James Andrews

I arrived at Narita Airport last night around 6pm. Quickly made my way through immigration and customs without a hassle. Was very happy that the line at immigration was 10 people long. My wife arrived 10 minutes late, which gave me time to buy a soda, and some oreo cookie bites at the store in the airport (at reasonable prices go figure, go Japan!).

It’s now 6:30am. Now starts a week or two of waking up ridonkulously early. Happens on most trips that I don’t sleep very well in the plane. I’ve had my buttered toast breakfast. Greated the dog, who was confused that someone was awake at 6am. I found a key waiting for me on the coffee table. I assume it’s the key to the house. Attached to it is a barcode card, it looks like it’s for a grocery store. Very nice of my wife to lay it out for me to have.

My wife is still in bed after a late night up. She has a wedding party to attend too and then a full day of classes at her ballet studio. I will drive her to the train station and then possibly return to my home in Japan and maybe do things with her father, or go off exploring.

I need to be able to go places without relying solely on public transportation. On the list of things to do is find a user bicycle shop, and hopefully find a bicycle for $30-$40 US. That way I don’t have to rely on the buses all the time.

Over the last 3 years we’ve heard a lot about AT&T. Three years ago AT&T scooped up the exclusive deal Apple successful iPhone. Through out those 3 years AT&T has proven that they are increasingly incompetent. Today they have climbed another rung up that ladder. AT&T customer Giorgio Galante had emailed AT&T’s CEO Randall Stephenson. Like many people who email many companies CEOs he did in hopes that someone higher than the lowly tech support pion might be able to solve their problem or reasonable request.

From my standpoint the idea that after 2 non threatening emails Mr Stephenson would send one of his executive minions to threaten a customer; a customer who’s monthly contribution helps keep ATT in the black, is foolish. Especially today when we lived in such a wired world where this news goes viral relatively quickly. He instead should take a lesson from his Colleague Mr Steve Jobs, who though many may disagree with, at least has the professionalism to interact with his customer base and not stand behind a wall of overpaid secretaries.

I am also an AT&T customer, but that will shortly change. My iPhone contract is long since up, and I am moving out of country, but if I weren’t moving out of country, I’d be moving away from AT&T anyway. Their poor customer support, network service, and corporate attitude leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

Anyone who is familiar with Javascript and using many of the libraries like prototype, jquery and YUI are all to familiar with the power of “$”. Many of the new low level libraries such as these allow you to use the “$” as a shortcut to other functions already in the system. With prototype $ is short for “document.getElementByI” in jQuery it’s short for the “jQuery” object. Other libraries link it to whatever it is they feel it should be. This makes writing code a bit easier.

While it’s easier it’s also more problematic. Many people who don’t have time to write libraries rely on other’s libraries to do the work for them. They may need a carousel, or a modalbox, or they may have something that they wrote 3-4 years ago and defined “$” as something they wanted to define it as. This can be hugely problematic.

Let’s say I wrote a javascript application that used prototype. A while later my client who uses my javascript application finds a javascript modal that they really like that uses jQuery. The developer of that modal application uses “$” for jQuery. Now we have a conflict. I can’t just tell jQuery to not use “$”, even though it has that option because the modal application utilizes it heavily. Going through and modifying “$” to jQuery is a hassle. The solution should be simple, if you are writing a javascript application that you are planning on releasing publicly, you shouldn’t use shortcuts. You may keep some great website from using your work.

It all starts as the perfect day for Susan(Reese Witherspoon). She’s about to get married Derek (Paul Rudd) the very self centered local news weather man. Unknown to the bride is that her life is soon going to change for ever, when she is hit by meteor, that causes her to grow to be 150ft or so. Her wedding in shambles as she is taken in by the military to a secret facility where monsters are kept out of the public eye for their safety as well as the public’s. She is now Ginormica, and her life forever changed.

Monsters vs Aliens is a fun story of Gallaxhar’s invasion of earth in search of the very rare mineral that has made it’s way to earth. Ginormica along with her new friends B.O.B(Seth Rogen), Dr Cockroach Ph D(Hugh Laurie), and the Missing Link (Will Amett) take on Gallaxhar’s invasion. Will they succeed? You’ll only know if you see the movie. The 3D animation is incredible. Very much on par with the recent “Coraline” film. There was not a lot of quick motion, so very few 3D scenes had that annoying blur to them. I was worried that many of the best jokes were used in the trailers, and while that was partially the case there are still a lot of really funny moments in the film. Some great adult joke references as well. I will admit there were a few geekier jokes that I saw coming. The voice acting was great, and Stephen Colbert’s roll as President Hathaway was spot on. One of my favorite scenes being when the President tries to communicate with Gallaxhar’s initial robot probe for the first time.

The movie is very much worth bringing the kids too, but if you are an adult who likes animated motion pictures you will not be disappointed.

When I get started on something sometimes it’s just hard to stop. Once I was pretty happy that it was working. I renamed a bunch of variables and functions to match the new name of the plugin. Full Circle. What Full Circle is right now is a combination WordPress plugin that talks via Facebook’s Application API. One of the things I wanted was to make it so that your FB friends did not have to install any application on their side. Once you install the FB app into your profile, you need to grant it authorization to “share things”. The plugin takes advantage of these permissions to post “links” to your feed making them application independent to your target audience.

Currently the only feature is post to your Facebook stream as a link. I am trying to think of other features that may be useful. I was thinking maybe making it so that your Facebook status showed on your blog as a widget, or maybe even posting to Twitter and other SM type sites, so you don’t have to post in 1000 places. I read one post the other day about that, and the guy thought it was bad, but I have to disagree with so many SM outlets it can be hard to manage. This way you can get the word out in one shot, and then interact with what people say. Let me know what you think.