Wow, busy times.
November 13, 2009, 12:03 am
Everything has kind of come to a screeching halt around this neck of the interwebs. I've been hard at work on another project that I won't be announcing on here until it is actually complete. It should be up in the next couple of weeks or so. Also, a new layout and bug tweaking will be coming to vesparos.com in the near future. You may be saying, but wait! You just finished this layout a month ago! I'm fickle and a perfectionist like that.
Stay classy.
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Bots, bots, go away!
October 27, 2009, 11:20 am
Just an FYI, comments now need approval after a quick run-in with some bots. I'll update the layout to warn you so people don't go posting comments all willy nilly thinking that they will eventually show up. Original content every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, starting this Friday. Stay tuned.
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The Dumbest Generation? Really, Mark Bauers?
October 22, 2009, 1:07 pm
Are you younger than 30? Do you enjoy the luxuries of technology? If so, you are ruining the world as we know it. At least, that's what author and English Professor at Emory University, Mark Bauer would like you to think. A couple of months ago, at my local Barnes & Noble, while prowling for some helpful programming literature, in the same section, a certain book caught my eye. The title? 'The Dumbest Generation: How The Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (or Don't Trust Anyone Under 30)'.
Wow. All that it takes to be grossly offended by this writing is to read the title, but I wanted to at least give a benefit of the doubt and read the synopsis.
Holy hell, it only flew downhill from there. Bauer asserts that the technology that was promised to enrich our youth and turn them into super-geniuses has backfired and turned us into a group of egotistical retards too consumed in our online popularity to pick up a book. He goes on to say that when there is an avenue for absolutely everybody to express their opinions, there is a problem. To a certain extent, he has a point. People that don't need a podium to spread their opinion diarrhea can be found: here, here, and here. And yes, most of the world does not care that my facebook status or my twitter feed indicate that I am currently 'Eating the best ham and cheese sandwich in the world, OMG you guys!' But surprisingly, a couple of people do. Mark Bauer incorrectly suggests that your typical social network user thinks that they are some sort of celebrity, fruitlessly sending their message for the whole world to see. Outside of bloggers, your average networker's 'audience' are friends, family, and people they have created a connections of sorts due to common interests.
What is really the most bothersome about Bauer's opinions is that he just seems to refuse to see the good in any of these new communication methods. During the despicable acts following the 2009 Iranian election, Twitter users ensured that the brutality didn't go unnoticed. Digg uses the ego stroking Bauer accuses social networks of causing to an advantage by allowing users to share news with each other, often times these are important issues not covered by traditional media. Social networking turned Barrack Obama from a little-known Senator into the victor of the 2008 presidential election. And who made the deciding votes? People under 30, and I would say that they made the most non-dumb choice at hand. Even 4chan's 'b' page, the absolute bottom-feeder of internet intellect, the birthplace of countless mindless memes, (and a guilty pleasure of mine), use their dirty deeds for good to bring social justice to pedophiles, corrupt organizations, and other online criminals.
But how do I feel? Do I think that there is anything wrong with social media? Short answer: YES. My problem with social media, and the internet in general is that there are a lot more users than creators, and a lot of creators are monopolizing by convincing their users that they, themselves, are creators. People add some CSS changes to their myspace page, relentlessly update facebook, follow indiscriminately on twitter, and while they are contributing to the networks, there aren't enough people with the drive to build their own networks that could be more useful. Blogging is a fantastic source of creation, but even in this world, the vast majority are simply users. They are using blogging software and plugins that do the intellectual work for them. Is this really a catastrophe though? Absolutely not. It's certainly nowhere near as criminal as Mark Bauer would like for us to believe.
It is important to point out, but I did not, nor will I ever read 'The Dumbest Generation'. My opinions on Bauer's ideas are based on judging a book by it's cover, interviews I have watched/read, and the book's promotional website. Does this prove Bauer's theory of the aliteracy our youth faces? You could argue that it does, but I don't have to read an Ann Coulter book to know that I hate her ideas. What I find to be truly ironic is that as a technology enthusiest/writer and avid social networking user, I found this book in the non-fiction section of a bookstore while looking for books that teach the reader how to use modern technology in intelligent ways. It was sitting right next to O'Reilly's Web Database Applications book. Let that one soak in...
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Things are starting to look real around here
October 17, 2009, 11:43 pm
Ah, things are starting to come together quite nicely around here. As promised, comments are at least presentable now. Today, there has been some polishing of functions that already worked being done more efficiently as well as a few new functions. I added retweet and sharethis links to all posts. Now if I write anything worth while, it is easy to share. I have just a couple more core functions to solidify over the next few days and then you will start seeing more worthwhile content as promised. This initial build is almost complete, and it feels great. There will not be any more posts after this one discussing functionality, from a user standpoint, the blog does all of the functions that I care to give. The remaining work is asthetic and some slight functional improvements (such as the text in the comment and contact forms erasing it's self on mouseclick). Be sure to watch the projects page, some things are beginning to solidify and there will be project announcements shortly.
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OMG! You guys! Comments!
October 16, 2009, 3:25 pm
Yup. I finally have them up and running, feel free to try it out. I'm warning you, they're ugly... I'll write the CSS to make it prettier tonight. I was waiting to do so until I could actually see what I Was trying to edit. I'm busy, that's all for now son.
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A long time with no updates
October 14, 2009, 11:10 pm
Yeah, it has been a long time since I have updated, my reasonings? I fell victim to layoffs and was not in the proper state of mind. Then starting a new job was some stress, yada yada. Well, I'm back. With a vengeance. Although I haven't been actively working on this site, I have been working on other projects that are in the planning phases. But last weekend I did next to nothing other than work on vesparos.com. I finally came up with a solid starting layout that I liked, made some quick logos, wrote some CSS, and got some core functions working. Basically every user interaction code works, with the exception of leaving comments. I spent the past couple days stressed over not figuring out why it doesn't work. I found out that by default, the host that I am using for my database has remote insert access shut off and their support has to be contacted to turn it on. So, you can't comment yet, but hopefully in the next couple of days (that's assuming that I have an audience). Well, I must at least have some one mildly paying attention because some one tried to exploit the contact page with an injection attack. So that's two bits of good news;
- vesparos.com at least has one person paying attention, even if they are trying to destroy it
- and the attack was thwarted
Gold stars all around. Speaking of the contact page, yes, it works. So if you feel it necessary to comment before tomorrow, or want to reach out for anything else; to say 'hi', to say you hate me, for girlfriend advice, whatever... please, feel free. Of course, more content is to come and other projects to be announced as they solidify. And I promise that this blog isn't going to be about building this site, or even that much about me for that matter. In the coming weeks you should expect original content focused on
- Technology
- Music
- Culture
- Arts
- Events
Although, most of it will be based, of course, around my experiences in the best place for all of these things: San Francisco. In short, in the next week or so, expect comments, the about me page, original content, and project announcements.
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Mild navigation has arrived
August 13, 2009, 10:40 pm
Alright. A lot of progress has been made today. All available links now work. Clicking on a blog entry or the count of comments will take you to the page that just displays the entry. In the future, it will show the comments on these main entry pages as well. When you are on main post pages, it will show you if there are any newer or older posts. I have it setup to where the main page that shows 10 entries at a time will start giving links to other pages full of 10. Awesome. The specific post pages will also show a message if you end up on a page that doesn't exist or has been deleted. A lot more to go, but things are moving along quite nicely here.
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Progress update
August 12, 2009, 9:58 pm
You may have noticed that now there are some links available. These still don't go anywhere, the code to make these work is still in production. I did however fix a problem in my counter. The main blog page is supposed to show the 10 newest posts. The counter function did not skip deleted posts. So, I altered it to skip them when factoring in the count for 10. I am currently working on pages for specific posts and for navigation to "older" and "newer" entries. The posts now show how many comments have been left and the option to add a comment. These links only appear if commenting is enabled. Good enough progress for one day.
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This is the project, This is how it will happen
August 11, 2009, 8:31 pm
OK. So this is my first official blog entry. I am writing this in an SQL Query GUI and I am manually escaping all of my special characters with a '\'. That's how primitive this is. The whole purpose of this blog is to be able to sell my abilities. To show what I can build using the coding languages what I am learning and market it. If you visit often, you will see changes. Last week the blog database was built. Nobody would notice that. Today, the backend engine to display blog entries on the main page was built. That's why you can read this. The engine is built to show the ten newest entries. If comments are allowed, you see a display saying that they are. But surprise, you can't actually submit them yet. The next steps over this week are to create commenting abilities and create multipage browsing (for example, there are 10 blog entries per page and you want to see an entry posted before the newest 20). The available links will also be calculated based on the grand total of blog entries. Today, a column was also added to the database to allow the deleting of entries. A test entry has already been deleted. These don't actually disappear, but are skipped in the code that generates what you can see. If I want to re-activate the code, all that I have to do is change the attribute back to the default. As a developer it is important to not use any blog apps but to build your own. Your website as well as others that you work on become your resume. I am offering the unique opportunity to track progress from the ground up. Very often, you will notice changes here... First, you will see functionality build. Then you will see the CSS and other design elements fall on top of that. I doubt if many people will be reading from the beginning, but all posts besides tests will be kept and you will be able to track my progress. Cheers.
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This is a blog test title.
October 22, 2009, 12:59 pm
This is a test entry. Testing testing 123. Echo echo echo. Can you hear me
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