TheOneCubed

This week has seemed to fly by. Monday night after work was pretty chill. I have for the first time become addicted to a reality tv series: Hell’s Kitchen on Fox. I think it is the reality of it that pulls me in. I love to cook and I understand and appreciate what goes on in a kitchen. Some of the people on this show aren’t cut out for it - that’s for sure.

Tuesday night is like most others - Media Team worknight at church. No matter how tired I am, I’m always excited to go. The guys on the team are awesome Christian men and its a great chance to hang out with them. In addition they are tech nerds like myself so we can have great conversation about the newest technology in audio/video/computer use - especially with focus on worship settings. I can stay there for several hours and not even realize it.

Last night I was at church again, this time running sound for the singles ministry. The Gathering as they call it is ok - but I still feel a little out of place there. Most of the time I feel like I’m just there to run sound - not actually to be a part of the ministry team. It’s hard to explain but I still feel much more connected to the college ministry - even though I’ve been out of college for over a year now.

Who knows what tonight will bring - my friend Susan mentioned pickle chips - so now I’m craving them . . . maybe a trip to Lynnwood Grill is in order :-D.

Well this weekend I did something I’ve been wanting to do for quite some time. I applied my new site design to my gallery. I’m still working to finalize pages for my main page, however the design is working on the gallery. Hopefully tonight I’ll finish content for the main pages and have a general working site. I’m still working on applying the design to the blog. Have to learn all about Blogger tags and such to be able to make the transition smooth and effective. In the mean time you can see the design at the gallery (listed below).

Gallery: http://gallery.theonecubed.com
Main Site: http://www.theonecubed.com (coming soon)

There will be eventual unification across my site, blog, and gallery. Unfortunately I’ll probably then be ready for a new design :-p.

So I thought I’d take a bit of time this morning to rant about Microsoft’s grand invention known as Internet Explorer (IE). This is really a fenced in issue. On one side of the fence you have IE - loved and used by all - because they don’t know any better. On the other side of the fence you have your Mac people and all the smart computer users who choose another browser.

Now some of you are saying “Jason - that’s pretty harsh to call anyone who uses IE dumb. What about all the websites and such that will only work in IE. It has its strengths.” Unfortunately those strengths are far out-weighed by its weaknesses (in my opinion).

But let me interject a third option to this fence issue. You’re like me - you want to reside on the side of the fence with your fellow Mac users - however you are forced to straddled the fence in a very awkward position (often times without protection) just for the sake of helping those other users on the other, IE, side.

Now it’s no secret that web developers and system administrators around the globe despise that which is IE. Microsoft (in their grand wisdom) decided to support their own set of standards when it comes to things like HTML, XHTML, and CSS. They also decided to unify their web browser with their file browser engine - creating so many security holes it has been hilarious or disastrous (depending on which side of the fence you reside).

Now I’ve learned to deal with IE. I’ve even gone so far as to code almost everything I’ve done to be compliant and look good (that equates to the same) in both IE and other browsers (Firefox, Mozilla, Safari, etc.). My latest quam with IE is the long standing lack of support for PNG 24 files. Now true - you can do some fancy coding and get PNG to render with their alpha transparency in tact. However, I found out the hard way, that this image translation engine can have some strange side effect. The most unique side effect - completely nullifying hyperlinks.

I was using a PNG as a background image of a TD (table cell) and was placing hyperlinks as text within the cell. To my surprise the links wouldn’t appear in IE. They were there in the code - but you couldn’t click on them or anything. You could highlight the text - but still no hyperlinks. Unfortunately for me, my final solution consisted of using PNG 8 files instead of nice PNG 24 files. What happens in this case is that IE drops any and all transparency values and just displays what it can. So if you were to look at the design I was working on - all of my nice drop shadows on images are now gone in IE (sad me).

Now I might try the solution of slicing my images a little differently to go back to using the image translator - but a large part of me wants to boycott. I want this huge disclaimer to appear to a site visitor that reads “I’m sorry you feel so bound to IE - because it’s all you know. Here, why don’t you try a real browser” and point them towards Firefox. Then maybe they’ll get the full feel for my site - as initially intended.

Well now that I’ve ranted enough let me leave everyone with one final thought. Perhaps the only reason we have to put up with crap like this - is because we don’t make enough noise in the process. Here’s to revolution!

So I had all good intentions to get up this morning and go do some cardio before coming to work. Yeah . . . ummm . . . I couldn’t drag my fat butt out of bed. Oh well - hopefully I’ll have some better luck tomorrow morning (one can hope right).

This morning is amazingly quiet. I guess everyone had really good weekends so no one is in before 9 AM this morning (except me and a few of the other die hards). Only sad thing is, unless they sign online to our in house jabber account - I have no idea if they are at work or not. Kinda sucks to be disconnected from the people you �work with�. Oh well - I have my comfy office and can play my music real loud without bothering anyone.

While home this weekend I took this picture of a flower outside my parents house. I know it is a little blurry - but I shot this at like 9 PM with nothing but the fluorescent light on. It caused a cool kinda glow - so I thought I�d share it.

So this weekend I’ve traveled to Denver, NC where the parents live for Father’s Day. We decided to have a cookout this evening to celebrate this holiday. The usual - hamburgers, hot-dogs, homemade ice cream . . . oh yeah that’s right. If you’ve never been fortunate enough to have homemade ice cream - you are really missing out.

On another note - my grandparents are hilarious! I heard the same story three different times and something kept changing. On top of it all my grandpa wants me to make a business card for his bluegrass band. I ask him what he’d like on it and he gives me the name of the band, phone number, etc. Then he ask me to put images of instruments on there. I grimaced a little at this - but was like “whatever”. Then he gives me a bible verse. Ok - cool. Then he gives me another, and another, and gives me his personal motto. Starts spitting out several other phone numbers of other band members. AHHHHH!!!!

It was at this point I stopped him and said I’d use my “designer” judgement and make him a few variants and mail them to him. He responded with “OK - but you’ll print them out and send them right? I don’t have one of them there computer contraptions you’re using.” Some of you are saying “Ok - my grandparents don’t have a computer either” - but do your grandparents pronounce the word computer as “COM-pooter”?