Lily hasn’t really gotten much bigger, although her ears have more hints of silver now.

The Huffington Post has an article by Will.i.am talking about why he recorded “Yes, we can”. I recommend starting the video, reading the article while the song plays, and then you’re welcome to come back and read my ramble after the cut.

Monday started with receiving notice that my best friend’s grandmother passed away rather abruptly on Sunday. I won’t go into details here out of respect for my friend and his family, but it will suffice to say that they were all very close, and that being so sudden, it’s quite hard for them all. I spent a lot of time with my friend in the more formative years of my youth, often at his grandparents’ house, and his grandma never treated me with anything but respect and love. I know how close they all were, and my heart genuinely aches for my friend and his family (who, even though he has several siblings, always treated me like family, for which I am immensely grateful).

Yesterday, I got an email that I can’t really go into in public, but it contained phrases such as “tanked economy” and “lost huge amounts of money”, and in short, it left me feeling very crushed and defeated. It’s hard to explain in detail, but really, even though it wasn’t my “huge amounts” lost, I felt like I’d lost something really important to me.

Last night, we attended my friend’s grandmother’s rosary. It was beautiful to see how many people came out, to see how many lives she touched. It helped me to realize that, for as hard as the email yesterday hit me, I’m really quite lucky to be where I am in the world right now. I’m feeling results of the economy, but really, only tangentially. I haven’t lost my job or my home, I can pay my bills on time, I can put food on the table, but most importantly, my life is full of wonderful people that I love dearly, that for whatever reason they have, also love me back. I’m a very blessed individual right now, and it would do me good to remember that more often.

As an aside to the economy, while drafting up this post, I got an email from my employer, stating that “in consideration of the current economic situation and the challenges many of our employees and their families face”, our holiday party is being canceled. I’m sure it’s the right decision and all, but I have to say, it kind of stings too. Not nearly as bad as

The one glimmer of hope that I’ve had this week was seeing Obama get the nod. Part of my vote for him was hope that he would be able to help pull us out of this economic mess. I do not think that having elected Obama is some sort of panacea, some miracle cure for the nation’s ills, but I’m more hopeful for change - for real, substantial, meaningful change - than I have been in a very long time.

Last night, watching the returns, I got chills several times over. I’m sure I cried a little. I wish I could say that it was due to overwhelming emotion that for the first time in my life, I’ve been on the winning side of a vote, but that wasn’t all of it.

Barack has a long road ahead of him. To have lost his grandmother so close to the election had to have made giving last night’s speech so immensely difficult.

Another friend of mine lost his grandmother this week. I’ll be attending that rosary tonight. His whole family has always treated me like I were family, and even if I haven’t seen them recently, I know that while it’s not my family, I’ll feel very at home with them.

I lost my grandma back in 2003, some months after having lost my dad.

Last night was just a lot of emotion, from both recent events and triggered memories, and I really can’t find words to properly express the emotion.

Democrats: We’ve handed you the keys. Please do right by us. As a nation, we’ll be watching very closely.

Here’s looking forward and hoping to finding joy and peace in the days, weeks, and months ahead.

• Barack Obama - I’ve sent my vote his way. The more I’ve read and the more I’ve researched, I can’t see myself voting any other way. Between his increasingly hard right shift, his horrible selection for VP, and general change in conduct over this campaign, I can’t in good faith vote for McCain. In a sense, I’m voting more against McCain than I am voting for Obama, but it’s still something I feel is important to do. Please, get out there and vote. Even if we don’t agree, just get out and vote. Do your duty. Please.
• Obama in tears - Obama lost his grandmother yesterday. Having lost mine in 2003, and having another friend who just lost his, I’m all too familiar with such pain, and seeing him with tears running down his cheeks makes me feel that much better about him.
• Wassup 2008 - I link to BoingBoing for this one because they have the video embedded, but also link to the original video and such. The original group from the Bud commercial were brought back together to do what eventually results in an ad for Obama, but no matter who you’re voting for, it’s funny to see them reprise the roles. Rewatch the first one - it’s really quite similar.
• FiveThirtyEight.com - One of the best sites for statistical analysis of the presidential elections. As of this writing, they estimate that Obama has a 98.1% chance of taking the election. I hope they’re right.
• FactCheck.org - A great site that does analysis of pretty much everything the candidates say. On the whole, it basically seems that Obama is really good at stretching truths (such as his 95% household tax cut claim, which is actually 81% according to the Tax Policy Center), whereas McCain and co. have basically been launching one horrible lie after another (part of why I’m not voting in his direction, I have to say).
• Google Maps Voter Info - If you haven’t voted, and don’t know where to go to vote, look it up.
• 2008 Elections Gallery - There are a variety of maps available here. The one I’ve linked is for live election results. Linked on Twitter by Bishma, recommended by my friend Angela to be appended into this post, it seems like it could be a neat map to watch as the results come in.

I have to say - I’m going to be so glad when all of this is over. I’m looking forward to not coming home to multiple voicemails from various political groups and whatnot. Also, let it be known that you’re welcome to comment, but don’t expect a reply if it’s political in nature. I’m sharing these links because they seem fitting for today. I’m done discussing my reasons, and it’s all kind of moot anyways, since I’ve already voted, and hopefully you have too.

Get out there and vote, and be glad that it’ll (hopefully) all be over soon.

Edit: 9:25am: Added the 2008 Elections Gallery link.

I fought buying an iPhone for quite a long time. When it first came out on June 29th, 2007 (which I can remember very specifically because it’s exactly one week after we got Gryphon), I was able to talk myself out of it because it lacked 3G. When the iPhone 3G launched earlier this year (which I can’t recall the date), I was able to talk myself out of it beacuse of the increased price of the data plan. Apple has also been fairly hard on iPhone developers, which as a developer myself, made it easy to be angry at them. I told myself I’d hold out for an Android phone.

Then, the G1 finally came out, and after many pictures and reviews and whatnot, I decided that it just wasn’t for me. Apple also finally lifted the non-disclosure agreement surrounding iPhone development (although the rules for what goes and what doesn’t in the app store are still somewhat mystical).

Something snapped in me, and I decided I really wanted to get an iPhone. It was all I could talk about for a couple of days, and then I finally bought it on October 24th. I’m paying a bit more per month now (including both my plan as well as Lisa’s, as she also has an iPhone now), but after having had it for just over a week, I couldn’t be happier with my decision.

It’s not nearly as open as I’d like it to be, and not quite as developer-friendly as it could be, but even with all that in play, I’m still so immensely pleased with the experience. I’ll try not to drool too much as I write here. Let me hit a few of the bullets of things I like.

• The developer concerns: As voiced above, developing for the iPhone is… somewhat odd. I can’t install my own software without a $99 developer’s license (assuming I don’t jailbreak it), and I have no way of telling if my software will be accepted to the App Store until it’s fully complete, meaning that if it doesn’t make it in, I wasted my time. However, considering the applications I have in mind, I think I’ll make it in, if and when I get to them.
• The look and feel of the device: It feels solid but not too heavy. The glass front is totally smooth and looks amazing. Even when it has a bit of fingerprints and smudges and such, the light shines through and it really looks great. In order to keep it clean, I find myself washing my hands more, which is an amusing side benefit.
• Connectivity pretty much anywhere: Only once have I had connection problems, and it was short-lived. I also think it was due to the building I was in, and it’s not somewhere I’ll frequently find myself (as I was doing early voting). Having the Internet pretty much anywhere has been nice. I find that I’m reading more of Twitter and such, but doing so in what would have normally been wasted time.
• Convergence: I’ve tried carrying around an iPod and a notepad alongside my cell phone in the past, but eventually the bulk of having so much on me at one time got to be too much. Now, I have one device that works well for taking notes, for listening to music, watching videos, and even handles phone calls fairly well. I’m just now starting to use Mail on it as well, which is kind of nice, since I don’t need to reply to most email that I receive. On top of that, it acts as a GPS, so I don’t really need to carry that around if I were to, say, go geocaching.
• The App Store: I realize it’s not unique, but having the app store is very nice. It’s one centralized location for all sorts of interesting software. There’s a lot of noise, for sure, but there’s also a lot of great software, and most of the stuff I care to have is free. A lot of services like Evernote and Facebook offer up free software, and as evidenced in a prior post, there’s also a WordPress application. I find myself more willing to use Twitter and Facebook more frequently now, simply because the iPhone versions make it easy.
• Sync: I’m a Mac user by night (currently Windows .NET developer by day), and so I already have a vested interest in a lot of Apple applications, like iTunes and iPhoto. I’ve wanted to use programs like iCal and Address Book more, but they never worked with my phone, and they do now. I realize the iPhone is going to have a notable edge here, but there’s still something to be said for being able to use software I love with my device of choice.

I’m sure I could say a lot more here. To be fair, let’s list a few things I don’t like.

• Photograph quality: The two megapixel camera is okay, but it’s still definitely a cell phone camera. I’d say it’s on par with my old cell phone, but it’s still not great. It’s good enough, though.
• No video recording: My Samsung Sync recorded video. Not much, and not for long durations, but on occasion, it was nice to be able to snap video instead of a picture. I know there are ways to record video if I jailbreak the phone and install some other software, but, I’m not so keen on doing that yet. There’s rumors of proper video recording coming soon, so I’m going to hold out hope.
• No MMS: My Samsung Sync also used to do multimedia messages — well, usually. It didn’t always work. However, no support at all in the iPhone just seems very, very odd to me.

All of that being said, though, the sheer joy and functionality I get out of using the iPhone outweighs the negatives. It makes most activities more fun. I enjoy being able to keep up on Facebook on the go, and uploading pictures is incredibly easy — same with Twitter too, thanks to Twitterific. I’m still looking for a solid Flickr upload application, although I can always lean on the email gateway if nothing else — and I may have to start doing more of that. I mean, I need to be able to more quickly share photos like these in as many channels as possible.

Inquisitive Lily is inquisitive

I think that’s a good point to wrap up for today. I’m looking forward to my first Tubesday.

Several times, I’ve tried designing my own look, and pretty much every time, it has been painful. The previous theme (with Gryphon in my head) wasn’t too bad, for a hand-rolled design. Some of my older readers may remember a particularly ugly theme I had at one point. Dark blues and greens. Seriously, I have no idea what I was thinking.

I built that theme on Sandbox. Code-wise, Sandbox was amazing. It was built on an amazing XHTML foundation, and gave designers a lot of room to play without having to change the DOM very much, if at all. I really liked Sandbox, but without solid design ability, it was immensely plain and simple — and as I have demonstrated time and time again, I’m not exactly talented in visual ways.

So, now I’m using the Carrington Theme, by Crowd Favorite. Carrington looks decently pretty by default, but should still give me a really strong foundation for design, while also giving me some more room to play in the code without altering the templates directly. Visually, it’s not quite me, but it’s a good sight better than what I’d crafted up before.

There’s a chance I’ll be using Carrington with a stock look for quite awhile, so I hope it doesn’t offend.

Up next: my first Monday in the sequence. Will I be writing up a musing? Will I be going off the rails already? Who knows? Stay tuned.

That being said, I’m not exactly a creative writer. I can very distinctly picture a small book I self-published as a child, in elementary school. I went over a waterfall in a raft, but I totally made it out okay. I don’t really think I’m destined to write amazing fiction works.

However, I do wish I were more of a blogger. I used to write more. It’s not that I don’t communicate much these days, but between things like forums and Twitter and comments on others’ blogs, I don’t really write much for myself, in my own space.

Apparently, I’m not the only person wishing they wrote more, and thinking that NaNo would be something to try to hop along. There’s now NaBloPoMo, which is short for National Blog Posting Month. Perhaps after ten years, it won’t sound as odd to me as it does now.

Anyhow, it’s good enough for me, hopefully, to give this thing a shot. I’m going to see about posting once a day for the entire month of November. Said posts may be short and/or sweet, but there’ll be something here every day. Since TheBon is also doing NaBloPoMo, and that’s where I heard about it this year, I’m going to borrow her ideas (with my own tweaks) for a daily set of themes, in order to help me out. I don’t promise I’ll stick to the themed ideas, but it’ll give me something to work with if I’m feeling dry of ideas.

• Monday Musings: Somewhat more focused thoughts on some topic I’ve had in my mind recently.
• Tubesday: Since the internet is a series of tubes, I’ll use Tuesdays to explore or highlight what I’ve ran across in the prior week. I suspect that my heavy use of Google Reader is going to help me a ton here.
• Working Wednesday: Seeing as I’m frequently dabbling with junk on the ‘net, various pieces of code and such, this’ll be a good excuse to put some of it out in front of you all for thoughts. I hope and expect this post theme to help motivate my work on my JavaScript canvas play. I’m also considering using Wednesday to actively alter the look of this blog (yet again).
• Thursday Inspiration: Hang on baby, Friday’s comin’. I’ll use this day as an excuse to find something inspirational or motivational to finish out the week.
• Photo Phriday: Not Photoshop Phriday (may be NSFW, be warned), but just an excuse to post some pictures that I may have taken during the past week, or perhaps I’ll finally get around to talking about pictures from Europe, or someone else’s photos. Whatever it winds up being, there should be associated photos.

As for Saturday and Sunday, I may reuse a theme or post something a bit more meta. For example, tomorrow’s post may very well be about the new Carrington Theme I’ve installed. I just started talking about it some more here, but I need to stop! Hammertime. I mean, save it for tomorrow.

In fact, that sounds like good advice. So, come back tomorrow for more. Or perhaps you should just add my RSS feed to your reader. More to come.

I totally caved in. It’s not so bad so far. The auto correction is kinda neat so far.

I’m in the living room, Lisa is watching an episode of Lipstick Jungle. We’re resting a bit. It’s nice.

Therefore, I make this plea. Assume I have never read any notable literature in my life. I’ve read a lot of books, but this just makes it easier. Assume I’ve read nothing, and make a suggestion to me. You can suggest it because it’s one of your favorites, or because you think I’d like it based on my personality, or any of a myriad of reasons — just suggest a book or two to me.

In the event that I’ve read it, I’ll try to reply to you to say whether or not I have. You’re not obligated to make another suggestion or anything, of course. I’m just looking for something good to read.

Done? Okay. So, here’s my thoughts — and keep in mind, I’m a web developer by profession, so stuff like this gets me excited. WALL OF TEXT AHOY!

Actually, before I get to the wall — here’s the TL;DR version for you. Google has released a new browser. It’s very awesome and has potential to improve not just the web, but every browser out there. Check it out.

I ran some JavaScript tests against Chrome and FF3 to contrast execution. Honestly, that’s what has me the most excited here, so I wanted to see what it could do. Chrome was actually nearly twice as slow on the regex and one or two other tests, but averaged out 1.85x faster than FF3 overall. Compared to the FF3.1a2 that I did the same testing with, Chrome is going to beat FF3.1 out, but not by the same margin — perhaps only about 1.1x the speed. That being said, many tests between FF3 current and Chrome ran at 3x or greater Chrome-side — a few were even a full 15x faster. Seriously, OMG. Happy happy developer am I.

FF3.1 and WebKit (Safari 4 effectively) have both been talking about TraceMonkey and SquirrelFish, their respective JIT compiling JS engines. Chrome has V8, which is effectively the same thing, although the description of V8 is more fleshed out and friendly than any I saw of TM or SF. Seriously, did you read the comic book? It’s actually very well done. Anyhow, since every single one is open source, I’m really looking forward to what happens when they compare notes and optimize the heck out of the engines. From my playing about, V8 is faster than TM is faster than SF, but really, the differences between the three aren’t immense. Compared to the current JS engines though, we’re talking amazing leaps and bounds. JS is looking nicer by the day for serious development at this point.

I also tried to run the test here — http://blog.mozilla.com/schrep/2008/08/22/what-can-you-do-when-your-browser-is-7-times-faster/ — but it doesn’t work at all. Chrome isn’t perfect by any means. I was somewhat surprised to see this piece of code not work. At a cursory glance, it’s primarily just YUI components, and I didn’t immediately see anything FF-specific. The page claims that the demo works in all versions of FF3 and up (and it does work in FF3, just horribly slow) and WebKit nightlies. It doesn’t work in Safari 3 either, so perhaps the version of WebKit that Chrome is using isn’t from nightlies, but from a stable release. I suspect it’ll work eventually.

Yet more JavaScript ramble! A couple of months back, I wrote a version of Conway’s Game of Life that is pure JavaScript (uses the Canvas element to render) — http://www.randomthink.net/canvas/life.html — and so I set it to run at the max speed that it could, and put it up in both Chrome and Firefox. Firefox was 200+ ticks ahead when I started the Chrome one (not an immense amount of time, since it’s effectively running as fast as it can, but still). By the time they both ticked past the 30k tick mark, Chrome was over 3000 ticks ahead. It’s definitely running notably faster than FF3. It’s doing nested loops over a somewhat large data structure, so I didn’t expect huge speed differences, so it did surprise me to see how well Chrome was doing.

I should also note here, the garbage collection in Chrome is apparently vastly improved over Firefox, and I’d suspect over pretty much every browser, really. The comic mentions improved GC, but I didn’t expect what I saw. Over the life of the process, the tab for Chrome never broke past 13MB of RAM, and if anything, was slowly shrinking as it ran. I do love that I was able to see the individuals tabs as processes, BTW. Watching Firefox, it was doing nothing but running my game of life (seriously, I shut down all Firefox instances and started up just one, and the game of life was the first thing I loaded, nothing else going on with it), and its memory usage was bouncing between 55-85MB. It’d slowly climb as the execution continued, then the GC would very obviously kick in and it’d drop from 85MB to 55MB, then start the climb again. It’d look like a saw blade if graphed, whereas Chrome’s memory footprint was nearly level, with an ever-so-slight decline to it.

Then I left ‘em both up but switched tabs in Chrome. When I came back to Life after a few minutes, it’d actually lost ground and was nearly 3000 ticks behind FF. Apparently, Chrome does some de-prioritizing of tabs if they’re not the front-most tab in their window. It doesn’t stop execution — since they’re individual processes, I was able to watch processor load, and it dropped from ~45-48% of CPU to ~13-20% when I switched it out of being the front tab. It’s still enough that most things run fine (YouTube in a background tab is fine, I could still hear it, and it’s not like my game of life actually stopped executing), but it does de-prioritize. Safari does this as well, although it has a bit more of a marked drop than what I saw in Chrome. Just to see, I pulled the tab out into its own window (loved that in Safari 3, SO nice to see it here, you can merge back by dragging too, also like Safari), and it kept its high priority even when I did other things in the original window, since it was the front-most tab in its own window.

Inspecting elements provides effectively the same interface that Firebug’s DOM inspector does, and on the Resources tab in the inspector, you can get a full JS console and some graphs that seem akin to the Network tab of Firebug, which is nice. Really, it has the pieces of Firebug that I want, but without the apparent overhead that Firebug does incur (1.2 is pretty good, and tries to stay friendly, but still, not quite this good, I don’t think).

The render engine is also notably faster — at least, visibly. I haven’t actually ran any tests against it, but stuff just seems to render MUCH more quickly than in any other browser I’ve played with.

It also has built-in support for Google Gears (which is not surprising, really — I mean, this *is* the Google browser). That’s pretty awesome. I don’t have much more to say about that, really, other than that I like the prospect of Gears, and look forward to seeing Google push it out for every major browser (there’s already Gears for Firefox, a beta for Safari, and I’m fairly certain they’re working on a version for IE).

On the whole, as both a web developer and Google apps user and general netizen, I am damned excited and want my Mac beta already. I run very few Firefox extensions anyhow, and Chrome has most of the functionality that I want. I could see myself moving to it full-time. FF3 is what it took for me to move away from Safari (seriously, FF2 on Mac = BLOATED PIECE OF JUNK, FF3 on Mac = Happy Times), and I think Chrome could take me away from FF3.

I do mildly miss having a bookmarks bar, but apparently I can rebuild something akin to it on the new tab page. I’m still torn on whether I really like that feature or not. It shows me how much time I waste at non-work sites. :P