Mat's Blog

I've put my CMS project on hold for WAY too long. At the moment, I estimate my CMS is in the final stages of Alpha functionality. What this means is that I do everything I need to do as far as adding, deleting and editing all of the data for a website is concerned. However, I'd still need to iron out all of the bugs in the system, streamline the whole system and make it efficient.

However, I realize now that while writing the system, I've generated a ton of separate PHP files to perform all of my tasks. I can't help but think that I can compress the necessity for all of these files (especially the control panel files) into something a bit smaller and more manageable through AJAX/Javascript.

This, of course, is always a debatable topic. Do I design the system to work around AJAX/Javascript or do I design a system that will work with all browsers regardless of functionality? There are plenty of pros and cons on both sides.

Pro Javascript arguments include:
Make the site more efficient and easy to use
Make the site faster (by loading only certain portions of data)
Allow the site to load only bits and pieces of what needs to be loaded, such as sub menus and sub-options

Anti Javascript arguments include:
- Make the site more compatible with browsers and mobile devices
- Make the site more predictable by handling all processing on the server side
- Speed up the site's performance on the browser side.

The obvious compromise is to design the site to function with and without Javascript, but this adds a fairly large quantity of time and effort. My blog was written to function without any Javascript. Once I finished and added Javascript to the site, I had to finagle several functions to work with Javascript and fall back to non-Javascript functionality, which adds time and code.

We'll see how I want to get my CMS system to work. However, I will not worry about making my pages compatible with IE6. Even Microsoft is attempting to phase IE6 out. I probably won't worry about IE7 either.

Hello all, in case anyone cared, I'm still around updating the site in the background. I've been taking a lot of time to pursue personal projects and relearning a few subjects. I've been reading a book on C to get me up to speed in the syntax so that I can use that instead of Java for personal projects. I'm still unsure as to when I will get around to learning C#.

I also started reading a book on AI programming in games, but quickly stopped reading that as it was pretty obvious I was going to have to relearn some math to make full use of the concepts in the book.

So, I've also started relearning Linear Algebra and Matrices from the Khan Academy.

I've also started to focus a bit more hard on these concepts because I also want to get back to school. I've gotten a strong desire to acquire a Master's degree in a discipline and I'm looking at getting one in Computer Science.

Just found this bird on the ground. It fell from a nest in a light fixture located in a building near my house. I think it was still alive, considering its limbs were moving very slightly, though I'm not sure if the wind was moving it or if the ants were pulling it.

Here's a new photograph I took of buildings in Chicago off of the Chicago River:





I decided to try something different with this photograph. It's actually an HDR image comprised of 3 photographs. I tweaked the colors to a fair extent in Photoshop to get the look you see.

In this post, I'll show you how to hack PC flash sync cables so that you can use variable length cables with a fair amount of ease. This method also allows you to use much cheaper 3.5mm stereo mini plugs in lieu of much more expensive PC flash sync cables.

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Firefox 4 was released on March 22. I've had an opportunity to download and try it out and there are a few things that are initially bothering me right off the bat. I typically don't have a problem with restructuring a program's UI to make easier to use, or more intuitive. For instance, I really like Office 2007's Ribbon as compared to Office 2003's menu and button system. However, the problem I have with Firefox 4 is that it feels as though it's more difficult to use as compared to the previous iteration (Firefox 3.6). Here's my rundown...

Another Downtown Photo. I took this by Union Station looking up at Willis Tower. It's sunset so the orange is real. You can see the moon in the middle of the frame.

Just took a recent picture of the girlfriend:

I've finally gotten around to developing a logo for my own business.





It's taken a long time to get my own logo developed. The problem I faced was that I'm just new to logo design. Fortunately, my attempts to create a logo coincided with a coupon from Borders for 50% off any item. This, for me, was a great opportunity to pick up a couple graphic design books, both for the "inspiration" to create something, plus insight into the process itself.

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I typically go to Google News for my news aggregation fix. Every once and a while, I'd stumble upon ABC News. ABC news's pages will frequently place a video into the news story. I'm sure some people like watching the news video, but at work, I tend to keep my noise level to a minimum, so I rarely watch news video, unless the story is about a video.

The problem I have is that the video plays automatically. I don't like video players starting automatically, because it will frequently suck up bandwidth (which is limited in my office). There's no stop button to keep it from playing. To make matters worse, ABC videos start with a 30 second commercial. So not only is there no stop button, but you can't pause the video either. All you can do is mute the video.

I found this work around unacceptable. I don't need my bandwidth sucked up for unnecessary advertising. So, I decided to just block all ABC video via Adblock. I had used one of their basic lists for a couple years now, not worrying about setting custom block entries. Today, I finally add a custom block entry for ABC flash video. At the same time, I decided it would also be beneficial to block facebook, because I don't use it for anything and the large areas of "like" buttons just cluttered up web pages.