the bofe blog

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I posted a little over a year ago about Murray’s controversy involving a student (Harrison Yonts) and a drunk driving hit and run that killed one of my college friend’s mother.

The trial is going on now, and it’s being handled pretty well by the MSU News staff with Daily Blog updates – check it out here

There’s extensive discussion at MSURacers.com.

Alright, since Mr. “I’m Published” Sanders asked…

One of the core features of the app is LDAP authentication. It’s not that hard to do in PHP, but instead of maintaining a robust set of read/write/edit/delete permissions I’m letting LDAP take over. We have a well maintained user directory and I fully intend to utilize it.

The app is a wiki in the sense that any member of the OU has full control over their OU’s site. I’m a member of the Information Services OU, I have full permissions to edit any page on Information Service’s site.

That’s where accountability comes in – the app records who made the last revisions and keeps a copy of the previous state of the site. I’m debating on keeping the last N revisions, just to make it uber accountable.

Other features: Lots and lots of AJAX and a very popping user interface (in terms of response). I’m also offering users file uploads ALA GMail’s file attachment (add another/remove). I’m using the lethal scriptaculous/prototype/behaviour combination. Some screenshots:

The WYSIWYG engine I’m using is FCKeditor with some custom configuration.

Re: WordPress MU

WordPress MU does not have reliable LDAP support that I know of although it’s offered in plugin format. It also does not meet my needs because I will need to integrate it across several domains and combine it with several apps. Basically, each department I work with will have a “stock” set of static pages that are occaisionally updated along with a couple of custom apps that I develop as we go that will need to be integrated into their site. MU also doesn’t have the accountability built in that I desire (that I know of).

I’m not married to the idea of the “Killer App” yet. If there’s something better out there that will meet my very specific needs, let me know.

For the past month or so I’ve been developing an application at work that’s sort of a wiki/CMS hybrid.

I want my users to quickly be able to edit parts of their respective websites. We have a few hundred employees and a slightly intimidating web presence for one person uphold.

• Nine Domains
• 15 Departments – each wanting their own website
• Lots of room for growth

CMSes are sort of a no-no in the web 2.0 blogosphere and have been replaced with wikis. Wiki’s win because are faster, more accountable, and can show revision histories.

However, a wiki for city government just won’t cut it. Even an access-controlled wiki would still require quite a large amount of learning — most departmental secretaries won’t bother learning WikiSyntax. They will be able to maintain sets of ’static’ pages. Each one of them will probably at some time, need a custom application developed by me. Another consideration is that eight of the nine entities mentioned earlier (that aren’t one of the 15 departments) will want a distinct look and feel to their website. Whew, that’s confusing. Oh well.

The app is starting to take shape, but I need to be able to get the word out about it — and it doesn’t even have a name!

So… help me name the app. Comment away.

Most of these are web development releated, but some are useful to everyone.

• MeasureIt – Great for finding the width of anything on a website (in pixels)
• ColorZilla – Very useful for getting the RGB (or Hex Color Code) of any item on a website. Becomes even more useful when you can enable the dropper with a keyboard shortcut.
• SEO for Firefox – great for showing Pagerank, what kind of links the page may have, and easy whois access.
• GreaseMonkey – Too many positive reasons. GreaseMonkey is the best.
• AdSense Notifier – quickly show how much money you’re pulling in with Google AdSense
• FasterFox – speeds up your Firefox experience without having to modify things in about:config.
• FireBug – great for CSS/JavaScript Debugging, also has a lot of useful keyboard shortcuts.
• Web Developer Toolbar – a standard if you’re using websites. You’ve gotta love w3 validation by keyboard shortcut.
• Google Toolbar – useful for doing quick finds on items you searched via Google, also useful for cached copies, quick translations, and going “Up One Level”
• IE Tab – IE is a necessary evil web developers have to test in to make sure the browser with the largest install base gets attention it needs, with IEtab testing on IE is seamless. If you’re wanting to test on IE7/IE6 and various other IEs, check Multiple IE.

I ended up sleeping from 2pm on Sunday until 7:15 am on Monday.

PROs:

• I slept
• I’m pretty awake for a Monday
• I really needed the sleep. Hard.

CONs:

• I didn’t go out with my sister
• I missed another episode of ROME [thank god for DVR!]
• I didn’t go grocery shopping
• I didn’t clean or do any laundry

A few other things I’ve been up to lately:

• I saw the 70th Annual Campus Lights production of “Fame” on Saturday.
• My MSU id still gets me into the wellness center. Sweet.
• I got to play designated driver on Saturday and celebrate my mother’s birthday on Sunday.
• I played raquetball for the first time on Saturday.
• I’ve lost 10 pounds since moving from KS to KY. That’s not too bad, considering the exercise really just started earlier this month. I attribute it to: exercise, not eating out nearly as much, and no frequent consumption of birthday cake. (although those were fun at Gragg)

Nike used a song called “The Second Coming” in a commercial introducing their Air Force 25. “The Second Coming” samples from Hector Berlioz most famous piece Symphonie Fantastique. Following the footsteps of Ludacris with Mozart and Dvorak (Coming 2 America) and tons others using Orff’s Carmina Burana, I think this may be my favorite classical/rap mashup.

Here’s a clip from the original [Just Blaze sped up the track quite a bit!]:

And yes, it’s the song from The Shining’s opening credits.

PS: Thank you, Askme.

Since “outsourcing” my blog to wordpress.com, I’ve got to say I’m impressed. Their stats package is great and they have little addins that make life a lot easier.

For instance…Songs and Movies on WordPress.com motivated me to update my old posts with mp3 files in them – now they have inline players:

• Needs More Vibraslap
• Vocal Stylings
• All in the Key
• 311 Throws Down

It’s no secret that logistics are what drives the global economy. By logistics, I mean goods traveling from Point A to Point B cheaply and quickly.

The first shipping container that went from a truck, to a ship, and back to a train/truck at the destination port was in 1956.

This spawned a huge industry. There were dozens of different containers in the US and they were all incompatible with each other. Towards the end of the 1960’s, standardization discussions took place and the first ISO spec for a standardized shipping container (Isotainer) were ready for publication in 1970.

There’s a good article on the ISO’s website about the Isotainer [pdf]

It’s been over 30 years – yet there are still people who refuse to conform to the standard. The Isotainer has a 90% adoption rate, and it took a hell of a long time to get.

So, when I see ranting and raving about Web Standards and specifications, I just think to myself it will all get better in due time. We’re working in a very young industry.

I’m already a Cingular/ATT customer now. I’m okay with the iPhone forcing that.

What I’m not okay with is the total cost of the iPhone. $1936 for the first year? WHAT!? Let’s investigate!

I’m currently dropping about $756 a year on my phone (including fees/tax). Let’s see… I could buy a really nice iPod for $249. I could buy a nice GPS addon for $129/year, and a phone that supports it with a contract renewal for under $300.

iPhone

Total for year 1: $1936. Year 2’s total is $1296. TCO for two years: $3232.

iPhone, no data plan

Total for year 1: $1456. Year 2’s total is $816. TCO for two years: $2272.

Components, no Data Plan

Purchasing New Phone: (one time cost) – $300
Yearly Phone Plan: $756
Purchasing New iPod: (one time cost) – $249
Yearly GPS Fees: $119.88
Total for year 1: $1424.88. Year 2’s total is $875.88. TCO for two years: $2300.76.

Components, with Data Plan

Purchasing New Phone: (one time cost) – $300
Yearly Phone Plan: $756
Purchasing New iPod: (one time cost) – $249
Yearly GPS Fees: $119.88
Yearly Data Fees: $480
Yearly Fees: $96
Total for year 1: $2000.88. Year 2’s total is $1451.88. TCO for two years: $3452.76.

My choice is obvious – iPhone and no data plan, if I can afford it. Consider the iPhone’s one time cost versus the component’s one time costs — $549 vs. $640. Another thing to consider is using the iPhone without a gluttonous data plan. You’d actually be better off with an iPhone and No Data Plan than buying the components separately – the $9.99/mo for GPS is what gets you!

I’ll go ahead and do this for 5 years, because that’s how long I’ve had my existing phone (or the cheapest one available in case I drop my phone in KY lake again) … and in chart form:

The iPhone without a data plan may be the route I end up going.
I-may-have-screwed-up-the-numbers-but-I-dont-think-so-Disclaimer: It’s getting late and my eyes are getting heavy.

At work I’m starting to experiment with some really cool GIS and starting to hook their data into useful applications. Hopefully I’ll get them out the door soon so I can show them off publicly.

Anyway, the lesson learned today is that points in GIS are not exactly the same as a point in math.

Math:

x,y

GIS:

lat, long

The problem is, latitude is actually a Y coordinate. Latitude refers to a point relative to the equator. Longitude is actually an X coordinate, since it is referring to a point relative to the Prime Meridian.

Moral of the story: when you’re reading a database of X, Y points on a map in decimal degrees to plug into Google Maps, you don’t want to plug them into the GLatLong function in that order. In other words, don’t use GLatLong(x,y) … it’s wrong. Use GLatLong(y,x).