Dutch Rapley

What If?

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 00:18:00 -0500

What if you you were walking into a grocery store and you noticed a family? The reason you noticed them is that you had to walk around their kids to get into the store. You look again and you notice they have a stroller full of food. Not a massive amount of food, it’s not a big stroller. You notice the youngest child is no older than three and bundled up. You overhear a conversation about the weather. The temperature has dropped fifteen degrees in the last hour. It may or may not be raining and it’s windy.

What if you offer a to give them a ride and they politely decline with, “Someone is coming to pick us up.” What if you know that’s not true and you insist?

What if they walked one and a half miles, in less than pleasant weather, one way to buy groceries?

What if they don’t have furniture in their living room? You wonder whether or not they have a refrigerator. You wonder if they have pots and pans.

What if you go back to the store and you buy groceries? What if none of those groceries make it to your home because you bought them for the family in need? What if you realized what you originally went into the store to buy is no longer important?

It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

When Steve Jobs Died, I Wept

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 15:43:05 -0500

On October 5, 2011, Steve Jobs passed away. As I received news of his passing, I shed a tear. I wept. Steve Jobs was many things. He was a businessman and an innovator. More importantly, for some, he was a father.

I wept, not for passing of Steve Jobs but for what it represented - an acknowledgement and reminder to us of our own mortality. It was a reminder to me of my own father’s mortality. Like Steve, my father struggled with cancer the remainder of his days.

I wept for Steve’s children. I knew I would be experiencing the same emotions in the not too distant future. I wept because I knew I was going to miss my father dearly. A month later, I watched as my own father had no choice but to give up on his struggle with cancer.

Today is his birthday. While Dad isn’t here to celebrate with us, I can still celebrate today as the day that he was born, that he lived, and that he gave everything in his service to God, his country, and his family.

Rest in peace, Dad. You are gone, but not forgotten.

Decisions

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 18:41:08 -0400

When I was going off to college, I thought it might be a wise decision to buy a car. I knew of a 1976 Chevy Nova 4 door that was for sale. It didn’t have AC, but had a nicely tuned 327. May dad and I took it out for a test drive. I really wanted this car. My dad said, “No.” I needed to buy a computer. I did.

The computer wasn’t that great. It was put together with parts from Computer Shopper and had a Cyrix processor. I could play Doom, Command & Conquer, and the original Warcraft on it.

I never experienced a hardware failure, but I found myself tinkering with it on an ongoing basis. Netscape was fairly new and web sites piqued my interest. Yahoo! was just getting started. Because of this computer and access to the internet, I got interested in web development which later led to me a career in the field.

In retrospect, the decision to purchase a computer was the best one that could be made. I didn’t make the decision, my dad did. Sometimes we need a little help in making decisions.

Four Week Challenge

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 14:25:07 -0500

I’m posting this a little later than I wanted and I’ll keep it short. I’m taking part in a four week challenge. The challenge is to learn something knew or expand knowledge on a particular topic in four weeks.

For this challenge, I’m diving back into Rails. The idea is to spend some time with Rails each day. It doesn’t have to be a large chunk of time, but I have to spend enough time to advance my knowledge. At the end of four weeks, I hope to launch a new website. Whether or not I launch isn’t as important as establishing continuity for continuous improvement. It’s not the destination that’s important, but the journey that gets me there. Here’s to continuous improvement and the advancement of knowledge.

FW Geek Dinner, Revisited

Sat, 08 Jan 2011 11:37:20 -0500

HISTORY

When I moved to Fort Wayne, I hardly knew anyone. Being a telecommuter didn’t make it easy to meet people. I was fortunate enough to meet a couple of other telecommuters, Mike Krisher and Nathan Yergler, early on and we started meeting on a regular basis to “talk shop” over at Old Crown Coffee Roasters. After a few months, we all decided it would be a good idea to invite the community at large to join the discussion. Thus, the Fort Wayne Geek Dinner was born.

The FW Geek Dinner ran from about mid 2006 to early 2008. We always had between fifteen to thirty folks in attendance with attendees from as far away as Bryan, OH and Muncie, IN. In early 2008, I thought it would be a good time for the dinner to self organize, but that never took shape.

REBIRTH

Over the last year, I’ve had several folks approach me about bringing back the FW Geek Dinner. Those who attended the past said that they really enjoyed the format and the company of those who attended.

WHO’S INVITED?

The FW Geek Dinner isn’t just for programmers and server administrators. If you have any interest in anything technology related, you’re welcome to attend. You could be a maker, enjoy LEGO Mindstorms, work with illustration software, work with 3D modeling software, etc.

WHEN IS THE NEXT DINNER?

The next dinner is currently being organized and will take place either late January or early February. Once we finalize the details, I’ll announce the plans. In the meantime, you can join our group to stay informed or to connect with other professionals in the area: http://groups.google.com/group/geekdinner-fw.

Bitstream Vera Sans Mono

Mon, 20 Dec 2010 20:59:06 -0500

http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/ttf-bitstream-vera/1.10/

A found a new font. I’m using it for programming on Mac and Windows.

Web Designers VS Web Developers

Thu, 11 Nov 2010 18:37:08 -0500

Web Designers VS Web Developers

Ten Men Walk Into A Bar

Mon, 27 Sep 2010 14:05:48 -0400

Ten Men Walk Into A Bar

The Journal of Applied Disruption: A Surefire Search Engine Strategy

Fri, 24 Sep 2010 17:45:00 -0400

The Journal of Applied Disruption: A Surefire Search Engine Strategy:

applieddisruption:

Undeniably, showing up on the first page of Google results for your most vital keywords creates opportunities for your organization. Getting there the right way can make the difference between creating opportunities for a week or opportunities for a lifetime.

“Great content, well-structured and…

Needed ColdFusion Hibernate Improvements

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 18:54:00 -0400

Adobe made some nice improvements to Hibernate integration in the latest 9.0.1 update.

The nicest addition is the ability to work with multiple datasources in a single application.

I feel the implementation leaves much to be desired. Here’s where it falls short:

Additional datasources are differentiated with the “datasource” attribute in the CFC metadata
Across all datasources in an app, entity names have to be unique
There’s no flexibility with entityLoad() - see #2 above

I feel that a couple of minor improvements could be made:

Have a Application.cfc setting for this.ormsettings.datasources, this could provide some additional, useful functionality. You would no longer need to specify the datasource in the CFC’s attributes.

this.ormsettings.datasources = [
{datasource=”ds1”,
cfclocation=[“com/myorg/orm”]},

{datasource=”ds2”,
cfclocation=[“com/myorg/moreorm”, ”com/bmic/evenmoreorm”]}
];

2) working with entityLoad() and entityNew()

Currently, if you’re working with entityNew(), you have a nice work around, and that’s because you can instantiate ORM objects with createObject(). Granted, you’re still at the mercy of dealing with unique entities.

I realize it wouldn’t be right to add an additional attribute to entityLoad() and entityNew() for the datasource, but the following could be options for implementation when dealing with multiple hibernate sessions:

entityNew(“path.to.SomeEntity”)
entityNew(“ds1:SomeEntity”)

entityLoad(“path.to.SomeEntity”, 100, true)
entityLoad(“ds1:SomeEntity”, 100 true)

entityLoadByPK() would require the same enhancement as entityLoad()

entitySave() wouldn’t need to be updated since the entity is aware of the datasource it belongs to.

CBS Sports FAIL

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 17:53:00 -0400

I don’t know how fumbled this one. Was it the developer or the QA engineer? Maybe both are to blame. I know the casual user doesn’t see the meta data when visiting your site. Meta data matters when you share a link via Facebook.

ColdFusion + Migrations

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 19:16:00 -0400

Wait. What? Database versioning with ColdFusion? Not exactly. If you’re building any type of web application on Linux or Unix (Mac OS X included), there’s no reason you can’t leverage a little bit of ruby goodness in the form of ActiveRecord::Migration.

Migrations in ActiveRecord do a wonderful job of versioning your database, especially if you work on a distributed team, or each developer has their own local environment, and you use git. Forget managing SQL statements that updates your table structure, that’s for the birds.

If you’re interested, you should definitely check out the standalone-migrations gem.

After all, it’s about using the best tool for the job.

Web Application Developer

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 18:15:00 -0400

Artisan or engineer?

All Roads Lead to Rails

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 21:22:00 -0400

All Roads Lead to Rails:

I know this video is old, but, it’s still very relevant. It’s another one of my favorites on the topic of software development.

So Long Slashdot

Sat, 21 Aug 2010 11:28:45 -0400

For years, I’d take a glance at Slashdot on a daily basis. For the past several weeks, I haven’t looked at it, even once. I can’t explain it. I’m just not interested anymore.

70’s Schwinn Suburban 5-Speed This bike has...

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 21:16:32 -0400

70’s Schwinn Suburban 5-Speed

This bike has Shimano’s FF System and Positron shifter. The FF System is fairly interesting and probably ahead of it’s time in the 70’s. It allows for the chain to turn even when not pedaling; thus, allowing for the rider to shift while coasting.

Low esteem and the factory

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 14:43:17 -0400

Low esteem and the factory:

Words of wisdom from Seth Godin.

Doug Richard on Lifestyle Businesses

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 06:45:00 -0400

Doug Richard on Lifestyle Businesses

Moving Away from Dreamhost

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 07:08:00 -0400

Six years ago, I set up an account on Dreamhost. I have nothing against Dreamhost. They have served me well over the years. I paid $10.95 per month and I got basic hosting.

Initially, I used Dreamhost for a personal website to host Gallery (of which Matt Mullenweg of Wordpress was a contributor). I also used Dreamhost for email until Google Apps came out.

One of my goals was to build some PHP applications and host them on Dreamhost. I built one. In 2004, I used the Fusebox framework to build a Flickr/Shutterfly mashup. You could browse your photos and friends’ photos then add them to a Shutterfly shopping cart. This was before Flickr supported authentication as part of their API.

Over the years, I’ve hosted several blogs. I’d write a dozen, or so, blog entries then delete my bog and start over. I was never committed to blogging. I’m now hosting my blog on Tumblr.

I even hosted a few sites for friends.

In 2007, I started playing with Rails and prototyped an idea. I was even able to host it on Dreamhost without any issues. Granted, the site never went live for mass consumption.

I’m getting back to developing with Rails, and quiet frankly, Heroku is a better platform for launching and hosting Rails applications. I’m still using Dreamhost for registrations and DNS entries.

Zed Shaw: The ACL is Dead @ CUSEC 2008

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 01:51:00 -0500

Zed Shaw: The ACL is Dead @ CUSEC 2008