New Photos are Up

I finally got the photos from our awesome trip to Italy up on our website. Anyone who wants to look can check em out here. I would post some favorites, but they are kind of my favorite, since it was such an awesome time. Ok, one favorite:

Like OMG! Google App Engine Supports Java! SHUT UP!!

Ever since last week's announcement that Google App Engine would officially support Java, there have been no less than 2,002,555,1111 blog posts and articles written on the subject. Let this one be the one that says

WHO CARES

Seriously. Who cares? Has ever an announcement caused so much excitement? This is hardly the most exciting thing to happen in the world of software. It's someone announcing that their platform that isn't THAT exciting to begin with supports a hacked version of your language...color me less than exciting. It's neat. It's neat like the Macbook Air is neat. Nobody needs it, and certainly I'd think that nobody needs to drop everything to create a tutorial for how every single framework in the whole world interacts with Google App Engine.

It just seems like there are way better things to talk about. I guess it's shiny thing syndrome, but I just don't see the big deal. Google would probably counter by saying 'hey look at all the people excited about it - there must be something there!'. I say, once the shine comes off of it, a new toy will likely replace the excitement around this.

Tip: MySQL and Timestamps as Integers

So, say you managed a legacy project, and on that project, they chose to store timestamps for creation dates in the database. This is quite normal. Now pretend that the timestamp was stored as a TIMESTAMP. Still quite simple. You want to get something after a certain date, just add WHERE CREATED_ON >= '2009-02-01' to get everything February and after. Now imagine that somebody who wrote this application chose instead to store this data as an INTEGER.

This becomes a little more annoying, but not undoable - I had to do a bit of digging in the mysql manual, but here's the query:

select id, first_name, last_name, created_on, as create_date from members where FROM_UNIXTIME( created_on ) >= '2009-02-01';

Hope this helps others out there who suffer from badly designed database maintenance syndrome.

New Homepage is Up

Check out the new and improved kirkandjena.com.


It's no longer one sentence and a link on a white background! I promise that the site will grow and improve as time passes. I have the basic template done, but there is definitely more to add, like bios, resumes, a feed of pictures from our gallery site, etc. I also want to add an 'apps' area that I can use to show off any sort of nerdiness I do in the evenings. This is a start, and not a bad one - it only took me a couple hours last night to do it. Yay for websites!

Now This is Good News

Dan Steinberg has clued us in to an exciting development at Nationals Park this year. No, the Nats will not be good at baseball, but we will be able to drink delicious beer while we watch mediocre baseball:

Bottles: Budweiser, Bud Light, Miller Genuine Draft, Miller Lite, Coors Light, Bell's Oberon American Wheat Ale, Harpoon Summer Ale.

Draft: Peroni, Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA, Bell's Kalamazoo Stout, Stone Arrogant Bastard Ale, Southampton Triple Abby Style Ale, Harpoon UFO Hefeweizen, Williamsburg Tavern Brown Ale, Flying Dog Old Scratch Amber Lager.

Thank you Stan Kasten for putting a quality product in my plastic cup, if not on the diamond!

What's That You're Listening To?

Before I get to the original point of my post, let me just say that I can't stand April Fools' Day. It's a stupid day. I spend my entire day wondering if things people say to me, or things I read are legitimate. How much time is wasted having to interpret every statement? A lot I think. Multiply that by 300 million people in the U.S., and you have a lot of wasted hours, say nothing of those wacky Canadians! We can't afford this sort of inefficiency with the world economy in such a state.

Here are some things I am not joking about:

I have been wishing and waiting for Postal Service to make another record, since Give Up is one of my favorite albums of all time. I don't know if they are listening, but fortunately we have some other artists out there to fill the void. Thanks to Pandora, I was able to find Owl City and The Blow. Both seem to be awesome upbeat synth-filled goodness that makes me feel like I am listening to really good 80s music without the absurd lyrics.

Other music I am very into right now:

MGMT - Oracular Spectacular
Anything by M83
Kings of Leon - damn they rock it out for shizzle
Sigur Ros - so weird, yet so money

I have also pulled the Pulp Fiction Soundtrack out of the dustbin. Not only does it contain many incredible songs - it also reminds me very vividly about some ridiculously fun times that I had my senior year in high school centered around that movie and the soundtrack.

I wish there was more time in the day, so that I could actually listen to all the music in my collection. In my limited library on my Macbook, I would have to listen for 28 days to get through it all! This is less than half of what I have! Makes me want to take a sabbatical, go sit on a beach with a giant pair of headphones and just close my eyes and listen...for 9 or 10 weeks.