MonkeyTroy's Nerdy Man Cave Blog

For anyone who skis or snowboards without wearing a helmet..  I’d have to say I think you are a fool.  No joke.  I guess I should apply that to anything where a head injury is a possibility with any regularity..  biking especially comes to mind.

I’ve been snowboarding now for 4 years or so and have become pretty good at it.  I do anything up to black diamonds with little problems and can mostly keep up now with my snowboarding co-workers that have been skiing or snowboarding for 10 years or more.   I rarely fall anymore and if I do it’s usually because I am trying something beyond my skill and I kind of expect a fall, like jumping.   Even icy conditions, though not as fun, don’t really affect my stability anymore.

This year on my two snowboarding excursions, I have been tempted to stop wearing a helmet, as I see many skiers and snowboarders do, despite the fact that over the last four years it has probably saved me from a concussion at least 3 times.  I am glad I came to my senses.

The second day of our trip I was getting on the lift, after many runs in icy conditions where I had not fallen.  The guy getting on the same chair as me slipped and fell as he approached the loading line. For those of you that don’t ski / snowboard, the loading line is a red line on the loading platform that you ski/snowboard up to when getting on a lift.  You ski up to the line, the chair comes around on the cable and you sit down on the chair so it can take you up the mountain.  So this guy fell as he was coming up to the line and the operator quickly hit the stop button as the lift chair was swinging around the turn towards us.  I was already all the way up to the line and had turned around most of the way to see if the other guy was ok.

Unfortunately, those lifts don’t stop on a dime and the cable was still moving forward, bringing the chair towards us.  The operator grabbed the lift chair and tried to stop it from bashing his head in.. which he did.  The lift chair went over the downed snowboarder since he had the sense to stay low to the ground.  The operator, at that point, had to let go of the chair as it was heavy and, as I said, the cable was still coming to a stop.   The lift chair, carried by both the still moving cable and the forward and downward momentum after being held back, swung forward clipping me across both shins.  It scooped me off my feet and threw me about 5 feet backwards off the lift platform to the ground a few feet below, where I landed flat on my back, on hard ice and gravel.  A considerable portion of the impact being delt to the back of my head.

Even though the helmet I was wearing protected my noggin from the direct impact, I was stunned and immobile for a minute or so while the lift operators franticly rushed down to check on and assist me.  Once my senses came back to me I decided that my legs were not broken from the metal bar of the lift chair, and my head and back were not seriously injured from the fall.  I got up with some assistance and all I could think to say was..  “And that is why I wear a helmet”.

My shin is a little bloody and my back and neck were pretty stiff and sore the next morning.. but the only reason I am not in a hospital tonight is my helmet.  It had nothing to do with my skill on a board but just a freak accident while boarding a lift.. something you do dozens of times a day while skiing.  And as it turns out..  the ice was bad again the following day and I did wipe out once hard enough that my helmeted head bounced off the frozen mountain.

So don’t be a fool.  Wear a helmet.

A few years back I posted screen shots of the UI I had designed and worked on for my companies video search and viewing system, adLib.  The UI, while may have been interesting from certain design perspectives, was ultimately not well received.  Less from a usability perspective than from a it-doesnt-work perspective, thanks to the technology that we used… OpenLaszlo.

OpenLaszlo is an XML mark-up language used to compile Flash or DHTML pages.  It cites being able to create flash-like dynamic web-pages that are cross-browser supported.   After using it for several years I can say that it did not live up to it’s marketing in that aspect, and was just riddled with bugs especially in IE.  However, it did generate Flash applications that worked quite well..  too bad we could not use flash as our client UI.

A year and a half ago we decided to abandon the technology and rewrite the UI components of the product using ExtJS, an easy to learn and well documented javascript library used to develop rich web pages.  ExtJS is used by many large scale commercial web sites including Intuits’ Quicken online.  It works like a champ with only a few minor cross-browser issues and bugs.   It has been a huge success for our team.

The new technology was accompanied by a new UI design, rewritten to take advantage of ExtJS components.   Here are some screenshots from the current version of our system.

Currently, my primary duties involve writing the webapp for our core product, adLib. The client side UI is currently written with OpenLaszlo (xml markup language that compiles JS and/or flash client apps) and is back-ended with Java servlets. The entire system is used to capture video from various sources (primarily unmanned areal vehicles like the Predator) and provide that video back in small chunks thru a search interface. If you want some more (marketing) information check out the EchoStorm website at www.echostorm.net

Here are some screenshots of my UI specific work on the project.

Well, I got to go to JavaOne last year and I had a blast. The conference, which is always top-notch, is a great place to get re-energized about technology and software development. I’m not a writer so I won’t go into great detail but it was both fun and very informative at the same time. My co-workers all went out each day and met at various times to compare notes on sessions, technology and of course.. where to get the best free t-shirts from the vendor floor. Got to see some really cool previews of Java FX, some 3d game engine stuff and much more.

Here are my pics from the conference itself: Gallery JavaOne 2008

Besides all the great knowledge we obtained, we got to spend several nights eating out at various places in San Francisco including the best stinkin pastry shop in the world.. Mara’s Italian Pastries. (503 Columbus Ave, San Francisco, CA 94133, (415) 397-9435‎). I think after the first time we went there every night for cannolies, cookies and more! If you are in the bay area, you MUST stop by there. It is worth it.

The last day the conference ended and we all booked it back to the wharf where we did a bike trip over the Golden Gate bridge. Man it was cool! Ended up on the other side in Sausalito where we ferried back to the wharf. Did I mention it was cool? Oh yea!

Here are pics from the bike excursion.. enjoy! http://picasaweb.google.com/monkeytroy/JavaOne08AfterConfBikeTrip

In case you notice the date, you will see that I am updating this a year later. Did not get to go this year.. not enough money for extra stuff like that. Maybe we can swing it next year.

-Fred

I havent played World of Warcraft for a long while now. Had a lot of fun while I played though.. here are some of my fav screen caps from playing.

Ran across these screenshots from some LAN party games from a while back.  Still get a chuckle out of them…

A site I did for a friends daycare service.  The Early Learning Center in Chesapeake, Va.   The design was actually created by my brother-in-law Matt and passed to me as a static image.  I split the image and implemented the page based on the design idea.   The site is also based on TextPattern, which I was really happy with.  It allows the customer to manage their site content without knowing anything about web technologies and lets me, as the admin, make design changes remotely with little difficulty.

A very simple site I setup for my brother’s drafting service company.  The site is based on TextPattern and the ‘style’ is custom for his company.

jChat was another application I wrote while at the US Courts.   It was a simple chat program based around the ASTA client/server components.   I was not tasked to write it but did it more as a short technology test of ASTA and because at the time we were all locked out of AOL and MSN messaging programs.

I think I wrote it in a few days and then bit by bit enhanced it over a year or so.   It worked well, but I never really put enough time in it to make it anything super special.   It was replaced a few years later by an open source jabber client/server setup.

Screenshot!

Thought I would write my first entry about a program I wrote while working at the US Bankruptcy court. Right after I started I was tasked to design a program to track annual, sick and other leave type balances, request and histor. Electronic Leave Management Resource, or ELMR, was the end result. I ended up being awarded the Directors Award for technical achievement a few years later (a big deal in the courts) after ELMR grew in scope and usage till more than 80 of the US court units were using it.

The program was written using several technologies that I didn’t have much experience with when I began with the courts. Delphi was the development environment and the system was designed around ASTA which is multi-tier client/server component set for Delphi. The db started out as Informix (we had a court-wide license for it) but ended up being moded to use MySql just before I left the courts.

There isn’t anything terribly ground-breaking in this system, but I still like the UI I came up with even though it is based on fairly standard windows components. Here are some screenshots for posterity.

Main screen.

Shots from making a new leave request.

Manage employees.

Leave calandar

Additional management stuff.