admin part of the site and BAM! The site got some internal error and stopped working! It’s actually been a few days since this happened and I finally got around to getting it fixed. What a pain!

In the latest iteration of the look of Chomer.com and it’s blog, I was pretty satisfied. Now I feel a subtle discontent that is steadily growing. For one thing, the blog doesn’t render perfectly (I need to delve deeper into the CSS HTML machinations of Wordpress). Even if I did get that straightened out, it’s just not quite what I’m looking for.

For starters, I want something that has a cleaner look. A bit more professional. But I also want it to be beautiful. A site that if someone appreciates beauty, they will come to the site just to look at it regardless of the content. I know, that sounds crazy, but I want something that I would just want to look at. A web site that is Art. Something you might think about putting in an art museum.

Of course that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to have content, and good content at that, but I want to strike that perfect blend of beauty and content.

It would be nice if the site layout/look were COMPLETELY separate from the content. Not just as far as files i.e. CSS, but something more dynamic, something where I can change the look on the fly and see what it will look like before I apply it. No, I’m not talking about canned blog Themes.

In the past I’ve kind of done a random, gut feel build-as-I-go type of design. I’m planning on doing some more thorough research on this subject. I do what to look at allot of blog themes, and allot of different web sites to see their page layouts/styles. I want to note down the ones that I find appealing.

There is a need to focus in on color. I am striving for a calm, relaxed, sort of zen feeling to the site.

Some of the ideas I want to do I’ve not seen anywhere. Many of these ideas I’ve partially proved as technically feasible. What I DON’T want to do is take a great idea and implement it in a sloppy manner.

Allot of thought needs to go into how the navigation works on the site. How the pages are laid out.

I’m also thinking about using my Renegade web framework on my own site. This would give it some credibility as well as improve the overall user experience on Chomer.com.

Do you have any ideas, do you know of any examples I might like? Point them out to me. Any constructive criticism is greatly appreciated.

Robert Scoble did a post today addressing what to do if you lost your job in the 2008 recession.  I think allot of these tips are very good. When going over them I thought how many of these could apply even if you still have your job! I mean, it couldn’t hurt to position oneself better career-wise.

The advice about working on one’s blog posting items in their area of expertise. Posting a video a day to You-Tube, again, covering something in their area of expertise. This has set me to thinking about this blog, what I can post here that would be useful, as well has posting one short video a day on You-Tube, again, on some short subject that I really have a handle on.

Just zeroing in on this is a great idea for those of us who still have jobs. I tend to have grand ideas for my web site/blog. I don’t want to throw away those ideas… but I need to think about giving my readers/viewers useful stuff in the near-term that will ultimately better position myself and my career.

So what do you think? Do you have any other ideas?