Adam's Blog

After settling in on Picasa Web Albums, I've taken my album offline and cancelled by Google paid storage. I'm going to be deciding on a new picture host soon. Hopefully one that actually support subfolders, password protection, and has a good, quick, easy iPhoto plugin. This is when I wish MobileMe wasn't so damned expensive. Picasa Web Albums, even with their incredible face-recognizing people tagger, is so sub-par compared to every other photo album out there. Its feature-poor interface lacks so much that it makes using it a chore for me. I've tackled this before: Picasa Web just ain't cuttin it.

Not too long ago, I said "Heroes has replaced LOST as my #1, mostly because the plot advances comfortably." I've blogged about Heroes in the past, too. But now, comfortably into the realm of the show, I can safely say that Heroes is the poor man's sci-fi. Heroes is ill-thought out from the get go. As my friend Eugenia has said before, the writers made the Heroes too powerful up front, and as a result, the storylines are seeking to limit them where possible, and just flat out ignoring them at worst. Firstly, Peter, Sylar, and Parkman's dad, at a minimum are all extremely powerful, yet none of them really "use" their powers, even when it would make sense. Sylar, for example, didn't hear something whispered just 20 yards from him, yet it was explained in season 1 that he had super-hearing. Hiro makes the dumbest mistakes in the world, and doesn't use his power to fix them (like going back in time to just not open the safe, or better yet, putting a fake version in his hand before Daphne swiped it.) The entire story arc often feels like a bunch of ninth graders writing a "wouldn't it be...

At home, I prefer Camino. At work, I use Google Chrome. I find both to be very pleasurable experiences. But no browser out there comes even close to challenging Firefox when it comes to development. First of all, extensions such as Stylish and Firebug are invaluable. In fact, scratch Firebug, the default Firefox error console alone is aces to me. Is there anyone who can tell me why no browser besides Firefox has a "View Background Image" link even as an option? How come no other browser has developer friendly stuff? I know that the Web Inspector in Webkit browsers is really cool - I love Webkit - but ultimately, it's Firefox I often resort to when I'm doing real work.

Lots of really interesting stuff is going on right now, most of which I can't talk about just yet. It has kept me, in large part, from focusing on sethadam1.com, which I regret. I don't want this site to devolve into reposting of political crap. But many things are keeping my occupied. I promise I will chronicle "things" soon enough, as soon as I know how everything shakes out. In the meantime, today is my baby girl's first birthday. It's odd thinking she's been around for a full year now. It really seems like just recently she was born, and yet, at the same time, I can't really remember life without her, so it feels like she's been around for much longer than just the last year. It is truly amazing, the experience of parenthood. You never think it will be, but it constantly is.

I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight..... If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're 'exotic' and 'different.' Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, you're an American story. If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim. Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, and you're a maverick. Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable. Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, then you're well- grounded. If you spend 3 years as a community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, help register 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, 8 years as a State Senator of a district of 750,000 people, chair the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people, sponsor 131 bills, and serve on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works, and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience. If your resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town of 7,000 people, 2 years as governor of a...

That Kool-Aid guy, who does he think he is? Just smashing through walls with no afterthought? Does he realize the mess that will need to be cleaned after his fat ass leaves? I've had Kool-Aid, and while it's generally pretty tasty - especially the purple - I'm not sure it's worth smashing through the family room wall.

Choice words from the rollingstone.com article:

Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States. As a representative of our political system, she's a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove. But more than that, she is a horrifying symbol of how little we ask for in return for the total surrender of our political power. Not only is Sarah Palin a fraud, she's the tawdriest, most half-assed fraud imaginable, 20 floors below the lowest common denominator, a character too dumb even for daytime TV — and this country is going to eat her up, cheering her every step of the way. All because most Americans no longer have the energy to do anything but lie back and allow ourselves to be jacked off by the calculating thieves who run this grasping consumer paradise we call a nation.

Ouch.

Kroc Camen, long time OSNews reader and frequent IM buddy of mine, has an interesting piece examining the use of the <abbr> HTML tag. Kroc is one of those people who is very serious about the presentation and efficiency of his code, a trait I do not share, at least in practice, at least, to the same degree that he does, and it makes us good companions. My focus is typically on clean, fast, scalable code that forsakes beauty in favor of performance. My code, in the form of OSNews, has sustained a simultaneous Digging and Slashdotting, something of which I'm very proud. But my CSS isn't going to win any awards, my javascript could be collapsed a lot and made much more efficient, and my HTML often suffers from "div-itis" and "class-itis." Enter Mr Camen, whose motto, "code is art," is evident upon initial inspection. Kroc's code is not only well written, the source itself is actually beautiful. We have collaborated on both CSS and PHP in the past and both are the better for it. That said, we have strikingly different positions about publshing on the web. Kroc writes his website for himself, and as a result, publishes...

Phish is back. The first time I saw Phish was in Hampton. The last time I saw Phish was in Hampton. The best Phish show I saw was in Hampton (11/22/97, best Piper ever!). It would be awesome to see them in Hampton in 2009.

Yesterday, Facebook released Facebook for iPhone 2.0. I have to say, this is one of the best app updates I can ever recall. I'm incredibly impressed. First of all, it introduced what appears to be a pretty decent speed boost. Interacting with the app is significantly faster for me on both Wifi and 3G. Facebook for iPhone 2.0 Secondly, and more importantly, the app is much more robust and complete. Whereas before, the Facebook experience was very limited, the new app is almost a wholesale replacement while on your iPhone. The old version was so limited that you'd have to go to the browser for most operations such as adding a friend, viewing a photo tag, viewing requests, etc. And going to the browser directed you to m.facebook.com, which meant you had to login and go to the full site - a multi-step process to be sure. Also, the iPhone optimized Facebook site, iphone.facebook.com, was woefully underpowered. Both served as great platforms for basic browsing, but severely handicapped when it came to truly using the site. So it's that much more of a welcome treat that the new app is a full on competitor. As Apple continues to let me...