This morning VelaClock 2.1.12 was out and I picked it up - not that I need it as much as I used to, but it's still nice to be able to know for certainty what time it is in the other time zones. Back in my days at O'Connor, I needed to know London and Hong Kong without fail, but now it's not that big an issue. Still, if I need to know DST rules for Gaza, it's in there now.
OK, a little silly, but nice to have.
Got out and voted and I have to say I'm more than a little disappointed in the quality of the polling staff these days. The name is spelled B-E-A-T-Y, and it's on the voter registration card right there, yet still, I had to point out Liza's sheet in the rolls, and mine as well. Amazing.
But I have to say, it's great to strike a blow against what appears to be 'old time' Chicago politics in Bolingbrook. This article points out the incredible unfairness built into the system in this town. But I'm sure, if you look at any one of the rules, it is there for a reason - don't want to have cheating, do we? But the upshot of these rules enforced by a corrupt system is nothing less than... well... corrupt.
So I wrote in BONNIE ALICEA for mayor and I'm hoping she gets enough other folks as well. But even if she didn't, it's the process that's essential, and next time, maybe she'll be on the ballot for sure.
Today was a good day for my little project. I have been waiting for a few folks to do somethings for me - get data back to me, set up servers, install a little software - nothing that they can't do, but stuff that normally just takes time. It's a little frustrating, but that's just the way it is working with folks. Gotta take time for these things.
I will say that I'm glad to be working with a good QA Team. These folks are actually doing tests on my stuff that I hadn't thought of. Memory profiling as a function of time is a great little thing because my Google AnnotatedTimeLine is not very memory efficient and can crash IE 6 and 7 if you have it up for a while, and while Firefox 3 works, it's the exception on Windows. But these folks are willing (and interested) in doing the tests to make sure that it's reasonably stable. That's great news.
So today was time to put in new features and get things cleaned up while I wait.
This morning iTunes 8.1.1 hit Software Update with the somewhat lame description:
iTunes 8.1.1 adds support for renting HD movies and provides a number of bug fixes, including addressing issues with VoiceOver and syncing with iPhone or iPod touch.
and while I don't think we need to get a novelist to write the release notes, I think this is a little skimpy for even Apple.
But hey... it's an update, and there's got to be a reason to have it. So I got it.
This morning I saw that OsiriX, the medical image viewer, released a new version, so I had to go get it. There's nothing quite like getting your images (x-rays, MRI, etc) and being able to look at them at home. Not that we're doctors and can read them, but it's fun to look at your guts and wonder Hey, is that a tumor?
If you have medical images, give it a try.
This evening the episode of House, M.D. had one of the main characters commit suicide. In their trying to understand the reasons, the remaining characters searched for a reason that he'd do this. Point was, there was no reason. None at all. And while I appreciate showing that suicide is not glamorous as some might want it to appear, I have to wonder why do it to this particular character? Why have it make no sense whatsoever.
In the show, this character wasn't depressed. He thought life was worth living. Looked on the bright side of things. In general, he was the "hopeful" one in the crowd. The others are cynics. One with a genetic disease and less than a decade to live. All morose. So why pick this one happy person to kill himself? Clearly, it would be completely unexpected.
But that's possible in fiction. Portray a person as happy, full of life, enjoying life, and then have him be a closet mass murderer. It's possible. Totally illogical, but possible. If he'd been killing people and stuffing them in his fridge, I'm guessing there are a few tell-tale signs that people he worked with 60+ hours a week with would have spotted. Like a grim sense of humor, or signs of multiple personalities. Something.
So this wonderful character that my family has come to really like is gone. And what does this show my kids? Well... that the can't depend on TV for justice. Thanks, TV, but I think the real world will teach them that. Next? Oh... it shows them that even their best friends can be suicide cases. Thanks, TV, but my kids don't need to wonder if their friends are going to off themselves, they have enough of a tough time just being kids these days.
In the end, I'm disappointed in the writers. They could have done this to a patient on the show. A member of family of one character. Something. They didn't have to do it to the one person that never would have killed themselves in real life.
It's some literary vehicle, I'm sure. Someone new is coming on the show, or the actor wanted off to pursue movies, etc. But it's not anything close to a lesson learned. This was the writer's idea of a sucker punch. Nothing more.
UPDATE: there have been a few articles indicating that this was handled badly. But the reason: Kal Penn, the actor, wanted to work in the Obama administration, so he wanted out. Out he is. I'm now a little disappointed in him, as well. Finish the season, make a commitment and stick to it. Alas, this is not the case, it seems.
I was reading the Google Visualization groups today and 'VizGuy' responded that within the week, we should have the ability to set the format of the date/time in the upper-right hand corner of the AnnotatedTimeLine graph as well as setting the format of the numbers in the legend at the top of the graph. This is excellent news! This means that they are listening, and that I'll be able to get the format set before too much longer.
While I realize this isn't a big deal to Google, it's still a good indication that they are interested in moving this forward in response to user inputs. That's just the best news I've had all day.
Now I just need to sit tight for a few days... yup... it's gonna be tough.
[4/7] UPDATE: true to their word, the AnnotatedTimeLine now has a dateFormat preferences value that does exactly what I wanted it to do. I love it. Excellent work, Google.
This morning I needed to have a nice, simple, quick, date formatter for my Javascript code. Nothing fancy, but since Javascript really only allows you to manipulate the components of the date, and not really format it nicely, something else is needed. So I went 'a Googling. Found something that's really quite nice.
The idea is that with a simple:
<script type="text/javascript" src="data.format.js"/>
you can then include in your java script code:
var label = document.getElementById("label") label.innerHTML = dateFormat(new Date(), "HH:MM:ss mmmmm dd, yyyy");
where you had tagged the date/time field like this:
<div id="label">this will be the time</div>
What I get in my code is the updated time and date of the last update to the data. It's pretty nice. A little CSS on the div tag and it's looking pretty nice. I have to say, I'm a little surprised that Javascript didn't have this, but to see it in the open source community makes me feel very good about Javascript. It's there, and it's really being supported by the developers.
So... if you need a Javascript date formatter, give this guy a look.
I noticed that VLC 0.9.9a is out with video performance on Intel Macs, fixes for the known issues with libxml2, and the addition of Real Video 3.0 & 4.0 stream decoding. All in all, it sounds quite nice, but the real reason I have to stay up with it now is the dependency on HandBrake. And there's nothing I've found that's nicer than HandBrake for ripping DVDs.
So it's a new upgrade, and might as well get it.
I've been working with the AnnotatedTimeLine for a few weeks now, and I'm simply amazed at the quality of the code contained in that widget. Oh, sure, it's not perfect. It's got update 'flicker', but on the whole, it's saved us a ton of time and it's price point is a lot cheaper than VantagePoint, the next-best alternative I know of for this kind of visualization.
I'm able to do the zoom in and out cleanly, I'm able to smooth (compress) the data nicely in Javascript - which, by the way, I'm now very interested in the speed of Javascript processing in a web browser, and very excited about Safari 4, and the next version of Firefox for the speed.
It's great to get a better understanding of Javascript as well. It certainly opens my eyes to the JSTalk project, and makes that far more interesting to me because I know it better now than I did. Lots to like there, too.
Yeah, this has been a great experience. I'm very interested in seeing what 'da Boss thinks of the app on Monday. I hope he likes it - whether he says so or not.