reedmaniac.com

Many thanks to both Les and Erin for being the only two people to submit a reply actually giving a charity and a solid reason why I should donate to that charity. The one I found the most convincing was Les' comment about Child's Play, a charity dedicated to improving the lives of children by donating toys and games to hospitals worldwide. Not only was I able to be completely in control over where the money was being spent, but I also could choose the hospital that would receive the items. And now, thanks to Les, Legacy Emanuel Children's Hospital has thirty-four books, eleven board games, three DVDs, three learning toys, a 50 piece race car set, and a Nintendo Wii headed to their door. Should all be there in the next couple weeks.

Also, since there was still money left over, I donated the rest, approximately $100 Canadian dollars, to Movember in Erin's name. The least I could do for a cause that led a man to shave off his goatee of twelve years.

-----

Despite learning of two new causes and being pleased with my donations, I am still disappointed. Was incredibly crestfallen for most of the afternoon, actually.

Unless my stats are mistaken, there are at least a factor of ten more people reading this website than who replied to my original Spread the Wealth entry with either a comment or email. Where were their replies? Did the opportunity to fund a charity or cause not seem worth the effort? Silent observers was not what I was hoping for...

Curiosity drives me to try many different things. An idea has been stewing in my mind for a couple days now, and I have decided to just try it and see what happens. Hopefully, it will not explode in my face.

On a fairly regular basis, usually about once or twice a month, I donate money to a person, charity, organization, or what have you. It ranges anywhere between giving an acquaintance a Flickr Pro account to donating a substantial amount of money to a non-profit. While I would never consider myself blessed, I am fortunate to have had a well paying job for a few years and frugal spending habits in relation to that income. My investments are still doing relatively well and my part time contract work pays more than my bills, and like a certain Mr. Barack Obama I believe in spreading the wealth around and helping others/causes I believe in.

But, this month I want someone else to choose. The election is over, and I would prefer if we could keep some of this energy and momentum going. For months, people were seriously invested in the future of their communities and government. They should continue to be so, for their entire life, not just when there is an election. Keep your civic life strong!

So, here's the deal. I am going to donate $1,000. Write a paragraph, an essay, or a proposal explaining to me where I should donate this money and why, and then post it in the comments. The one I deem the most worthy will get the money (and yes, that means all of my personal biases might come into play).

There are no real restrictions. It can be a person, family, group, non-profit, cause, organization, or possibly just investing it in something like green energy. However, keep your arguments mature, responsible, and lacking any sort of anger or hate; I want to see the best of humanity, not the worst. Have at it. Oh, and you have until Monday morning.

Update:

A Mr. Derek Jones pointed out over IM that writing a check != community action. To which I say: duh. Of course, you writing an argument for where my money should be donated is not actually community action. Instead, this, like much of what I write here politically, is meant to start thoughts and a discussion. To get people motivated to thinking about what could or should be done in their communities, small or great, local or global. I have also received emails from other people who have talked about their own donating or volunteering habits. Things I like to hear. So, yes, if those are the topics you wish to bring up, go ahead and say something in the comments.

Link. Only been playing with this for about ten minutes, but I am rather impressed so far.

Amelia’s new professional website is now live and eagerly awaiting public consumption.  In September, she started pushing me for advice on how to buy a domain, get a host, design a website, and all the other fun things one does when creating a new site.  What I found refreshing was how quickly she took to the process of designing the site.  She coalesced in her mind its purpose, created a site map, and only then started on the design.  And as for the design, she first did parts of it by hand and then built a layout in Word.  I then converted it into HTML and CSS using my rusty design skills.  The end result is a focused website that is rather straightforward and does exactly what she wishes.

The one thing I changed was the Portfolio.  I knew we could design a better and easier to update Portfolio than what her original layout had planned.  Thanks to my playing with jQuery this past month, I finally found a remarkably easy solution for creation a Portfolio using jQuery and Flickr’s Feed API.  Honestly, at this point, I think anyone with a Flickr account could create their own online portfolio, similar to Amelia’s, within ten minutes.  And, I thought I might share…

Tools

• Magpie, RSS/Atom PHP Library
• jQuery, JavaScript Library
• Galleria plugin for jQuery
• Flickr Feeds
• A host running PHP

The first three can all be downloaded individually and combined, if you wish and have the skills.  However, I added some functionality to Galleria (on the request of Ms. Lohrenz) and updated the Magpie library to use a new version of the Snoopy library, as its version was woefully out of date.  Also, I thought you might wish to have a barebones demo using this technique.  So, I created a download with all of the pieces combined and working…

‹ Download Portfolio Demo ›

Inside the index.php file are two variables.  One is the $page_title and that value will be placed in the <title> tag, which is displayed at the very top of your browser’s window.  The second, $set_url, is the URL to your Flickr feed.  In Amelia’s case, what we did is create a new Set in Flickr for each section of her Portfolio.  If you go to the Flickr page for a Set, you will in the bottom left corner, a ‘Feed’ link.  That is the URL you will put in $set_url.  Flickr has feeds for photostreams, collections, sets, and even tags so you really can pick and choose which images you show in your Portfolio.

Now, there is a small limitation with how many images that can be displayed.  Flickr’s feeds only show the 20 most recent images uploaded.  However, that actually worked in our favor as more than 18-20 images would be a detriment to the design.  Sadly, there does not seem to be any publicly available around this limitation.  I can easily imagine someone using another jQuery plugin to create a nice scrolling list of thumbnails for display.

Once you have set your $page_title and $set_url values, upload all of the files up to your host.  Next, go into the ./script directory and give your ‘cache’ folder writable permissions (777, typically).  Open your browser and look at the page.  Here is my demo on reedmaniac.com.

The beautiful thing about this is that Amelia never has to learn any PHP or JS code.  Heck, she never even has to modify a single file on her server to update the Porfolio.  Instead, she uses her already existing Flickr account to add, edit, and remove images from Sets as she sees fit.  And, if she ever wants to add a new section to her website’s Portfolio, she just creates a new Set and I copy a file and change two variables.  Piece.  Of.  Cake.

That’s how it works.  We’ll probably be tweaking her design off and on for the next century, but the demo I provided here uses only the basic CSS required for the demo.  You should be able to play around with it and have loads of fun.  Since there is some DOM manipulation of the HTML, the Safari ‘Inspect Element’ ability should come in handy with any CSS tweaks.  If you want to learn a bit more of the technical aspects of what I did, continue reading.  Everyone else, go play with the demo!

-----

The Porfolio, Various Technical Details

First off, I admit the CSS is a bit messy in the demo.  Honestly, I copied it from the demos provided at the Galleria site and manipulated it thanks to ‘Inspect Element’ ability, which gave me a nice view of the DOM.  Sure would be nice if we could have a View Source for the DOM at any given time, no?  I expect I will clean it up once Amelia gives me the changes she wants done so that I can kill two birds with one stone.

Second, I hacked the Magpie library so that it looked for the Snoopy library in the same directory as the rest of the javascript.  Just streamlined the directory structure a bit.  Also, according to SourceForge the Magpie library has not been updated since 2005, so it has a tendency to output a few PHP errors when parsing feeds.  Instead of fixing all of its problems, of which there is no shortage, I simply turned off error reporting while it was processing.  Does not adversely affect results and saves me from hacking it any further.  Finally, as for the Snoopy library included with the Magpie Library, it is also rather old and Derek Jones informed me of a recent security fix in it, so it was updated as well.  I think that contributed the most to me creating the Demo for people to download and use.  Leads credence to the idea of Magpie being resurrected or replaced in the PHP community.

Third, if you look at the top of the Galleria script, you will see the list of changes I made to it.  Basically, Galleria allows you to add a caption to an image by putting it in the title="” attribute of the <img> tag.  However, Flickr allows one to give an image both a title and a caption, both of which are included in its Feeds (the latter requiring a bit of processing to retrieve).  Amelia wanted both to be included in her website’s Porfolio.  What I did is added the longdesc="” attribute to the <img> tag to contain the Flickr caption while using the title="” attribute for the Flickr title.  Then, in the Galleria plugin’s code, I had a <div with a class of ‘caption2’ added just after the original caption.  I also modified the onImage trigger to include this second caption object, since I wanted to do a fade of the images and captions.

Looking in the PHP code in the portfolio_template.php file, you will notice that the Flickr caption was contained in the Atom feed’s ‘content’ element along with the image and a link to the Flickr page.  Thankfully, Flickr puts those last two items in paragraph tags right at the beginning, so it was a simple grep match to remove them and get the caption, no matter its length and number of paragraphs.  Also, since captions in Flickr contain HTML, I removed line breaks and did a bit of urlencoding to make it function correctly as an HTML attribute and validate as XHTML Strict.  A bit messy, but it works and works well.

Finally, the Flickr feed only sends us the small image URL, which is oddly given the suffix of ‘_m’.  For most Portfolios, this is too small of an image for detailed viewing.  Magically, by removing that suffix, you get the medium size image.  However, what you do not get is the width and height of this medium image.  Thankfully, Flickr resizes medium images so that no side is longer than 500.  With some quick math, you can determine the proportions of the small image and then what the medium image’s dimensions are.  At most you will likely only be off by a pixel, I believe.

That’s mostly it.  Just a bit of hacking, updating of outdated files, and massaging some data to fit our needs.  In the future, it might be prudent to use the Flickr API with REST to get data as it has more parameters and would allow pagination among other features.  Still, a good, simple first foray for people who want an easy to update Porfolio.

Link. Not so much a bubble as a mountain peak...

On Monday, I went to a rally at the Bagdad theatre for Ralph Nader, who is running for President in Oregon under the Peace party.  His accomplishments are fairly well documented and his viewpoints are clear, but I really wanted to hear him speak in person and get a feel for the man.  Arriving two hours early to get a seat definitely worked in my favor.  By the time he started speaking, the theatre was packed and people were lining the walls and a couple dozen were sitting in the aisle.  As it was, I was able to watch him from the third row.

A little ageist of me, but the first thing that really struck me when Nader began speaking is that he is older than McCain, was jet lagged and on his third rally of the day, and yet he still seemed incredibly focused and adamant about his views.  Not only that, throughout the night (including at the after-party), his knowledge of people and details was practically encyclopedic.  The man knows his issues and can lay out the details; he’s sharp.

His viewpoints are close to my own and the overarching themes were responsibility, accountability, and action.  Precisely what I have been harping on for months.  The Democratic Party have repeatedly failed us in Congress.  Bush and Cheney have lied and broken the law on numerous occasions without Congress using its power to fully investigate them for possible impeachment proceedings.  A $700 billion bailout bill was passed last month with another $150 billion tacked on without a single hearing for the public to comment.  The ban on offshore drilling was allowed to fail.  Tele-communication firms were allowed to escape prosecution for allowing wiretaps illegally.  More than two-thirds of America wants us out of Iraq months ago, and yet it continues being funded.

With all of these complaints, Nader constantly asked the crowd to question our friends who still support the Democrats:  What is your breaking point?  When would the Democrats finally lose your support? When do you say enough is enough?  Most importantly, have you even thought about whether you have a breaking point?

I disagree with Nader that there is no real difference between the Republicans and Democrats, between John McCain and Barack Obama.  I have no doubt that Obama would be a far superior President than McCain and that many of the issues I deeply care about would have greater support and guidance under an Obama Administration.  However, I do agree that Obama is a slick politician, that Obama will abandon groups of his supporters when it becomes politically convenient/necessary, and that there are disgusting similarities in what they support.  Despite watching numerous videos of Obama speaking and reading his proposals, I have never been able to believe in him or his “message” of change.  Detached realism is my mantra for his campaign.

Nader may not be seriously in the running for the presidency...But he is running seriously, and his challenges to Bush and Cheney, to a sputtering two-party system, and to the media that maintains failed presidents and failed politics are not nearly so radical—or so off-putting—as his dismissers would have Americans believe.
-- The Nation

Nader is under no illusions about winning the Presidency.  That is not his goal.  Civic awareness and building a progressive movement with strong third parties is.

Nader is looking to build support for well-organized, funded, articulate, and passionate third parties and organizations, who can resist corporate interests over those of the people, in not just the nation but in states, Congressional districts, counties, and cities.  Altogether, citizens getting together, becoming informed, and having a civic life with power in their government.  By campaigning as a Presidential campaign and getting votes, he believes he can help and provide seeds for this vision of the future.  He believes the real campaign begins on November 4th.

This is a candidate I can support.  I do not think he is the messiah or that he will bring “real change” to Washington, but that he will inspire people to do better and fight for what they believe in and get involved.  That seems worth listening to and hoping for, so I donated to his campaign and signed up to help.

Honestly, I have not decided if I will vote for him.  Obama is leading by double digits in Oregon and has not been here since the primary ended though, so why vote for him?  A vote for Nader might get more funding and support for the Peace party here in Oregon, and it would be a principled stand where I vote for what I truly want and NOT just choosing a candidate from a party I have no real passion for or trust in.  Trying to think of a apt metaphor, I would rather choose as a friend the slightly geeky friend who says what is on his mind and is reliable than either the bully or the head of the football team who might rough me up or hang me out to dry if there was trouble.

-----

For anyone who finds voting for Nader distasteful because they believe it steals or takes votes from another candidate, I only have this to say:  My vote is not taken or stolen, it is earned.  If a candidate cannot earn my vote, then they never had it in the first place.

Having been dating for nearly half my life now, and while possibly no wiser from the experience I do believe I can impart this one piece of advice with a certain amount of confidence:

If you have been dating someone for a year and cannot say with confidence that you want to be still dating them in another year, break up.

What is with all these people playing it safe?  Why compromise and settle for “good enough” when there are other possibilities?  One of those ongoing philosophical themes in my life…

I have a somewhat well deserved reputation for being secretive and a bit enigmatic. While I do tend to output a fair amount of noise from my mouth, the really important stuff is all sealed in a nice vault up in my noggin'. For those ExpressionEngine and CodeIgniter lovers out there, you can probably place a hefty amount of the blame for EllisLab's tight lips about product releases and features upon me. I fought, often against Les, on that point at least once a year during my tenure as CTO. Rick's similar belief in the early days only reinforced mine, and I think I properly ingrained it into Derek Jones before I departed.

One of the reasons for being so secretive is that half the time I have no clue what the hell I am doing, and, conveniently, the other half of the time, it never turns out the way I plan. Then again, that has never stopped me from talking smack while playing sports. Must be an ego thing.

Still, now that a few things have fallen into place in the last week, I feel like at least mentioning parts of my current plan, even if it completely falls apart when a single thread is pulled the wrong way. Dan and I applied for a spectacularly renovated house in SE PDX over the weekend and were informed yesterday that our application was accepted. We sign the lease on Saturday. Now that I am sure of my residency for at least the next six months, I know the direction I wish to take with my life.

Over the past month, I have been doing part-time programming work for Solspace, Inc., one of the premier ExpressionEngine focused web development companies. Their third party add-ons have become quite the hit in the ExpressionEngine community and with my skills it was a natural fit. As of today, I have completed new versions for three of their most popular modules and work on a fourth is nearing completion. After receiving the welcomed news about the house and a talk with Mitchell last night, I informed him that he could count me as part of his team for the foreseeable future.

The primary benefit of working for Solspace is that I am only doing it part-time, but that amount of work allows me to pay my bills without touching my savings. Freedom and flexibility. Also, Solspace has ambitious plans for expanding their influence within the ExpressionEngine community while also exploring other non-EE opportunities. Opportunities that I have desperately wished to explore myself but was never given a chance to seriously pursue as an employee of EllisLab.

Back to that flexibility and freedom. While an independent contractor with Solspace, I will also be working on my own projects separate from them. A couple will be personal but the majority will not. For the latter, we're talking new software. Both Add-Ons for ExpressionEngine and completely independent programs. My goal is to have a sustainable level of sales and the ability to live off of it in the next six months.

So, I look skyward and sigh heavily as I say this, but it looks like I am going to be working on another start-up business. Frankly, this is where my true passion and focus is aimed as I think about the future. I enjoy writing great software and building really neat products, but I also want to be the one in charge. Experience has shown me that if you want to truly build what you want and how you want it, be it software or a company, you need to have the power and control and freedom to do so.

Already, I can see the possibility of a strong partnership with Solspace in the future. They have a strong crew whose skills in support and service might be invaluable to me. Mitchell and I will be talking a great deal, I am sure.

So, that's where I am aiming in the near future, work-wise. More news will be coming in the future, such as the new company's name, a beta of its first EE module, additional software tidbits, and why its independent programs are likely not to be written in CodeIgniter.

Link. Might start getting in line a few hours early for this one.

That is what I may be in less than four weeks. The fourth house that I have wanted to rent in Portland has been rented to someone else. Got the news early this morning over email. Really, this is my first and only outright rejection, but it still stings a bit. The first house I wanted to rent involved a poor attempt at negotiation so it fell through, and then the other two were rented even before I got a chance to deliver my complete rental application. Not exactly a high showing of success after a month of looking for a new place to live.

My pickiness is a factor. I want a house in a certain, fairly specific area of SE Portland with three bedrooms and at least one and a half baths. Those characteristics were required even for me to think about looking at the place. Then, it really had to compare in style and charm to that very first house I wanted to rent, which was perfectly located and looked, for lack of a better term, homely. And, we all know how I refuse to settle for anything less than what I think I want.

No idea if I am even going to keep on looking. The pre-election polls are increasingly going in Obama's favor, and yet we just passed a brutal bailout bill made bulbous from special earmarks. I feel dirty just reading descriptions of the final bill.

One option is to simply get an apartment or room in a house. The problem is that I really wanted a house, a fresh house, to start anew and built/create from scratch. To have control, from the beginning, of how it develops (and not just plopping my sorry ass into a situation that I can merely live with for a while). Wanted all of the amenities possible with a house too, such as a garage and yard. Picky picky.

The other option is to travel for a bit. I have an open offer to visit a friend in Hawaii and I am sure I could putter around a few other countries afterwards too. In my infinite hope, I suspect that just might be enough time for Dan to finally find and buy his own house that I can brusquely worm my way into living at.

Whatever the case, I should probably reach a decision soon.