A couple of weeks back, I was contacted by Apress on the possibility of authoring a book on the topic of jQuery. I was taken aback by being approached rather than simply submitting a proposal myself, which I’ve always considered. I always thought it’d be great to publish a tech book. I spend so much of my time at Barnes & Noble, or Borders, rifling through the shelves for a new book that I can’t live without on varying topics such as PHP, MySQL, jQuery, Photoshop, Software Development in general, and basically what might appear to be of interest at the time. Many of the titles I have bought over the last decade have either greatly impressed me, or greatly disappointed me.  So many times when reading through some explanation/tutorial on a topic I would consider to myself, what was this guy thinking? Has he ever even used this programming language, or something upon those lines. I never felt the need though to spend to much time preparing a long outline or proposal to submit unsolicited to a publishing company to take my own chance. Maybe even a fear of rejection, and them saying something like the thoughts I just mentioned above.

However, after working through some initial issues on a proper jQuery topic that would suit both my creative desire, and my technical knowledge, a 7 page, 19 chapter outline was in place, and submitted along with my proposal information. To my surprise, and joy it was accepted, and I now have the go ahead to start work on the title. I’m intentionally omitting most of the details of the book including proposed title and topics for the time being until I’m a little more comfortable with the contractual details with Apress, and hey… if I gave out all the information too soon, someone else might try to write it before I get finished!!

I’m excited as can be though on the possibilities that this type of work presents. Not only can I have the potential to have my name/company associated with a published work on the topic of jQuery, but this could also be a HUGE boon to my own web development success, and help present future work from larger and larger clients.

Not sure how this may affect my blogging, but I doubt it could adversely affect it since I’ve been writing so little to begin with. It could come to be though that my blog now might have some value for me to output some of my creative roadblocks, direction on topics, or who knows… I could end up being so busy just trying to complete the manuscript that I never make it back here! I’ll hope for now that’s not the case, but we’ll just have to see how it goes.

However, I’ve been Extremely Disappointed in the capabilities for e-commerce with the system. (more…)

Look for a blog, forums, and tons of cool jQuery implementations into this potential free-for all site that will let me do what I want in implementing features that I think all Stargate fans will enjoy!

This game has the potential to get me to cancel my World of Warcraft subscription…

First, the most important item I have on the table is the completion of the Drupal project Poodle Breeder Source. It’s a great site, and almost ready to go, I just need to finalize the ecommerce installation again, and work on some of the copy for generic pages, along with touching up the admin panel that advertising/posting users will have the ability to access for usability purposes.

Second, I need to upgrade this site to the latest version of wordpress… should be easy money there.

Third, I need to complete the copy and such for the Himerus Inc. The layout is done, and except for a few issues in IE7 with the jQuery scrollbars,  it really just needs the appropriate information incorporated into the pages that have been created so far. This will be the first implementation of my own custom CMS that will greatly speed up putting out quality, easy to manage sites.

Fourth, It’ll be time to rework the Himpressive theme, and get that set up to work with Wordpress 2.3 and have it installed on the site. I’m really excited about that one, the way it’s going to be set up, It could definitely be a popular theme that gets used quite a bit, and will be my first release of a fully functional Wordpress theme. Included with that will be a few plugins that help some of the functionality that will be implied on the theme. There will be a very slick jQuery calendar that should be eaten up by the community even without using the theme.

So, putting it lightly, I have a lot of work to accomplish, and want to be able to get most of this lined out as quickly as possible once I get back home. Once I get in the swing of these projects, I will probably be able to start posting up some jQuery tutorials and different modifications to Drupal and Wordpress that I can’t live without.

Look for more to come soon!!

However, even on my hiatus down to TX to help settle the affairs of my grandfather, I was able to catch the last 3 quarters of the Cowboys/Giants game. I was ready to cry once the fourth quarter came around and the Cowboys couldn’t seem to get it together. Even after two wins against New York during the regular season…

So I’m forced to listed to the continued nagging from friends regarding the Cowboys. (they are just jealous their NFL teams have never won 5 Super Bowls and probably never will)

I can only hope now with two seasons behind T.O., and the first full season behind Tony Romo, and with both Marion Barber and Julius Jones starting to work very well in a rotation, I have to feel that next year will be our year.

And the fact that they’ve lost now gives me the opporitunity to pull for Green Bay. I mean, after all Brett Farve’s sub-par seasons, who can wish poor on him??? He really deserves to pull of this miracle and get a ring for his team… but on the other hand, it seems like the Patriots are truly on the way to a remarkable season, and a once in a lifetime chance to go 19-0 straight to a Super Bowl win. If it comes to Pats/Packers in the big game, you can bet I’ll be pulling strong for my NFC side all day long, but wont be too disappointed even if the Patriots pull it off…

I’m back in the heartland for the time being & had to bury my grandfather this week who was always like a father to me. Now it’s down to packing up belongings, and securing the house he lived in for the past 20+ years with my grandmother who is in the severe stages of Alzheimer’s.

Kinda hard being here without him around sitting at the bar smoking his cigarettes barking orders.

I hope to be back home in the next week at some point, and back on track. My first order of business is finishing up some final details regarding the ecommerce features for poodlebreedersource.com and getting it lined out for an immediate launch. It needs some upgraded jQuery features in the backend, and to have some final layout/presentation issues resolved, and it’ll be ready for launch.

After that, it’ll be the new corporate site for himerusinc.com. I was having some DNS issues with the site this morning. I don’t know how long those have been going on, but all the other sites on server have been working just fine. And I think it’s fixed now, but my stupid Sprint card is caching the site, and so I can’t see for sure that it’s working yet or now…. (fingers crossed)

Anyway, I hope to be back, and active in the next week or so once I have all the family stuff taken care of down here… see ya’ soon!!!

I hope to have something worth a crap to write about soon. Maybe some jQuery tutorials would be nice.

I think that with this move, I’ll be able to really jump back into my blogging, a few personal projects, and continue to move forward in a good direction with my skills. Learning jQuery over the past couple of months has really expanded my capabilities as a UI Developer as well as the extensive experience I have with PHP/MySQL application architecture. Combining these elements along with a now almost anal CSS/Semantic XHTML layout structures, I’ve reached a point where I feel that I can literally “do anything”.

I’m hoping for the best, and we’ll see where the contract labor takes me, and what offers arise in the next weeks/months, and take it from there. Until then, it’s nose to the grindstone for me, and finishing up some work for the previous employer on a contract basis, and continued research & development into my own personal projects.

http://www.yougamers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=67332

After all the day’s mess sorted out, and I was able to do some reading on the very active post at denverpost.com it has come down to the following facts of today’s ticket sales blunder by Rockies management, ownership, and the company contracted with the MLB for ticket sales, Paciolan (link intentionally omitted).

First, this has been blamed as a malicious attack by hackers, however, the facts state that approximately 8.5 million visitors were active on the ColoradoRockies.com at the time tickets were initially to be sold. I find that this really seems to fall more on poor IT Department talent at the ticket venue, Paciolan who I found out later were even running Windows 2000 servers for fluff’s sake. But despite all the visits to the MLB page for the Colorado Rockies, which I did not once today notice even the slightest slow down in connecting to, was able to stay up all day with all those 8.5 million visitors landing on the site. Yet somhow, the Paciolan systems seemed to take a crap and die before even 500 tickets could be sold. The simple fact would have to be that Paciolan had no idea how big this would be considering that they were not restricting sales to outside states as many teams seem to have used in the past as informed by message board posts at the denverpost. The fact that even prior to Sunday, when season ticket holders were able to buy tickets, I saw many listed on StubHub from tons of season ticket holders looking to charge 700 or even 1000$ for ROCKPILE tickets!!!!!

If I were living in some country where the all mighty american buck is so valuable that 1000$ could support a family for months, why wouldn’t I try to buy tickets, and turn a quick profit on the hundreds of online venues where such items can be sold for auction or set prices. Ticket scalpers across the country are able to use their tools of trade to get tickets, and then charge the real fans, us, triple, quadruple, even ten times face value because that’s how they make a living. By buying something cheap, and selling it to us for more than the manufacturer originally intended. Supply and Demand at its simplest. But we are Americans after all, so why not blow hard earned cash, and give in to the pressure. If only fans gathered together once, and left 20,000 plus seats unsold at a World Series game, or even the Super Bowl, and left the scalpers holding , it would be a hard lesson learned for them, out tons of cash with a handful of tickets. But we give in each time, and submit to the mercy of merciless ticket scalpers.

I hope for my own sanity that tomorrow does go smooth, since they did mention that they have backup plans in place for tomorrow should anything goes wrong again, which I’m sure will happen since they are just turning back on the same system, hoping for the best.

Good luck to the rest of you Rockies fans out there…  Be vigilant so the damn scalpers and sox fans don’t get them.

As a fairly decent Rockies fan, (I saw about 8 games this year with an empty stadium), I find this as a HUGE mistake by the Colorado Rockies and the MLB for contracting a company that can’t handle ANY server load obviously, and now, people are sitting online at work, wasting HOURS of company time just to even hope that the webpage loads once to even have a slight chance at getting the tickets. I’m obviously not the only one encountering major issues trying to load the site as demonstrated here by other frustrated Colorado Rockies fans.

I’m going to be vigilant, but have little hope for this evenue.net company to get their stuff together so Rockies fans can get some tickets to the World Series for crap’s sake.

I’ve finally got to the point where I’m about 80% complete with the core backend features. The CMS backend is completely powered by jQuery & PHP, with zero new page loads, which is my first real attempt at what has become the evolution of web applications.

I’m expecting to have most of the backend features completed in the next week or two, and then be able to finish integrating the theme engine (Smarty) on the front end along with features to tie into the backend.

This has really been taking my time as it’s been a project at work that required a custom backend, and also spending about all my spare time adding in features, and customizing the jQuery interaction which was outside the scope of the project for the client, and required my own personal time to give it that “extra touch”.

Since the himpressive theme was lost, and is only partially put back together so far in photoshop, it’s falling further and further to the back burner for the moment as I’m forced to finish this CMS, and then I will be doing a redesign of my corporate site for Denver Web Development and integrate it into cmdr pro.

I hope to have it wrapped up, and be back on the grid shortly. Patience is the key to success.

After a ridiculous 5 interceptions, and a fumble by the usually flawless Tony Romo, who only threw 4 interceptions in the previous 4 games, managed with 2 minutes remaining bring the Cowboys 80 yards for the touchdown to bring them to within 2 of the Bills.

The two point conversion, a flop at best by the fumble-fingers Owens, all hope seemed lost with 20 seconds on the clock…

But wait… an onside kick is coming, and YES!!!!!!! Cowboys recover with 18 seconds remaining… Tony Romo looks down field to Terrell Owens again, and after a review, the call of a completed catch is reversed, and the Cowboys are dragged back to the 47 yard line with now only 15 seconds left on the clock. Two quick plays later, the Cowboys have the ball with :02 left on the clock, and an attempt at a 53 yard field goal for the rookie kicker Nick Folk, at the attempt is UP, it’s GOOOOOD…. but wait….

What the hell are the refs doing????? they aren’t throwing up their hands with the “it’s good” signal… what the hell is going on??? Oh wait, the Bills coach (does anyone really know what is name is???) calls a timeout JUST before the snap, reminding us of several implementation of that sneaky-snake in the grass move… Oh well…

Nick Folk sets up for his second attempt at a 53 yard filed goal (career long), and it’s UP, it’s GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD

COWBOYS WIN…..

The most priceless thing for me is not the win by my favorite team, who is now the only team in the NFC with a 5-0 record, but it was the dejected, heartbroken looks on the fans in the still packed till the last minute stadium in Buffalo…

Next week…. 5-0 Patriots IN Dallas… prepare to be destroyed NE….

Great job coming back from a dismal first half, and stepping in like Dallas Cowboy quarterbacks of our past. I felt like for a moment with under 2 minutes remaining that it was Troy Aikman on the field charging down the field for the come from behind, yet inevitable win for the cowboys…

Sweet dreams fellow Dallas fans…. we can all rest easy tonight… :D

The site for the Vote Yes on 3A campaign in Park County Colorado was originally set up to be a brief informational site on the details regarding the Mill Levy that would generate $300,000 for the Park County School District. I had set up the site to use the jQuery Accordion plug-in for a nice effect on several key topics, expanding for more detailed information on the topic. However, after the amount of content grew, and the section for statistics on school violence incidents became more of a complete report card of the tragic events dating back as far that could be found, listing over 1800 tragic events, and details regarding each event, it was clear the accordion plug-in couldn’t handle the massive amount of data. Without time to modify the code to load content from an external source, I was forced to remove the option, and just let the page be what it is: A massive amount of data on school violence, highlighted by the needs of the Park County School District in order to encourage local residents to Vote Yes on 3A.

So against some of my recommendations, the site is complete. If I’d known the data would be this massive after it was done, I would have planned it as a multi-page site rather than a single page informational, but that’s all water under the bridge.

School violence occurs daily in the United States. These include such episodes such as shootings, beatings and stabbings, bullying, the list goes on and on. Student-perpetrated school massacres in North America most often occur in overwhelmingly white, middle class non-urban areas (small towns and suburbs) where they receive the most media attention due to their severity in a brief period of time.

We need your help… not just residents of Park County where this Mill Levy applies, but in every school across the nation, in every community across the world, we must prepare, and through our preparation, we can help prevent tragic massacres from shaking the very foundation of your own children’s school.

Thank you for your help in getting this passed for our community to better ensure the safety of our children.