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the singularity of being and nothingness
My First Sencha Touch App
Feb 21st
As readers of this blog know, I’m a pretty big Sencha fan. I <3 ExtJS…seriously, I love pretty much everything about it, from how great the default UI is, to how ridiculously easy it is to build awesome applications in zero time. So when I heard a while back that Sencha was combining ExtJS, jQTouch, and Raphael to create a mobile framework (Sencha Touch), I knew it was something I’d have to try.
And try I did…well, really, it was more like dabbling. I had ideas that I wanted to test out, so over the last few months I’ve been experimenting in between life and other projects. But no matter how hard I tried or how good my ideas were, I couldn’t really find the motivation to bring anything to completion…or even to a real start. Until this weekend.
The CatalystYou see, my darling 5-year old daughter is valiantly learning to read. But like a lot of kids (I think), she has trouble staying motivated and gets frustrated easily when she’s not able to hit a home run with the new things that she tries.
As I’ve been working with her on reading, I have reflected on my own experiences. While I’ve always loved More >
Epic Music Import of 2011: Some Stats
Feb 8th
A few days ago, I posted some reflections on my efforts to import my CD collection into iTunes. Well, it’s finally done, and here are the final stats:
No. Songs: 4595 No. Albums: 592 No. Genres: 45 Library Size: 21.1 GB Biggest Genre: Religious Year Span: 1940-2011 Best Album: In Shallow Seas We Sail (Emery) Best Artist: Emery Best Decade: 2000’s Best Genre: Rock Most Used Word in Song Titles: “Love” Best Discovery: I have about every Toad album ever Most Disturbing: Clay Aiken Christmas albums *shudder* Share this:
Chrome Web Apps Upgrade
Feb 4th
Just a quick note–if you didn’t see, Google Chrome has revamped the display for your personal app dashboard. You can now re-order apps by drag-n-drop, rather than installing and uninstalling in the right order.
Check it out 🙂
Share this: CDs are a Hassle
Feb 1st
For about the last 9 years, my wife and I have been lugging around giant, fabric-bound cases of CDs. While most of the music we listen to nowadays is delivered via iTunes or MOG, we’ve held onto these portable discs of sound…and I’m not really sure why.
Sure, there are some gems that I’ve found–albums that I’ve all-but-forgotten about, but smile fondly when I am now reminded. Â But, it’s still mostly a pile of garbage…and it’s still something I can’t bring myself to throw away!
But finally this weekend, after going through the collection for about the 1 billionth time, I decided that I had had enough. I vowed, then and there, to ditch this pile of garbage for good…after I imported them into iTunes, of course 🙂
So I started importing the music, disc by disc, album by album. And here’s something I’ve noticed: when your entire CD collection is spread across several zippered carrying cases, it doesn’t seem that large. However, when you pile them all up next to each other–and have to wait on a less-than-speedy CD drive, you realize (very quickly) just how much of a chore awaits you.
Now here I am, nearly 60 discs into the over 350-disc More >
Quick Update to Gloss
Jan 27th
Based on feedback from several users (thanks to Charlie and Tyler!), I’ve updated the search interface to Gloss a bit. It’s still a work in progress, but this newest fix has resolved the issue of lack of keyboard navigation to search results from the search field. Â Here’s what has changed:
- You can now tab out of the search field to the first search result, and then tab to subsequent search results.
- You can strike Enter or Spacebar on a highlighted search result to load its respective page
I do have a question for users regarding the “post-load” behavior. Currently, if you select a search result to load a page, focus is taken away from the search result and given to the item in the navigation tree that correlates to the search result. Is this desirable behavior, or would you rather have focus be retained on the search result?
Perhaps I’ll install a new configuration option to give the choice…:)
Thanks to everyone who uses the tool, and please feel free to let me know of any ideas/improvements/bugs/whatever.
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Replacing HTML Anchor Jumps with ExtJS
Jan 22nd
In an app I’m currently working on, I make pretty heavy use of HTML anchors to not only move to target content on the page, but also to load content via AJAX. With normal HTML anchors, clicking on a “source” anchor (e.g., <a href=”#top”>) will jump to the destination anchor (< a name=”top”>). While this is definitely beneficial, the one downside is that this action additionally adds the anchor (“#top”) to the url string (plus, the “jump” in kind of harsh–not very sexy at all).
Since my app is completely AJAX-ified (meaning that there is no navigation between “pages”), I wanted to find a way to preserve the “jumping” behavior of anchors, but not have my url cluttered with anchors.
Turns out that with ExtJS, this is pretty darn easy.
Getting the AnchorsNow of course, you could always modify all of the anchor links in your files to replace all the “href=#…” with onclick JavaScript events. However, what if you have existing anchors that you don’t want to change? With ExtJS, you can easily find all of them and override the default behavior. Â In my app, all of my anchors have the following form:
<a href="#WSXXXXXXXXXXXX">...<a>
Since I know that they all begin with More >
New HTML5 Logo
Jan 19th
If you didn’t see, W3C unveiled a shiny (new) logo to represent the far off dream of HTML5. Check it out – http://www.w3.org/html/logo/
Share this: Using Java LinkedHashMap for Sorted Structures
Dec 17th
Chalk this one up to “I never thought I’d need this, but glad it’s there!”
I’m currently working on a little project where I wanted to have an honest-to-goodness struct of structs, but to have the structure retain the order of the child structures as they are created. Â Of course, ColdFusion structures do not have any particular ordering, so forget that route.
Fortunately, you can create a Java LinkedHashMap to accomplish this, and there’s very little impact to the normal course of development in working with structures. Â In fact, I think the only real difference is case sensitivity.
Anyway, here’s where I found this nugget.  Enjoy 🙂
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Auto-Tuning Theology: The Disappearance of Death
Dec 14th
Continuing with Athanasius, we come across an outstanding passage from On the Incarnation of the Word wherein Athanasius brilliantly lays out the reason for Christ’s Incarnation.  But for Athanasius, the importance of the Incarnation is of more importance than the mere appearing of God in the person of Christ.  Rather, he sees an indelible link between the manner in which Christ has come (in the flesh), and the work which he accomplishes.
To Athanasius, the assumption of human nature is the means by which the corruption and dissolution which has infected humanity can finally be undone. Through his suffering and death, Christ tastes the annihilating power of sin and death. Â Yet because he is at the same time the incorruptible Word of God made manifest in the flesh, the corruption of sin and death which would normally obliterate the human person severed from God is of no permanent effect on him. Â By virtue of his justification and “grace” in the resurrection granted to him by the power of the Father, Christ reveals the powers of sin and death to be ultimately vacuous, and in this triumph over the grave, he crushes forever their claim on his brothers, the race of humankind that has been More >
Athanasius: Mortality and the Problem of Unbecoming
Dec 13th
Throughout theological history, there have been many theories set forth regarding the origin and theological meaning of human mortality. Â Some, seeing mortality as the result of a departure from a pristine existence in the Garden of Eden, root the advent of human mortality in the “fall” of Adam and Eve by virtue of their disobedience of God’s commandment not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Â Others, especially those influenced by reflections upon the theories of biological evolution, understand human mortality as something which is the natural state of existence, the peculiar aspect which all things in the impermanent universe share in common.
For those who have read my previous thoughts on the subject, it should be plainly obvious where I come down on the issue, and I have argued strenuously that I believe it is possible to assume the latter position while still putting forward a thoroughly biblical and theologically tenable understanding of the nature of human existence in relationship to God, the problem of evil, and the ultimate purposes of God within the universe.
Nevertheless, I was extremely intrigued to come across a fairly developed argument from St. Athanasius on this very topic. Â The selection More >
