Since this is one of the most painful times of the year for people due to gift buying, I thought I would make it somewhat easier (and not as exciting) if I made a list of things that I want.

Warning: some of these items are downright expensive… hence them being wishes.

Happy holidays and good shopping.

http://www.informationweek.com/shared/printableArticle.jhtml?articleID=210603946

So Novemeber 13, is the big date for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion pack. I still haven’t decided what I’m going to do yet. While there will be a lot of new content, a lot of new ways to play, and I am finally caught up with the rest of the world (of warcraft), I’m still not sure it would be worth the time and money. In order to figure out this answer, I have transfered my account to friend’s server to play with him a bit. If I’m still luke warm about the game by novemeber, I think I will cancel altogether. Though, inside I do hope it will be fun. There’s no better way to waste time then logging hours (and hours and hours) behind this game.

After having just finished to code to revamp the way this site brings the photos in from Flickr, I think it might be worthwhile to share how that is done. I use JQuery for all my javascripting needs. Now it may be overkill for some tasks, but it is a relatively small file to import and saves me a lot of time and cross-browser headaches. This is no tutorial by any means (getting the token from Flickr would require pages of explanation). I really just wanted ot post snippets of my code here for reference. Here is goes:

<?php

if(!Empty($_GET)){

    $secret = <from flickr>;

    $_GET["api_key"] = <from flickr>;

    $_GET["perms"] = "read";

    if($_GET['url'] == "auth"){

        $url = "http://flickr.com/services/auth/"; 

        //the idea here was to break out the code to get the token. 

        //never tested since I did it manually.

    }

    else{

	//hardcoded here from previous calls to api

        $_GET["auth_token"] = <from flickr api calls>; 

	//this makes it easier to use the data once it's brought back into jquery

        $_GET["nojsoncallback"] = "1"; 

        $_GET["format"] = "json";

        $url = "http://flickr.com/services/rest/";

    }

    // CREATE QUERY STRING AND API_SIG

    ksort($_GET);

    $sigString = $secret;

    $queryString =  "?";

    foreach($_GET as $key => $value){

        $sigString .= $key.$value;

        $queryString .= $key . "=" . $value . "&";

    }

    //querystring: all of the $_GET values and appended with the api_sig

    $sig =  md5($sigString);

    $queryString = $queryString . "api_sig=" . $sig;  

    $url .= $queryString;

    if($_GET['url'] == "auth"){

        echo $url;

    }

    else{

        echo file_get_contents($url);

    }

}

?>

a standard jQuery call from the main page would look similar to

$.getJSON("callFlickr.php", {method: "flickr.photosets.getList"},function(data){

   //do stuff with the photoset list here

});

Hope this helps someone out there.

Mike

Hey everybody… um… Abs, and I’m not even sure if he reads these. Anyway, we got back from our Italian tour a couple of days ago. It’s an amazing country with so much history, architecture, and food that it was hard to leave it. But after 4 weeks of travel we were on our last leg anyway. Coming home to a familiar bed and nice shower was a great feeling. I am not going to write a whole lot about the trip because 1) I feel that pictures will describe the trip better than words and 2) nobody is going to read this anyway. So briefly, here was our itinerary:

Apr 18 - 22: Rome
Apr 22 - 25: Sorrento, Amalfi Coast, Pompeii
Apr 25 - 29: Florence
Apr 29 - May 3: Montalcino, Tuscany with a car
May 3 - 5: Emilia Romagna, Bologna, Modena
May 5 - 9: Venice
May 9 - 13: Barolo, Piedmont with a car

Why RIP if I can get a REZ?

Last week I had my first ever work trip. Luckily it was to sunny California. Yes, it was sunny and 60s for the whole week. I flew Virgin America. If you’re not familiar with VA then just imagine dance club lighting with free satellite TV and PPV movies. Pretty nice. Though don’t expect to get fed on the flight. I learned that the hard way.

So my daily scheduled went something like:

7:30AM - Wake up and get ready
8:30AM - Get coffee from hotel lobby and walk to office.
8:35AM - Get second cup of coffee from office kitchen (which has more food than a 7-11)
9:00AM - Play on a computer
12:00PM - Lunch, sometimes gourmet chinese, sometimes mexican platters, always catered.
1:00PM - Play on a computer
4:30PM - Play video games on a computer in my hotel room
11:30PM - Sleep
2:00AM -Get woken up from loud bangs from ceiling fan… or something
3:00AM - Get woken up from more loud bangs
4:00AM - Again with the loud bangs!!!
7:30AM - Start all over

All in all, not a bad first work trip. The people were nice. The food was nicer. And the weather was unbeatable. Sleeping was another story. I would do it again if I had to, though the hardest part was leaving the family at home.

In case you haven’t noticed, my website is back up and fully functional. I gave up on trying to use a “free” web service. They gave me a lot of space and functionality, but restricted me so much that I would have had to rewrite the website from scratch. I wasn’t about to do that. So it’s back up from home. I all but eradicated the virus on my computer (and learned my lesson about real internet security).

I will be putting more pictures online as I get the motivation to. Stay tuned.

So this week I started work at my new company. So far it’s been great. The work is infinitely more interesting and more important. The company also tries to act more like a family than an employer. It seems like they really look out for their people. So I should be at this place for a while (knock on wood).

About the website… yes the pics are down. I had a virus a few weeks back that essentially forced me to move the website from my home computer and find a new home for it. Well some places put restrictions on what you can do with the website. I think my problem has something to do with making copies of my flickr pictures. The web host I use doesn’t seem to like that very much. So until I find a cure for the pics, all you are able to enjoy are my wonderful insights in life.

If you’ve ever played this game, you’ll know this song.