CoderBrown Journal

Posted: 11:18 pm

Wow, how time flies. Seems like only 3 days since my last post, not 3 months. So here’s what I’ve been up to:

First off, the tree has been significantly reduced. The main part of the trunk and many twigs are all that’s left. Not to mention several holes in the ground that are awaiting my repair and a now-broken playset that needs to be dissembled and hauled to the landfill.

In February I celebrated my 41st birthday.

In March Gail and I chaperoned on a trip to New York City, where the Linganore Marching Band was marching in the St. Patrick’s Day parade. This is the second time we’ve done this trip, and I have to say it was much easier than the first time because we didn’t do nearly as much walking. We left early on a Sunday morning via charter bus and returned very late Tuesday night (ok, officially it was Wednesday morning—about 1AM). The schedule is purposely packed full of activities so the students don’t have any down time while in the city. Which is a good thing, because it takes an extraordinary effort to coordinate a group of 150 people. On Sunday we visited the U.S.S. Intrepid. After spending about 2 hours there (not nearly enough time to see all of the attraction) we got back on the buses and headed to the hotel in New Jersey to unpack our bags. After only an hour we again got back on the buses and headed back into the city for dinner at Planet Hollywood. After dinner we visited Madame Tussauds Wax Museum (for 3 hours, too much time) and then gathered in Times Square for a group photo. Afterwards we returned to the hotel. On Monday we we took a three hour guided bus tour of famous sites filmed in TV and movies followed by lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe (breakfast was McDonald’s on the bus). Afterwards we went to the top of “Top of the Rock” at Rockefeller center—70 stories tall. Magnificient views of the entire city but it’s a shame the day was somewhat cloudy and gray. Then we went on a behind the curtain tour of Radio City Music Hall, where we saw the massive stage lift and got to meet a Rockette. At this point we were a little ahead of schedule so we visited St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Beautiful! Then we went to dinner at Jekyll & Hyde, a themed restaurant with no apparent air conditioning as it was as hot as blazes inside.Then we went to the theater to see West Side Story and then headed back to the hotel. Tuesday morning we again had breakfast at McDonalds while everyone packed up and checked out of the hotel. We spent about an hour in Chinatown then walked to the South Street Seaport for a quick lunch. Afterwards we met up with our busses and the students suited up in the uniforms. We drove to their staging area on East 48th street (and drove right past Ground Zero on the way) and us chaperones rode up to 90th street, which was near the end of the parade route. The band stepped off over an hour later than anticipated but they had a good parade, although at that point the parade had been going on for most of the day so attendance was down quite a bit. When they were done we loaded up the busses, got changed out of the uniforms and headed home, stopping at a “trough” (buffet) for dinner. A long three days but it was alot of fun. A bit of trivia: we went through the Lincoln Tunnel a total of eight times.

In April I ran for and was elected Secretary of the Band Booster organization. Gail was re-elected as Treasurer so we’re both going to be in the thick of things next year. I begin my term in May, right after our Band Banquet. I already have big plans, as I want to redesign and rebuild the band website (linganoreband.org) and I already signed the band up on Twitter (@LinganoreBand) and sent updates while we were on the NYC trip.

Other than busy periods at work that pretty much sums up what I’ve been up to. I installed a WordPress app on my iPhone so hopefully I’ll post more frequently.

Posted: 7:21 pm

A couple weeks ago we had some freezing rain and it was just enough to make trees shimmer with a light coat of ice. Unfortunately, it was also enough to bring down a fairly good sized tree from the woods in our back yard:

Fallen tree. Click to see more photos on my Flickr page.

Significant parts of the tree were rotten. The tree didn’t do much damage, though it did splinter some boards on the playset that we were planning to get rid of anyway and gouged some holes in the yard.

Earlier this week Tim—the husband of one of Gail’s workmates—came out to cut up the tree because he wanted it for firewood. This was a nice deal since we didn’t have to pay someone to cut it up and haul it out ($700, and they’d probably sell it for firewood anyway). However, we had a light snow a couple days prior and Tim couldn’t move the wood down the steep hill of our back yard so he piled it up at the top of the hill. Yesterday I decided to move the wood down to the bottom of the hill, as a courtesy since he cut up about a third of the tree:

Tree after first trimming

I used my wheel barrow to move the logs down the hill, which was not an easy task. It took me 15 loads. On load nine or ten I had an extra heavy load and on my way down my feet slipped out from under me, I fell on my butt and then slid about halfway down the hill before I could get the wheel barrow stopped. It was a fun ride but I hope my neighbors didn’t witness that!

On my last load I loaded up the wheel barrow and then took a breather. I was looking into the woods and saw a hawk take off from the ground. It expertly navigated through the woods towards me, gliding left and right to avoid all the tree limbs. Then it cleared the woods and flew over my house, where it picked up a draft and started gliding in circles. I marveled at the markings on the underside of its body, which were a light tan color with dark spots. Soon it was joined by a second hawk and they continued circling over my house. It was pretty cool. Finally I took the last load of wood down the hill and piled it with the rest of the logs. I had a pretty good pile by then:

Log pile from first trimming

I don’t know if Tim plans to cut up the rest of the tree or if I’ll end up having a tree trimming party. In any event I’ll follow up with what happens.

Posted: 1:36 pm

Not stinks as in it’s no good, but stinks as in smell. Let me explain…

When Apple launched its App Store for iPhone and iPod touch it was a stroke of genius. In a mere six months from its launch, there are now over 15,000 apps available and the App Store has had over half a billion downloads. Simply amazing.

There is one segment of the App Store that is contributing to this success, and it is one I wish wasn’t so popular. A little over a month ago Apple allowed an app called “Pull My Finger” into the store. This app was initially rejected, but then Apple changed their upload policy and eventually posted it. Shortly after that an app called “iFart” was released, then news broke that iFart became the #1 app and the developer made over $40,000 in just two days.

You could hear the virtual rumble as developers rushed to duplicate iFart’s success by posting their own version of a fart app. Today, a search for “fart” in iTunes will reveal 68 fart-related apps. I’m sure this isn’t what Apple envisioned when they developed the idea for the App Store, and I’m dismayed when I search for new apps and find one or two more fart apps released every day. How many more fart apps need to be released? None, in my opinion. There are far too many offered now, and I think these apps only cheapen the effectiveness of the App Store.

Posted: 11:53 am

I had to work on Inauguration Day, though I was one of just a few who were in the office that day. This worked out because it was a pleasantly slow day with not much to do, so I watched the entire inauguration on my TV. (One nice thing about working at a cable TV company is we all have TV’s on our desks.)

This inauguration was different than any other I remember in my life time, and I’ve never felt such a strong sense of hope for our nation as I did when watching this inauguration. The sheer mass of people at the Capitol and on the mall, the enthusiastic responses from the crowd, and Barack Obama and his inspiring inauguration speech all filled me with positive feelings even though the country is going through tough times. Obama pointed out we have much work to do to get the country back on track but he has a roll-up-the-sleeves and let’s-get-’er-done approach, as he said in his speech (one of my favorite quotes):

Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and begin again the work of remaking America.

I also liked how Obama made it clear the United States will stand firm, and even though there is a change in leadership we are not to be taken advantage of:

We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.

I am very glad Obama was elected President, and I am excited to see where he leads the country.

Posted: 12:24 pm and last modified on January 25th, 2009 at 11:15 am

As I write this I’ve been awake for over 28 hours. Let me explain…

Yesterday was one of the coldest days of the year, with temperatures in the teens. My ten-year-old son Andy and I worked outside, he doing “poop duty”—cleaning up the yard after our three dogs—and I brought in several loads of firewood. Afterwards we came in and I worked on getting this journal and my blog set up. That evening Gail and I went out for dinner and drinks with some friends from band.

When we got home close to midnight I resumed working on my blogs, including looking through all 545 themes on the WordPress site. I had already selected the theme for this journal (called GlossyBlue) but I was having a difficult time finding just the “right” theme for my blog. I wanted something somewhat techy with a clean layout and a fairly wide area for content. Let me tell you—the task sounds easier than it was. Many themes just didn’t have the right layout or had problems with the typography but I finally downloaded seven themes to try out and eventually settled on a theme called Librio. That was sometime around 3am. Then I decided to tweak both themes, including adding and formatting the info in the footers. And as usually happens, time magically accelerated and before I knew it it was 8am. So I figured I might as well stay up. I went downstairs and fed the dogs, made a cup of tea for Gail and Dianna and a cup of coffee for me and built a fire in the fireplace. Then I took a shower then came back downstairs with the laptop to sit by the fire and write up my initial posts for both blogs. Now we’re watching a movie, and this will pretty much be the pattern for the rest of the day. Figures that today is relatively warm (in the 30′s) and I’m sitting by the fire when yesterday I was out working in the frigid cold.

Tomorrow I have the day off and Andy and I plan to go see the movie Paul Blart: Mall Cop and then have lunch at McDonald’s. Andy wants to try his first Big Mac. Until then I’m going to try to stay awake until bedtime tonight so I can get a normal night’s sleep.

Posted: 11:18 am and last modified on January 25th, 2009 at 11:14 am

This is the third time I’ve started a blog. The previous times I had high hopes that my blog would turn into something (translation: have a regular following). This time I’m just content to jot down whatever comes to mind about my personal life. In fact, the “personal” aspect is what’s different this time. I think I tried to do too much with my previous blogs, combining both technical things from work and the day-to-day happenings in my life. A blog with such a wide range of topics is not likely to be read by many, if any. With this blog—which I’m calling a journal—I’m focusing on just the stuff that happens in my daily life. It could be anything, such as funny things that happen at home or work or what my kids are involved in. So we’ll see where this goes.

I’m also starting another blog (blog.coderbrown.com) where I’ll write about technical stuff and things I learn about web development and building websites from freelancing (hopefully) and at work. I hope to one day grow a freelance business as a web developer where I can eventually quit my “day” job and freelance full time, and the blog will help document my progress towards this goal.

You may notice the byline of this journal reads “The personal side of CoderBrown.” If you visit my blog you’ll see the byline reads “The professional side of CoderBrown.” I’m also working on revamping my website coderbrown.com and plan to have it somehow serve both as a professional and personal site. I’m hoping to launch the site soon.

In case you’re wondering, “CoderBrown” is an identity, something that is easily searched on the web and a name to call my freelance business. It’s a play on “Farmer Brown,” in that I work with code instead of farming. Incidentally, my brother Tim has a motion graphics and visual effects studio that he calls Farmer Brown (farmer-brown.com)…and neither one of us discussed our business names but came up with them at about the same time. Must have been some kind of funny family connection thing.

Eventually I’ll get around to writing an About page but for now I’m not going to introduce myself any more than I have. You can check out the links on the right (“CoderBrown can be found on…”) to learn more about me. And feel free to leave a comment anytime you wish. I hope you enjoy reading my journal.