CSS max-width

I just discovered a cool CSS trick. We’ve recently started using a wiki for collaboration. People are able to attach images in the document, but the images show up as whatever size the image they upload is. So if they upload an image that is 2000 pixels wide, it fills the browser window.

CSS to the rescue. CSS 2.0 supports the max-width attribute. This is great but doesn’t work in Internet Explorer. In my browsing I came across this little IE specific trick. You can actually embed javascript in a CSS file. So this little block in my CSS file limits the size of images for both Firefox (and Opera) and IE (don’t know about Safari).

div.wiki img {
    /* for CSS 2.0 compliant browsers */
    max-width: 500px;
    /* for IE only */
    width: expression(this.width > 500 ? 500 : true);
}

Old Dog, New Tricks

Link: � Self defeating desktop Linux strategies | Paul Murphy | ZDNet.com.

There’s a parallel phenomena that affects systems implementations of all kinds: busy users will spend hundreds of hours doing something the old way in order to avoid having to spend a couple of hours learning the new way. You can see one rationale for this by looking at each learn/do decision independently: imagine that a task takes 30 minutes the old way, and five minutes the new way -but it takes an hour to learn to use the new tool for this purpose. Put the user under daily "get it done" pressure and continuing the old way of working looks thirty five minutes better each time the decision comes up -even though learning the new tools would free up a full working day each month.

Moral of the story – take time to learn new tricks.

Google Strategies

Link: STLtoday – Business – Columnists.

The company employs a concept known as “Twenty Percent Time,” whereby every Google engineer is encouraged to spend 20 percent of their working time developing ideas that interest them, not just those affiliated with larger projects. The Google News headline compiler and Gmail Web-based mail program (now available to anyone) grew out of this concept.

In churches, when we have a volunteer doing ministry for us we tend to let them contribute as many ideas as they can. We’re just happy to have someone to help. However, once a volunteer becomes a full-time employee do we continue letting them brainstorm or do we try to squeeze all the work out of them we can?

Allocating 20% (or more) of staff time for brainstorming and development of ideas – without fear of accusations of wasted time – is something we need to make sure we keep doing.

Wiki

I’ve set up a Wiki for Crossroads. I hope people will find it useful for group projects. I’ve put KC The Cone up there for starters, but there’s really no limit to what we can use it for. Initially it is intended to be used internally  (hopefully putting it on my blog won’t induce graffiti), but if you’re not from Crossroads and have a cool idea I’m not gong to stop you from contributing. I’ll consider the KC the Cone section to be open for non-Crossroaders.

I’m using Kwiki. I considered Twiki and WikkaWiki, but decided simple is best for starters. It also helped that Kwiki is Perl and I know Perl inside and out.

Have at it Crossroaders! Consider it a living, breathing document.

Child Security

Micah started 1^st grade this week. The other day Shari observed that there is little to no security at the school. As luck would have it, Shari is gone on a retreat this weekend and I got to take Micah to school this morning. Sure enough – no security. Any Joe could simply walk in there, do whatever he wanted, and nobody would know.

I spent a whole heck of a lot of time developing a check-in system for church so that we could have security. We’re moving to Fellowship One so we can continue having that security (along with church management stuff). Was it all in vain?

If 70% of the time (5 out of 7 days) kids go to a place where security is lax, and 15% (1 Sunday out of 7 days) of the time have very good security, isn’t that kinda like putting our finger in one hole in a leaking sea wall that has seven holes?

Does it make sense to continue having good security? Are we here to lead the rest of the world into proper notions of security, or are we simply going overboard?

Thoughts?

YouTube

Here’s my (probably) final KC and The Flip animation.

I’m trying out youtube, which seems to be pretty cool. I was using videoaddon to do the previous videos in my blog. Videoaddon on is cheap (about $5/mo), but YouTube is free. The concepts are a bit different though. YouTube is a video sharing site like Flickr is for photos.

Videoaddon is a little easier to customize, offering different sizes of video. We’ll probably keep using it for our Crossroads stuff. But for personal stuff YouTube seems cool. I had to tweak the HTML to get it to show this size. It wants to do things at a fixed resolution. The Typepad editor didn’t like it and wouldn’t do the WYSIWYG thing so I had to use the HTML editor.

Book Discussion

I’ve just started a book discussion forum on the Crossroads site.

Iron Sharpens Iron

Prov 27:17 As iron sharpens iron, So a man sharpens the countenance of his friend.  NKJV

Jason Ely just posted Going Up. He mentions having recently met a number of Crossroads people who have helped him to begin a new growth spurt. He also mentioned books related to this spurt. First I’d like to say that Jason is one of the most well read people I know. If I name a book, he’s probably read it. He’s not only knowledgeable and intelligent, he also has a servant’s heart. I’ve truly benefited from knowing him.

The group of guys Jason mentioned have benefited from the sharing of quality books. Jason instigated my reading of Atlas Shrugged, which was a very thought provoking book. Pete caused me to read Blink. And I’ve just added Velvet Elvis to my audio-to-go queue based on Jason’s blog.

In the interest of sharing more of this type of information, I’m posting my full queue. I can’t necessarily recommend these books since I haven’t read them yet, but it gives an idea of where I’m heading. I try to intersperse fun stuff with serious stuff.. I’ll take suggestions too.

• Sarah : Women of Genesis
• The Story of
  Philosophy:
  From Plato to
  Voltaire and
  the French
  Enlightenment
• Harry Potter
  and the
  Sorcerer’s
  Stone
• America’s
  Secret War:
  Inside the
  Hidden
  Worldwide
  Struggle
  Between the
  United States
  and Its
  Enemies
• The Runes of
  the Earth
• The Practice
  of the
  Presence of
  God
• Moon is a
  Harsh
  Mistress
• Celebration of
  Discipline
• Desire of the
  Everlasting
  Hills: The
  World Before
  and After
  Jesus
• Piercing the
  Darkness
• History of the
  World, Part 1
• Brave New
  World
• Speaker for
  the Dead
• Miracles (C.S. Lewis)
• Getting Things
  Done: The Art
  of Stress-Free
  Productivity
• Moby Dick
• Becoming a
  Person of
  Influence (for Shari)
• Being the
  Body (for Shari)
• Lies Women
  Believe (for Shari)
• Velvet Elvis:
  Repainting the
  Christian
  Faith

Wish List History:

• Ender’s Game
• Blink: The Power of Thinking
  Without Thinking
• Lila
• The New Tolerance
• Aristotle for Everybody:
  Difficult Thought Made Easy
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of
  Secrets
• Dreams of a Final Theory

JSAN

I forgot to mention another cool thing I learned about at OSCON. JSAN is to Javascript what CPAN is to Perl. JSAN is fairly small at this time, but it could end up being pretty cool.

KC and The Flip

After Pete saw KC on my blog the other day, he had an idea that we use him in our upcoming "Flip." Kid Crossing is going to be expanding into a new part of the building we haven't used before. The transition is being called "The Flip."

Building on the logo the team came up with, Pete suggested we have KC jumping on the spatula or something. I managed to create this draft over the last couple days. The final view is the original logo.

I'm not sure about what Crossroads wants to do with "Kid Crossing," the logos, etc. as far as ownership goes, but I've been thinking about making this whole thing into an open-source project. We're using the G-Force curriculum from Fellowship Church and usually work our Kid Crossing theme into that somehow. It may be useful as add-on material to bring it all together. Or it could simply be a place where people share ideas on how to use it. Maybe someday it would grow into a curriculum of its own… who knows.

Mambo Split

It seems that Miro, the company that is behind Mambo, and the Mambo development team have had a serious disagreement. The development is splitting off from the Mambo project and planning to rebrand Mambo. This new fork (though they’re not calling it that) can be read about at http://www.opensourcematters.org/.

Crossroads will continue to use the product regardless of the rebranding. At this point we plan to follow the developer community in its split with Miro.

Fellowship One

Well, I just logged into Fellowship One for the first time.

I don’t really have a whole lot to say about it because we’re just getting started. None of our data has been converted (though I was called about that).

What I can see of the interface is fairly minimal since there’s nothing to do yet. What I can see is quite responsive, which is as it should be since there’s no data. It’s well laid out, attractive, and works well in Firefox.

I looked at the documentation for Fellowship One Data Exchange, which is their XML/HTTP interface for manipulating the data. The documentation is clear and easy to follow. I’ll probably sit down and write a PHP or Perl tool for accessing this data – unless someone else already has. (please speak up if you have)

I’ll continue posting as we continue through the process.

KC the Cone

A while back I mentioned using Blender to make a super-hero for Kid Crossing. Ben Mitchell (and Melonie Mitchell) and I (and a few others) have come up with KC (for Kid Crossing) the cone. It fits the Kid Crossing theme and is simple to model and animate (ala Veggie Tales).

We're looking for ideas on what to do with KC as a mascot. Do we have a weekly KC nugget? What does he do? Does he have a supporting cast of characters? etc.

Consider this open-source mascot development. If you've got any ideas please share.

del.icio.us

At OSCON I kept hearing about del.icio.us (delicious). It’s a "social" bookmarking service. I just tried it out and decided I like it.

The primary benefit for me is that it allows my bookmarks to follow me from work to home (or wherever). I can use Firefox live bookmarks to create a pop-down menu of my favorite links. A bookmarklet serves to perform the actual bookmarking.

The other benefit is that links to the same site made by other people using the service will allow you to cross-reference other links made by that person to similar sites. It’s another way to find stuff you’re looking for.

For those interested in my short list of links (will grow in time) visit http://del.icio.us/brianglass.

Novell Linux To Be On 1600 Indiana High School Desktops

Link: LinuxElectrons™ – Novell Linux To Be On 1600 Indiana High School Desktops.

This is where Linux needs to go to win mindshare. If the students of today use Linux, the professionals of tomorrow will.

Home Computer

We’ve had several power outages this summer. Ever since the outages started, my USB ports have been acting strangely as have a few other things. I’m going to take this opportunity to upgrade my system to something a bit more modern (it’s currently an Athlon XP 2100+ w/ 1GB RAM).

I looked briefly at the Macs. Linux will run on either. They look cool and all that, but when push came to shove the $$ won. I can upgrade my current system – replace the motherboard, processor, memory, and video card – for $440 and have a machine that creams a Mac Mini that costs $499. Macs go up from there.

Here’s what I chose:

• Athlon 64 3000+ (socket 939) – $135
• DFI nF4-DAGF motherboard – $89
• OCZ Performance Series 1GB (2×512MB) PC3200 (2-3-3-6) – $112.75
• Chaintech SE6200 128MB GeForce 6200 PCIe – $86

I’ll continue using my ATX tower and I already have a couple 7200RPM drives totaling 90GB, and a dual layer DVD burner.

A split order from Newegg and Monarch Computer Systems comes to about $445/w shipping. Anyone with thoughts or better deals elsewhere?

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

I’m currently on my second reading in 3 months of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. The first reading was actually a listening (via audio books). Since I was going to be spending several hours on a plane going to OSCON I picked up the paperback to read.

Next to the Bible, this is probably one of the most mind altering books I’ve ever read. The primary issue of discussion in the book is Quality (i.e. value(s), virtue, good(ness), morals, etc.). It is actually presented in story form, which makes the book easy to digest.

Things happen on many levels in this book. What happens in the story often parallels what happens in the philosophical discussions on a different level – almost allegorically. Not only that, but the story has multiple layers to it. It can be easily digested on the first read, but multiple readings will let you see the depth. The writing is superb.

Frankly, this is one of the best books I have ever read.

OSCON Observations

Here’s some observations from my trip to OSCON.

There were a lot of Macs there. Off the cuff I’d guess 40-50% of the laptops in use were Macs. The rest were PCs with a lot of Windows and slightly less Linux. I wanted to reach out and cuff those people for using Windows at an Open Source Convention, but then I realized that the laptop my employer gave me to take to the convention had Windows NT on it. Many others were probably in that same boat.

Red Hat was non-existent.

Tim O’Reilly had an interesting presentation about OS scripting language book sales. I don’t remember specifics, but PHP volume was highest and increasing. Perl was only slightly less in volume but declining. Python and Ruby were relatively small in volume but both rising. Hopefully the Perl people will get Perl 6 rolled out here soon and turn the trend around since my personal favorite is Perl. Nevertheless, Perl is not dead yet.

Ruby on Rails seems to be the latest fad. (In case you didn’t already know). After a brief look it seems an awful lot like Maypole for Perl (which is what I wrote my check-in system with).

I saw a really cool demo of the next generation Linux desktop (to be released in a month or two). IMHO it rivals or beats OSX desktop eye-candy with such things as jiggly windows, rotatable cube of virtual screens on each side, drop-shadows, Exposé type behavior, and we actually had Beagle before Apple released Spotlight.

Portland is a nice city.

Sprog looks like a handy dandy little tool for things you’d normally do with perl (it’s written in Perl). I’d call it simplified graphical perl for non-programmers. It looks handy for doing simple reporting stuff like producing reports, graphs, charts, and such from input files, SQL, etc.

Ajax is another new trend.

PlaceSite

One of the cool things I saw at OSCON was PlaceSite.

According to their site:

Project PlaceSite introduces a new way of using wireless networks — to
create digital community services by, for and about people who are
together in the same physical place.

They are using this in café’s to create forums that are only visible to the people within wifi range.

What is cool is that the software runs on a Linksys router which can be had for about $50 at your local office store. It then connects to a server outside the network to access more permanent identity information. There is a growing network of Café’s using this technology. I’d like to try this out in the Crossroads Café.

Super Hikers

By far the highlight of our vacation was our last day of hiking. My kids, Micah – 6 and Hannah – 3, both enjoyed hiking. By the end of our stay we had hiked enough to try something more strenuous. Shari and I figured we'd hike up the mountain for a couple hours and then turn around and come back, but we wanted the kids to be able to say they had hiked part of a mountain.

We should have known that once we started we wouldn't be able to turn around till we had reached the top. It took six hours to reach the top of the Twin Sisters, but the kids were both pretty excited about and we knew it would be something they could be proud of for a long time.

The trek back down was even more exciting. A storm blew in fairly quickly and we had to hustle to reach the timberline before it hit. Lightning up there can be deadly. The kids were fairly unhappy about the storm. Lightning was striking very very close, we were getting pelted by pea sized hail, and temperatures dropped quite a bit. The positive thing in all this is that we got to see some big-horn-sheep up close and personal. They saw us coming and vacated a very fine sheltering tree just in time for us to move in behind them.

It took 2.5 hrs to get back down. We carried Hannah most of the way through the rain, but Micah hiked steadily down the mountain non-stop. A very nice man came back up to check on us and helped us carry Hannah back down. We suspected he might have heavenly connections. Hebrews 13:2 comes to mind:

Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.