Categories
Adventure

A Fish House Wedding

Long time friend Brian (probably my oldest friend, pre-preschool) got married this weekend. There was only a party to attend at Nick’s Fish House in Baltimore, and it was quite a laid back fun time.

Since it’s a fairly decent drive to Baltimore, I decided to ride up with the Shepherd and Scott. Scott was kind enough to drive. We got there in record time, but I must admit my co-passengers did get on my nerves a little bit with their poor habits (e-cigarettes are stupid). Oh well, it was a ride so I can’t complain too much.

We arrived a bit early, and stopped at some random Wal-Mart in the middle of nowhere. It was a bit strange with nothing at all around it, but we figured it was better than nothing. There was a screaming child, who just screamed at a constant amazingly high pitched rate while it’s mom did nothing. The constant sound was both incredible and I tip my hat to this child’s lungs for being able to sustain such a not for such a lengthy amount of time. Truly amazing and remarkable annoying.

After Wal-Mart, we were still very much early. So we drove around Baltimore a few blocks until we found a safe haven. There was a really fancy fenced in apartment area with shops. A pretty cool setup if you were living in the city.

We walked around a bit and noticed a park with some activity going on. Some event was taking place and there were a ton of dogs about. An amazing amount of different dogs. A huge shaved Saint Bernard, a therapy Blood Hound and many more. It was pretty awesome to see.

After that we headed over to Nick’s. It was a pretty cool place on the water. There was a chair for all attendees to sign. I thought that was a pretty nice touch. Apparently the Shepherds sloth knows no bounds, and I noticed that he added onto my signing instead of writing his own. Geez Shepherd!

There was a live reggae band, that while very talented was much too loud for my old man ears. I couldn’t escape it no matter where I wandered, and it eventually escalated a bad headache I had from the crazy card ride there to very bad. I eventually decided to attempt to sleep in a car for a bit, and Scott eventually found some Tylenol for me to take from his endless supply of drugs he carries in a strange bag.

After a pretty long time of laying down in a half sleep state in a comfy car (which I’m sure must’ve been quite the strange sight) I finally emerged to face civilization. My first stop was more water and a delicious cupcake. It was a red velvet cupcake with cream cheese icing, and I currently would like another one as it was yummy.

It was really great to see so many old friends and am reminded just how many of my childhood friends are still friends to this day. Pretty cool.

The car ride home wasn’t really as bad as the ride there. The Shepherd was too broken and sleepy to smoke his stupid e-cigarette non-stop, and there was much less traffic to Scott to attempt NASCAR moves thru.

Even with the stupid headache it was a pretty great day, and I wish Brian and Shanna much happiness. Great to see everyone and glad it was under such great circumstances!

Categories
Development

Android Display Issues with jQuery Mobile and Cordova 3.5

Wow, I’ve been having all sorts of fits with a mobile app that I had created and how it was being displayed on Android devices with a very high pixel density display. I was really stumped for a while, on iOS it wasn’t having issues like that at all.

I had built this mobile app using Cordova 3.5 and jQuery Mobile. On a Android with a very high pixel density display the text in app was appearing super, super tiny. It was a pretty big difference, and an significant inconvenience.

After much research I did find a suggestion to change a setting on the viewport meta tag. Apparently if you set the target-densitydpi to medium-dpi things will display a bit better in varying Android devices/displays.

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meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0, target-densitydpi=medium-dpi, user-scalable=0"

While this doesn’t seem to scale as pretty as on iOS, it is much better than it was displaying before changing that to medium-dpi.

Categories
Books

The Rise and Fall of Great Powers

The Rise and Fall of Great PowersI do enjoy my recent complete random reading of library books. While it can be a bit of a risk, it is refreshing to just read something that you have no previous expectations of.

I picked The Rise and Fall of Great Powers thinking that it was about the Soviet Union or some other historical nation. Turns out it was a novel (as was written quite largely on the cover looking back).

I did enjoy how it jumped through various points in time from chapter to chapter, past, to near present, to a bit further back. That was a pretty interesting technique. I was always pleased at not really having any idea just how things would turn out.

I really expected a bit grander of a surprise twist at the end, but it wasn’t. And that was a surprise in itself.

Turned out to be not too bad and completely different than what I had expected.

Categories
Adventure Development

Drupaldelphia 2014

Took the PATCO again to Drupaldelphia yesterday. It’s really a great Drupal and just overall tech gathering, with a lot of higher ed folks. Which is really great to meet some peers who face similar issues as I am at work.

The trip was so much easier that it was last time around for me. I knew to bring exact change and not a $20 to the station to get my pass (change is given from the machine in $1 coins, I have no idea what to do with a $1 coin). I also knew which way to insert my ticket as well. Apparently last time was quite the disaster know that I mull it over a bit.

I got there right on time and saw Jesse from Atlantic Cape who is in the position I once held. We discussed work, shared ideas, and joked of co-workers and situations that clearly don’t change. Fun times, he’s a good guy.

I took in the following sessions:

  • Keynote – pretty interesting discussion with 4 folks. They had some very valuable ideas.
  • How to make Drupal NOT look like Drupal – this was  a solid session on theming. I’m interested to see his slides and code once posted on the site.
  • Using Git to Manage Deployents/Updates – uhhh, this one wasn’t for me. I left after a few minutes and went to …
  • Drupal Security Made Simple – though I arrived late, this one had some very useful modules to consider in securing a Drupal site. Oh and never hack the core!!!
  • Migrate Magic: An Overview – I still have to master the migrate modules. This session was helpful, but I just need more hands on practice.
  • Building Beautifully Complex Content Types – the presenter was very entertaining, but I found much of what he discussed to be bad practice. I hope nobody walked away with bad habits.

I started my first every BOF (Birds of the Feather) session. I picked up a magic marker and wrote “higher ed” in the 3:30 time slot. I had no idea if anyone else besides Jesse and myself would show up, and we were pleasantly surprised to find a table full of folks attending our BOF session!

This was probably the most useful thing of the entire day. A bunch of higher ed web folks exchanging war stories and sharing their success and pitfalls. We all went around asking the group questions, and pretty much at least on of us had been though it and had some sage like advice. It was pretty great. Very glad I picked up that marker and wrote on that board!

For lunch I met up with first ballot Honey Badger hall of famer and Atlantic Caper great Lauren. She works a few blocks from there and we dined at the Hard Rock Cafe. I’d never been to one of them, so it was a true adventure for me. Felt like old times lunching again, and it was pretty great to get caught up in person. I did smuggle a really ugly Drupaldelphia t-shirt for her for taking the time out of her busy schedule to meet me for lunch.

All in all a pretty great and useful adventure. Looking forward to more conferences and continuing to be more active when at such events.

Categories
Books

Things Fall Apart

Things Fall ApartI’ve found that I’ve been very much stumped with what to read next. I suppose much of that is due to just how much I have read over the past few years. While I know it’s the furthest from the truth, it does feel as though I have read most everyone by now.

So, while at a loss at the library I Googled the 100 best books ever. High atop all the various lists was Things Fall Apart. Lists cannot be wrong, so I went with that.

This edition of the book did have a built in bookmark, which I found to be very cool. A simple string built into the book itself, genius.

While it wasn’t a bad story at all, I’m not sure I’d place it so high on my list. It was good and got you thinking, but I guess I went into this one with a bit too much hype considering the ranking I had found online.

I did agree much with the whole concept of not understanding the customs of others. It does frustrate when I hear others wanting to “fix” others problems, thinking that their way of doing things is of course the “right” way. I see this happen all the time, especially with the ease in which social media allows others to share their thoughts and opinions.

I think if I didn’t get my hopes up so high going into this one I’d of enjoyed it more, but it was still a fine read and glad I checked it off my personal list.

Categories
Video Games

Shovel Knight

Shovel KnightHad to give Shovel Knight after reading all the fine stuff about it. From the Kickstarter campaign and the excellent reviews, it was just a matter of time before I gave the fine Shovel Knight.

The developers did a pretty amazing job of creating an old school’s NES style game. It was a mix of mostly Mega Man, and Ducktales to me. Both pretty amazing games back when I was just a young lad and looking forward to the next issue of Nintendo Power (the good old days).

Not only was this an excellently done throwback, but it was also very challenging as well. Some of the bosses and pesky jumping levels were very tough! Challenging, but also very gratifying when you do finally overcome them.

This was very well done, even with the cheesy makes very little sense story that goes along with it. Excellent job of capturing the essence of those amazingly fun NES days. Very fond memories of playing those old Nintendo days.