- Most Recent | Since 2004
- List View
- Archive
- May 25, 2005
Busy Busy
May 25, 2005Read moreI’m having a very busy few weeks, and my posting schedule will be quite sporadic. Here’s what’s up:
- The Intel Thinking Tools project I’m working on is moving into a new phase: Internationalization for Right-To-Left languages! This is a pickle all of its own, since Flash does not support RTL input or display natively. This affects languages like Hebrew, Arabic, and Farsi. The piece I’m working on, Showing Evidence, is going live in June, and already supports non-RTL languages. Our RTL version is scheduled for later release.
Pitching some new business with ActiveEdge for a company out in Irvine, California, going up against some pretty impressive design houses. We have a good core team in place for this, so it’s a matter of making the best possible presentation. It should be a very interesting experience.
There’s a lot of business-type stuff to do: setting up a new accounting system, redefining my service offerings, defining a more precise definition of what it is I do, and making a compelling business plan with financials and associated metrics. I’ll feel a lot better once all that’s done.
<
p>On top of that, there’s the expanded participation in various local group activities, such as the New Media Group.
- May 23, 2005
En Garde!
May 23, 2005Read moreI am in a rather introspective mood. This past month has blessed me with a number of perspective-changing events. Some of them are related to work, as I revisit old working relationships to build future projects. Some events have triggered thoughts relating to the dynamic nature of friendship and cameraderie, and how there are entire rich worlds of social activity occuring all around me. There are a lot of positive things going on right now, the pressure to compete is on, and I am enjoying it.
So why do I feel on guard?
- May 22, 2005
The Darth Side, a Final Entry
May 22, 2005Read moreI’ve mentioned The Darth Side before, a fantastic send-up of Darth Vader as an introspective blogger. Great, funny stuff.
The final entry describes the scene in Return of the Jedi, when Luke turns himself in to Darth Vader on Endor. It is an amazing piece of writing that deftly integrates the details of the Star Wars backstory with a very moving perspective that, having now seen Episode III, seems less preposterous than I would have otherwise thought.
Matthew Davis Frederick Hemming, the creator of The Darth Side, really gets it. And–I never thought I would ever think this–Anthony Lane does not.
- May 19, 2005
Star Wars Episode III
May 19, 2005Read moreSo here’s my Episode III rant. I went with my buds at ActiveEdge to another George Lucas crapfest. Finally, this entire series will be behind me; the circle is complete. I can get on with my life.
- May 18, 2005
PHP and Unicode
May 18, 2005Read moreHooray for me! I get to look at Unicode today, as part of a second internationalization phase for Showing Evidence, an upcoming part of the Intel Thinking Tools suite. We have to modify our test server to localize some of the last few hard-coded strings in the application.
Although Intel’s server isn’t written in PHP, our test server is, so now I get to learn how to work with Unicode in that environment. Ben pointed out that PHP doesn’t, um, actually know how to deal with Unicode, so this article by Scott Reynen is going to come in handy. I will need to re-read Joel Spolsky’s “if you are a programmer working in 2003 and you don’t know the basics of characters, character sets, encodings, and Unicode, and I catch you…” article on the basics. Entertaining, and informative!
Scott Reynen’s weblog is pretty cool too…I like his writing style a lot. One more thing: my opening “hooray” was originally intended sarcastically, though with these two useful articles I am actually looking forward to it.
