Category Archives: Family

New and improved johnwilker.com

After tapping one of my good friends for some of his mad SQL skills, as well as dusting off more of mine than I intended to, I’ve now successfully moved johnwilker.com over to a hosted wordpress blog site.

Same Domain, same feed (assuming you’re using the feedburner feed, sorry Sim, but you can use this one)

A few comments got lost :( No posts did though (I think). It turned out to be much more manual than I expected. I’m still re-categorizing old posts, I’ve done 5 of 23 pages of posts in the admin, sheesh!

There’s a few reasons for the change. As much as I love BlogCFC, it was time for something a bit more robust and widely used. Mainly from the third party options stand point. Twitter updates, and other plugins, themes, etc. Using third party tools like Ecto or Marsedit to post. Or posting from my phone, consuming Flickr feeds, etc.

Ray’s done a damn good job, and my wife’s blog is still blog CFC. My Personal blog (which will be closing down in favor of a single point of contact (this blog), is still BlogCFC as well.

I also use WordPress for the EffectiveUI blog, so having a single admin to master is kinda nice.

There were also some small annoyances with BlogCFC that crept up during the last update I performed; inserting a link was a multi step process. the first time I inserted a link, it would use some weird javascript thing, with a string of numbers. I’d have to go back to the link and edit it re-pasting the URL. Very likely a PEBKAC thing, but still annoying, and with my new and varied responsibilities, digging around in CF isn’t likely to be a priority for me :(

Future dating of posts was very frustrating. Ray and I worked on it for a good couple weeks, and I think it just comes down to not being a big part of BlogCFC. When possible I write blog posts days in advance. That worked pretty well with BlogCFC, however, if for some reason I had to change the post date, all hell broke loose. Unfortunately, that’s a common occurence, as I sometimes blog about things that won’t be public until a certain date, and sometimes that date changes (despite my frustrations, LOL). Inserting rich media like youtube, etc was hit and miss too.

Like I said, most if not all of these hassles could be solved by tinkering, but I just don’t have that leisure now. the WordPress community is huge, godzilla huge!

Writing for the Denver Metroblog, the various 360Conferences blogs, and the EUI blog, I got used to working with Ecto. It’s nice to have a native mac app to do my blogging through. However I couldn’t use that tool with BlogCFC.

So here I am, on WordPress. Let me know what you think :)

More proof my wife is great!

Without even knowing it, prior to our meeting, she bought a widescreen, HD capable TV.

Tom and I bought a PS3 for 360|Flex Atlanta, since he’s already equipped for gaming, and Blue Ray, I got this one. Not counting when it’s doing a tourĀ  of duty as the official Rock Band/Guitar Hero station for 360|Flex, it’s now our Blue Ray player. I doubt I’ll ever own or play a PS3 game, since my gaming days ended when the Original NES died… Good times, good times.

I was pleasantly surprised (I was fully thinking that we’d be buying a new TV sooner than planned to handle HD content) when I upgraded the PS3′s OS to support the BD/BlueTooth remote control, and it comes up with “HDMI Device Detected. Use it?”

“Oh hellz yeah!”

I watched a few minutes of Spider-Man 3 (came with the system), and then Transformers, and WOWZA! While I don’t think the world changed, or that I’ll never watch non 1080 content again, I will say that DAMN it does look great!

SF wrap up

Flex training was great. I have a much clearer understanding of the technology and different aspects of using it. Rob Rusher is a great teacher of this course.

Saw a few sites, we went to the Coit Tower one night. THe group from class was supposed to go out Salsa dancing with Rob, but I ended up having to work and Emily was tired. So Rob flew solo.

Nicole and I went up to Napa on Friday for some wine tasting. It was great. We picked up two cases from V.Sattui. Can’t wait for those to arrive.

We hit a few other places, Mumm was good, but not good enough. We did pick up a bottle of Brut from Chandon

We had sushi with one of Nicole’s friends and her husband. Great sushi place called Kirala in Berkeley.

Hung out with Ahmad one more time. Had a yummy dinner at Plouff, then walked to a champaigne bar for a drink. Had a good Port (Fonseca LBV 1999)

On our way to San Jose on Saturday we stopped at Mt. Tam, and walked around. Was incredible. very scenic.

Our last stop was the Winchester Mystery house. Highly recommend it! It’s very interesting. Lots of walking though, beware.

I’m Getting Married

TOMORROW!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’m so excited, nervous,

scared, happy, ecstatic, did I

mention nervous, happy,

excited?