November 27, 2012
I went up to Estes Park over Thanksgiving weekend with my family. While I was there I got a chance to take some pictures of the Elk heard in town right at sunset. They were mostly hanging out and grazing, but a couple of the males were sparring. Some of the picture are below, you can find the rest here.
October 17, 2012
Two years ago I wrote a blog post about Hiking with a DSLR. I had just recently moved to Colorado and was enjoying all the great hikes but struggling with how to take my camera with me in an unobtrusive but accessible manner. Since then I’ve tried a few new options and thought I would write an update.
My camera is a still the Nikon D300, and my primary hiking lens is the Nikkor 17-55 2.8.
July 16, 2012
There was a small wave of excitement on twitter this week about employee benefits. Specifically, FullContact announced Paid Paid vacation. Essentially, not only do they provide you with vacation time (ie Paid time off), but they will pay for your vacation itself, in the form of $7,500 ‘bonus’ in salary (taxable of course).
This is a great marketing, as it drove a lot of social media traffic to their business yesterday. I’m sure they yielded a lot of new applicants, and probably some new sales leads as well. Nicely done.
July 12, 2012
As a customer and fan of Amazon, I’ve been watching the company grow and develop for a while. Based on my experiences and observations, I’ve come up with a picture of the not-so-distant future that I believe will (mostly) come to pass.
Today Setting aside their thriving Cloud Computing business, Amazon primarily sells consumer goods and digital entertainment (E-Books, Songs, Movies, TV Shows, and Android Applications).
Amazon has created a strong incentive to purchase digital contents through their store. They offer hardware dedicated for e-books (the Kindle line) as well as a 7" Android tablet for apps, music, e-books, and video. However, they do not lock you into their platform. You can read an Amazon e-book on Android devices, iOS devices, and your computer. You can stream Amazon shows and movies to various set-top boxes. Compared to Apple or Google’s online offering, they have the most complete and consumable content available, usually for the lowest price.
May 22, 2012
The year 2000 came and went, and the world went on. There were no horrific date rollover bugs, despite all the press. However, that doesn’t mean that date rollover issues do not exist.
I just debugged a date rollover issue. It manifested as follows:
Our application worked fine in our local environment (of course), but when we deployed to a customer’s server, the cookies didn’t work. We took a look at the HTTP Headers using Chrome, and everything seemed fine. But still they didn’t work.
May 14, 2012
In a fast moving marketplace like Consumer Electronics, where your newest cellphone is out of date within a year and ancient after two, I thought it would be worthwhile celebrating some of the electronics that have served me well year after year.
Some of these are great investments because they are in a category that evolves more slowly. Others are examples where buying quality really pays off.
The HP 4L was replaced by a Dell 1320c, with a wired network connection. It has served well for 4 years now, and will hopefully continue for another 10. It was more expensive then an ink jet, but if it continues to serve it will be well worth it.
May 4, 2012
I got to sit on the bench and watch the Rapids pre-game warm-up on Saturday (April 26) for the game against Chivas USA. I took some pictures of the team warming up. You can see the full set here. Below are some of the highlights.
February 21, 2012
Normally, I would use a packet sniffer, such as WireShark (OS X and Windows) to look at the network traffic and debug the application.
However, for Android development I do my primary development on a physical Android device. It is faster, and provides a more realistic experience during development and debugging. However, since the network traffic is no longer going through my computer, WireShark doesn’t help.
To solve this, I use another program called Charles. Charles is a ‘Web Debugging Proxy Application’. In short, it is a tool similar to WireShark, that allows you to easily debug network traffic. Charles is a bit ‘higher level’ than WireShark, and provides a simpler view of the web requests to developers.
January 1, 2012
At the end of 2011 I set out on a bit of a new path professionally. I am very excited about the opportunity and so far it is living up to expectations.
So as we begin the new year, I thought I’d share a few pictures of the path ahead…
Sometimes the path ahead is flat and well traveled…
And sometimes you need to watch your footing…
It can be steep…
October 9, 2011
Saturday we had our first snow of the year in Golden. It was just enough snow to have a great snowy soccer game, but by the afternoon it was a nice sunny fall day.
After the storm passed, my family and I headed up Lookout Mountain Road to check out the snow, and on the way down I captured a quick shot of Downtown Denver illuminated by the sun peaking through the clouds, while the rest of the area was still in the shade.