existdissolve.com
the singularity of being and nothingness
iOS4 Reflections
Jul 1st
I’ve had iOS4 upgrade on my iPhone 3GS for about 2 weeks now, and since I’m not unfortunate enough to have procured an iPhone 4, I thought I’d share a few reflections about my experiences.
First, the BadThe biggest downside of the upgrade is that the new OS puts a severe beat down on the battery life. Before the upgrade, I used to be able to listen to Pandora all day at work, make a few calls, and surf around on my phone while watching TV…on one battery charge. Now, however, my battery life is at least halved, if not more. If I start Pandora first thing at work, I’ll be getting down into the 30% range by late afternoon, necessitating an early evening charge. *Sigh*
A few other disappointments:
- Random buggy-ness: I’ve noticed that apps will randomly crash without warning
- Multi-tasking management is kinda clunky-way too many double-clicks and holds to end a program (should give you the option when normally closing, me thinks…)
- Camera “zoom” upgrade is a joke. It’s exactly what you’d expect, and exactly what every app out there already did: make crappy, low megapixel pictures look even worse.
While these are fairly serious issues, there are some definitely cool More >
St. Ignatius: Three Celebrated Mysteries
Jun 29th
From The Epistles of Ignatius, Epistle to the Ephesians, Chapter XIX:
“Now the virginity of Mary was hidden from the prince of this world, as was also her offspring, and the death of the Lord; three mysteries of renown, which were wrought in silence by God. How, then, was He manifested to the world? A star shone forth in heaven above all the other stars, the light of which was inexpressible, while its novelty struck men with astonishment. And all the rest of the stars, with the sun and moon, formed a chorus to this star, and its light was exceedingly great above them all. And there was agitation felt as to whence this new spectacle came, so unlike to everything else [in the heavens]. Hence every kind of magic was destroyed, and every bond of wickedness disappeared; ignorance was removed, and the old kingdom abolished, God Himself being manifested in human form for the renewal of eternal life. And now that took a beginning which had been prepared by God. Henceforth all things were in a state of tumult, because He meditated the abolition of death.“
Java String Methods in ColdFusion
Jun 29th
This is nothing new or shocking, but I thought I’d post it anyway. When you’re dealing with ColdFusion content, you have available a number of exposed Java string methods that can be used in addition to the functions that CF provides. You don’t have to invoke any Java objects or nonsense like that-simply call the method and see what happens.
Of course, many from the full list of Java string methods are either already familiar via CF functions or can be replicated quite easily by CF-only functions. Nonetheless, I thought I’d share a quick roundup of what I think are some of the more interesting, along with simple examples of how to use them. I hope you enjoy this Bleach-inspired sampling
Method Code Result charatvalue = 'Bleach is awesome'; value.charat(3);3 concat
value = 'Bleach is awesome'; addtl = ' because of the epic battle sequences'; value.concat(addtl)Bleach is awesome because of the epic battle sequences contains
value = 'Ichigo Kurosaki';
value.contains('saki');
Yes
endswith (case sensitive)
value = 'Zanpakutou';
value.endswith('tou');
Yes
lastindexof
value = 'You can catch new episodes of Bleach on crunchyroll.com,
but only if you have a membership for which you pay each month';
value.lastindexof('you');
101
split
value = 'Shinigami|Bount|Hollow';
value.split('|');
[Shinigami,Bount,Hollow]
startswith (case sensitive) More > On Loving God, St. Bernard of Clairvaux
Jun 24th
“…why should not the creature love his Creator, who gave him the power to love? Why should he not love Him with all his being, since it is by His gift alone that he can do anything that is good? It was God’s creative grace that out of nothingness raised us to the dignity of manhood; and from this appears our duty to love Him, and the justice of His claim to that love. But how infinitely is the benefit increased when we bethink ourselves of His fulfillment of the promise, ‘thou, Lord, shalt save both man and beast: how excellent is Thy mercy, O Lord! ‘. For we, who ‘turned our glory into the similitude of a calf that eateth hay’, by our evil deeds debased ourselves so that we might be compared unto the beasts that perish. I owe all that I am to Him who made me: but how can I pay my debt to Him who redeemed me, and in such wondrous wise? Creation was not so vast a work as redemption; for it is written of man and of all things that were made, ‘He spake the word, and they were made’. But to redeem More >
ColdFusion 9 and Ternary Operation
Jun 23rd
Just a quickie
I learned about ternary operators in JavaScript probably about 6 months ago, and absolutely fell in love with it. After all, who doesn’t love to convert something bulky to something clean and able to fit on one line?
THEN:
var myidea = '';
if(thething=='yes) {
myidea = 'great';
}
else {
myidea = 'lame';
}
NOW:
var myidea = thething=='yes' ? 'great' : 'lame';
The other day, I was busting out some <cfscript>, and came across a bit of evaluation where a ternary operator would be PERFECT. Having no idea whether or not it would work, I gave it a shot and voila!, it’s magic!
<cfscript>
myidea = thething=='yes' ? 'great' : 'lame';
</cfscript>
Now after a bit more investigating, turns out this is in the “only works for CF9″ domain. Nonetheless, pretty nice-I love saving keystrokes!
Fun with CSS3: RGBA
Jun 20th
If you’re a web designer, there are times (I’m sure) when you’ve wanted to have a transparent background for something. After all, Web 2.0 is all about transparency and rounded corners, right?
In CSS2, there were generally two ways to go about this. The easiest was to use the “opacity” property. Sure, it didn’t validate, and you had to use an alternate syntax for IE7, but still…super easy.
.opacity {opacity:.7;}
The major downside (besides lack of support) of this approach is that the opacity is applied to the entire element. So, if you have a div with a bunch of text in it, any opacity setting applied to it will rollup to whatever content is contained within the element to which the opacity is applied. Especially with text, this can make for some washed-out-looking content:
In this example, the heading has a simple color of “white”, yet it looks very washed out. This is simply because it inherits the opacity of its parent element.
So if the opacity of the content is important, the next best option is to use a .png as a background image. With this approach, we get all the benefits of background-opacity, while still preserving the natural opacity of any More >
Ext JS is Now Sencha
Jun 16th
This caught me a little by surprise. A few days ago, Ext JS-a pretty awesome JavaScript framework-announced that it is joining forces with jQTouch and Raphaël to form a new company named Sencha. Branding, domain-everything is changing.
Personally, I really like this move. To me, it shows that Ext JS is interested in expanding in very important directions-vector graphic JS manipulation and mobile content-by teaming up with jQTouch and Raphaël. I’ve used Raphaël in the past for some pretty cool and simple effects, but have yet to really play around much with jQTouch (although it looks pretty sweet). Anyway, I am definitely looking forward to what’s ahead for this already great framework..the future looks very bright
Interested in learning more? Check out Sencha’s official blog post about the merger.
The Final Touchdown
Jun 15th
In case you didn’t hear, the iconic “Touchdown Jesus” (or “Big Butter Jesus”) that guarded the I-75 passage from Cincinnati to Dayton, OH, is but a skeleton of its former self. In what is the stuff of blogger’s dreams, the 62-foot statue in front of Solid Rock Church in Monroe, OH, burned to ground Monday night after-ironically enough-being struck by lightning.
I was fortunate enough to be able to see Touchdown Jesus 6 days before this transpired. It will be missed (probably not…).
Before: After:
